The Spencer Letters

Letter 1.

"There's been no progress." I guess he was expecting you to get better right after the first surgery. That's not how it works.

The first surgery was to stop the internal bleeding. The doctors said your insides looked like a colander. They worked on you for many hours, you only left the operating room a couple of hours before my plane landed. As successful as they were with the procedure, your body is still completely shattered... and the possibility of losing you is still very high. Too high.

Broken bones everywhere. I think it would've been easier for the doctors to count the bones that were still intact instead. You're so fragile they're afraid to move you whenever they have to run any tests or work on you in any way. But you hit your head pretty bad, and that's the biggest problem right now.

How did we get here, Spence? No one knows how the accident even happened. We don't know if you lost control of the bike, or something got in the way and you tried to avoid it, or if someone hit you or crashed against you and left you there.

It wasn't until the Holloway boys realized you had been gone too long that they started calling you. Everybody knows you may not always answer a phone call, but you always reply to texts. When they didn't hear back from you in a few minutes they knew something was wrong. They told everyone and a search party went out looking for you, like they do with missing people.

Uncle Shane found you, on a dirt road down the river's edge. What the fuck were you doing there? Yeah, I know, you were probably there because there's no traffic, and you have zero experience driving those things. Why couldn't you go on a ride with Junior? Why did you have to drive it yourself?

My uncle called 911 and then called Harry, and he was there in a flash, followed by my dad and your mom who had gone out searching for you together in his car. Harry says you were already unconscious, no one had a chance to talk to you.

The doctors said it was a good thing that nobody tried to move you. In their desperation, Uncle Shane and Harry were close to lifting you up and placing you in the back seat of Shane's truck to drive you to the hospital themselves. You know, they feared the ambulance was going to take too long and it was going to be too late for you.

One wrong move and they could've killed you.

Fortunately, my dad arrived in time to let them know that the ambulance was right behind them. Since they had been out looking for you, they knew you had likely gotten in some sort of accident and Stephanie had asked her friends at the ER to have an ambulance on stand-by.

Everyone played a part in saving you.
Everyone but me. Because I wasn't there.

This is the one thing I hate the most about living in another country, the "not being there" when the people I love the most need me. Or when I need them.

"I'll take the first flight out" I told Harry when he called with the news. But even if the next flight was within the hour, I still had more than eight hours before I could get to you. What if I lost you before I touched down? I have never been so terrified in my life! Still am. You're not in the clear, yet.

"Tell him I'm coming, he'll wait for me" I said, "He always waits for me."

You never went anywhere without saying goodbye to me first. All of your school trips, every time you went to England, whenever you left town for more than a day, or even when you left a party early... you always looked for me to say goodbye or goodnight. This time couldn't be the exception.

You waited.

I got here and you were still hanging on to life... by a thread, but sometimes that's all you need. I've had to make Harry see that, because he had already given up when I first saw him.