Please Don't Leave Me

[Cactus]

Hospitals are very disparate places, if you look at them very closely. Everyone within a hospital is moving in one of three ways - either walking with a purpose, slinking through the hallways with a tentative gait, or not moving at all. What business a person has within a hospital is often illustrated by the way that they move while inside of its walls; doctors and nurses have a purposeful comfort about them that turns into fatigue near the tail end of a long shift. Orderlies and custodians traverse the hallways with the same comfort but far less of the stress. On the flip side, it is simple to pick out the family members of people staying within the hospital. Many of them are uncomfortable, anxious, and move with a scattered energy about them, standing up and sitting down, unsure of what to do with their hands or their minds as they wait for news about a loved one, or simply run the time down as the human body attempts to heal itself.

Very little needs to be said about the third category. When someone is prone within a hospital, it often means that they are the focus of the attention of both the anxious and the comfortable. The more important thing is whether or not they manage to move again, at all.

As Morgan Dragosavich shuffled through the hallway of Kindred Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, eyes streaked with tears and barely holding Mrs. Henderson's hand, it was readily apparent that he fell into category number two, as indeed, the anxiety was radiating off of the boy.

So was the guilt.

((MORGAN DRAGOSAVICH MEMORIES START))

It wasn't supposed to happen. He still didn't understand why it had.

He'd wracked his brain in trying to figure out what he'd forgotten that morning. He'd put on safety gloves, he'd used goggles, and the chemicals hadn't been the kind that should have done any harm. Every safety precaution that his father had drilled into him was vehemently adhered to, and yet...

The hospital corridor seemed cavernous, and even with the natural sunlight streaming through the windows and illuminating even the darkest corners of the hallway, Morgan felt a darkness that seemed to follow him, all of the way from the parking lot, through the lobby; it was in the elevator with him on the way up, and it hung over him as Mrs. Henderson guided him towards an open door on the right side of the hallway. His kindly next-door neighbour had a certain way about her, the elderly woman popular amongst the children on the street. She was everyone's grandmother, favourite aunt, and confidant all at once, and through his anxious sadness, he was secretly glad that she was here with him.

Letting his hand go, she placed her hands on his shoulders and guided him towards the door. Morgan, who until now had been moving on autopilot, stopped dead in the doorway as his eyes fell upon the still form laying in the hospital bed, ventilator slowly rising and falling. On the far side of the bed, a man sat, holding the hand of the patient, his face stricken with grief. This man was stout, with decidedly Slavic features and a close-cropped haircut. Upon Morgan's arrival in the doorway, his face darkened, and the ten year-old saw an expression that the seated man had never before shown towards him: disgust.

His eyes welled up once more at the look. Mrs. Henderson gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze behind him. It only helped a little bit.

"Da li vidite šta ste uradili?" The question was thick with venom, and Morgan did indeed see. The man let go of the patient's hand, and rose to his feet, giving his head a mild shake as he did. "Vidiš?"

The boy couldn't say anything, his lips seemed to weigh fifty pounds each. He couldn't even stammer out an answer, and the man came out from the other side of the bed and walked right up to Morgan. He towered over the small boy, who was barely over five feet tall, more than a foot taller. Extending to his full height, the man stared down at Morgan, and switched from Serbian to English, more for the benefit of Mrs. Henderson than for Morgan.

"You see what happens when you do not follow what I tell you? When you are careless?" The man's voice was accented, thickly enough that Morgan could hear the fury within his voice. Mrs. Henderson gave his shoulder another squeeze, and held up a hand to the man, who inhaled sharply, collecting himself instead of continuing.

"Come now, Radko. Let Morgan have a visit." Her voice was soft, but forceful. God bless Ethel Henderson for knowing exactly how to diffuse a situation, as she had many a time, particularly in her past life as a guidance counselor. The man exhaled, and some of the tension left his body as he nodded. He walked past Morgan, and stopped only to look down at the boy and leave him with one more parting thought.

"I have never been more disappointed in you."

More tears came across Morgan's face as the man quickly left the room, knowing that anything more that he said would likely come across as needlessly cruel. It didn't really matter much in Morgan's mind. Those last words had hit the mark that they were supposed to.

It was now crystal clear - his father hated him for what he had done.

Ethel looked on with a grimace. Radko had been harsh, and the poor boy in front of her looked absolutely devastated at the words thrown his way. She surmised that the best thing to do would be to let him visit alone. "Go now, Morgan. Go see your mother."

