Chpt. I

 Afraid of Telling the Truth

In China a young girl lay in a hospital bed with her boyfriend lying beside her.

            “How could I have let this happen?” she asked quietly.

            “Paige, it’s not your fault. If I would have pulled out sooner we would have been fine!” The girl began to cry. Then the doctor walked in, his face sad and worn.

            “I’m sorry Paige, but the test came back positive. You have two, three weeks tops, to live. I’m sorry.” 

            Paige shook her head and held back a blood curdling scream. Then after taking in a few deep breaths she was brought back to reality.

            “What about Dayton?” she asked. “Did he get it too?”  Dr. Rodriguez smiled softly and shook his head.

            “Mr. Ohio will be fine,” he said laughing at his cousin who had just slapped him.

            “His last name is Miller. Not Ohio!” she exclaimed. Michael, Dr. Rodriguez, looked at her seriously this time.

            “Alright, Dayton is fine, but he should get a screening every three months, just in case something pops up. Look, I know you were just trying to help your family, but running into a burning chemical plant was ass-nine Paige. At least Dayton was partially smart and stayed out of the building. You’re dying of lung cancer because of your stupidity!” her cousin shouted, causing a few other doctors to look his way. Dayton stood up and pulled Michael to him by his collar.

            “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are, cousin of Paige’s or not, don’t ever talk to her that way again. She risked her life to save those she loved and even those who hated her. She saved twenty women and five children who were there. She also saved two workers. I think she was very brave to do what she did. So, shut the hell up Michael, and just try to help her!” Dayton screamed. By this time two other doctors had come in and started pulling Dayton away from Michael, but Michael told them to leave them. It was a family matter.

            He looked at his cousin lying in the hospital bed. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face pale. Her breath came shallow and with great effort. Michael had never seen her so sick and weak, even when she had been in a coma for two weeks after surviving a hit and run.

            “I’m sorry. Paige, I really didn’t mean it,” he said. “It’s just, how the hell am I supposed to live after you die? I mean, I love you too much couz.” Paige coughed weakly, but her smile spread and she began to sing and song that they had known for years.

            “He kissed me gently and then he quickly walked away. I called up mama, she said time will need your pain. Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same. And she said, how can I help you to say good bye, it’s okay to hurt and it’s okay to cry. Come let me hold you, and I will try, how can I help you… to say goodbye?”

            Michael’s eyes filled with tears. Dayton began to whimper softly, and even the two doctors began to cry. How could she help them say goodbye? She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t. Paige never said goodbye. She said, ‘see ya later, see ya soon, never say goodbye, we’ll meet again someday.’ 

            Paige felt her chest tighten and began to cough. She couldn’t breath.

            “Michael,” she gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

            “Dayton, grab that oxygen mask behind you. Paige, listen to me, you have two choices. You can go home and live for about one more week, or you can stay here and enjoy two or three more weeks,” Michael said, hoping she would stay, but as soon as she could breathe again she laughed.

            “Stay in this sad, pathetic dump? I’d rather eat a horse. Dayton, could you grab my jeans and soccer shirt. I’m ready to go home.” Dayton smiled sadly and yet happily.

            “I love you,” he said kissing his girlfriend of four years.

            “Only ‘cause you’re sick of mush for every meal,” she replied sweetly.

            “You know me too well,” he laughed.

            That night she and Dayton went down to the lake they lived by. She had his Kettle sweatshirt on and her jeans that he had written on so many times before. Dayton held her hand tight and made sure that she was warm enough.

            “Baby, if you don’t feel well, just let me know okay?” Dayton said. Paige put her “chubby” legs over his long, muscular ones.

            “I know, but believe me, I’m fine right now. You’ll know if I’m not feeling well. You always do.” She smiled, but her heart was pulling her away from the romantic evening. She would never tell anyone, but, she was terrified of death. She wasn’t ready to die. There was so much that she hadn’t done yet. She hadn’t gone to Egypt and helped discover the lost tombs of many Kings and Pharaohs; she hadn’t ridden a train to California or a plane to Canada or anywhere for that matter. She was scared, scared halfway to death.

            “Paige?” Dayton waved his hand in front of his girlfriend’s blank eyes. “Paige?” She blinked and let her eyes wander their way to her boyfriend.

            “Yeah?” she replied.

            “You alright?”

            “Yeah, I was just thinking,” Paige said quietly.

            “About how scared you really are about this entire thing?” Dayton replied knowingly.

            “How’d you know?” Paige asked in surprise.

