Thalia’s Pov
Another eight years elapsed, I had no idea how but they just flew by like a wildfire. Indeed time never waited for anyone but I couldn’t help but feel like it was deliberately running away from me.
My Kendra had just turned thirteen, yes she was a teenager. She grew up into a beautiful, strong nonsense young girl. She never lost hope in meeting Brandon, every weekend she went to visit him at the beach house, telling him everything that was happening in her life and all her secrets, secrets that she never wanted me and Josh to know.
She loved the beach house and never missed the weekend. We also kept the tradition of watching the sunrise at the bridge on the anniversary that I met Brandon. Sometimes I forgot and she had to remind me. She was my rock, if it was not for her I would have lost hope just like the others.
I saw it in their eyes when I talked about Brandon, they just wanted me to stop talking about him and move on. But they couldn’t say it to my face because they did not want to offend me. Even Nestor seemed to have given up, I noted he reduced visiting, he even found himself a girlfriend, which was a sign that he had moved on.
Only Kendra and I were hanging on but I was on a thread and every time that realization hit me I shrunk in shame.
I had no idea whether doctor Wilson had given up because I stopped taking progress reports from him. He would send them every month to my email but I intentionally stopped opening them because I was tired of getting the same report with no progress while I was pumping in a lot of money.
I stopped harassing him with my constant visits. Even when I was visiting Brandon I would ignore the lab. It was too much of hearing the same things over and over again.
I had no idea how many more years I was supposed to wait, but it was becoming depressing. Maybe that was the reason why Nestor found himself a girlfriend.
Josh and Scarlet had two sons, one was eight while the other was five years old. Kendra adored them and she was always protecting them at school.
They were a constant reminder of how the years were flying by. Thirteen years was a lot of years to wait for the cure, a lot of years but I did not want to pull the plug. That was his wish, in the event we failed to find a cure, we were not supposed to wake him up, we were not supposed to say goodbye. We were supposed to switch off all the machines and let him die. I could not do that, the love I had for him would kill me if I did that.
I had no idea what to do, sometimes I would just pretend that he was not in a coma so that I would be sane for a day. The thoughts were killing me, I was thinking too much and everyone around me noticed that I was finally breaking down so they suggested I see a therapist but it never worked out.
All the therapists suggested I pull the plug which was a big no to me. They all wanted to make it look like I was punishing Brandon. One even dared to call me selfish after I confessed that a maximum number of years Brandon stated to pull the plug.
I had kept that a secret, not even Nestor was aware of it. I guess Brandon only told me because he never wanted us to be fighting. His wish was three years but I went all the way up to thirteen years, going against his wish. Was I selfish? Was the therapist right? Maybe they were but I felt offended and stopped going to the sessions.
They all found out that I had quiet therapy and requested a meeting but I kept giving excuses of being busy. I knew what they wanted to talk about and I was not interested. I would hide at the beach house, usually staring at the plugs and machines that were keeping Brandon alive. Asking myself whether he was in pain, whether he hated me for holding on too long or whether he would forgive me.
I had a lot of questions but only he was eligible to answer. I heard footsteps behind me and knew it was Nestor. They s*upidly called him. I had not seen him in weeks.
“Hello, Nestor? I’m not pulling the plug, let us give the doctor some more years?” I quickly spoke.
“What is the doctor saying?” He asked.
“I do not know, I stopped reading his progress reports a year ago,” I replied.
“Thalia, seriously?”
“Brandon was right, that fool is useless. Maybe he diverts all the millions I give him to his personal account,” I replied.
He kept quiet without responding
“Have you ever asked Kendra how she feels about letting him go?”
“How on earth would I ask her that? What kind of a mother would ask her child that!” I yelled at him.
“I asked her?” he replied.
I turned in shock to face him, he had no right to do that.
“She said if he is in pain then it’s only fair we let him go to heaven,” he replied.
I glanced at him speechlessly, there was no way Kendra would have said that. She was the only one that was on my side. She had been looking forward to meeting him. She liked all the stories I told her about him. She had watched all the videos of him and always wondered how fun he would have been with her.
“Kendra would have told me, stop lying.”
“She does not want to break your heart, I promised her I would not tell you,” he added.
I placed my face in my hands, as he drew me for a hug. “Brandon would understand, I think it’s time we said goodbye to him.”
“No! No!” I pushed him off. “You know what we went through with him, Josh, Scarlett, Maggie, and Wilfred have no idea who Brandon is. We know him, we are not supposed to give up like them!”
“Thalia, it has been thirteen years, Thirteen f*cking years.”
“People stay in comas for more than thirty years!” I yelled at him.
“Those people are not waiting for a cure, a cure that we have no idea about. I think we should talk to Dr. Wilson,” he replied and began walking towards the lab. I was in disbelief at what was coming out of his mouth.
I quickly ran after him as he pounded on the doctor’s door like a mad man. The door opened and the doctor walked out confused. He had really gotten old, he looked malnourished and looked like he had not stepped outside for days or maybe months.
“You scared me, I thought it was intruders,” he said. He turned in my direction and ran to me. “Ooh miss Thalia, you have not aged a single day,”
“Cut the clap!” Nestor shouted at him. He glanced at Nestor in disappointment, then turned to me. “Miss Thalia you just came in time, I have sent numerous emails but you never replied so I made improvements,” he said.
