Maya's pretty sure that she's dreaming. Wherever she is, is bright and there's a fog to it that suggests it isn't reality. Sometimes, she the fog lifts, just enough, that she seems to see herself lying in a bed.
Her blonde hair is fanned out across a pillow and her face is pale and something about it seems wrong. Something about how still her entire body looks, seems wrong. She's too lifeless and there's something in her mouth that Maya doesn't entirely recognize. If it is a dream, she assumes that it must be a nightmare.
But most of the time she's walking through a fog of nothingness and waiting for something to happen. She gets the feeling that decisions are being made and the outcome will decide what happens to her next, but she doesn't seem to get a say in them. Time doesn't seem to mean anything in the fog, but the longer that she's there the heavier she starts to feel. The harder it is to move or to think.
"Maya?" a voice asks and the fog clears just enough for her to make out Nick's face.
"What are you doing here?" Maya questions, feeling strange that someone else has appeared in her dream.
"Same thing as you, I'm waiting," Nick informed her, looking passed her.
"For what?" Maya asks, but the fog is closing in again and she never gets an answer.
The only thing waiting for Maya at the bottom of the cliff is pain. Her entire body feels torn apart and every breath feels heavy and forced, when she finally regains consciousness. Her arms and legs feel heavy and the lights are entirely too bright when she manages to get her eyes open.
"Maya," a voice greets her, squeezing her hand as she blinks to try and make the room seem less blurry.
Maya tries to talk, but there's a tube in her throat and she finds herself panicking as she realizes that she's trapped. The sound of beeping fills the room and a woman in scrubs enters and quickly turns off the machine.
"We had a tube in your throat helping you to breathe and I'm going to take it out, but I need you to stay still, okay?" the woman explains, staring at Maya intently.
Her eyes widen and she closes her eyes as she feels the tube leaving her throat and a burning trail in its wake. Her throat feels dry and scratched and she starts coughing as soon as her airway is clear. A pain in her abdomen keeps her from sitting up and she finds herself groaning in pain.
"It's okay," Shawn's voice reassures her, brushing her hair out of her face as he returns to her line of vision.
"What happened? Where am I?" Maya demands, taking in the hospital room from the light, blue walls to the painting of a garden that hangs opposite of the bed.
Shawn looks helplessly to the woman in the scrubs and she sits down in the chair at Maya's side, "Based on your toxicology results you overdosed on Oxycodone, which also is known as OxyContin or Percocet. You were incredibly fortunate, in most cases it slows down your respiratory system and you stop breathing, but in your case it pushed you into organ failure. Your kidneys' stopped functioning and you had to have a transplant."
"I almost died?" Maya clarified, trying to wrap her mind around what the woman was saying. Most of the medical terms went straight over her head, but, "kidney transplant," and, "stop breathing," made it through.
"You should have died, it's a miracle that you didn't," the woman informed her, leaving the room.
"She's a little blunt, but I've been assured that Nurse Nancy is very good at her job," Shawn informed her, running his hands through his hair as he turned away from her, "Your mother is a mess. She had to be admitted due to severe exhaustion and dehydration. She's down in the ER now with Topanga and she begged me to stay here with you. What were you thinking, Maya?"
"I wasn't trying to kill myself, you have that look on your face that says you think that I did, but that wasn't my intention. I started drinking and I couldn't stop and then I started taking pills and it was what was getting me through the day. I've just been so lost," Maya admitted, tears filling her eyes and she reached up with a hand that was hooked to an IV to wipe them away. The shock at almost dying had her feeling like she needed to explain what had happened and she couldn't stop talking.
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Shawn asked, turning around and she was surprised to find that tears were filling his eyes, too.
"I don't know," Maya admitted, "Everything just kept spiraling out of control and I wasn't thinking, I was just doing things."
"I need to go tell your mom that you're awake. Everyone was worried when you didn't wake up after the surgery," Shawn informed her.
"How long have I been out?" Maya demanded, wincing as the words burned her throat.
"Two weeks, it's been two weeks," he said, quietly, his voice cracking with the words.
Riley's the next person to enter the room, her breathing heavy from running and her hair a mess around her face. She stares at Maya for several seconds and for the first time Maya can't read any of the emotions that are playing their way across her face.
