4. Tyson
FOUR
TYSON
THAT NIGHT
A faint yelling rings through my head, along with the sound of a single gunshot, but I can’t place anything, my body feeling like it’s floating through space.
It sounds familiar, but the words are foggy, and in a split second, everything goes silent. I move further away from the noise, toward a place where the pain stops, and a calming sensation takes control.
I don’t belong here, not yet anyway, but just as I slip away for good, a jolt of electricity runs through my body, bringing the pain back in agonizing waves.
The voices are back, along with loud wailing, but my eyes refuse to open, likely saving me from seeing what horrors I’m surrounded by.
“I’ll be back, brother. You’re going to be okay.”
Massi. My brother.
He’s here, and if I can hear his voice, I must not be dead yet.
His hand squeezes in mine, but a more petite touch is missing, and if I can’t find her in my subconscious, there’s nothing left to live for anyway.
That one thought echoes through my mind, searching for my girl in everything I can process or recognize, but even when everything begins to fade to black, she’s still not here.
Two Weeks Later
A bright white light invades my peace, and I fight against it, but something about this feels like I should find the surface.
My body wants to come out from the darkness, but when I peek one eye open, the pain rushes in all at once, and I groan, attempting to return to the place where nothing hurts.
It doesn’t work, but I instantly feel hands on my skin, and voices ring in my ears, piercing through me like nails on a chalkboard.
“Nurse! Nurse, he’s awake. I swear to God, he opened his eyes!” Someone yells, the sadness and terror enveloping me as I squint to see who’s making all the noise.
“Ty, look at me. It’s alright, I’m here. You can wake up now, brother. I need you here, please wake up,” Massi sobs, and I slowly open my eyes into his, a stream of tears rolling down his cheeks.
Slowly, I lift my hand, but it fights against me, like my arm is weighed down by bricks, and all the pain is centered in that one spot.
“Mas …” I try to speak, but my voice is hoarse, and I realize that I’m in a hospital, my blurred vision able to make out the IVs lodged in my veins.
“Mr. Kelly, welcome back to us,” A voice I don’t recognize says, and I turn my head, locating a shadowy figure standing beside me. “You’ve been in a coma for the last two weeks, healing from your wounds, but you’ve been in good hands.”
Two weeks? Jesus Christ, no wonder why I felt like I was floating through space.
I’m poked and prodded, relief flooding my veins and making my head spin, but the pain finally stops, and my eyes can adjust to the light.
A doctor comes rushing in and explains what happened, but the medical shit flies over my head, and I’m only concerned with one thing.
Where is Carter?
“Carter?” I choke out, interrupting all the conversations happening around me.
“Not right now, Ty. We’ll talk about it later,” Massi says, moving across the room and sitting beside my bed, but I push my back off the terrible mattress, tugging at the IVs in my arm.
“Where?” I grunt, not even finishing my sentence, but getting my point across.
If something fucking happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to live another day, and every second that I don’t know where she is stabs into my chest, the pain worse than whatever the bullets did to my body.
“She’s gone. She left us, Ty.” His words obliterate my entire world, and I deflate against the bed, each breath stagnant and slow, like the air has been stolen from my lungs.
He’s wrong, he has to be fucking wrong, because Carter wouldn’t just leave us.
Again, I try to sit up, but the lower half of my body doesn’t respond, my legs acting as if they’re cemented to the bed.
Every move I make feels like it’s working, but as I stare down at my feet, they don’t respond, not even with a slight twitch.
“Mr. Kelly, that’s what we’re trying to explain.
The bullet lodged against your spine, and while we were able to remove it, there’s no way to know what kind of damage it did to your spinal cord.
There’s a chance that you … you may never walk again,” The Doctor says, and my world falls apart once more, the idea of being paralyzed, or spending my life in a wheelchair crashing down on me like a cruel punishment from the universe.
After almost dying, losing my ability to walk, and finding out the love of my life is gone, I break down, all the pent up anger and sadness escaping my body.
I don’t care who sees me, or what they think, because this is a fucking nightmare that I can’t seem to wake up from, no matter how hard I try to shake myself out of it.
It’s been a hard road, but the grim diagnosis I was given were just words, and all on my own, I retrained my body.
