Chapter Twenty-One #3
I carry on, the words coming to me easier now, the more I get them out, “Aaron, my love for you hasn’t diminished.
It hasn’t faded. It hasn’t gotten drowned out.
I haven’t replaced you. In fact, my partners are gunning for me to get you back, sweetheart.
They want to see you, to meet you, and to help care for you just as much as I do.
They’re backing me up on this. I want you to meet these amazing people because I want you to see just how much their love has helped fill in the holes left behind by grief and anguish. ”
My vision is blurry, my eyes stinging with tears so I can’t see a damn thing while I keep on babbling, promising him that I haven’t—and won’t—give up on him.
Lauren suddenly covers my hands, silencing me. “Babe, wait,” she says. “Look at the camera.”
I yank up the hem of my shirt, wiping away the tears. When I look at the screen, there are two wet streaks running down Aaron's cheeks. Is he—?
“He’s crying,” Lauren notes, her tone laced with disbelief. With my hands still clasped between hers, she shakes them excitedly. “Oh my god, he’s crying! He can hear me! He can understand you!”
I slip my hands from hers. “I don’t think that’s possible…”
She gapes at me, hope in her expression, then her eyes flick back to the screen. “Aaron, hunny?” she says skeptically. “This is just me, Lauren, speaking to you now—not interpreting for Caleb. Can you understand me?”
A blink. A coincidence, I’m sure. He’s never responded to outside stimuli other than just reflexively—not that I’m aware of, anyway. Still, Lauren squeals as if there’s been some big breakthrough here, so while I hate to burst her bubble, I have to.
“I think you might be getting your hopes up, Lauren. Medically speaking, it’s unlikely that he is responding to stimulus right now, since he’s been in this state for so long.”
She shakes her head, responding to me but never taking her eyes off the screen. “Caleb, I know that it’s not likely. I was in nursing school before my assault. We did a whole unit on minimally conscious patients before. But just because it’s not likely doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
Then, Aaron does something that causes my stomach to drop so hard it feels like it could fall out of my ass. Slowly, he turns his head and looks straight into the camera.
“Sweetheart?” I sign, suddenly too stunned to remember my own warning to Lauren about getting her hopes up. “Can you blink twice if you are able understand me?” I ask insistently.
He blinks twice. Slowly. Purposefully.
Not a reflex.
It can’t be, can it?
Lauren scrambles for her own phone, opening up the text thread she has going with Cameron:
Lauren
Get your ass back in that room… right now!
Not more than ten seconds later, I hear Cam come bursting into the room. “What’s wrong?” he asks frantically, then he gasps. “Papa?! Oh my god, did he turn to look at the camera?!”
“He did!” Lauren replies. “He turned and he blinked in response to an ask!”
“Nana!” Cam shouts. “Nana, come here!”
From that point in the call on, everything erupts into chaos.
My ex-mother-in-law comes scurrying into the room, along with someone whom I presume is a nurse because of the scrubs, and somewhere along the line, the call gets dropped in all the pandemonium.
Try as I might to re-connect, I’m unable.
Cam does send me a quick—uncharacteristically typo-riddled—text, however, letting me know he’ll call me back when he can.
Lauren is so excited she’s practically vibrating as she launches herself into my arms, sitting on my lap.
“Oh my gosh, Caleb,” she squeals into my neck, burying her face there.
“Do you even realize how big this is? Aaron responded to you. You. This just further proves that he needs you in his life, babe!”
I nod, softly smiling into her strands of hair. If that’s truly the case, that he did respond to me, that’d be huge. Reality, however, dictates that this was probably just a fluke, because something like that happening would be nothing short of a medical miracle.
And then what? How do our lives change? How does this change—us?
“What’s wrong, hun? You’re tense…” she notes, slipping off of me, back onto her own stool.
I keep trying to sign everything that’s currently rattling around in my head and deep within the confines of my chest, but everything comes out just as jumbled up as it feels inside me right now.
I start and stop, wringing my hands in frustration when everything comes out wrong.
With an understanding expression on her face, Lauren stills my hands.
“It’s okay to be confused, Caleb, but what I’m seeing is a lot of uncertainty about how this could potentially weigh on us. I am going to stop you right there, because I am one hundred and ten percent certain that you are overthinking this way too much.”
“How? How am I overthinking this?”
She sighs. "I have something I need to tell both you and Marcus, and I was going to wait until later tonight, but now seems like the right time. I hate feeling like I'm keeping something this huge from him, but I think, in this instance, he'll be understanding…"