Chapter 56

Ouch

Over spring break, I knuckled down on my house building plans. Mr. Roberts had given me the numbers of three local builders and having spoken with them, I decided on one who seemed able to build the house to the plans I had. It wouldn't be exact, because I'm not a builder and I don't know about that stuff, but he looked at my plans, got out some of his own and was able to do a good job matching it all up. So, I went with him. Total cost to build my house, $26,000. Almost the same price as my land. He's due to start in a week. If all goes well, it should be done by my birthday.

Ashley also had a surprise – her parents have finallydecided to allow her to have driving lessons. She was as excited as I was when I won the money! I smiled at her giddyness.

"Well, I told them I would be going to college soon, and it would be important to know how to drive. Daddy finally said yes! I'm already signed up!"

I was happy for her. That first taste of freedom is exhilarating and yet can scare the crap out of you too, when you realize you're in control of a machine that can take you places or kill you or others if you screw up. My parents had died in a car accident, so the true power of a vehicle was never lost on me. I respected it.

School was going well. I had another "C" and a smattering of "B's". Finals were coming up in late May, so I was busy trying to fix the "C". College was no joke!

"What are you going to major in when you go to college?" I asked her one day as we sat around doing nothing.

She looked at me, then looked down, obviously thinking. "Teaching, probably. I always pictured myself as a teacher. Molding and shaping young minds. Daddy's a teacher, just seems right that I follow in the family tradition." She said with finality. "What do you think of that?"

I smiled. "It suits you. Can I be in your class...Miss Benning?"

"Oh, Michael! Stop it" She giggled at me.

XXX

June was finally here and I finished up my first year of college. I did manage to turn my "C" into a "B-", so it seemed I was going to perpetuate the "B" grading scale.

Ashley graduated from high school and I was invited to her graduation. Yet another moment of high school glory I was to see through her eyes and not my own, but oh well. You make your bed...ya gotta lay in it. She looked so proud turning her tassel and getting her diploma. I was proud for her.

My house was halfway done and looked wonderful so far. It's a single story three bedroom two bathhouse with a large stone fireplace in the living room. It's big, but I want it that way. I have always lived in a small space, either at home where Darry did the best he could but cramped was always the name of the game, or my little apartment. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but I wanted the freedom to move about in my own place. I have sandstone colored brick that cost me a little extra but I think it looks better than the garish red brick everyone else has. I went by every few days watching the house come to life.

It sort of surprised me when I recently got a letter from Croft and Drake publishers. I had to think back on all the manuscripts I had sent out. I even took out my notebook and there it was, in small print. It was a smaller company, relatively new out of Pennsylvania. They were the eighth publisher I had sent a manuscript to and hadn't heard back from them yet. I had actually forgotten about it entirely.

I opened the envelope and pulled out the contents.

Dear Mr. Curtis,

After much consideration of your manuscript, Hot Tulsa Nights, we have decided it meets our criteria for our growing young adult section, and would be delighted to publish it. However, your manuscript needs some editing and minor corrections, and we have assigned Joyce Donnovanto be your editor. You may contact her at (###-###-####) to proceed with this phase of publication.

After the editing process we can proceed to the next phase. Congratulations on your work. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Tom Adams

Croft-Drake Publishing

"Whoa! This was not happening. It was accepted? Really? I put the papers down, not trusting myself to read them. For the rest of the day, I just sort of floated. The next day I called and spoke with Mrs. Donnovan.

"Well, Ponyboy, you have some punctuation errors...apparently you are a comma happy kind of guy, along with some other typos and a little sentence structure to fix. There is a bit of redundancy in chapters 6, 18 and 22, but that can be fixed. Now the story...the story itself is solid. It will take a bit of work, but we'll get it done."

It was nothing like doing illustrations and would be a longer more tedious process, but I was on my way to being an author. A real bona fide go-into-any-bookstore-and-see-my-words-on-the-shelf author.

XXX

Ashley had her eighteenth birthday on the 16th of June, and we had a big BBQ for her. Since prom, she and I have spent a lot of time together, talking about everything or just holding hands all quiet and sweet like. I just enjoyed being with her. Now that summer was here, I realized it had been a year since I met her. I smiled at the thought of how happy she made me.

I decided not to take a summer class this time, my house was nearing completion and I needed to spend time working on it. Also, one of Mr. Roberts neighbor friends had five horses he was selling and was using part of my land - with my permission -to stable them. The agreement basically was if he put the stable and the temporary fencing up, I would let them stay there rent free until my house was ready, but I also got to ride the horses whenever I wanted to. So, my summer afternoons were spent with me and Ashley riding around my property. I was seriously thinking of buying two of the horses, the one I rode was a large black Appaloosa with white spots, while Ashley liked the disposition of the straw colored quarter horse.

However, with my house nearing completion in a few weeks, he put an ad in the "Horseman's Trader" magazine to try to stir up an interest and finally sell the horses. It gave the name of my little "ranch," as it were, and his phone number as I had no phone yet. When I was asked- rather unexpectedly- to name my ranch, there was only one name I could think of. I smiled when I said it. "Ponyboy's." As he didn't understand the full meaning behind it he thought nothing of it either. So the add was placed and all I could do was sit back and wait for someone to want the horses.

XCXCX

My house was finished a week before my birthday. My own eighteenth birthday, but to everyone else it was my twentieth. Even Ashley didn't know. I planned to tell her soon, but well, nature helped me out on that one.