            “I know you’re a brave, smart, and brilliant, and,” he paused and smiled deeply, “ human. Any person in this world would be scared half to death if they knew what you know now. I know you better than I thought I ever could when we started dating, but I also know that what I’ve seen isn’t the part that is shy and scared. Everyone has a weak spot usually greed or selfishness, but you, your weak spot is death. That small part of you, that shy little girl is timid and afraid to die because of everyone you love and because you just aren’t ready to die. I know that you hate to admit it, but, it’s true isn’t it?” Dayton’s green eyes shined in the moonlight and his face was soft and kind.

            “Dayton, why? Why me? I was trying to help, not kill myself. I’m not ready to die!” Paige began to cry. Dayton pulled her into him and she cried on his shoulder.

            “Shhh… It’s alright, it’s gonna be okay. I’m going to help you get through this. Shhh… Shhh…” As they sat there it began to rain, but it didn’t matter, what mattered now was that Paige was going to get through this alive. Because if Paige died, well, he didn’t know what he’d do. Paige was going to get through this alive because she could, because she was strong enough to. And nobody could stop the two of them from trying to live through it, even if they thought it was pointless.

            Three days later they were on their way from China to Waupaca, Wisconsin. It was about a two day trip, but they got their. Dayton knew a guy who knew a guy who knew another guy that was a doctor. He was willing to help Paige, but for a price, Dayton had to work in the hospital for seventy-two hours straight to pay off the bill, without any breaks. The poor boy worked so hard that he could barely walk, but he managed to make it through the three days. By the time he was done, Dayton was so tired he couldn’t make out his left hand by his right, but he had done his job. He had performed six surgeries, seen two tuberculosis patients, saved the life a pretty, young girl who had jumped off of a building in Kenosha and was rushed here because no one else had the technology to save her. The girl’s name was Mandie Jose, and she was an only child in a family of one. Her mother and father had died two months ago and so she was in depression. She was doing better now, but had refused the offer of social services and begged Dayton not to tell or call her in. He had agreed that she could stay with him and Paige once she was out of the hospital.

            Dayton changed into his street cloths and reported to Paige’s room as soon as he possibly could. On the way there though, he say a young girl passed out on the floor. Oh no, he thought, Mandie must have over dosed! Sure enough, there lay Mandie with a bottle of pills completely empty. Dayton called his ‘boss’ Dr. Lupin, but was told that he should take care of it on his own. As soon as he got her up off the floor, she began to have a violent seizure. Finally about twenty minutes later the seizure stopped, but then Dayton noticed blood on his hot rod T-shirt.

            “Come on baby, don’t do this to me!” Dayton said. As he turned to call Dr. Lupin to get an emergency operation, he saw Paige standing there.

            “Hey honey, how long have you been standing here?” he asked quietly. Her eyes burned with hate,

            “Long enough for me to see your affair with your patient! I thought you loved me!”

            “Baby, I do, it’s just that she’s…” Paige cut Dayton off in a heartbeat.

            “She’s cuter, funnier, and you’ve seen parts of her that would even make me giggle a little?” she asked snoopily.

            “No! She’s dying! This girl O.D and had severe seizures, and now she’s hemorrhaging. Look at her eyes, nose, and gums. She’s bleeding Paige! She bleeding, and could possibly have a stroke. Just go get Dr. Lupin for me. NOW!” Paige looked up from the floor. Her eyes had turned an icy shade of grey.

            “No,” she replied shortly. “She’s probably better off dead anyways. That way she can’t steal you from me. Is this why you haven’t been visiting my room lately?”

            Dayton shook his head, “I’ll explain later, just please, get another doctor before she has a stroke.” But it was already too late. Three days later, Mandie Jose was still trying to move her lower body, but she was paralyzed from the waist down. She would never walk again.  

            “Paige,” Dayton said stroking his girlfriend’s blond thinning hair, “I love you and nothing can change that. I would never take a girl over you unless you became someone completely different and the opposite of who you are. Mandie was in danger of dying. I was only trying to comfort her. I didn’t mean anything by it. Really, I swear on my life.”

            “Whatever, it’s fine. I over-reacted and I’m sorry. Not that sorry fixes the fact that I’m why she’ll never walk again,” Paige replied shaking her head in shame.

            Dr. Chase Valance walked into the room at that moment with a report on Ms. Jose for Dr. Dayton Miller.

            “I’m sorry Dayton, but Amanda has stage two cancer. She’s got one year to live unless the treatment works, but so far it’s just made her more sick and even more tired and weak. If radiation doesn’t work, we can’t do anything for her and she’ll live in pain and agony for the next year. If she can hold on that long.”

