Mason

It was a drak and rainy day in February when I was hit with a small red pick-up truck. February 15th. I was told I flew 15 feet before landing smack on my head. Apparently the diver was drunk and didn't see me crossing.

I don't remeber that day at all.

Four weeks I slept, in a coma that many feared I would never come out of. I was placed in a ward of children and teens with major bodily harm or disease. My roomate was a boy named Mason. I never did find out his last name. For the time in which I slept, he found out bits and pieces of my through my various visitors. My favorite colour, what kind of music I liked, and other random things.

The day I woke up, I was showered with love and attention from my family and it took me almost an hour to realize the boy laying in the bed beside me. He flashed me a lopsided grin and quietly went back to the book he was reading.

Eventually, I was left in peace and after about 20 minutes of mental debate, I spoke up and asked him his name. His voice was smooth and low and never failed to make me shudder. We spent the rest of the evening playing 20 questions and getting to know eachother better.

Eventually, my doctor would break our quality time and give me the low down on my injuries and what the healing process would be like. He tld that when I was hit, not only did I give myself a nasty concusion, but my legs were also broken in my oh so graceful landing.

They said I had a 60% chance of ever walking again.

We became close almost instantaneously. The nurses would laugh and say we already looked like an old married couple bundled up in bed watching whatever soap-opera happened to be on television. Mason would just flash me his trademark grin while I blushed and buried my face in his chest.

We both had our good days and our bad ones, Mason and I. On a particulary tough day of treatment for him, we both lay in his bed with him trembleing in my arms. I'll never forget the feeling of his soft hiccups or the knot at the pit in my stomache. I finally got up my courage and asked him the million dollar question.

He had Hodgkin's disease. I don't think either of us slept that night.

While my legs were transitioned from casts to braces, Mason's chemotheropy began. However, without fail, I'd come back frustrated or in tears from a difficult session of theropy, he'd be there to comfort me with soothing words and reruns of I Love Lucy.

Over the weeks, the chemo bagn to take it's toll. His brown curls thinned into almost nothing, dark circles took perminant resident under his eyes, and his skin turned pale as snow. As my legs grew stronger, the day I was released no longer seemed like something to look foreward too.

The day we decided to shave his hair was the day I broke down. I told him I'd do anything; give blood, bone marrow, anything to make him better faster, but he just shot me that smile that instantely made me melt and wipe my tears away.

60%. Mason had a 60% chance of beating his demons. Same as me.

On May 12, I was officially released from room 104, I would walk with a limp most likely for the rest of my life. Every other day I would visit Mason. Each time I would leave, we would take a picture together. Over the months I could compare our first picture with our most recent one and see how much he was deteriorating. It was heartbreaking.

August 17th was the first time I lost him. Overnight a high fever had broken out and his heart stopped for 4 1/2 minutes. Those were the worst minutes of my life. I sat outside his room in an uncomfortable plastic chair watching the nurses I knew all too well scrambleing back and forth trying to save his fragile life.

After than, I vowed to never let him leave me alone again.\

I guess the odds weren't in his favor, by Thanksgiving, he was practically a skeleton. But I didn't care.

He confided me that night, accepting the fact that his time was almost up and that he'd wait for me on the other side. I begged him not to go, but he just lightly shook his head and rubbed soft circles into my back. He wasn't going to survive to see Christmas.

That was two months ago.

No longer being able to bear seeing him hooked to all sorts of machines, we decided to steal away in the night together. So, I bundled him up, and we drove away in my mother's car until we arrived at an old cabin my family wouls stay in during the holidays. Mason and I couldn't be any happier. I don't care if I'm on the news every night, or if every cop in the county is looking for me.

All I care about is being with Mason forever.

Even if his flesh is crawling with maggots and is beginning to peel off the bone. Even if the smell from his rotting cavader never fades from my skin. His lips are still warm at night and often whispers sweet secrets into my ear before we sleep. No one, not the police, doctore, or anyone else can ever seperate us. I'm ready for them when they come.

I made sure to bring the sharpest scapel I could find before leaving the hospital.

But until then, I'll lay in Mason's arms, or at least what I think were once his strong appendages, and well talk the night until he takes me away.

We'll be together forever.