"Hey," Maya hesitantly greets her.
"We're supposed to be best friends," Riley informs her, crossing the room, "We're supposed to laugh and cry and hurt together, Maya. It doesn't matter if you're dating my ex-boyfriend, or doing drugs, or in jail because we're supposed to deal with all of that together. As mad as we get at each other and as badly as we hurt each other, we're both supposed to be there at the end of the day. But you almost died. You almost died and I realized that we don't have any of that, anymore. When did we stop being there for each other?"
"I don't know," Maya admitted, "I went to a dark place, Riles, and I didn't want to take you with me."
"You don't get to decide that for me, anymore. You don't get to decide that I've never experienced anything dark and you don't get to decide that I'll never understand what you're going through because I haven't dealt with the things that you have. I promised to be your best friend forever and they weren't just words, so you don't get to go to these dark places without me, anymore. If you wouldn't take me with you, you shouldn't be going there, anyway."
"I'm sorry," Maya apologized, "You're never going to know how sorry I am."
"I stopped by your house and I found this on your nightstand," Riley informed her, holding up Maya's best friend ring, "I know you spent the last few months high, but you kept wearing this ring, even when we weren't talking and even when our relationship was a mess. So, I figure that some part of you must have wanted to fix things eventually."
"Are you going to give it back?" Maya enquired, holding up her hand.
Riley crossed the room and placed the ring in Maya's palm, her own ring catching the light that was filtering in through the slits in the blinds of the hospital window.
"I almost gave you my kidney because I would give anything to make you whole, but I can't make you whole unless you want to be," Riley informed her.
"I love you, but you can't carry me through this, Riles. We're always going to be best friends, but someday you're going to have to follow your dreams and we both know that they're going to take you away from me. I need to learn how to make myself whole, I need to learn how to live with myself and I want you with me while I do that, but you have to stop thinking that you can single-handedly fix me."
"I'll stop trying to fix you, but you have to stop trying to protect me," Riley offered, sinking down on the chair next to Maya's bed.
"Deal," Maya agreed, slipping the ring onto her finger.
Her mother is escorted into the room in a wheelchair and she looks like she's aged ten years overnight. Her face is tired and there are bags under her eyes. Maya's pretty sure she's lost about ten pounds, too, and despite all of Maya's struggles with her mother she finds herself feeling incredibly guilty.
"I'm not sure that there are words for this situation," Katy informed her, biting her lip, as the wheelchair stopped at the side of her bed. Riley is still sitting on Maya's other side and Shawn stands awkwardly at the foot of her bed.
"I'm sorry, Mom," Maya offered.
"I thought you were doing better, you kept saying that you were doing better. We were making plans, Maya, and then you didn't wake up. If I hadn't checked on you that morning, you would be dead," Katy informed her.
"I'm not okay, I haven't been okay. I have a problem and I don't think that it's the kind of thing that will just go away," Maya informed her, thinking of all of the mornings that her mother hadn't checked on her. The mornings that she had gotten away with being hungover and the mornings that she had spent cutting classes while her mother was at work.
"Your father's here and he wants to see you. I wasn't going to tell you, but he's leaving tomorrow and so if there's any chance that you want to see him, it has to be now," Katy said, looking away.
"Why is he here?" Maya demanded, anger pulsing through her, "How would he even know that I was in the hospital?"
"Maya, he wanted to donate his kidney," Riley spoke up and Maya turned her glare onto her best friend.
"You didn't put his kidney inside of me? He's the reason that I'm an addict, he's the reason that other people can drink without getting addicted and I can't. I hate the idea that any of my genetic makeup comes from him, but you're not actually telling me that you let him be the hero who kept me alive?"
"He didn't get here in time to donate his kidney," her mother replied, keeping her voice even, "And I'll go on record as saying that I would have let him donate his kidney if he had been here. You were dying and really didn't get a say. Maybe the next time that you're tempted to use, you can remember that."
"Why don't we go for a walk before we say anything that we can't take back?" Shawn suggested, returning to the back of Katy's chair.
"Okay," Katy warily agreed and Maya watched as the two of them left the room.
"So, if it wasn't you and it wasn't my father, whose kidney did you put in me?" Maya demanded, returning her attention to Riley.
