He’s not dead.
It’s hard to swallow around the knot in my throat.
My eyes trace the familiar contours of his face, stopping at the birthmark on his cheek. Just as I remember it, it’s a detail that grounds him in reality.
This is my Saylor.
I watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest, a rhythm that’s both reassuring and painfully slow. His hair, a brown, untamed mess, falls carelessly over his forehead, some strands daring to touch his closed lids. It’s longer than I’ve ever seen it, a disarray oddly fitting for the turmoil of our situation. The urge to reach out, to gently push those stray locks away from his face, is overwhelming.
This is so unfair.
He’s not dead, he’s still here with me, and yet…
I’m hit by a wave of longing and sorrow. The man before me is both the Saylor I love and a stranger. I push the thought away.
Not a stranger, he’s mine.
No matter what the future holds, he’s a part of me, a part I will cherish and fight for, always.
My hand finds Hunter’s, seeking an anchor in this storm of emotions. “He looks so… still,” I murmur, the words catching in my throat as I try to match the Saylor before me with the loud, silly one I’ve known in my heart.
Hunter’s voice is gentle yet laced with a pain that echoes my own. “This is what he looks like when he’s… active.” I turn to look up at Hunter, frowning at him. “Mostly, he’s in a vegetative state, Sloan. As we got him out of the water, he was slipping away, and I got him back, but his heart stopped another two times before the paramedics got him to the hospital. We thought he would die. But he didn’t. He lived, but he just never woke up again.” I watch Saylor’s motionless form. The rise and fall of his chest and the occasional twitching of his fingers are the only signs of the life raging silently within. Hunter’s words wash over me. “I know it’s horrible, but sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to… I don’t know.” Hunter’s voice is laced with sorrow and grief, and I grip his hand even harder, trying to give some support.
I understand. I get it.
Watching your best friend, your brother, like this after you had given everything to save him.
This is hard.
I’m choking on emotion and haven’t lived this reality for that long.
Hunter’s voice is a heavy shroud in the sterile room, his words laden with a grief that’s been festering for years. “Right now, Saylor seems almost reachable. His eyes are moving behind closed lids, a twitch here and there, signs that scream he’s still alive and trapped in there. This is the state where the doctors had hope at first. The state he could wake up from. But then there’s the other state, the one that made us all lose our hope, and that’s happening way more often than this one.” His voice breaks slightly, a testament to the pain of hope that flickers and dies repeatedly.
“Most of the time, he’s still, like he’s braindead. That’s why our parents had to move away. My mom,ourmom, couldn’t handle the flares of hope every few days, only to be pushed into a hole again. It would have killed her to stay here, come here every day, and watch this over and over again. So they left.”
My heart constricts painfully, a sickening feeling swirling in my gut. “They left you guys alone with it,” I whisper, tears threatening to spill over.
The enormity of what they’ve been through.
Hunter nods, a tear escaping down his cheek. “True, but I get it. We all get it. We stopped coming here long ago, even if it fills me with guilt. We only come occasionally when the doctors call because his active spurts are so long or intense that they think his state could change. But it never happens. And if I’m honest, we only ever wait on a call where they’ll tell us he’s died.” His admission is like a punch to the gut, brutally honest and heart-wrenchingly painful. “Sloan, for us, Saylor died that day. Havinghope… it’s been seven years.” Hunter’s voice is barely a whisper, laden with a feeling of sorrow that seems to seep into the very walls of the room. “I would give anything to have him back, but it’s not going to happen, and I had to let go of the hope, or it would have killed me.”
I understand, I really do, but it’s all so fucking messed up. “But how? How can I feel him, see and sense him, if he’s like this? If he’s not dead?” I ask, my voice shaky.
That’s what I asked myself repeatedly on the way here. I have no idea how all of this is possible, and my thoughts and feelings are in such turmoil that I can’t even think straight long enough to make sense of it.
“I don’t know, Shortcake. I don’t understand it any more than you do. But maybe, in some way, he reaches out, and you’re just receptive enough to feel it.” Hunter’s words offer little comfort, and I turn to look at Saylor again.
“There has to be a way to get him back,” I say, more to myself than Hunter.
Hunter shakes his head, his eyes shadowed with years of disappointment. “We tried. Our dad flew in every doctor who specializes in his condition. Medical experts, people who work with natural healing, experimental methods, we tried it all. Nothing made a difference. But I can tell you with full conviction, we have done everything there is to do, tried everything there is to try.”
Leaning my head against Hunter’s shoulder, I allow myself to feel the grief, the love, the confusion.
There has to be a way. Being like this? Nobody deserves this. I thought it was bad for a soul to be lost in the between—between life and death. But this is even worse because Saylor’s not lost. He’s trapped.
And he doesn’t even know it.
I step closer to Saylor, reaching out tentatively to touch his hand. There is no tingle, but it’s warm, startlingly so, and reality hits me with the force of a freight train.
