THE NEXT THING I KNEW, I was in a hospital bed with IVs in my right arm and bandages wrapped around my head. I don't remember anything at first.
But I do right after a few breaths.
"Where is he?" I'm struggling to get up. "Where is he? Is he alright? I need to see if he's alright."
Klarise is here too. She looked tired. She calms me down and puts me back in the bed. I reluctantly try to sit still.
"You didn't answer my question yet. Where is he?"
She's rubbing my hands and smiling. I don't want her to just rub my hands. I want her to tell me where the hell my best friend is.
"Where is he?" I asked again, my voice growing louder.
"Shh, shh, it's okay."
No, it was not okay. "Where. Is. He?"
She takes my hands and plants her lips on them. She's shaking. When she brings her face back up, her eyes are filled with tears. They don't fall out just yet. "I thought I was going to lose you. What happened? How did it even happen?"
My impatience turns into guilt. And then...I feel water coming down my cheeks. I let my head fall on her shoulder. "I-I don't know. This is all my fault. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
She rubs my back, she kisses my face. She does everything to try to make me feel better but it just doesn't work. I needed to see him.
As if hearing my thoughts, she tells me: "He just got out of surgery."
I gasp. I feel air being sucked out of my lungs.
Klarise lightly slaps my back like I was choking, she's really trying. But I just couldn't seem to calm down. "It's OK. He's going to be OK. He's safe now."
He's safe now.
Even hearing that, I don't think I was okay. Since waking up, I now examine my surroundings. It's a nice hospital room. There's a bathroom, and the only bed in here is mine. I notice Cameron isn't here.
"Cameron is with Mason right now." She says, reading me like an open book. "They're both safe."
I struggle again, trying to get up. I don't realize just how weak I am until Klarise pushes me down, barely using any force. She pulls the blanket higher, engulfing me.
"Now you should rest."
"But I——"
"If you want to see him, you need to get better first." She says all of this in a matter-of-factly voice, which makes it harder to argue. "You wouldn't want him to wake up and be worried, would you?"
I stopped resisting and let all my guards down.
Klarise touches my face, weaving out my hair and pulling it out of my way so it was more comfortable. "Just rest now..."
Her voice is so soothing. My eyes start to close, even if I don't want them to. I fall asleep.
__________
They put me in a wheelchair even though I was very much capable of walking. I argued about it with Klarise and the nurses for around five minutes until I realized it was either this or I'm not going anywhere. It was ridiculous. I had legs. I did hit my head pretty hard, I did have some scrapes and cuts on my arms from the glass. But I could walk. When you're a patient at a hospital, especially trapped and feeling contained, I think you start to notice just how annoying and ridiculous all the rules were.
We were in the private section of the hospital. Or rather, the section where rich people are because they don't want to be crowded. One thing about hospitals I did like during those few moments were how these staff minded their own business, walking by and not caring about who me and Klarise were. While Klarise pushed my wheelchair, I glanced back several times to notice she was looking around. You could see it all over her expression: she was scared that there will be cameras. It was painful to watch how she still cared so much, even at times like this, to be seen with me. I looked past it and tried to think of something else.
"Here," she stopped us in front of a door.
"Here as in..." I don't turn around to see her face. I just stare at this door. There's a small squared glass window, but it has a curtain over it on the other side. I don't hear anything. There's no voice, no anything. "He's in there."
I wanted to turn around, look at Klarise, and tell her I don't want to do this anymore. I was the reason he's here. I was the reason. That fact was so evident I...I wanted to kill myself.
And then Klarise does what she does, which stops any choice I have.
She opens the door. She pushes me in. She doesn't say anything, just did what she did. She closes the door. And then I have no way out.
Mason was awake. I don't know if that was good or bad. But he looked tired. Really tired. And then I start to wonder how long I have been asleep for, has it been days? When did the accident even happen? I didn't even know the date.
Klarise wheeled me in even closer.
They both look up. Cameron and Mason. He was sitting on a chair, not saying anything, and leaning his head down on the side of Mason's bed. Mason himself was...I haven't seen my own reflection yet, so I didn't know if his injury was worse than mine. But it was...bad. I felt a harsh inhale, like tiny little sharp glasses in my throat. I didn't know breathing could be so painful at one point until then.
Bandages covered just about two thirds of his whole face. And I didn't see this then, but a few moments later, I would see the purple and blue bruises on his waist line. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time.
