He smiled at me over a plate full of ribs. “I ate thirty-seven!” he cried raising his arms in triumph, as barbeque sauce smeared his face and clothing. I just stared blankly down at my two nibbled ribs and then across the table at the fifteen-year-old I had just met named Ryan. He claimed to be a sophomore in college. He was funny and our table had laughed the whole evening. He was loud; he commanded authority and respect, but most of all, he was smiling at me in a way no one had smiled before.
~.~
It was a Sunday, a few days after camp had ended and I was relaxing and watching television with my mom. The phone rang and I will never forget the conversation. It was Brittany, a girl I had met at camp just a few weeks before and she also lived in Las Vegas. It’s one of those moments frozen in history that I could never forget where I was and what I was doing. “Stephanie, Ryan was in a car accident and he’s in the hospital.” I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t wonder, I just knew he’d be fine, so I took my mom down to the hospital and we waited.
~.~
I looked up from a conversation on the back deck, over looking the lake and there he was, taller than the year before. I smiled and jumped up to greet him. Ryan returned my smile and we hugged, a moment later he exclaimed, “You look prettier every time I see you!” He loved me with all his heart. I knew he did, and I knew he told people that he was going to marry me someday, but I never took him seriously. But he didn’t care that I ignored his affections; he was never one to give up and everything he set out to achieve was his in the end. Ryan’s mom recently told me that he had said, “Stephanie isn't like other girls, she’s not the type of girl one dates, but the kind of girl that you keep on the back burner as a friend and then marry someday.” Never had more true words been spoken of me at that time of my life.
Ryan and I saw each other about once or twice a year and only for short weekends or a week at a time. We once spent a day together at the beach when I was in southern California visiting family, and another time he had eaten Thanksgiving dinner with my family. On one occasion, his parents took me out to lunch. But since we had met at camp we always saw each other there for a week or two out of the year. Mainly, our relationship was as long-distant friends with long phone conversations. Ryan and I talked at least once a week, having long philosophical discussions and talks about God and nature. We had a lot of laughs night swimming and getting lost, both in the city and in the forest.
He was one of the strongest people I knew, both mentally and physically. Ryan wore a size seventeen shoe and was 6’4”. He came from an acting family and when he would say he was “in the movie business,” you believed him simply because of his demanding presence. He was outgoing; he was the life of the party and when he entered a room, everyone knew it. Ryan could be friends with anyone, and he usually was, he never met a stranger.
~.~
When visiting time at the hospital began we asked if we could see him, but it was a trauma center where no one was allowed unless they were over 18 or immediate family. We didn't even know what had happened. A car accident, that was all. I was just seventeen, so I sat in the waiting room with my mom and a few friends, shivering. Isn't it funny how when you’re scared and nervous, even if you're in the warmest place on earth, you're still ice cold? A minute later, Ryan's mom, Peggy, rushed out. I'd met her only two weeks before when his parents had taken Ryan and me out to lunch. That lunch was the last time his parents ever saw him alive and I will always be in their last memory of him. Peggy walked straight up to the security guard and stated, "She is coming in with me. Ryan would want her there." Before the security guard could answer, she took my hand and led me back to the small ICU room where Ryan lay.
~.~
We had spent the last three weeks before the car accident at summer camp together. There was a lot of Ryan, both physically and with his charismatic personality and he was sometimes hard to handle. I can’t lie by saying our last three weeks were perfect, and that we were the best of friends, because they had been quite the opposite. I'm normally a patient person, but he tried my patience on a number of occasions and I know I tried his. I was with him for over three week and especially there in the last week I blew him off on a number of occasions and for what? A shower, a nap or someone else. I regret that most of all. But how can you know it will be the last time you see that person, talk to that person or hear them laugh or see them smile? We can never know such things and I will live the rest of my life wishing I could have treated him like he deserved to be treated; but also I will live thanking God for the time He blessed me with Ryan. It was a lesson to always treat others with sincere kindness and respect
~.~
I hadn't wanted to see him lying still in a hospital bed, I wanted to remember him as he was, as Superman, but at the same time, I never would have forgiven myself if I hadn't gone in to see him. It was hard to tell if it was really him. Yes, it was a big guy, but most of his head was wrapped up in a white bandage. "He's in a coma, but the doctor says that he can still hear you. Talk to him let him hear your voice," His mother, Peggy, told me. I bit my lip as tears formed in my eyes. What do you say in a situation like that? "Hey, Ryan," I whispered, choking back on tears. Then his mom said, "Just talk to him." I tried again, "Hey Ryan, it’s me, Stephanie." Tears streamed down my face and through blurry eyes, I took hold of his hand, wishing that if he could really hear me, I’d have something more to say. His hand was warm, almost hot compared to mine which were ice cold. I squeezed the hand of my dear friend saying nothing at all, hoping that if I squeezed hard enough he would squeeze back. In that moment, the entire world around me froze. It was just me standing there with my only friend in a hospital bed. He was squeezing my hand back and I had hope; I knew he’d be fine. But in truth, it wasn’t until I let go of his limp hand that I realized he was never squeezing back at all.