I invited Ashley out for dinner, my birthday dinner, but I didn't tell her parents this. I just wanted a special evening with her and her alone. My stomach had been bothering me but I attributed it to nerves. I took some aspirin and went to pick her up, then off we went to this restaurant out near the base of the mountains. She looked so nice, wearing a minty green shirt and a floral print skirt. I was listening to her prattle on about how she was accepted to Pembroke City College and was looking forward to classes when half way there my side gave me another jolt of pain. I grabbed my side expecting to find a knife sticking out of it, but of course there wasn't one.

"Mike, you okay?"

I waited to see if anything else was going to hurt, but nothing felt wrong. I shook my head and smiled at her. "I'm fine...really...you were saying something about classes.....go on." I patted her hand and she laced her fingers into mine again. A few minutes later, another pain shot at my side and a dull throbbing ache set in. I squeezed her hand involuntarily as I wrenched my hand free from hers to grab my side again.

"Mike..." Her tone was one of caution.

"Just a spasm. I'm fine." But I was starting to wonder myself what was wrong. I had been running more lately, now that winter had passed, and I figured I'd pulled something because I wasn't warming up like I was supposed to. A tiny prickle of fear went through me that accompanied the throbbing ache that was settling in my side.

Ashley just kept glancing at me, totally forgetting her story of school and our futures. I just smiled at her and tried to ignore the stinging ache growing in my side.

Finally I made it to the restaurant and parked the car. As we walked from the gravel parking lot to the sidewalk the pain in my side took a nasty turn to the extreme as I felt like I had been slammed against a brick wall by an explosion in my side. It dropped me to my knees as I let out an audible groan and sucked in air, holding my side so tight as if I were punching myself. Something was definitely not right.

"Mike!...What is it? What's wrong?" She was kneeling down next to me, worry all over her face.

"It's just a spasm, I dunno. I'll be okay." I tried to stand up but every time I tried to pull myself together, if felt like daggers exploding in my stomach and side. My muscles tensed up against my will as my side demanded that I not straighten up.

"No, you're not okay, Michael. What is it? What can I do?"

Shock waves of pain radiated through my system. There was no way I'd be able to sit in a restaurant now. Plus, people were starting to stare at us. I forced myself to my feet, pain screaming at my side the whole time.

"You got your license now, right Ash?" I asked, panting through the pain.

"Yeah..." She said, terror in her eyes.

"Good, here..." I fished my keys out of my pocket. "You're driving us out of here."

I made it back into my car and slumped against the side as she made her way back down the road we had just come up on. She kept looking at me, worry in every glance. By now I was sweating something fierce and holding my side as tightly as I could. I wanted to scream but knew it would only terrify her, so I held it in.

"Mike, where am I going?" She asked finally, looking at me with wide eyes.

Where are we going? I restated in my head, we're going to the one place I thought I would never, ever ask anyone to take me to unless I thought I was about to die....

"Take me to the hospital, Ashley." I shook all over, whether it was from fear or pain I wasn't sure, both applied at this point.

XXX

How she found a hospital I don't know, but I now found myself laying on a gurney in the emergency room. My clothes had been stripped off me and people bounced around me, poking me with needles, putting oxygen on me, and then someone decided it would be fun to take their finger and jab it into my side, right where the fires from hell burned at that moment.

"Oww! Don't do that!" I yelped in spite of myself. I wanted to cuss, I wanted to cuss, I wanted to cuss. People were asking me questions...my name, address, age, allergies, family to call. Then in the mix of all this I saw the doctor pull out a needle about the length of my hand and dab some brown, sticky wet fluid over the spot that hurt the most. Oh hell no you don't!

"What are you gonna do with that?" I asked, he looked at me.

"Mr Curtis, I think you have an inflamed or ruptured appendix. I need to see if you're bleeding inside your abdomen. I'm going to use this needle to check for free blood. Hold still."

I had no choice. I felt the stab of the needle in my side and was literally held down by everyone around me. Through the scream of pain heard only inside my head, I heard him say to the nurse at my side..."Positive for bleeding, call the operating room for standby. Prep him for surgery."

Finally he came to my side where I could clearly see him.

Mr. Curtis, your appendix has ruptured and we need to take you to surgery to remove it. I see your chart has you at 20 years old...is that correct?"

"Yes." I stammered, everything happening too fast.

"The nurse will have consent forms for you and then we can give you something for the pain. After that, we'll take you upstairs for surgery."

"Ashley, I need to see Ashley." I called out. Suddenly some nurse was talking about surgery and procedures, risks and benefits, this and that. None of it made any sense to me. It hurt too damn much to think.

"Sign here, Mr. Curtis."

She handed me a pen in my hand and I shakily signed...something.

"I want to see Ashley."

"Mr. Curtis, we need to take you..."

"...Ashley!" I screamed, stopping the nurse in her tracks. "I need to see her, now!"

"Fine." The nurse said icily and left the room a second, returning momentarily with Ashley.

"Mike?" Boy she looked scared.

"Look, I'm gonna be fine. I know I will." I tried to be reassuring. "But if something happens to me, call this number for me and tell who ever answers the phone who I am and where I am." She got out a pen and piece of paper, writing down a long hidden number I had only used twice since leaving home over a year ago. "Don't call them unless something happens to me. Promise me...Ash...promise me."

The nurse had to have given me medicine in one of the many IV'sthey had placed in my arms, because I was getting sleepy, with a detached feeling sweeping over me.

"Ashley..." I called out, my voice going numb. "I love you." I wasn't sure if I said it. I hope I did. Damn... I cant...keep....my...eyes...open.

XXX

Okay...There are those of you who seem to not want Pony's book published. I do. I'm the one writing this, so I win. But I appreciate your words and know from experience that yeah...first time works are rarely printed. I had my own bout of disappointment with that years ago. But I still appreciate your reviews, words of wisdom and continuing support. Thank you. Calla Lilly Rose.