            Dayton looked at Paige and felt his eyes fill with tears. He couldn’t cry in front of Paige though because, even though Mandie was just a close patient, Paige would think that they had been having an affair.

            “You alright baby?” Paige asked. Dayton hadn’t spoken since Dr. Valance had left, and that had been nine hours ago. Dayton nodded his head.

            “I’m just tired.” Paige smiled.

            “Go to sleep hun, I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”

            Five minutes later Dayton fell asleep and then it all began to go downhill for Paige. She couldn’t breathe and could feel her lungs collapsing as she struggled to inhale.

            “Dr. Lupin!” she screamed with her last breath of the moment. Dr. Tobias Lupin ran into the room and put an oxygen mask on Paige. He didn’t tell her this, but, her lungs were both collapsing and she would die within a matter of minutes after they were completely collapsed. Tobias shook his med student awake and told him the bad news. His girlfriend would be dead by the end of the night.

            “Please, is there anything we can do to save her?” Dayton asked. But Lupin shook his head.

            “No, nothing. I’m sorry Dayton, I’m really truly sorry.”

            Paige regained consciousness and spoke briefly and breathily to Dayton.

            “What’s…. going…. On?....” Dayton smiled sadly.

            “Are you ready to see your grandmother Tammy?”

            “I guess this is it then?” she asked in assumption of Dayton’s words.

            “Yeah baby, this is it, but you’ll be fine. I promise. I love you.”

            Paige leaned over the bed and pulled Dayton onto it. There she put her head on his shoulder and stared at a picture of an angel. Paige died at eleven thirteen p.m. in Dayton’s arms.

            “Dayton?” it was Dr. Lupin this time. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but, had you and Paige ever had sexual intercourse?” Dayton looked at him in shock.

            “Do you think I’m stupid? Of coarse not! Why would you even ask that?” Tobias looked at Dayton sorrowfully.

            “Paige was pregnant with twins.”

   CHPT. II

I Don’t Understand!

            “But how?” Dayton replied almost twenty minutes later. Dr. Lupin looked at his med student sitting on the floor almost in tears. He had just lost his girlfriend of four years and now found out that she was pregnant with a child that wasn’t his. In Tobias’s mind, Dayton had taken this all very well.

            “Well, do I really need to explain that to you? Look, Dayton, I know this is hard, but do you have any idea who she could have been cheating on you with? The tests weren’t just positive for lung cancer. Paige also had AIDS and was HIV positive. She was also infected with CRABS. So whomever she was with must also be tested for these diseases. Can you think of anyone?”

            Dayton stood up, but didn’t answer. Suddenly his eyes became hazy and dazed. Tobias noticed that his face was breaking out in sweat and that his knees where shaking.

            “Hey, Ohio, (Dayton) are you alright?” Dayton mumbled something that sounded like call an ambulance, but Lupin didn’t understand. Suddenly he did, as Dayton collapsed to the ground and began to cry out in agony. Something was wrong with him, but Lupin couldn’t see what.

            The next two hours were spent in the E.R. Somehow, Dayton had had a hemorrhage and his kidneys were beginning to fail. His body was quickly dying, and nobody knew why, nobody but one person, Paige. Almost as suddenly as it came, the violent shaking ceased and Dayton regained consciousness. 

            “Michael? Is that you?” Dayton asked holding out his shaking hand. The blurry figure nodded its head and grabbed onto Dayton’s hand.

            “What’s happening to me?” he asked quietly.

            “I don’t know man, I really don’t know. Don’t leave me here though. I already lost Paige. Do you understand me?! Don’t leave me!”

            “I’m not going to. Did you know that Paige was pregnant with twins?” Dayton asked. When Michael said no, he was completely caught by surprise. Usually Paige told him everything that happened.

            “I don’t feel so good. Michael, I’m dizzy and I can’t see right. My abdomen feels like it’s being stabbed over and over again every time I move in the slightest way!” Dayton said wincing. He was immediately rushed into surgery.

            Two days later Dayton was back to normal. The doctors had found a drug in the water that he had been drinking which was causing all his organs to shut down, arsenic. Now he was recovering in his hospital bed and trying to figure out who had tried to kill him.

            “Knock, knock,” said a voice from the doorway. It was a girl in a wheel chair who looked quite happy, not like the time before when Dayton had seen her in bed. “I’m glad they figured out what was wrong with you. Now I can thank you for saving my life.” The girl paused for a moment. Then she smiled and finished. “Twice.”

