Do-Overs (25 page)

-64-

Waiting

Wait. That’s what we did. Wait. Pray. Cry. Wait some more.

We couldn’t go back to see him. First there were tests. Then no word. Rachel, the mother of our group, had taken over. The nurse at the desk was probably tired of dealing with her, but Rachel was going to get answers.

Slowly the waiting room was filling. First the K’s arrived. Then Butch. Then the theater group. Within an hour the waiting room was full. When the president of the university arrived we finally were able to get some answers.

President Newman came running in. I knew that they were close, but I was surprised at the look of concern on his face. “I’m here about Al Dansberough,” he said at the desk. Maybe they weren’t as close as I thought. He got the name wrong.

“Dansby,” I corrected as I walked up to him.

“Lottie, right?” I didn’t know that he knew I existed. “How is Al? Any word at all?”

“They won’t tell us much. Just that they’re doing tests.” I was trying so hard not to cry. I had to keep it together. But talking made it harder.

“They haven’t let you back?” He turned to the nurse again telling her who he was. “Can we see him?”

“You can go on back, but not the friends.”

“She needs to come,” he said looking at me. “She’s his fiancée.”

Suddenly the waters parted and we were allowed to enter. Walking behind the nurse down the long sterile corridor I whispered to the president, “Thanks for lying for me.”

He looked back confused.

“We aren’t engaged,” I clarified.

“Oh,” was all he said. Then changing the subject. “Al’s dad is on his jet here. Should take another hour or two. We’ll need to make sure the press doesn’t hear. It will be chaos around here if the paparazzi gets wind of this.”

There had been many times over the past year when I had felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. When I first used my eraser on that fateful spaghetti day. When my dad hadn’t erupted when he caught me making out with my boyfriend on the rug at the condo. But worrying about the press and paparazzi for a car wreck when the guy I loved more than life itself was fighting for his own life, seemed too surreal to even register.

All those thoughts left my mind as we turned the corner. It took me a second to even recognize him. His face was battered. His beautiful hair was matted with blood. He was so pale. There were tubes and machines everywhere. Only because I heard his heart monitor beeping was I sure that he was even alive.

I moved over to his side. I tried to find a place on his hand to touch that wasn’t connected to some monitoring device.

“Al, I’m here.” He didn’t move or acknowledge me in any way.

“We’re not sure if he can hear you,” the E.R. nurse said. “But talk to him anyway. I think it helps. Makes them remember that they’re still needed and wanted here.”

“Al, please don’t,” I started. “I love you. I always will. Please don’t. . .” The word die stuck in my mouth. Saying it aloud would make it all seem too possible. “I won’t ever do-over a second of our lives together, if you’ll just stick around and spend that life with me. Just don’t go.” It was all I could say.

Time became a blur. I don’t know if I stood there for ten minutes or two hours. All I knew was that I was terrified to take my eyes off of Al’s battered face. Somewhere down deep I felt that if I could will it strong enough he would wake up and be well. Afraid that if I looked away, when I looked back he’d be gone.

There was a flurry of activity behind me, but I didn’t look back. A hand touched my shoulder. It was the president. “Al’s dad is here.”

“Hello, Lottie,” he said. He sounded so much like his son that I couldn’t speak or I knew I would cry. “I had hoped to meet you in a different way. I’m Al’s dad.” I glanced over at him. He looked vaguely familiar. An older version of his son. But my eyes went right back to Al, willing him with everything in me to live.

Later people would ask me what it was like to meet my all time favorite movie star, Alistair Dansberough. At the time all I cared about was his son.

-65-

Time To Grow-Up

“Lottie Bug, Stina brought you some clean clothes. The nurse says you can use a shower down the hall,” my mom said. My family had arrived right after Al’s dad. My mom had rapidly taken over. She was a rock for which both Alistair and I were thankful.

“Do I smell that bad?” I asked sitting staring at Al’s face. We had made it through the crucial twenty-four hours. Other than a few potty breaks, I hadn’t left his side. We’d had some great one-sided conversations. Al was in a drug-induced coma. Alistair had tried to explain it all to me. Al had a broken leg, broken arm, broken ribs. All down his right side he was broken. But that was fixable the doctors said. It was his brain they were worried about.

