You, The Ocean and Me

Chapter Nineteen

19

            It was the perfect summer setting. Blue skies, shining sun, marine waves washing up in the distance. No one was on the beach today, so all there was in view was the golden yellow sand. I had gone fishing with Ryan and as we walked back I noticed how perfect today had been. I took a deep breath of the saltwater air and checked my watched. 2:03 pm.

            As we walked up to the house, Ryan and I said hello to Mrs. Martinez who sat on her front porch waving a fan in front of her face. She had a grim expression and she turned to me. “Your friend Jason was about to come over,” she began. She swallowed hard.

            “Oh, what did he need?” I asked unaware.

            “An ambulance.” She stated. I stared at her in disbelief. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. “He was walking down the road when he fell over. I called the police as soon as I saw him collapse.”

            I didn’t bother listening to what else she had to say. I dropped my bags and without even saying a word to Mrs. Martinez or Ryan I took off down the street, running in the direction of the hospital. I could hear Ryan calling after me but I ignored him. I needed to know if Jason was okay. My heart was thudding in my ears and I was breathing hard.

            I burst through the front doors of the hospital out of breath. I probably looked mentally insane. I ran up to the front door trying to catch my breath. A young nurse peered over her glasses and looked me up and down. “Is Jason here? Is he okay?” I panted without hesitation.

            “Jason Parker is in a room right now. He went into cardiac arrest, but he is being stabilized,” She explained in a nasally voice. “He isn’t accepting visitors,” She added, narrowing her eyes. I bit my lip. She turned, her ponytail nearly whipping me in the eye. When she disappeared down the hallway I immediately went down the opposite corridor, peering through the windows of hospital rooms so I could find Jason’s. When I finally got there, I slipped into the room, closing the heavy door behind me.

            He was lying on the hospital bed in his normal clothes. The pills I had found in his medicine cabinet were on a tray at the foot of the bed and an IV was connected through his arm. There was some dirt in his hair, evidence he had hit his head on the ground when he fell.

            “Did you meet my nurse? Her name is Hazel, more like Nasal.” He joked, trying to get me to laugh. His boyish smile lit up his face, but the grey surroundings of the depressing room dimmed it. He must’ve been talking about the annoying nurse who greeted me on my way in. I would have laughed if he weren’t being stabilized for cardiac arrest right now.

            “The pills….the bad news the doctor gave you…it was this wasn’t it? You knew you were going to die, Jason. And you never told me!” I cried as tears spilled down my cheeks. Jason’s smile wilted as he sat up a little straighter. I knew he wanted me to come over to sit with him but my feet remained my planted on the floor, my back resting on the door.

            “You were upset about Sarah leaving because you knew you wouldn’t make it to college, you knew that you’d never see her again. That’s why you didn’t let me switch colleges either, you knew you’d die!” Jason looked down into his lap, not wanting to have to look at me.

            “Kaiden, I just wanted to have fun. I knew if I told you, or anybody, all the time we spent together would be timed. It would constantly be about getting to do a bunch of stuff before my clock ran out, and I know we wouldn’t be able to do everything we wanted to do and then I would die and you’d be unhappy,” Jason argued, his voice getting louder the more and more he spoke.

            “Stop saying that!” I yelled back. “I deserved to know!”

            “Can you do one last thing for me, Kaiden?” He asked.

            “What?”

            “Sneak me out,” He pleaded. “Just so we can go to the beach one last time. One last time,” He begged. I glanced at his heart monitor, the steady beep was scary, but once I looked into Jason’s big auburn eyes, I couldn’t help myself. I peeled my back off of the door and walked over to him slowly, then helped him unhook his IV so he could stand up.

_ _ _ _

            We laid on the beach together, resting on the golden sand side by side, much like our midnight visit to the beach the second day we’d known each other. We soaked in the bright sun, the slight breeze cooling us down enough that we weren’t sweating from the heat. The beach was still empty, since less people had gone to the beach since the Fourth of July episode, but it was okay, because it was just the two of us enjoying our last moments together. It was bittersweet. The only sounds you could hear were our breathing and the waves washing up on the shore.

It was just us, Jason.

Just us and the ocean.

You, the ocean and me.

xxx Kaiden