The sterilized smell of Suburban Hospital tickled my nose as I pushed the elevator button once, twice, three times. I stared at the stark white walls, bright shiny floors, and sleek chrome information desks that made everything all the less inviting and all the more cold and uneasy. I wanted to be anywhere but here, and so did nearly every other person wandering the halls of this place. The least they could do is put a pot of cheery coral tulips somewhere. I heard the elevator creak down slowly and open with a jolt as a few people walked out. Some held pink balloons that screamed “IT’S A GIRL” in all caps, chattering in hushed voices, and others held white lilies with quivering hands. One man’s joy, another man’s sorrow.

“C’est la vie,” I thought as I stepped inside the elevator, clutching the yellow envelope in my hand and pushing the scratched orange button that would take me to the fourth floor intensive care ward. Three others joined me. One wearing an important looking suit pushed the button for the third floor (cancer ward), holding a thick stack of paperwork. Another, looking relatively calm, pushed the one for the fifth—cardiovascular care. His hands were empty. The third pushed the same one as me, number four. She was the most on edge of us all, clicking away on her out of place looking bright pink cell phone and tapping her foot with a sense of urgency. I guessed what each might be there for as I waited for the elevator to stop at my floor, reading the sub-departments of each floor and trying to tie them to where each person was going. Mindless and disturbing thoughts, I turned my mind elsewhere, trying to distract myself from the depressing aura every square inch of this place was giving off.
After an awkwardly silent thirty seconds, we stopped at the fourth floor with the same jolt I heard in the lobby and I took three short steps out, as carefully and quickly as I could. Making sure I still had the yellow envelope, I asked the stout woman sitting at the front desk in a wrinkled mint green nurse uniform where Room 417, patient Mason Chadwick, was.
“Down to your right, three doors down from the break room. It’ll be at the end of the hall,” she said in a tired and raspy voice. I would have guessed she had been there since the crack of dawn and it was 4:30 in the late afternoon now. I thanked her with silent sympathy and followed her directions, mechanically making a right, then counting three brown wooden doors from the one labeled “Break Room.” I found myself staring at the outside of Room 417, afraid to turn the steel handle. I felt my palms sweating and my shoes slipping on the glossy linoleum. I ran my hands through my messy curls and breathed a heavy sigh. I turned the knob in what felt like slow motion and entered the bright, fluorescently lit hospital room.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t him. It wasn’t his bed or the side table that held six different kinds of alarming looking medications or his family members sitting quietly on the bench for visitors. It was the monitor, the slow and steady and horrible sound of the constant beeps that came every few seconds, the green lines marking Mason’s heartbeat. They evoked a sudden feeling of utter fear, a ball of worry in my throat. His health depended on those beeps. His life depended on those beeps. Mason depended on those beeps. Nothing had terrified me more. But courage in a crisis was always my specialty. I managed to maintain a steady gaze as I surveyed the rest of the room, noting everything I previously ignored.
I acknowledged Mason’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick with a nod, and reached over to give his sister Laurel a tense hug.

“How long has it been?” I asked quietly, struggling to keep my voice stable.

“Six hours,” Laurel whispered, choking back tears, her big blue eyes glazed over with a layer of moisture. Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick sat stone faced. They didn’t look sad or worried or scared. They just looked empty. I knew the feeling.

“How did it even happen?” I had gotten the phone call an hour before and still didn’t have any details. Although hesitant to ask, I had to. Being in the dark was never good for me.
“He had a heat stroke during soccer practice. His brain shut down and he fell,” Laurel said with the most bravery she could muster. “They say that the concussion he got from falling combined with the shutdown will make it extra hard for him to wake up.”

“Has he opened his eyes?” I asked, trying not to think about the possibility that he wouldn’t wake up. Mason’s eyes were the sole most comforting thing in my life, and they were the first part of him I fell in love with. They were an illusion that never ceased to fascinate me. The mix of the emerald green with navy blue, the swirls of hazel, how they changed to grey on a cloudy day, and how they were as bright as the sun on a colorful day in June. I could drown in Mason’s eyes. They were beautiful. And if he had opened them, I knew things would be okay.
“Once,” Laurel said. “For twelve seconds. The doctors said it was a good sign but they don’t know when he’ll wake up again.”