I could tell he was disoriented, even though I stopped bugging him I always visited Brandon, and the lab and the capsule were in the same house. He could have walked out of the lab to meet up with me but he did not. He looked like he had gone insane.
Nestor and I exchanged worried glances as he pushed the door of the lab. I ignored the Doctor who was eager to say something and followed from behind. To our shock, we found the lab in chaos. There were papers everywhere, the equipment was not maintained and most of them were off. And lastly, he was alone, there was no sign of his team.
“Dr. Wilson, where is your team?” I asked
“They quit a year ago, they said they had wasted a lot of years,” he replied.
My heart stopped for a minute
“Do not worry, I never up, miss Thalia, Never, no for Mr. Fraser,”
“Shut up! What do you mean they left? Why was I not informed!”
He walked near me and I was hit with a horrible stench. He smelled so horrible like he had not bathed in ages.
” Finding another team was not a solution,” he replied.
I wanted to hit him, I wanted to kill him but Nestor held me as I insulted him. How could he? After all the millions that I kept sending. The state of the lab said it all, the negligence, it was all over. I kept a man in a coma for nothing, it was all my fault.
“I’m going to call the police, Thalia, this piece of s*it needs to rot in prison.”
“And who is going to administer the cure if you arrest me?” the Dr replied.
I was not sure if he had gone mad or if I was hearing double. But someone needed to take him away before I committed murder.
“Come, miss Thalia, come and check how the cells are dying. It was a virus, masking itself into cancerous cells. It confused us because of being able to attack both red blood cells and white blood.” he said. “Brandon had a virus, not Cancer, and in unmasking the virus, it took thirteen boody years” he added.
“Shut up!” Nestor yelled at him.
His last sentence caught my attention, “What did you say?”
He pointed to the table where one clean microscope was placed. “See for yourself, Miss Thalia.”
I got up and walked to the table
“Please Thalia do not tell me you believe this mad fool.”
“Quiet Nestor, scientists are supposed to be mad fools,” I said as I peeped through the microscope. I saw familiar mutated cells, but they looked shriveled.
“Wait here, let me get a fresh sample from mr Brandon,” he suggested
But I yelled at him to stay still as I grabbed a needle myself and went and collected fresh blood. I ran back to the lab and the old man handed me a vial of a colorless liquid. I first prepared a slide alone and I could see the mutated cells. I added the liquid and the cells changed back to normal shape exposing a root-like structure that dissolved and the cells shrunk.
My eyes almost popped out of my socket, I tried the process three times. “Holy s*it, holy s*it, holy s*it!” I kept screaming.
“Why didn’t you tell me!”
“What’s going on Thalia?” Nestor asked
“F*cking cure, he did it, he found the cure,” I said in excitement.
“I need to assess the dose, I need to start a trial,” the doctor began explaining but I ignored him, took out the smallest needle, loading the cure into it.
“Thalia what are you doing?”
“You all wanted to unplug him so it won’t make a difference,” I said and ran to the capsule. I opened it up and injected Brandon into his arm. By the time the doctor came in, it was too late, I had already given Brandon the cure. Yes, it was not tested yet but what was the point when they all wanted to end his life.
“Miss Thalia, what have you done?”
“We will unplug the machine after monitoring,” I said.
Nestor stood at the entrance with his hand in his hair. I got my headset and put them in my ears not wanting to hear all that could go wrong with injecting medicine that was not tested. I began going through the emails the doctor sent me for the past year.
He made a breakthrough the day I stopped opening his emails, a year ago though the cells were not shrinking. According to his notes, the cure sounded promising, and when I did not reply he thought I had rejected it and he began modifying it to perfection using only a microscope as his aid which took a year.
The old fool did it. Brandon was the g*inea pig and if he died then it was meant to be.
An hour passed and he seemed okay, two, three and on the eighth hour, I took a sample, and behold the cells were dying, most of them were dead. I typically lifted the old man, he was so thin, he had punished himself to do the impossible even when his team quit on him. “You did it, you did it,” I kissed him on the cheek.
Nestor’s shocked face was priceless. For the first time in the fourteen years I had known him, he became emotional and shed a tear. He just sat on the floor, I was the one who began texting Maggie and the others. Yes, it was too early and Brandon’s body was still processing but from the Doctor’s notes, I did not see anything that could go wrong unless he was allergic to one of the components.
The following morning everyone arrived shocked, I was the only one smiling. After thirteen years, and almost losing hope, my smile popped back on my face. We were yet to remove him from the coma. I wanted his body to be independent of the machine.
But the good news was that the cells were dying. Every slide I made contained fewer cells which went on for a week until I could not see cells that I could count with my hands.
Dr. Wilson then finally removed all the machines and gave him something to remove him from the coma. We were all at the beach house in anticipation. He prepared us to expect the worst, like memory loss, loss of speech, or even failure to wake up especially when thirteen years passed.
And it was not automatic that he was going to open his eyes and we understood. Kendra was very excited, she wanted to meet him but he did not open his eyes. He was in there but his brain was adapting to the change, meaning we had to wait.
I took leave from work and moved into the beach house. I wanted him to see my face first. We had moved him into his old room, it was exactly the way it was when he left it.
Kendra would join me, every day after school, reading to him her romantic novels. I had only stepped out to prepare her a meal when I heard screaming. I ran back into the room and found Brandon with his gray eyes wide open. The eyes that I missed a lot. He kept staring at Kendra, who was screaming in excitement. Even when she moved his eyes followed her new position.