~.~
“I don’t think I’ll ever die,” Ryan turned to me with a smile. “Oh really?” I asked in response. “Yes, for one, I’m too alive to die and for another, I think I’d rather just live forever.” He was satisfied with his response to the possibility of death and all I could do was shake my head. “But if I do die,” he continued, “I’m not going to be one of those angles with white wings and a golden halo, oh no, I’m going to be dirty and wearing a black ‘Ozzie Ozborne’ T-shirt, I’ll be one of those arch angels!” I laughed, “Ryan, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to die anytime soon.” He smiled at me, “Nah, you’re right, but I want a mosh-pit and a fog machine at my funeral.”
~.~
In the family room, at the hospital, a large group of us sat, waiting. People from my church and some that had come all the way from his Burbank, California church, his parents, his pastor, a few friends and some of their parents, all waiting to hear the news from the doctors. Never had such a small room, filled with so many people, been so silent. I dabbed away tears, refusing to cry but try as I might, tears just kept slipping out. The doctors were testing to see if Ryan had blood flow to his brain or not; then they would know whether or not he could possibly be saved by an operation. Ryan had been driving from California to visit me and almost directly at the Nevada state-line, he made a quick turn and his car ran off the road into a guardrail (there are no guard rails along the highway, except in this spot of about ten feet). The guardrail had come up over the car, tearing the top off like a can-opener. The guardrail hit him in the head on the way through the car. The car then fell eight feet onto the lower highway. No other cars were involved, and the reason for his sudden turn is still unknown.
~.~
Ryan handed me a small red flower, “I thought it was beautiful, and I thought of you.” I had smiled at him in gratitude and put it in my hair. Granted, he'd been on my nerves there at the end, I never stopped loving him. Never in the way he had wanted me to love him, but I loved him in the only way I could at the time. And I thank God that I wasn't in love with him because my heart would have been utterly broken into unfixable pieces. “I would do anything to date you,” He looked intently at him under the shade of an apple tree, “I would drive every week to Las Vegas to see you.” I just shook my head, “Ryan, I don’t want to date anyone.” He set his jaw with a determined look in his eyes, “You know I would do anything for you, right? If I could I’d give you everything.”
His death caused a split in my world between real happiness and fake happiness. No one would know I was upset. No one would know that I thought about him and still do at least once a day, because I wouldn't and won’t let them. No one would know that this was the hardest thing that had ever happened in my life; that the death of my friend and confidante turned my world completely upside down; that for a long time afterward, God and I stopped talking. I watched my mom cry about it, and I watched everyone else cry about it, but I would not. Not in public, not in front of people. I had to stay strong, who was I to be crying when others needed comfort?
~.~
I'll never forget those words from the doctor, "I'm sorry..." I looked at Serena, Ryan's ever-true friend since childhood, who flew out to see him as she began sobbing. I watched her silently before I too began to cry. We were allowed to see him one last time, to say goodbye. I sat beside him, the heart machine still beeping, his chest still rising and falling. He didn’t look dead, just asleep. He did not have a broken bone in his entire body, only his head was injured. I took his large warm hand in mine once more and squeezed. All the while I'd been praying, hoping against hope that he would open his eyes, be suddenly healed and smiling at me again. I squeezed his hand, hoping it would bring him back if my will was only strong enough. I squeezed, praying that this wasn’t really my friend lying here and that there’d been a mistake, hoping that this hadn’t really happened and soon I’d wake up from this awful dream. Squeezed, wondering if I’d ever be happy and content again. "Ryan, I'm so sorry I never told you I loved you." And with that, I leaned over him, kissed him on the cheek, released his hand and didn't look back. |