Cameron got up from where he had been sitting. The sound of his chair scraping the floor somehow made all of this even more painful. How was a chair scraping a floor that loud?
He doesn't look at me. He looks behind me. And now, I turn around to see Klarise nodding. I turn back just in time to see Cameron nodding too. Like me and Mason who shared connections without words, they had that too. I sometimes forget that Klarise grew up with Cameron and they went to the same schools.
Klarise leans down and kisses my temple and ear. "We'll be back soon. Watch over him for us?"
I wanted to tell her I couldn't do this. I wanted to tell them that I'm the very culprit of why he's injured and in this hospital. I don't do any of that. I smile that stupid smile I used to be so proud of that I was starting to loathe I could do so perfectly. I'm one of those people who could look okay, look happy. I'm just realizing how right Cameron once was. I am a monster.
"Yeah, sure, go ahead."
She kisses me once more, a comfort of a kiss, and she and Cameron start to walk away. But before leaving, Camerons stops at me. He leans down.
I felt scared for my life. I waited for the slap, the yell, the anger, the hate. I feared it but I knew I deserved it. Whatever it was, this will be my punishment. I wait.
His hand lands on my shoulder. It's a delicate touch. I'm surprised. I raise my eyes from the floor to see that he's smiling, tears in his eyes that only I can see from this distance. He doesn't say anything. He pats my shoulder, gives me a one arm hug, and smiles again. He leaves.
And he left me wondering what in the world Mason said to him. Because whatever it was, it wasn't me almost killing his lover.
The door closes and then I am opening my mouth to ask the question when Mason talks. I thought he might've not been able to speak.
"I told him what happened."
I push my wheelchair closer to him. His voice was quiet, the kind of quiet like he was on the edge of death but just somehow made it back.
"I'm sorry," I said. "This is all my fault. Why did you lie for me?"
He's barely able to sit. He has his head sunken into a pillow. "I didn't. I told him the truth."
I shook my head, smiling but more a shameful smile like I couldn't believe and allow what was happening. "If you did, he wouldn't have smiled at me like that."
"You know...I kind of caused all of this for myself." I'm about to interrupt because that was nonsense when he put his hand up—barely—and stopped me. "I said those things to you. I shouldn't have. No best friend would do that."
I put my hands on the edge of his bed. I let my head fall on the blanket. To think about it, everything he had said wasn't wrong. Because all of it was the truth, I bursted. I was a balloon, being blown and blown, unacknowledged that I was getting bigger. And I popped. All that stuff, I knew it deep down, but I couldn't admit them. Mason just simply brought them to the surface, put it up to my face for me to see everything. I couldn't take it. I was too weak to take it.
"No. A best friend is someone who will tell you the truth especially when you couldn't see it. You did that for me. And not only was I unappreciative about it. I..." The tears were coming. "I hurt you."
"No..." He tries to get up, but he winces from the movement. I quickly look up when I hear the sound, and try to settle him back down. He doesn't exactly cooperate. "Stop it. Stop apologizing for my sake. I said things I shouldn't have said. I..." He reached for my hand, and because he could barely move it, I reached for his and took it. He squeezes it, his hands warm with familiarity. "You love her. And my opinion shouldn't matter. She's...she's been through a lot herself, and for me to have stood there, pointing fingers, accusing her of things that we all sometimes do as human beings, making natural mistakes, I deserved for what happened. I was asking for it, wasn't I?" Now his own tears were falling. He makes an attempt to wipe them.
"Mason, you are talking nonsense right now. It was all my fault and——"
"I love you, Maeve. We've been through ups and downs together. This is just one of them. You are my friend, my best friend, my most trusted companion. If anything, you and Cam, you two are my soulmates. I care about you way too much to let this break us." He's been leaning his neck forward, and it looked like it was using a lot of effort. He lets his head fall, it hits with a tiny thump on the pillow.
I allow myself to finish crying, the kind where you just let the tears fall and drag on. When it finally stabilizes, I look him in the eye as he rests with reluctance in this bed.
"This will be a secret between us." He says, smiling like old times. The smile that young, shy, scared to reach out to the world boy did. He smiles just like always, and I feel my chest warming up. "What happened, it will be between us. We will let it pass, okay? Promise me?"
I had so much argument, so much to disagree against what he was saying. But in that moment, my heart got the better of my head. His smile, the smell of the hospital, his hand holding mine, I couldn't...I couldn't do what should have been the right thing.
"Okay," I said, smiling myself and holding tightly onto his hand. "I promise you."