And just like that, Morgan was alone in the room, with only the sounds of his mother's ventilator to keep him company. Slowly, he moved towards the bedside, wiping the tears and snot away from his face. As he came closer, he was devastated by the sight of his mother in front of him. On an ordinary day, Ludmila Dragosavich was a vibrant woman, full of vigor and energy. As an artist, she had a vibrant personality, and in her youth she had been a bit of a mischievous soul. As she'd entered middle age, some of that energy had left her, but there was always a particular gleam in her eye - one that her son had inherited and was apparent from an early age. She was beautiful, not just for a woman of her age, and on most days she had the smile that would light up a room.

None of that was evident right now, though. She lay, hooked up to a ventilator, unconscious. The only sound in the room was the rise and fall of the machine, and none of the energy or enthusiasm was visible in her body. She seemed a shell of herself, and that only made Morgan feel worse. Would she ever recover? Did she have a chance to regain all of that which Morgan loved about his mother? He hoped - hell, he had prayed for it. Morgan wasn't really that religious, and he didn't know if there were any particular rules or reasons for praying, but on the car ride over with Mrs. Henderson, he had tried to pray to whatever Gods there were for his mother to recover.

If she didn't, he didn't know if his father would ever forgive him.

He didn't know if he'd ever forgive himself.

On that thought, Morgan collapsed into the chair beside the bed and held his mother's hand in his as he quietly sobbed, not even caring how 'cool' he looked to any outside observers.

"Oh god, mommy, I'm so," he gasped, and sniffled loudly, "so sorry. I never wa-wanted anything to hap-happen," his words were barely audible through the tears. He couldn't control himself now. He was freely bawling his eyes out, his head buried in his prone mother's arm. He tried to vocalize a few more apologies but nothing came out. The only sounds from the room were the anguished cries of a ten year-old boy who didn't know if his mother was going to live through the night.

And it was his damned fault.

There had been no warning at all for Morgan. He'd tried the mixture, as he recalled it, and his experiment had been a bust. So instead of trying something different, he'd run off - for no more than a minute or two, and had gone to look things up on the computer in the den. He couldn't imagine that anything would have gone disastrously wrong, he'd only been gone for a few minutes, at least he'd thought. He'd realized what he'd done wrong - he'd mixed up the names of two chemicals, a mistake that could happen to anyone, he'd thought, but when he' come back to clean up and fix his mistake...

He hadn't realized it was a gas at the start. He'd tried to run in and see why his mother was sprawled out along the floor. When he'd started to be overwhelmed, he had retreated immediately, called 911, and then had tried to hold his breath to drag his mother to safety. It had taken three tries, and his eyes had started to burn, but he had managed to drag her through the kitchen door by the time the paramedics and firefighters had arrived. Everything else from that time on was a blur. From Mrs. Henderson coming over from next door, to the hours that had passed in the intermediary, to his eventual trip here... Morgan's mind was in a haze.

His tears subsiding a little, Morgan raised his head from Ludmila's prone form and rubbed his raw, red eyes. In a sense - well, no, Morgan was most certainly responsible for his mother's current predicament, but he was also probably responsible for saving her life. Did the two actions even out? He had fucked up, more massively than ever before, but he hadn't been frozen in fear, he had acted. Shouldn't that have counted for something?

Morgan started to cry again. What did it even matter? This was on him, and no one else. Good deeds weren't a currency. You couldn't exchange four good deeds to erase one terrible mistake. No, this would stay with him forever. God only knew what it would do to his mother. Rubbing his blurry eyes again, he took one more look at Ludmila, and was startled to see that her eyes were open, and she was weakly looking right at him.

"M-mommy, I can't... I'm so sorry!" It was all he could manage before his grief cut him down and took his voice away. All that remained was agony, and the sobs of a boy who believed he had almost killed his own mother.

The sobbing stopped suddenly, as Morgan felt something brush against his arm. It was her hand, and she gave him a squeeze. His attention went immediately down to his arm, and then back to his mother.

Ludmila winked at him.

It was all that Morgan could do to keep it together, as he tried to comprehend the gesture. There were so many things that it could have meant, maybe her eye was itchy, maybe she was involuntarily spasming, maybe she wanted to tell him 'no', like in that old Family Guy parody of Star Trek. It could have been any of those things, he thought to himself. The possibilities were numerous, and he allowed himself a second to consider all of them.

All of them except for the one that she truly meant.

It's okay, sweetie.

He wouldn't consciously allow himself to entertain that as a possibility. Not right then. But when he thought back on the moment years down the line, he would realize that it was that wink, that one enormous gesture from his mother that was the reason that Morgan Dragosavich would eventually learn to forgive himself for one careless - but near-fatal mistake.

((MORGAN DRAGOSAVICH MEMORIES CONCLUDED))