Chapter 21
Taylor leaned back against the cool glass of the telephone booth as Dawn’s telephone rang for the third time. He wanted her to be home; he needed her to be home. It rang a fifth time and Taylor was about to hang up, when her breathless voice called through the telephone.
“Hello.”
“Dawn! Hi!” Taylor said, a smile spreading across his face.
“Oh my God, Taylor, is that you?”
“Yeah…how are you?”
“I’m fine, is everything alright? Where are you?”
“I’m still at the clinic, and everything, is well, changing.”
“Is that good or bad?” she asked assuming the calm, soothing voice of a person ready, willing, and able to comfort someone.
“The good news is incredible. I will be home very, very soon.”
She smiled, “That is wonderful news.”
“My bad news is tragic though…Lee is dying,” he said his eyes slipping shut.
“Dying? How?”
“She has AIDS, and she is only getting worse,” he said as a single crystal tear slid down his left cheek, “She may live a year, or she may die before I come home.”
“I am so sorry Taylor. I don’t know what to say, but I am so very sorry.”
“You don’t have to say anything…I just need you to…” he trailed off, “I just need you.”
Dawn’s heart skipped a beat; “I’ll never leave you Taylor. Never ever again.”
Taylor’s lips began to tremble with a familiar urge to speak unspoken words, but even if he was ready to say them this was not the time or the place he imagined saying them in; he would let this opportunity slip by because it would be the last time he hesitated to live. Taylor could see one of the nurses signaling impatiently toward him; “I’m sorry Dawn, but I’ve got to hang up.”
“Alright,” she said with a small smile, “I guess the next time I talk to you I’ll be able to see your face.”
“Most likely.”
“I have a lot I want to tell you…”
“Me too…I wish I could say it now, but…”
“You’ll have your chance,” Dawn bit her lip hoping to get smoothly through the next phrase, “I love you Taylor.”
“I love you too Dawn…good-bye,” he croaked, his heart pounding in his throat; the receiver shaking in his trembling hands until he returned it to the cradle.
Walker finally got the chance to lug Jordan’s old trunk down from the cellar. He had not touched it since the day Taylor tried to commit suicide, but he knew now that Taylor would be returning home soon and that he need to become aquatinted with the man who no longer existed outside memories, dreams, and an old blue trunk.
As Walker set the heavy trunk down on the edge of Taylor’s bed, he realized he himself had not given more than a passing glance to the contents of the box in eighteen years. After Jordan passed away Walker did not want to comb through his possessions, so he shut them up and away in the attic never intending to see them again. Now he lifted volume after volume of Jordan’s journals; the pages slightly yellowed with age would tell all his secrets, how he lived, what he felt, and why he died. As Walker thumbed through the hard black notebook that contained the last words Jordan ever wrote a wrinkled, tear-stained sheet of paper fell from between the pages. He unfolded the crinkled, yellowed piece of paper, dated a week before his suicide, and addressed to an unborn Taylor. His eyes fell on the first few words, but he could not continue to read. These words had been hidden away, meant for Taylor’s eyes; Jordan knew his brother all too well, and understood that someday when the unborn child was no longer a child, he would read these pages and come across the words meant solely for him.
The doctors believed that Taylor was out of danger; he had not had an incident in weeks. He had responded to his medication in ways no one had dreamed. Vomiting was a rare and never a self-induced event for Taylor now, and while he had not yet returned to his normal weight, he was approaching it, and a steady diet would insure he reached it. His attitude had improved, and with steady counseling his doctor predicted he would make a full recovery. Diana and Walker had even been told that Taylor was inquiring about methods for healing the scars he stubbornly refused to have examined by a plastic surgeon.
Walker felt somewhat apprehensive about Taylor returning home. He understood that this transition could make him or break him. Dr. Kennedy said that one half of all patients have some sort of relapse, and ninety percent of those who have a relapse, especially a heavy relapse have it within the first two months of arriving home. For this reason Taylor’s doctors had scheduled many appointments in short periods of time and even prescribed a mild anti-depressant to help avoid a relapse, but Walker still did not know what to expect. He did not want to treat Taylor as if he were different or isolate him from the world, but the world had taken a piece of Taylor before and he worried it may come back for the rest of him. Walker hated the thought of getting him home, only to have to send him back. He knew from experience that some people would never recover; what made them so sure Taylor could? Jordan couldn’t, and he was no longer of the world. Is that what Taylor had to look forward to if he did not recover death, or a life inside hospital walls?
“Maybe I am being irrational,” Walker thought, ‘The doctors have all the faith in the world that Taylor is going to make a full recovery, and that if all of us are there for him he will not have a relapse…He is not Jordan. Jordan never tried to get better; he gave up. Taylor will not give up, again, as long as there is a breath left in my body. He will get better.’
Two days after Taylor discovered Lee bloody and broken in her room she was sent back into the general population with her clean, white bandages and frightening blue stitches. She was feeling better now that the last of the medication was completely out of her system, and all the side effects had faded. Taylor had not had the courage to tell her he was leaving yet. He was not sure what it would do to her, but he knew they were running out of time. They had twelve days left together, and he certainly could not break this kind of news the night before. He had been trying to tell her all afternoon, but the words were not right. Taylor wondered if the words would ever be right.
He stared at her lying on his bed; her dark hair was spread out on the blanket like a fan. Her arms were covered in milky white bandages that concealed the after effects of bad news. Her fingers tripped through the pages of a magazine she had found abandoned on his nightstand. Her eyes told Taylor she had no idea of what he was about to say, but the stiff, set expression of her jaw told him that she would be ready to accept reality and embrace another one of the constant changes she was already so used to.
Taylor sat beside her on the bed; “Lee…I need to talk to you.”
The magazine found its place on the nightstand; “Alright…speak.”
“There is no easy way to tell you about this, so it is probably best if I speak plainly: In twelve days I am being sent home.”
Lee’s heart jumped for the joy of someone getting their life back, but it quickly sank at the pain of having to say good-bye. Her smile did not falter when she said, “Congratulations Taylor…I knew you could do it.”
“Without your faith I probably couldn’t have.”
“Don’t be silly; you got better because it is not your nature to give up.”
“I was surrendering to the most dangerous enemy I had though…myself, and you would not let me. Whether you believe it or not, you were the catalyst to my recovery; there are no words to describe what an incredible gift that is, and no action could ever be enough to repay it.”
“You do not have to repay it…From the moment I laid eyes on you I knew I wanted to see you leave this terrible place; I was glad to…” she trailed off with a tear in her voice, unsure of how to finish her sentence, “I’m sorry Taylor…I am just going to miss you so much…”
He placed his hand on top of hers, “I am not going to disappear. I promised you once I would never leave you, and nothing in heaven or on earth would tempt me to break that promise.”
Lee smiled once again unsure of what to say. Heaven and earth were now places she felt torn between every day. She was going to miss Taylor no matter what; he could visit her everyday, or never, in the end she would still miss him. After all, she was going to die and leave him, and no promise could change that.