“I’ll sit with him while you’re gone,” Alistair said. He was just coming back from getting a cup of coffee. “Maybe if he smells this it will help revive him.” He tried to joke, but it was obvious his heart was breaking.

“When you’re changed, your friends want to see you. They’re in the family waiting room,” my mom added.

Clean and slightly refreshed after my shower, I entered the packed waiting room. I hoped that Al would live to know how much he was loved. There were hugs all around and questions over and over that I had no answers for. The one they all wanted to ask, but thankfully, never did was, “Is he going to live?”

Olivia pulled me aside. “It’s not your fault. I know you think it is. But it’s not.”

“He was upset. He called me and I didn’t pick up. Then when I finally did, I wouldn’t talk to him. He knew you were lying about the stomach virus. He was upset because I wouldn’t tell him why I was upset. I wasn’t there to tell him to put his seatbelt on. I did the first time. But I wasn’t there the second time. They said it wouldn’t have been that bad of a wreck if he hadn’t been thrown from the car. If he had had his seatbelt on. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t tell him.” I knew I was being redundant, but that’s what had been cycling through my head ever since I heard the cop say he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. “It was my fault.”

“No it wasn’t,” she insisted. “Things just happen.”

“You’re right,” I answered. “Things do just happen. Sometimes bad things. Sometimes good. Sometimes just silly things like spilled spaghetti. Things just happen. And we should just live through them, work them out, find a solution, not go back in time to try to change them.” I took the eraser, the once wonderful ability to relive and change all of life’s little mistakes, from my pocket. “Take this and get rid of it. I never want to see it again. Life gives you one chance. That’s all that’s guaranteed. That’s all that’s fair. From now on, no more deceit, no more conveniently fixing blunders, no more trying to look perfect, no more do-overs. It’s time for me to face life and deal with it head on, no matter how bad the outcome.”

-66-

A Different Perspective

The hours morphed into days. Everyone kept on their hopeful faces when they were in the room with Al and me. They came. They checked his vitals. They adjusted his machines. They smiled at me. They left. My battered and bruised Al Dansby slept on.

“Here,” my mother said, handing me my laptop. “Write about it.”

“I’m not really a writer. I’m just a wannabe.”

My mother shook her head. “No, you just lost your confidence. If ever there was a time you needed to regain it, it’s now. Write what you’re feeling. Get it all out. They say it is therapeutic.” Then my mother gave me her most sad, but hopeful smile. “You and Al will have fun reading it together someday—with my grandkids.”

With that she left the room.

I stared at my laptop for a while before opening it. My mom had been right so many times before, I’d take her advice again. I opened a file and wrote.

I wrote about the first time I saw his beautiful face walking across the campus as my mom chased my granny-panties. I snickered. Large underwear blowing in the Oklahoma wind were not the tragic occurrence I had thought back then. I wrote about spilling my spaghetti and his surprised face. It wasn’t until I wrote it that I realized, he hadn’t been upset at all. He had seen the humor in it and had seemed only concerned about me. At the time, all I had seen was the humiliation. I wrote about the first time I heard his voice while ordering coffee. As I wrote I could almost hear him speak. I wrote about how sweet he was to pick up my books when I plowed into him on the sidewalk that day. So what if my pants had been unzipped? It was hilarious looking back on it. All of it was fun and beautiful. I hadn’t ever needed a do-over, just a different perspective.

It was a few hours later when Alistair came back to relieve me. I had written pages and pages of our time together in both realities. Through all the writing I had seen a recurring theme, that all the silly embarrassing things I had so desperately wanted to do over at the time, were some of the best memories I had of falling in love with the broken boy who slept wired to life-sustaining machines next to me.

“You doing okay?” Alistair asked.

I nodded.

“Thought I’d give you a break. Stretch your legs. Go get some food. Somehow or another a feast has been brought in to the waiting room from the ladies in your church back home.”

That would be my mother’s Methodist Women’s Circle. Those women were amazing. Always there with a casserole when needed.

“But, before you go, I just wanted to make sure you were good with everything.”

I gave him a confused look. How was I good with the man that I so desperately loved lying there on the brink of death? I guess my face spoke volumes.

Alistair shook his head. “That didn’t sound right, did it? I don’t always do so well without a script. Life’s not like the movies where you get a retake anytime you flub a line.” He tried to laugh, but it didn’t come. “I meant about me. I know Al didn’t tell you who his parents are. I just wanted you to understand why.”

