When Love Dies by Meaghan Jackson (best historical biographies txt) 📕

I'm back in Orange, walking down the street with Sophia my pit bull puppy and Alex. Alex is getting farther and father away and suddenly Aaron is there, and they're yelling and there's loud sirens.
I hear voices all around me and there's screaming. I feel things being stuck into my arms and things trickling down my arms, they sting so bad. I'm seeing bright lights all around me, what, why? I'm screaming and everything comes into focus. I'm in the hospital, not the psych..the real hospital. There's a room full of people around me and I have a breathing mask on, I have IV's in my arms, and gauze covering my cuts. There's face's all around me, Mom's to my right holding my hand, and to my left is Emma. But the room is so much more crowded. Matthew, Micheal, Aaron, Joy, Molly, Dustin, Courtney...and..my god...Alex.
I start to cry. He stands there, so still, it's like it's a dream again. Like none of this is real and I will wake up any moment. I see some one move out of the corner of my eye and Aaron leaves the room, briskly walking. Matthew walks out after him, in the same direction down a long hallway that I have no clue where it leads. There's doctors and nurses in the hallways and more sick people like me. Mom starts to cry and she leaves in the opposite direction, Joy follows her.
Soon enough the room feels so empty, but that's not where the leaving stops, Micheal follows the boys and Molly follows to make sure mom's okay. Now there's only 5 of us in the room and Alex slowly makes his way over to the chair where mom was sitting. Emma shoots him a warning glare and Courtney shifts so she's now sitting at the foot of my bed. I feel a warm sensation filling me as Alex touches me, the feeling I've been longing for what seems like forever. "I never wanted you to leave, I love you so much and I would give anything to stay here with you, to be here by your side until the day after forever. We drove up here because we all missed you and I needed to see you, to feel you, to see those beautiful eyes of yours. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I would move the planet earth for you if it meant being by your side every day, but James just died and Randi needs me."
I start to feel a tearing feeling in my chest and my heart monitor starts racing. The doctors come in immediately and Courtney orders Dustin out of the room to find mom and Joy. Emma, who has never been known to be vicious, steps in now. "Alex I don't know who you think you are, but you do not do this to her. You can't, get the hell out of here and stay away from her until the doctors decide it's okay for you to see her. You are obviously the reason she's here, the reason she has gauze on her arms. Stay the hell away asshole or trust me, you WILL face the consequences." I pull off the mask and try to object to what Emma is saying but I can't say a word. I try but my body objects to every notion that my heart wants to say. I manage a squeak before the doctors hold me down and force me to stay put.
In the lobby I hear screams and all I can do is wonder what's happening out there instead of forcing myself to try to get better. I wonder if Alex is okay. Mom and Joy return and Emma and the rest leave. I hadn't seen Aaron since he barged out and I pray to god he's okay. My heart hurts since I haven't seen Alex, days pass..and days turn into weeks with out even a word from either of them. Courtney stays by my side but Dustin boards at a hotel close by. She sleeps with me in this very uncomfortable bed, only made for one. They nurses brought in a cot for mom and Joy had to leave after 2 weeks to go to work. The doctors diagnosed me with severe asthma and think after 2 weeks and 4 days I am okay to go home. Not with out an inhaler I must always have with me and a nebulizer to try and keep close.
My depression worsened in the hospital but is getting seemingly better knowing I can go home. When I get back home I go straight to Aaron's room to see if he's okay. Instead I found him in his room asleep with some girl and my world started to spin. I called up Courtney who told me that Alex...had been murdered. After the doctors asked him to leave he was so exhausted that he went to Starbucks to get a coffee. When he came back to the waiting room and refused to move for some gang bangers he was shot. That was when I heard those screams. My breathing is getting quicker and I start to wheeze while Courtney tells me all of this. She gives me my inhaler but it doesn't work, so we start my nebulizer and that seems to help a little. We put the mask on my face as Courtney tells me the rest. Alex's body had been sent back to Massachusetts where his family gave him a proper burial.
With out even realizing it I'm in Dustin's car, only me and him, and we're heading back to Massachusetts. No talking, no music, nothing. Not until we hit state lines. He cleared this throat as he started to tear. "You know, he really loved you Meg. You meant everything to him. He took that bullet for you and I want you to know that he was coming back not to hurt you, but because he knew what you were doing to yourself. He knew, because he was doing the same to himself. He came to try and ask you to stop in hopes he would do the same." After that, nothing.
We got into small town Orange and Dustin went home but offered to give me a ride to the cemetery. I refused, it's something I have to do on my own. I went to his house, and sat on his back porch where we spent so many summers laughing and giggling together. I reached in his broken window and unlocked the back door, like he had taught me to do so I could sneak up to his bedroom at 9am on Saturdays and wake him up oh so gently. I went up to his room with the door, which he broke because he got mad at himself because we had been fighting over stupid stuff. All these memories flood back to me and I just sit on his bed and cry. I cried like a baby, until I fell asleep.
The next morning I woke up to his mother oh so gently sliding into bed next to me and brushing my hair off my forehead. I had been like a daughter to Annie and I could not believe that this could really be true. I got out of bed at 4pm 2 days later wearing the same clothes that I had come to Orange in, and walked to his family cemetery. So many of my close and dear friends had walked by me, and tried to start conversations but I just could not deal with it. I couldn't deal with anymore pain or heart break.
I get to the cemetery..and find his spot. Our spot. The place where we had said we would be buried, because we had always hung out here. It was in one of the back fields in his old family cemetery. It doesn't even look like a cemetery, it's so beautiful. The beauty he said would never compare to me..and I would just push him thinking he was a hopeless romantic. Now I know his feelings were true.
I sit here under our oak tree, next to his grave sobbing. Dustin comes and finds me and hugs me. I cried and cried but I couldn't bring myself to leave. Finally just as it was getting dark we decided to go back, back to Ohio, and to the life I now had to live. All the times here would be missed but never forgotten.
Many years have passed now and I'm sitting alone thinking to myself while my adopted daughter Madeline lays by my side on the couch, of my first love and his untimely death. Of how god took him a little too soon to his golden gates of heaven, but he is now in paradise and for that I thank god. Aaron and I got married almost 3 years ago now and we adopted our 2 year old daughter Madeline almost a year and a half to this day. We live happily on a farm in Ohio with our horses. I still talk to Courtney and Dustin all the time with their new born daughter Chloe. They live right down the road from us with their ranch and ponies and dog, Sophia. I still visit Alex's grave every summer on his anniversary. I miss him with every beat of my heart, and I hope that Madeline will never feel this pain. Imprint

Publication Date: 06-06-2010

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Dedication:
To Alex, my first love who inspired this story. You are also still alive.