            Dayton nodded his head, but spoke sadly when he replied.

            “You’re welcome, but, because of me, you can’t walk ever again,” he said, his voice cracking.

            “No,” Mandie whispered. “No, it’s not your fault and it doesn’t matter. I will walk again, I will be able to play soccer and ride a horse. I will be able to chase my boyfriend around at the beach. I swear I will not speak again until I can walk.” With that she smiled, but said nothing else, nor would she, not until she could walk again.     

            “If you want to walk again, then I swear that I will not leave you on your own. I will not leave your side until you can walk again. I swear, I will help you walk again before I even consider leaving you by yourself,” Dayton said grinning. Mandie winked and rolled out of the room, leaving him to think about the past few weeks.

            “Man Paige, what the hell were you thinking?” he asked out loud to himself.

            “Well, first off, she may have thought you were crazy since you talked to her when she wasn’t there,” the man’s voice caught him by surprise. “Dang, you look like you just jumped off the Eiffel Tower or the Sears Tower. Ha ha! How ya been?” Dayton looked at his friend.

            “Well, if it isn’t Devin O’Conner,” he said slyly. The dark haired teen grinned and pushed back his hair.

            “Man, you really got in too deep this time didn’t you?” Devin asked.

            “Yeah, and that’s not the worst part. You know how you always said that if a girl claims you’re cheating on her, that means she’s probably cheating on you?” he asked. Devin nodded.

            “Why? Were you cheating on her and she caught you? Cuz that was just a joke about the girl actually cheating on you,” Devin replied.

            “It may have been a joke, but it’s completely true Devin. It’s completely true.” Suddenly Dayton broke out in tears. “What did I do to her? Why did he have to take her? Whey did she cheat on me? What did I do that made someone try to kill me? Why was it me who paralyzed Amanda? Why the hell am I even still alive? Huh? Why did God even let me live?” Devin looked at his friend miserably. He wished he could help somehow, but there was nothing he could do. Suddenly he looked at Dayton in shock.

            “Wait, what do you mean ‘why did she cheat on me?’ and ‘why did he have to take her’? Dayton, what’s happened?” Dayton looked up at his clueless friend.

            “Devin, Paige died about a week ago of lung cancer,” Dayton said wincing as he spoke.

            “I’m sorry,” Devin said after a few minutes of awkward silence. Dayton seemed to be off in la-la land, but responded after a few seconds. His eyes were hazy and his voice was far off and hurt.

            “She was pregnant with twins.” Devin dropped his coffee, spilling it on the white carpeted floor, but not caring.

            “What? You told me you weren’t stupid enough to ever have sex with anyone until you were married. You know how many diseases she could have? Did you get tested?” Devin asked, blowing a gasket at his friend’s assumed stupidity.

            “I didn’t,” Dayton replied, his voice still the same. All Devin could muster was

            “Oh…”

            “She had AIDS, CRABS, and was HIV positive.”

            “I… um… she… (sigh) I’m sorry Dayton. I know you loved her,” Devin finally said. It didn’t seem like there was much he could say, but, he gave it his best shot.

            “Ya know what the worst thing is?” Dayton asked. Devin shook his head and looked into Dayton’s green eyes with his brown ones.

            “I was just about to ask her to marry me. I had talked with her parents, my parents, and the pastor. The only on e who didn’t like it was the pastor because we’re only seventeen, but he still agreed to do the wedding.”

            “Oh, Dayton,” Devin gasped. How could Paige have done this? If she were still alive, Devin would have killed her right there and then. How could someone that kind do something so stupid, rude, selfish, and dangerous?

            “I’m sorry Dayton, I really truly am,” he said over and over again to his best friend of seventeen years.

            “No,” Dayton said partially snapping out of it. “I should be the one that says I’m sorry. You said ‘Don’t ask her out. She’s a player and she’ll skip all over your record. She’s a record breaker.’ I didn’t listen to you and look where it got me. You told me that she would play me and she did. She broke my record cuz she played me so many times. Devin, it’s me who should be sorry. So, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you and just thought you were jealous of me asking her out.”

            Devin looked at Dayton in disbelief how did he think this was his own fault? It could have happened to anyone, including Devin. Although his friend could be stupid at some points in life, Devin knew that Dayton had not chosen wrong originally. Paige had just gone down a path that she never should have taken.

            “Kid, it’s never too late to start over, and that’s just what you’ve got to do. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

            “Yeah, but, I never should have listened to or trusted her.

