“You said he’s alright, though?”
“Yeah. He was coherent . . . walking and everything. Just with a slight limp. Again, it’s just procedure.”
“Which hospital?”
“Newton Memorial.”
“Can you take me there?”
He hesitated. “Um . . . sure. Yeah.”
John met me outside of the resort and drove me the couple of miles to the hospital. I insisted that he drop me off, figuring that Reed and I would call an Uber back to the hotel whenever he was cleared to leave.
After much searching, I spotted Reed inside one of the examination rooms. He was talking to a doctor. Unsure of whether to make my presence known, I instead opted to stand outside of the door. I couldn’t help listening to their conversation.
“The thing is . . . I’d really been feeling great as of late. I wouldn’t have planned this trip if I thought the muscle spasms were going to return.”
“So you have experienced symptoms . . .”
“Yes, but they’re fleeting. I’m still in the very early stages.”
“Well, multiple sclerosis can be sneaky that way. And the truth is, you may have several weeks or months at a time when you’re asymptomatic, only to have the symptoms return. Have you experienced anything else in recent weeks?”
“Aside from some mild vertigo, no.”
“Did you come to the Adirondacks alone?”
“No, I’m here with a friend. She doesn’t know I’m at the hospital and doesn’t know anything about the MS.”
MS?
Reed . . . has MS?
Reed has MS.
What?
It seemed like the hospital vestibule was spinning. My heart felt like it was ready to explode as I ran down the hall and to the elevator. I needed air.
Once outside, I knelt down with my head between my legs on the front grass of the hospital grounds.
Breathe.
Everything was suddenly making sense. The cancelled wedding. Everyone saying that Reed had his reasons for the way he was. Why he wouldn’t let himself be with me. The bucket list. Oh my God! The bucket list.
My shoulders shook as I cried into my hands. Never in my life had I felt so much pain for another human being. At the same time, something else was bursting through me as every moment I’d ever had with Reed seemed to flash before my eyes.
I was hesitant to call my feelings for Reed love. All I knew was that I’d never experienced what I was feeling before. I’d known for a long time that my feelings for Reed transcended normal infatuation. Now that I truly understood why he was preventing us from taking that next step, I could allow myself to really experience those feelings for him for the first time. I went from understanding nothing to understanding everything. Everything.
Reed thought he was protecting me.
“You deserve to be with someone who won’t ever hold you back in life.”
Where had that come from? Had he said that to me? It was buried somewhere in my mind. Had he said that last night?
Then I thought about the dress and the blue note. He hadn’t known what lay ahead when he wrote that note to Allison. Reed’s hopes and dreams were likely shattered sometime after. But why did they have to be? Surely he couldn’t just give up because Allison left him? She was a coward who never really loved him.
What Allison had done to him was really starting to hit me. She left him because of his MS. Had she never heard of in sickness and in health? To think that I believed that blue note sewn inside her dress represented unconditional love. The fairy tale was an illusion. The fact was, Allison wouldn’t know the meaning of unconditional love if it smacked her in the face.
An overwhelming need for information overtook me. Tonight, I vowed to read everything there was to know about MS on the internet until my brain bled. I needed to find every bit of information there was to give him hope.
I remember watching that talk-show host Montel Williams on TV. He had MS and was lifting weights and looked healthier than most people. There had to be a way around this. I needed there to be hope. Reed could not let this rule his life.
There were the tears again. How the hell was I supposed to hold myself together today if I didn’t tell him I knew? He clearly never intended for me to know about his diagnosis. He was never going to tell me. I just knew it.
I had to think long and hard about this, because I didn’t want to upset him. He deserved the right to be able to tell me on his own terms. My finding out the way I had was an unintentional violation of his privacy.
My heart. It felt so heavy, like it was weighing my entire body down.
I called John back to come pick me up, asking him not to mention to Reed that I’d ever gone to the hospital at all.