I nodded quietly. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward but it was painfully anxious. I don’t know what we were waiting for, or if we weren’t even waiting, just watching. Hoping. Occasionally Mr. Chadwick would answer the phone call of a relative, answering the same mundane questions they all asked with his quiet, matter-of-fact voice. I lost track of how much time we spent on that cold leather bench, but it felt like an eternity. The beeps in the background seemed to make time feel like it was traveling through slow motion.

Finally Ms. Chadwick broke the silence to tell me that she, Laurel, and Mr. Chadwick were going to go get something to eat and asked if I would like to join them. I politely refused her offer and said that I thought it would be better if someone stayed with Mason while they were gone. “In case he wakes up,” I said, forcing a smile. One by one, they gave me a hug and softly filed out of the room, leaving me there with him.

“Hey, Mase,” I whispered. “I miss you bud, wake up. We need you here.” I kept back the tears because Mason never liked to see me cry. I got up slowly from the bench and walked over to his bedside.

As I watched him lay there lifelessly, I thought about how vibrant a person Mason always was. The first time I had seen him, in his orange t-shirt and khaki shorts at freshmen orientation, he had been so loud and happy, socializing with everyone around him with admirable ease. Even as I got to know him, he never seemed to stop talking. Four years later, he was still the source of sunshine on a gloomy day. Mason meant everything to me. He was my first love, my best friend, the constant piece of happiness in my life. It was so odd to see him be quiet for so long. I half expected him to wake up and tell me all about his day, and I found myself feeling disappointed all over every time I remembered he wouldn’t. It felt stupid talking to him when he couldn’t respond but I went on.

“I wrote you a letter, but it’s so cheesy you’ll laugh at me when you read it. Maybe it’s better if you don’t read it after all,” I said with a smile, setting the yellow envelope with his name neatly written on the back on the side table. I watched him breathe in and out, the beeps marking each inhale and exhale like it was a score sheet.

“Today Jake was playing video games and he asked me where you were,” I continued. “My baby brother wants you to come home so he can beat you at Fifa. There can’t be a better motivation than that.” This time I laughed out loud, and suddenly Mason shifted. He moved his arm ever so slightly that maybe I was imagining it.

It was working.

“And if you don’t wake up soon, I’ll have to lift my bed all by myself to rescue the cat when she gets stuck in there. You have to wake up, Mase. For the cat, come on.” I saw a shift again and this time, his eyes fluttered. I called for the nurse, the excitement and hope bubbling up inside of me. Mason was going to wake up. The same woman from the front desk came rushing into Room 417, and I told her what had happened.

On November 7th, I saw Mason’s emerald eyes open for eight seconds before closing again.
***
I came back to Suburban Hospital every day for ten days, passing through the same white washed lobby, pushing the same scratched orange button for floor four, greeting the same nurse at the desk in the morning, opening the same door to 417 day after day. Each time, I told Mason a different reason why we needed him here. Some days his eyes stayed closed, and those were the hardest to get through. Other times his eyes fluttered like that first day, and once they stayed open for 30 seconds flat. That was one of the better ones. On November 17th , the tenth day, Mason Chadwick opened his eyes for good.

We called for the nurse as we usually did when he woke up, thinking it’d be for another few seconds. But the nurse came, examined him, and when they stayed open, she called for the doctor, who told us Mason was fully conscious. The relief, excitement, gratefulness, and utter joy that passed through each of us at that moment was incomparable to anything I had ever felt before. As Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick and Laurel went to fill out paperwork, I felt myself drown in Mason’s eyes as I had so many times before. The doctor had said he wouldn’t be able to speak for another few hours or so but I didn’t mind. Him being awake was enough.
At the end of the night, as I was packing my things and getting ready to go home, I heard a raspy voice that couldn’t have been anyone else’s.

“For the cat, huh? You didn’t think I’d do it for you?”

I turned around in time to see his smile that I had missed for such a long time.

“Welcome back, Mase,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”