“Why?” I asked because to be honest I didn’t have a clue why.

Alistair took a sip of his coffee. “It’s hard growing up like Al did. I mean he had a great childhood. No doubt about that. Lizzie was the best mother ever. It’s just that when both of your parents are famous actors, well. . . How do I explain this? We tried to shield him from the paparazzi and the tabloids. But no matter what, in Hollywood, there are. . . well people use others a lot. Al would make friends in school only to find out their parents had arranged it so they could meet me or Lizzie. They always had a script or project they wanted us to look at. He had girls who wanted to date him just to meet me.”

“I can relate.” He looked at me like I couldn’t. “No, really, I can, on the small scale. I had many a friend who only wanted to hang out with me because of my brother the football hero. It hurts. Makes you feel used.”

Alistair smiled. “I guess you can understand. Anyway, when Al was ready to go to college he wanted to get away from it all. President Newman was an old friend of mine from my college days. We worked it out for him to come here. No one was to know who his parents were. Taylor was the only one who knew. She and Al have been friends since childhood. I thought she’d be his undoing, but she’s been a trouper. Never a slip. When I came to town, I had to come incognito. The mysterious donor. I still feel bad for causing Al to stand you up for your date after the play.”

I snickered. “That was you. I thought that donor, for all his money, had the worst toupee and silliest mustache I had ever seen.”

“Sorry, for all the charades. It was simply so vital to Al that he make it on his own abilities. And that someone love him, for him.”

“There’s just one problem.” I saw concern flash across Alistair’s face. “Dansby. It’s such a beautiful name. But it’s not real. Al Dansby isn’t Al Dansby, he’s Al Dansberough.”

Alistair laughed. “Of all the things to worry about. Rest your mind. Dansby is our real name. Dansberough is the stage name. Back in the 80s my agent had me change my name. He didn’t think Dansby was macho enough for an action hero.”

-67-

Finally

“Hey, you look awful.”

Those were the most beautiful, poetic, wonderful words I had ever heard. Al woke-up. And I guess I did look pretty rugged. Three full days and nights of sitting in a hospital thinking my entire future was gone had that effect on me.

“You don’t look so great yourself,” I replied with tears streaming down my face. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I never left.”

“Don’t ever.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Lottie, where am I? And why do we now have matching casts?” He tried to sound lighthearted, but I could hear the fear in his voice.

I told him about the accident and the helicopter ride and tried to explain all the medical issues although I didn’t understand them myself. And I told him over and over how happy I was that he was awake and talking, and most importantly alive.

I sat there looking into his beautiful green eyes. The world was right again. Then it dawned on me that others might want to know he was alive also.

“Your dad’s here. I better go get him. Oh, and then you have some explaining to do—Alistair Dansberough?” Al tried to smile, but I could tell that it hurt.

“Can you do something else first? Do you know where my jacket is?”

“You can’t leave! You’re not well.”

“No,” he softly chuckled. His voice was scratchy and horse. It was the most glorious sound. One that I had thought I might never hear again. “I need something from the pocket.”

I went over to the closet and dug through a bag of dirty, blood stained clothes. I found the jacket and held it up.

“Look in the inside pocket. I hope it’s still there.”

There was a little black velvet box. I walked back over to the bed.

“This isn’t at all the way I had planned. I had dad FedEx that out here so I’d have it in time. It was my mom’s. I made you dinner. Set the table with china and everything. I wanted everything to be perfect, so you could have a special memory forever. But, I can’t wait any longer. I can’t take the chance of something keeping us apart. I’m sorry. I can’t really get down on one knee right now. Can you open the box?”

My hands were shaking so badly that it too a couple of tries before I got it open. Inside was an exquisite princess cut diamond ring.

Al smiled. “Um, can you put it on your finger? My hands all seem to be attached to different machines.”

I did as I was told.

“Lottie, I know that we’re both still young and I’m fine with a long engagement. But, please say yes. Please, will you marry me?”

No need to guess what the answer to that question was. I tried to gently kiss his swollen lips. Even in ICU, Al Dansby was a great kisser. And a throat clearer? No that was
his
father the tough-guy, action hero, standing in the doorway with tears running down his face.

“Hey dad,” Al said like it was a normal day in May. “I’d like you to meet Lottie, your soon to be daughter-in-law.