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THIS WORK DEALS WITH A FICTIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO MEN. IF READING ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OR SEXUAL CONTACT BETWEEN TWO MEN IS EITHER ILLEGAL IN YOUR AREA OR OFFENDS YOU, PLEASE LEAVE NOW.
ANY SIMILARITIES TO ANY PERSON LIVING OR DEAD ARE PURELY COINCIDENTAL. THIS WORK IS ENTIRELY FICTIONAL.
DYLAN'S HOPE
Michael A. Raburn
Chapter 14
A loud knocking on the front door woke us. Sarah jumped up from the sofa and opened the door to let in the visitors. Slowly, not wanting for the dream to vanish I pulled my head from Dylan's lap. I glanced up at his face then to his blue eyes that were trained on me. He smiled his quirky smile and brought his hand up towards my face like he always did.
"No, he's dead," I thought, scrambling away from him on my knees.
"Jon." Sarah called to me.
Still moving back from Dylan I looked to her and the two men standing beside her. "No, Jake can't be here. He's dead too." I whispered, crouching like a cornered animal. I heard footsteps coming down the hall and looked to see Robert and Andrea come into the room still dressed in their robes.
"No, this can't be happening." I screamed as the blackness began to surround me again. Like a chill had settled into my body I began to shake uncontrollably. I was hyperventilating and could not get control on my breathing nor my emotions. Huddling against the wall that stopped my backwards movement, I cried, rejecting the visions in front of my eyes.
"He's having a seizure." Sarah yelled. "Get me my bag and call 911!" she screamed, running towards me.
The next few weeks were a blur of darkness, nightmares, and sedation. Truthfully I remember very little of what was happening around me since I was so deep in the hallucinations that had become my world. I've tried to piece together what happened based on bits of conversation I overheard, what I can remember of what the doctors told me, and the stories my friends and family have related.
The paramedics arrived at the cabin to find five distraught people, Dylan, Andrea, Robert, Mark and Jake and one very in control but concerned nurse, Sarah. And me of course, sedated, still lying in the pile against the kitchen wall where I had tried to hide myself. Sarah was on the phone with my primary care physician in Atlanta and they had concluded that whatever was going on was beyond the scope of the small rural hospital. They decided that I needed to be transported to my old alma mater, Emory University Hospital for treatment and diagnosis.
Andrea managed to shake off her ever-rising panic and organized the other people to close up the house, get dressed and figure out which cars they would be riding in. Dylan on the other hand, stood in the middle of the floor looking totally lost, tears streaming down his face. Finally Andrea had to take him by the hand and get him to our bedroom and into some clothes for the trip. With a hug and kiss on his cheek, she turned him over to Sarah's care. He left the house in mismatched socks and without any extra clothing. Luckily Andrea and Robert remembered and packed a bag for us before they followed us out.
As they loaded me and the stretcher in the ambulance Sarah hung up the phone with my doctor after he promised that he would meet us at the emergency entrance to the medical center. She grabbed Dylan's hand and tugged him towards the ambulance. Mark and Jake stayed behind to finish closing up the house and Robert pulled his car around so Andrea could get in then they followed us towards Atlanta.
Evidently my doctor had warned them what to expect because when we arrived at Emory they were ready and since I was still sedated they rushed me past emergency and into the CT facility. Dylan had to be threatened with a shot of his own when he refused to leave me with the doctors and technicians while the scan was done. Sarah finally convinced him to get some coffee and that I would be well taken care of while they were in the cafeteria.
"What am I going to do if he dies?" He moaned.
"He's not going to die." Sarah tried to reassure him even though she was only hoping when she said it. Everything pointed to something being terribly wrong in my head and she had seen enough in her nursing career to know that the prognosis was not good. "You need to be strong now for Jon, Dylan. He's going to need you to keep it together." She urged.
"I, I, I think I can do that for him." He stuttered.
"Sure you can, brother. We'll all help Dad get well." Andrea said, unshed tears filling her eyes.
Mark and Jake arrived about thirty minutes later and were directed to the cafeteria to join the group.
"What was all that about us being dead?" Jake asked.
"I'm not really sure, but he's been having pretty some strange dreams the last few months." Dylan answered.
"For months?" Andrea asked, shocked that she hadn't heard anything about them.
"He didn't think they were anything important, but he rarely slept more than a couple of hours at a time. He's been having them ever since he was beaten up."
