A little bit of Tim

I tell her I love her about four times a day, and if you know me that isn’t normal. But it’s just that… she’s alive. She’s alive and breathing with a big smile on her face like nothing ever happened.

“Did you hear about Macey?” I hear a voice across the room casually ask another. I stopped – I only knew one Macey in ninth grade – Macey Richardson. Who was, coincidentally, one of my best friends. Confused, I looked around to notice my phone buzzing. It was a text from Riley, the third point of our friendship triangle, “Sarah, do you have Lynzi Richardson’s number?” I started scrolling through my phonebook, “Yeah,” I typed back, my fingers shaking.

All that night I got forwards on my phone “Pray for Macey”, “Pray for Macey”. She had collapsed, Coach Gardner performed CPR, the paramedics had to use an AED to start her heart again, but no one really knew what happened. All we knew was that her ride home from school that day was in an ambulance.

She’ll be fine, I told myself. So I did what I do best – I pushed the chaos to the back of my mind and chose not to deal with it. The next day came and went with distractions, but she was only getting worse. Her lungs had collapsed and filled with fluids and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t want to think about it, so I continued to cling tightly to my small string of vain optimism. She’ll be fine, I insisted, she’ll be fine.

Then I heard the news that broke me. “Sarah, I just talked to Coach Riggs.” A girl on Macey’s track team came up to me with a worried face, “Macey is in a coma. They don’t know what’s wrong.” A… a coma? What? No! That only happens on TV. But as she finished talking the reality sunk in. The image that ended up haunting me for the rest of the week flashed in my mind for the first time. Macey, lying in a hospital bed with tubes all around her - Tiny Macey, Fragile Macey, Shy Macey. My friend who I was always trying to protect was lying there, not alive, but hooked up to a machine with only descending mountain peaks on a screen to keep her heart beating.

I spent the rest of that week in a haze. I would barely start to care about some new story we were reading in English when I’d turn to see the empty desk where Macey should be sitting, and have to leave the room in hopes to compose myself again. Three days passed and we were all loosing hope. That image wouldn’t stop plaguing my mind. Macey in a coma, a cord filling the space between death and life. I thought of a book we read in the fourth grade by Judy Blume, the one called “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and with tears streaming down my cheeks I thought, “Are you there God? It’s me, Sarah.” At church they always told me to say ‘let thy will be done’ when I prayed. But this time I left it out. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Sarah. Don’t let Macey die.” Please, I thought again. Don’t let Macey die.


And He must have listened. Because a few days later she woke up, then after a few tests and surgeries, the doctors figured out what was wrong and she came home. So now she’s here -

Alive.

Breathing.

With a big smile on her face like nothing ever happened.

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I tell her I love her about four times a day.