"I don't know," Riley said, her gaze falling to the ground and refusing to meet hers.
"I think that you do," Maya countered.
"Well, I think that you should talk to your father. You have unresolved issues, Maya, and you need to deal with them."
"Not while I'm stuck in a hospital bed and I feel weak," Maya replied.
Riley pulled her phone from her pocket and a frown creased her face as she read through the message, "Lucas is on his way to see you."
"You can stay," Maya pointed out as Riley stood up from her chair.
"I may be willing to do a lot of things for you, but watching you and Lucas together isn't one of them," Riley replied, tucking her phone back into the pocket of her pants.
"I don't know what you think is going on with Lucas and me, but we're just friends," Maya insisted.
"Even if you are just friends, seeing how close you are, isn't something that I can deal with right now. I love you, Maya, and I'll be back to visit you before your transfer," Riley promised, squeezing Maya's hand on her way out.
Maya closed her eyes and let out a sigh as she realized how messed up the entire situation had become.
"A piece of advice from one self-destructing person to another," Lucas said as he entered the room, "I think that it's time that we stop."
"You think?" Maya snorted, as he sunk down in the chair next to her bed.
"We let things really get out of control, didn't we?" Lucas asked, letting his head sink into his hands on the edge of her bed.
"Yeah, but we're both still here, which means we can still fix things," Maya offered, "How's Nick?"
"He's in the hospital right now and steadily declining. He refuses to let go of that picture that you drew him," Lucas informed her.
"I want to see him before they ship me off to rehab or a psych ward, or wherever they're sending me," Maya insisted.
"My parents don't know about your overdose, I couldn't put one more thing on them," Lucas admitted.
"Then you can help me get rid of this IV and I'll get dressed. We can be in and out before anyone knows that I'm gone," Maya suggested.
"You're hooked up to dozens of machines, someone will know," Lucas disagreed, "And your mother would kill me."
"I think it's too soon for the death jokes," Maya pointed out and he let out an emotionless laugh.
"I told Riley about Nick," Lucas informed her, staring intently on the sheets that were tangled around Maya on the bed, "And you want to know what I realized?"
"This is going to be something incredibly depressing, isn't it?" Maya guessed, reading the look on his face.
"You don't look at me like a hero, you never have," Lucas said and Maya wondered if they should be checking Lucas for drug use.
"I know that you're a good person," Maya offered.
"But you've never really been in love me," Lucas pointed out and Maya let out a laugh that ended in her groaning with pain.
"You are the most conceited, good person that I know," Maya snorted, "You don't really think that everyone just falls in love with you?"
"What I realized," he gave her a look that let her know she was missing his point, "Is that Riley loved me and she saw me as a hero and Farkle saw me as this superhuman and he's my best friend, but there's a part of him that hates me for the way that everyone sees me and I liked that. I liked being the good guy, I still want to be him, but I'm a lot more flawed then what I let on."
"I'm not sure what this has to do with telling Riley about Nick."
"I didn't want to go through this with someone who would be understanding, I didn't want to go through this with someone who would try to save me or try to comfort me. I wanted to self-destruct and be angry and let my life spiral completely out of control. You talked about wanting to burn, well I wanted to burn everything down," Lucas informed her, "Which is why I told you and not Riley."
"We're not good for each other, are we?" Maya asked, trying to process his words.
"Do you blame me for your overdose?" Lucas returned, his eyes meeting hers.
"No."
"Am I the reason that you started taking painkillers?" Lucas continued.
"No," Maya returned, gesturing for him to get to the point.
"We were both going to self-destruct, regardless of whether we were doing it together, or not. But you knew how to pull me back from the edge and I let you fall."
"I didn't fall, I jumped," Maya corrected him.
"My point is that I need you," Lucas ignored her, "You got me through this last summer and I'm sorry that I let you down, but you were exactly what I needed. And I'm going to help you come back from this and be the person who pulls you back from the edge, from now on."
"You know Riley claimed that role in my life years before I even met you, right?" Maya asked, trying to figure out what to do with what he was telling her.
"Riley's your Farkle," Lucas offered and Maya raised an eyebrow, "She's the best friend that sees the best in you, like Farkle does for me."
"Riley sees the best in everyone," Maya pointed out.
