Amy talked about how some girls wrote about the great tragedy in their lives. I’m quickly learning that the only reason that I didn’t was because it hadn’t happened yet. Well, now it has.
Nick was the perfect boy for me. Go ahead, scoff if you’ve never met us, seen us together. We were that sickly sweet couple that never fought. For 20 months, that’s pretty good. I loved him with every ounce of who I was. I thought about him everyday, almost nearing obsession. He was the one person that knew me inside and out. Better than anyone. He was my confidant, my friend, my lover all rolled up into one. He knew all my secrets. I never kept anything from him. He didn’t keep stuff from me. We could laugh about anything. He was my sure-fire happy pill. No matter what mood I was in, what had me down, he could make me feel better. He would pet me, tell me he loved me, and suddenly the day would get better. Even seeing him for five minutes could make my day. He told me I was the love of his life. I told him the same thing. People were jealous of us. We seemed like the only happy couple to be found. Nothing between us ever went wrong, so wrong that seeing each other wouldn’t make it better. For what else do you go into a relationship for than to feel better? If you don’t feel better, what’s the point? He was my motivation to keep going.
After we’d been dating a couple of months, I made him promise me that he would never get seriously injured or die while I was dating him. Because I knew that no man could ever live up to the idyllic relationship that I had with him. It’s the one promise he ever broke to me. And he never broke his promises. So half of me keeps thinking he’s ok. But he isn’t. Nick was in a horrible car crash this morning. The other two boys that were in the car will be ok eventually. Nick was driving, and his side took the worse hit. His parents called me and I went to the hospital at 1 this morning. Numbly, I sat with his family for two hours, the doctors making period check-ins. Everyone kept telling everyone else that he was a strong boy, that he’d be fine. I stopped believing them. I just kept hoping that if I went to sleep, I wouldn’t wake up there, in that hospital waiting room, with him in critical condition, his mother crying, everyone trying to comfort her, she trying to comfort everyone else. Frantic phone calls. My hands were shaking, hell, they still are. I got up and asked the person at the desk for a piece of paper. I started writing: I need to—No. you need to wake up. Need to be ok. I need you Nick. Please. You promised. I don’t want to see you, I’m so afraid. You’re supposed to be the strong one. You’re supposed to be the smart one Nick. Don’t you know how much I need you? Please Nick, most days, you’re all that’s keeping me together, keeping me going. I need you Nick. ***, I’m going to start sobbing.
This is just a dream, right? If I just keep writing, maybe it is.
Finally, they moved us to another room, or started to. His doctor caught us while we were in transit. It didn’t sound good. He’d broken his pelvis in a few places, his lungs were both collapsed, and he had a brain injury. That it didn’t look good but they were trying with everything they had. The rest of the group walked to the second room, but I, for the first time that night, started crying. I don’t cry easily. Hell, I can count the number of times I’ve cried in high school up until today on one hand. My dad, thank goodness he was there, held me. He knew I was beyond comforting, he just held me. Suddenly, we saw a bed coming towards us, surrounded by hospital staff. I knew it was him. Somehow I knew. I couldn’t look. My father held me to him. He said this morning that he’d always thought of Nick as so grown up, but lying on the bed, he looked very young. That was when I decided I had to go home. I couldn’t just wait around the hospital. I went and said goodbye to his family and left. I got a call at 5:30 this morning saying that there was nothing the doctors could do. That Nick was gone.