He relaxes more when I promise him that.
A few minutes pass and Klarise and Cameron still haven't come back. In the air, there seemed to be something that needed to be said. The thing that had started this drama in the first place. I thought I could have let it slide, could have moved on with the accident. But somehow I couldn't sit still about it. After all, it was a big thing.
"The marriage..." I start, and a soft chuckle escapes him. He's not staring at me. He's not staring anywhere. He just laughs. The kind that sort of...gave you the chills. "Is everything alright?"
"No, I was just thinking about it..." He looks me in the eye, a soft grin. It leaned more towards sad though, a sad smile I've seen Klarise sometimes do. A helpless smile. Like you know you will have no power over this thing. "It's okay."
"I'm sorry about it..." I was. I think I might've been the only one who was sorry about the marriage decision not being confirmed with Mason. Klarise, how much I loved her, did not exactly once bat an eye with this choice. She was so scared of people finding out I lived with her, I think sometimes she was glad to have me move away and move in with Cameron. Me getting engaged just made her cover better. And Cameron. He loves Mason, so so much, even after what will happen in a few years, he has always loved Mason. I don't think he has loved anyone the way he loved him. That's why he was so broke when...I won't get there yet. But with Cameron, he was just like Klarise years ago, scared with his parents. Cameron could have led a happy life with some girl if he didn't meet Mason, I think. He and Klarise could have both done that. But I guess what I'm saying is that that would've been another story. So put it in this way: Me and Mason were scared of the press finding out about us, we wanted to live happy lives to be ourselves but we were scared. But. Cameron and Klarise were on another level of scared and hiding. And this marriage, I think it made them feel...safer. An extra layer of wall being built around us for protection.
But this extra layer...I felt like I was slowly being strangled instead of being protected. And maybe that's why, as good as he always knew me, Mason didn't want this marriage to happen. I think he warned me with signs I never paid attention to.
Mason turned his face away, looking out at the window. "Do you know why, ten or so years ago, I didn't want you and Cameron to start this whole fake dating thing?"
"I..." I squeezed his hand like it would make this easier. Maybe it did. "I know."
He smiles. "I assumed you did. And yet," he turns back at me. That sorry smile again. "You've just done it to yourself again."
"That's not..." Now that the situation was fully turned on me, my tears were dry. So dry I felt like the last time I cried was when I was born. "I just want to protect us. I want to be useful."
"But you have been useful!" His grip is nice and firm in my hand. "And even if you're not, I don't care. You're family. Family isn't about being useful."
And then I admit the truth. Something I didn't know was true until it was out of my mouth.
"I'm scared. I don't want to keep on lying like this."
When he let go of my hand, somehow having this new found strength, he reaches for me and hugs me. And then it just clicked in me that he knew me so much better than I knew myself. He knew. He just knew like always.
I whimper a dry sob, breathing what's left of his smell from the surgery and hospital clothes he's in. "I...I don't want this life, Mason. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't...when can I tell the truth?"
I expect him to say something inspiring. Something that will be guide-full. Something incredibly special that I will feel alive again and not this torturous nightmare I feel like I have been encased in. I wanted him to say something even like "The truth is just there, waiting for you to reveal it. It's just a step". But what he said was simple. Something maybe any average human being would say.
"I don't know."
He doesn't know. He doesn't know when we can...I started to smile. To laugh. Because right that moment...the realization just struck me that...
Maybe it's too late for the truth.
Cameron and Klarise come back that second.
The TV turns on at that timing too, either one of them turning it on but I couldn't see who because I was still hugging Mason.
"The engagement of Cameron Li and Maeve Sun Lively is such blissful news that people all over have been..."
The TV lady keeps on talking. I tune the awful words and sounds out.
Klarise calls for me. I didn't know how to pull away from Mason, and I think he felt that, so he started to let me go. And then, I don't know if Klarise or Cameron hears this, but I know Mason said it and I wasn't being delusional.
He looked me in the eye, his lips drawn downward. That look was one to pierce a soul into millions of pieces. It just made me see all of this picture...this life I had built for myself.
Correction: Cage.
Klarise is saying something. I don't hear it. My eyes solemnly focused on Mason as his lips moved. Klarise pulls me away. She starts to point to these medicines and prescriptions, which she'll have to repeat to me later. Because all I could hear was what Mason had said.
This isn't just a marriage.
And he was right. It wasn't just a marriage. I don't exactly know what it was anymore.