"Beaten up?" Andrea demanded. "When was that?"
"Hmm, three or four years ago now, I guess."
"Why didn't anybody tell me about this?" She asked.
"Jon didn't want you to know. You and Robert were in California and he made me promise not to say anything."
"Daddy can be so stupid sometimes. Oh, God, I didn't mean that." She sobbed.
"I thought there might be something more going on when you told me about him passing out in the yard." Sarah added.
"Yeah, one minute he was hugging Andrea, then the next he was falling. When she told him about being pregnant he looked up at me and his eyes just sort of glazed over, then he was on the ground." Robert stated.
"But, I still don't understand why he would think that Jake or anybody else was dead." Mark asked.
"We'll just have to wait and see. His dreams and the hallucinations are probably related to whatever is going on in his brain." Sarah answered.
A couple of hours later the film had been read and a nurse came to the cafeteria looking for my family. The diagnosis was given to the group after the doctors assembled them in a small conference room. They had found a mass, a tumor, a meningioma in my brain. It probably had been growing for several years and only in the last few months was it causing any sort of problems. When Dylan asked about the dreams and the seizures they explained that it was probably due to the location and the size as the cause.
They were certain that the tumor was benign but unfortunately for me it was in a location that the doctors felt made it inoperable, at least with conventional surgery. The prognosis was not favorable. If it continued to grow the seizures would only get stronger and there was a good chance that I would never be rid of the hallucinations.
I was admitted to the hospital for observation and for counseling. Later that night I was becoming more aware. I remember waking in the room and seeing Dylan sitting beside me on the bed holding my hand.
"Hello, angel." I muttered.
"Jon, thank God you're awake." He leaned over to kiss me.
"Why are you here and not in heaven?" I asked.
He looked up from my face and across the bed. Sarah shook her head, indicating that he should answer me.
"I needed to be with you." He answered.
"Don't leave me. Can you stay for awhile?" I asked.
"I'm not going anywhere without you, my love."
"I love you." I whispered, my eyes again closing.
"Mr. Reynolds, are you awake?" she asked as she entered my room.
"Hmm." I answered groggily. Opening my eyes I tried to smile at the rotund lady as she settled into a chair beside me bed. "Who are you?"
"I'm Helen. Your doctors wanted me to talk to you for a little while. I'm a psychologist."
"Oh, I'm crazy." I muttered.
"Mr. Reynolds."
"Jon." I cut her off.
"Okay, Jon. Nobody said you were crazy. But you seem to be disoriented and I understand that it's related to the tumor. Who is Dylan, Jon?"
"He's my angel. He was my lover, my life before he died. Now he's my angel. He's staying with me and not going to heaven until I get better."
"I see. And Andrea?"
"She was my daughter. Then she died and she's an angel too. Jake is too. Not my daughter. He's Mark's lover. Now he's an angel." I explained.
"When did they die, Jon?" she asked, patting my hand.
Tears streamed from my eyes as I remembered the nightmares and that day in the emergency room. "A few days ago."
"How did they die?"
"Dylan was shot, Jake was beaten so bad he died in the ER, and Andrea bled to death." I sobbed, loosing my control again. "I don't want to remember. I don't want to talk anymore." I moaned, rolling away from her, facing towards the window. I was shaking and the darkness was again threatening me.
I think she ran from the room, I'm not really sure, but a nurse returned a minute later and shot something into my IV and I faded out again. I guess now that I was having another seizure.
Over the next day or two discussions continued among the doctors and my family about what would be the best course of treatment. My physician had gone to medical school with some people that were doing pioneering work on gamma knife surgery. He made several calls and shipped copies of my CT scans to their medical center so they could be evaluated.
"Mr. Reynolds." The doctor started when he came into the room that afternoon.
"Jon." I countered. Dylan and Andrea were with me, my two angels. I had convinced Dylan to sit up in bed with me and he was cuddled in my arms, his head on my chest. He tried to sit up when the doctor came in but I wouldn't let him go.
"It's okay, Dylan. You're right where you're needed the most." The doctor talked softly to my angel. "Jon, we've done everything that we can for you."
"So I'm going to die?" I asked, caressing my love's head. "Then I can be with Dylan forever?"
"No, you're not going to die. We want to transfer you to another hospital, to Wake Forest University. They think they can help you."