            “Than maybe you should never let go of her. Maybe you should hang on because you don’t know what your life would’ve been like if you’d never met her. Don’t tell me she didn’t make you happy, I saw how she made you feel. She pulled you into her when your father died. She helped you and sheltered you until you could stand in the rain and not melt away. Paige was the best thing that ever could happen to you even if she broke your heart in the end,” Devin said quietly. Dayton looked at him in amazement.

            “You don’t think I should hate her, do you?” he asked with his eyes full of anger. “You don’t think I should hate her for cheating on me, getting pregnant, not telling me, running into a building to save her stupid friends, some children, and a few seamstresses, and killing herself because she did? You don’t think that I should hate her because she was the person who told me that, no matter what happened, she would always love me? I don’t think you realize how much she hurt me. Devin, she could’ve spared me that pain and shot me in the chest. I’d rather die of a gunshot wound or live in the hospital, as a vegetable the rest of my life, than have her cheat on me and end up pregnant with twins! Now do you understand? Devin, I’m not leaving this hospital,” Dayton said picking up a surgical knife from the surgeon’s table of instruments and getting ready to stab himself in the chest. Devin stood up and grabbed Dayton’s arm.

            “I don’t care if I have to wrestle you to the ground, get stabbed, or die of a gunshot wound from security, I can’t let you do that. I know you are mad at her, and I know that I would have killed her if she weren’t already dead, but look at how happy she made you for the last four years. Look, I know you are mad, but, just try to remember how happy you’ve been for four years. After your dad died, you just weren’t the same, and I missed that Dayton Miller for two years. You were twelve when Michael died, and your brother, Andrew, was fourteen. How did you make it through that? Huh? I can tell you that you didn’t do it on your own. It was the help of your friends, the people who loved you and they can help you again. Two years after your father died, you met Paige and for four years I’ve seen the proud, happy Dayton Miller that you had been before Michael died. Please Dayton, let me see that again, not two years later. Not when you’re nineteen, twenty years old. I want to see it now, when your seventeen. Please, you’ve been my best friend since three year pre-school, I hate seeing you the way I saw you when your dad died. Please, don’t make me see that again. I won’t let you kill yourself, never! Can’t you feel that you’re doing the wrong thing by killing yourself?” Devin said, his eyes burning with passion, anger, love, hate, and many other mixed feelings. He had almost lost Dayton once, he wasn’t about to lose him again because of a girl.

            “I don’t want to feel anymore Devin. All it’s ever done is hurt. I’ve never been able to feel happy or loved and I don’t want to feel that anymore. I just want to die so I can be done with all of this shit here! First that damn God takes away my baby brother who wasn’t even born yet, and then my grandpa gets sick and begins to die, and then my father! Then he thinks can go take away my girlfriend? Who does he think he is?” Dayton asked with tears in his eyes. “Who does he think he is?” he repeated more slowly this time.

            “It’s going to be alright Dr. Miller. God does things for a reason, and I know you know that deep inside your heart. Even if you can’t see it now, you will eventually.” Devin and Dayton turned around in surprise. Who was talking? It was Mandie, but this time, instead of seeing that happy lively face when he turned around, Dayton saw a pale, worn out, frustrated face.

            “Don’t let my looks fool you. I feel better than I look,” she said straight faced without the beautiful smile she usually had on.

            “Hey Mandie, so, I was told your cancer is under control now. They said they removed the tumor and the radiation was starting to work,” Dayton replied dropping the knife. But Mandie shook her head.

            “We THOUGHT it was going okay until they discovered a tumor that is close to my heart. They can’t operate on it, but we know it is cancerous because the one they removed wasn’t, and they know for a fact that I have cancer. The Radiation this morning made me so sick that I was puking for over three hours, almost nonstop then I ended up in ICU because of some dysfunctional shit that happened because of the radiation treatment. I’m dying and nothing can stop it from progressing and taking over my entire body, but, if that’s what God wants, that’s what God can do. There’s a reason for everything, and God knows what’s best, so we take what we’re given, regardless of what we think. Those who don’t take it are fools and will never know the true meaning of love.”

            Dayton turned back around and looked at Mandie in awe and anger. She was calling him a fool and on top of that, she was saying he didn’t know what love was. He would’ve said something to her, but he stopped. Not understanding what he was doing, Dayton got up, walked over to Mandie, and kissed her gently on the lips.

            “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I really shouldn’t have. I apologize,” but Mandie was speechless. Her face hadn’t turned like she was embarrassed, but, it wasn’t that she’d hated it. She really didn’t know what to think.

            “I gotta go, we’re trying Radiation again in ten. See ya later