I’m slow to get around, but using a cane helps, and at last, I’m finally able to walk without help from a therapist.
It took three months of living at a facility somewhere in Connecticut, but I woke up everyday with one goal in mind, the only thing that made recovery possible: to see Carter again.
When I wasn’t in physical therapy, or regaining my strength in the gym, I was hunting her down and learning her habits.
Massi is an idiot that had no idea how to look, but I do, and I chose not to share my side project with him during our daily phone calls. I hate lying to him, but I need to see her first, to understand what happened that night, and most importantly, to verify with my own eyes that she’s alive.
The thing about being on the cusp of death is that you miss out on a lot while the rest of the world is still spinning, and as many times as I’ve heard Massi’s recollection of events, I want hers, too.
Selfishly, I need to hear it from her lips that she chose to leave us, that we aren’t what she promised, and I’ll listen, even if she says she never loved me, or that this whole thing was just an elaborate plot to murder our families.
There’s nobody else for me, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll never get over her, but I can’t possibly move on with my life without seeing her one last time.
Massi is angry, unable to fathom that there may be more to her side of things, so rather than drag a vengeful hothead across the country, I lied to him and hopped on a plane to California alone.
Carter is closely guarded, almost never leaving the house without an escort, or the man who lives in her home, but after a week of scouting, I finally found my window.
Remotely hacking into her father’s computer was tougher than I expected, but I’ve been able to access his schedules, which includes Carter’s, that shows her entire afternoon being blocked off with a spa appointment.
As much as it kills me to think she’s been gallivanting off to ultimate pampering and luxurious sides of life while I’ve had to relearn basic motor skills, I believe in my heart that there’s something deeper happening behind the scenes, and I’m here to solidify that.
“Hi, how can I help you?” A blonde woman smiles, offering me a small wave as I enter the lobby.
“You have a client this afternoon by the name of Cassini?” I ask, pulling out my wallet, knowing that what I’m about to request will cost me a few blue bills at the very least.
“Let me see … yes, we have her booked in for a massage with Rachel first, and then –” she explains, but I cut her off when she gives me the exact detail I was looking for right off the bat.
“How much to get fifteen minutes in that room alone? No cameras, no interruptions, and then I’ll be out of your hair.” I open my wallet without making eye contact, pulling out a stack of bills that would surely make a difference in this young lady’s life, if she’s willing to play ball.
“Um, sir … that’s a serious issue of privacy, and safety,” she stammers, her eyes widened as big as saucers, but I don’t skip a beat, intent on convincing her one way or another.
“I’m her lawyer. We can only meet behind the scenes in these settings, in order to get her away from her abusive husband.
You can check with her first if you need to, but we’re well-versed in our secret meetings,” I say, and the woman’s posture softens slightly, likely not believing me, but going with it just because.
“Okay, I’ll call you when she’s ready. Come with me.” She instructs, holding her hand out as she walks from behind the desk, leading me toward a back room of sorts. “This is it. When the light above the door turns green, you can go in, and the timer starts.”
“Thank you,” I say, patiently waiting outside of the room, prepared to stand out here with my gaze fixated on the light until the cows come home.
In a way I’ve never felt before, I’m nervous, like seeing Carter again is going to make or break the trajectory of how I spend the rest of my days.
It’s now or never, as the light flickers from red to green, and the second I step into that room a very slim window opens, but I force myself forward, opening the door that holds my girl on the other side.
My breath hitches as I step inside, even though she’s covered in a robe, lying facedown on the bed, I instantly recognize that body, and that dark, curly hair.
There’s my girl.
“Hi, babygirl,” I say softly, my heart thrashing in my chest as she freezes, but slowly sits up, turning until our eyes meet.
“Tyson?” She whispers, blinking rapidly as if she’s seeing a ghost, but in all likelihood, she probably believes that she has.
Before I can say another word, she throws her arms around my neck, and I breathe in her scent, the all too familiar perfume making me weak in the knees.
“How are you here? Alive, I mean? I’ve lived every day for the last six months thinking you were gone,” she says against my chest, clinging to me for dear life as we stay intertwined in the middle of this room.
“It’s a long story, and I don’t have much time.” I break our embrace, taking a step back to admire the beautiful woman I’ve missed, but I immediately sense something is off.