"Can my angels go with me?"
"Of course they can." He smiled.
"Okay, let's go." I said, letting Dylan go and trying to sit up.
"We're not in that big of a hurry. They'll come and get you in a little while."
"Okay. I'll be ready. Dylan can you get me some clothes?" I asked.
"I'll leave you with him." The doctor chuckled as he left.
I don't remember it but they say that I was a joy, laughing and joking like a kid during the flight to Wake Forest. Dylan played his part as my angel and held my hand all the way from my room to the waiting LifeFlight helicopter. I do remember the noise of the engines, but that's about all.
I'm not sure how Dylan or Andrea or any of the rest of them managed during everything that had happened. I can only hope now that they were taking care of themselves cause I couldn't have done it. Dylan was always with me unless the doctors would run him out of the room or I was in an area that was off limits to him. Andrea was with me most of the time. Robert had returned to Atlanta to keep the business going. Mark and Jake and Sarah had returned to the mountains when we left Emory. They called regularly and Dylan would pass on their best wishes to me. Mark and Jake checked on the house every day and even weeded the garden a few times.
At the time all I knew was that as long as my angel was with me nothing really bad could happen. He was my savior, my shield; the one thing that I knew was constant and unchanging. The nurses at Emory had gotten used to him sleeping with me in the hospital bed even to the point of getting us extra pillows and blankets so he's be more comfortable. Wake Forest was a little more difficult to deal with.
It all came to a head the second night I was there when a nurse barged into the room too early in the morning and found us asleep in each other's arms. She woke Dylan and me loudly shouting that he had to get out of my bed. She was having none of Dylan's explanation that it was the only way I could sleep and kept on ranting about hospital policy.
I had gotten to the point in my disease that I could sense the change in my body when a seizure was coming on and I tried to warn them, but she was too concerned about who was sleeping where to see what was going on in front of her. Finally when I began to bang my head on the bedrail she realized something was not right and ran from the room looking for a doctor. It took much more medication to stop this one than any before. It also took twelve stitches to close the wound to my forehead.
I'm still not sure what happened with her or what was said; no one will tell me. But, that was the one and only time I ever saw her and orders were written in my chart that my angel was to sleep with me for as long as I stayed in the hospital.
Gamma knife surgery involves pinpointed beams of radiation guided by a computer model of the brain and the involved tumor tissue. It is a closed procedure unlike traditional surgery and takes longer for the results to be evident. With traditional surgery when the tumor is removed almost immediate relief is obvious since the offending tumor is gone. Gamma kills the tissue but it takes time for it to die and eventually shrink and disappear.
There was still the risk that the seizures would continue for several weeks after my procedure until it shrank enough to not effect the surrounding areas. And there was always the chance that the seizures would continue even with the surgery. The doctors were hopeful that the procedure would be successful and that I would return to normal.
They had also figured out that most of my seizures were triggered by strong emotional events like the nightmares and of course that stupid nurse. I find it interesting today that the tumor triggered the nightmares and that the nightmares triggered the seizures. It was an interesting loop that I hope to never face again.
We spent three weeks at Wake Forest before the doctors were sure that results were becoming evident. The anti-seizure medications were reduced and would be gradually lessened until hopefully I wouldn't need them. I got the stitches out of my forehead after the first week and had the beginnings of a great scar. Finally the staff felt like it was time to go home and loaded Dylan up with papers and appointment cards. I was released with instructions to not do anything too strenuous but to do what I felt well enough to do until I regained some strength.
The nightmares were still with me but did not seem to be quite as vivid. Never as real as the breakdown but they were still there. The psychologist that I met with at Wake Forest had taught me some biofeedback tricks to get myself back to sleep when the dreams would wake me. We also talked about the realities of my angels, but for some reason I still didn't believe him about some things. And in the long run it did not matter. The people I loved most were still with me and it didn't matter to me what they were.
"Robert, when we get back to the cabin you can have your angel back." I spoke to my son-in-law from the backseat of his car. He had driven up from Atlanta to take us all home. Dylan and I were snuggled up together enjoying being with each other. "I know you've missed having her with you. Dylan's going to stay with me for a while longer, aren't you baby?"
"Yep."
"Andrea, you can go back with Robert. I'm going to be fine now." I said to my daughter, the angel.
The two in the front seat exchanged worried glances but said nothing back to me.
TO BE CONTINUED