"They see us as so much more then what we see ourselves," he tried and Maya conceded the point, "We're the best friends that can see the worst in each other, that can tolerate the worst in each other and still have a conversation like this in the end. I need someone in my life who doesn't believe in me and I think you need that, too."
"I was right, this is depressing," Maya said, at a loss of what else she could say.
"But you get it, right?"
"If you try to get me a best friend ring, I will hit you in the eye with it," Maya informed him, shifting her position.
"Deal," Lucas returned.
Maya's sleep that night was restless and she found herself spending more time staring at the ceiling then what she did actually sleeping. She knew that a fear of what awaited her in her dreams was what got her into this mess in the first place, but now she's dealing with the fear that she'll never wake up.
"There's forty-three ceiling tiles, in case you're wondering," Shawn offers from the chair next to her. Katy's doctor had insisted that she go home and sleep in her own bed and it was Shawn who was spending the night with her. She doesn't have to ask what he was doing counting ceiling tiles in her room because she already knows that he was waiting for her to wake up.
"Thank you for being here. Thank you for taking care of my mom," Maya said, turning to look at him.
"I love her, I love you. Almost losing you was the single most terrifying thing that I ever experienced," Shawn admitted.
"I think my life might have been a lot different if things had worked out between the both of you," Maya sighed.
"Have you ever played that game with Cory? The Family Game?" Shawn asked and Maya suppressed a smile.
"Yeah, I've played it," she admitted.
"Life is a lot like that game, you have to keep going regardless of how bad things get and who you consider as family gets redefined over and over again. The game isn't over for either of us, Maya."
"There's something that I need to do," Maya admitted.
Nick's room wasn't actually that far away from Maya's, but it was a lot less generic then hers was. She could see the personal touches that screamed Rebecca, all over the room. Posters had been hung on the walls and action figures rested on a table next to Nick's bed, along with framed pictures of the Friar family. Someone had even hung cut-out stars from paperclips and string that was taped to the ceiling. There was an abandoned jacket that Riley knew to be Lucas's hanging over one of the chairs and a set of shoes that were peeking out from under the bed.
This hospital room looked lived in and the thought made Maya feel incredibly sad. Sure enough, her own picture rested on the bed next to Nick, though Nick looked pale and had the same tube helping him breathe that Maya had woken up with. Maya quietly crossed the room, wincing with every step.
Shawn was waiting at the door with the wheelchair that he had insisted be used to bring her there and Rebecca was asleep on a couch that rested under the window.
"Hey, Nick," Maya said quietly, grabbing his hand as she sunk down in the chair next to his bed, "It's Maya. I just wanted the chance to tell you goodbye and how lucky I was to get the chance to know you. And I want you to know that I haven't forgotten my promise. I'll look out for Lucas and I'll tease him, just like you would. Don't tell him this, but even though I'm not in love with him, I do love him. And I love you."
Maya paused as the tears running down her cheeks threatened to turn into sobs and she gently pressed a kiss to his forehead, committing his face to memory. Something in her knows that this is the last time that she's going to see him alive and so she makes her last few moments count.
Shawn is still waiting for her at the door and she lowers herself into the chair without argument. She has an entire future waiting, but she tucks this piece of time into her heart, where it can live on long after it ends.
I got some comments last chapter about how I was altering things from Laws of Motion and that's partially true. Maya's going to remember things differently then Riley did, so I've switched up some of the conversations and not all of the events are going to line up. In regards to the kidney donation in Laws of Motion, I never came out and said that Kermit donated his kidney, I only said that Riley didn't and Kermit was planning to. I know that it could be argued that who donated the kidney does impact Riley's story, but Laws of Motion was supposed to really focus on Riley and Lucas's journey and I didn't want to spent a ton of time focusing on Maya's overdose, so I didn't expand on it. This story is about Maya's journey and I've written it pretty present-tense, so we're going to get a lot more detail and expansion on plot lines and ideas, then what we got in the flashbacks of Laws of Motion. As for the things that I've altered between the stories, you're the reader, I've given you two sides of the story and you get to decide what you think happened and how it happened.
Thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing! I greatly appreciate the continued support and I will admit that the reviews are a huge motivation in my writing. Speaking of which, I would love to hear what you think! Thanks again!
