Rey woke up very slowly, with one rustle at a time, one shift of his non IV-pricked arm at a time, and one half-kick of his uninjured leg at a time.
Dave sat and watched Rey from one of those cheap felt-covered hospital waiting room chairs that he'd dragged in there long ago. Rey had his own room in the I.C. U. and Dave felt like it might as well be his hotel room, because he spent so much of his days there.
He perked up and curiously watched Rey, dropping his magazine to the floor.
"Rey-Rey…?"
He poked his head out of the door and called a nurse in.
"Hey, he's waking up!"
He'd been told to tell them when Rey woke up.
He saw the doctor coming down the hall and he propped the door open for her with his foot as he turned and smiled at Rey.
"Hey, buddy."
"Nnn…" Rey groaned. Then he touched his throat. "Dave…is the tube gone?"
"Yeah, the tube's gone, you can breathe."
Rey struggled to sit up.
The doctor came in through the door and Dave let it drift closed and he walked to the other side of Rey's bed than the one the doctor was going towards.
He helped Rey sit up, supporting his back with his big hands. He propped the pillows up for the weakened little body and Rey thanked him groggily.
"Gracias, Dave."
Dave nodded, smiled, and straightened up.
"Hello, Mr. Gutierrez, how are you feeling today?" Dr. Sanjaya asked. She was a pretty, thirty-something year old Indian woman. And she was Rey's doctor.
Rey looked confused, as Dave thought he would.
"I-I'm...okay. Why am I here…?"
Dr. Sanjaya gave Rey a sympathetic look.
Fortunately, Rey didn't turn his head to see Dave's sad expression. Dave covered his mouth.
"Mr. Gutierrez…what is the last thing that you remember before the accident?"
Rey looked at her. Then he looked down at his lap. "I…I don't know."
He looked up again and seemed frightened by this.
"That's all right, Mr. Gutierrez. That's to be expected. You will probably be unable to recall the majority of the day leading up to your accident."
Rey swallowed. "I-um…I'm sorry, but I don't remember what…what type of accident was I in?"
She took a breath.
"Doctor Sanjaya, I can explain a little better," Dave volunteered.
Rey turned his head towards Dave and looked at him attentively.
Dave smiled reassuringly. "Rey, you and your family were on a plane headed to Florida for a family vacation. You know, the one you wanted to go on before Angie had the baby?"
Rey nodded.
Dave continued. "It was you, Angie, Aalyah, and Dominik. And the plane made it here to Florida, but then it had engine problems, and it- it crash-landed."
"I was in a plane crash?" Rey asked, shocked.
"What- what happened? Dave, you have to tell me!" Rey said urgently, grabbing Dave's hand.
Dave looked up towards the Doctor. She nodded.
"Rey…Dominik…didn't make it."
Rey jolted in a way that Dave thought was unbelievably quiet. It was like somewhere deep in Rey's spine, he felt a shock, and it stilled him. His eyes were so big that he looked like a deer that had felt a car hit its chest.
He slowly dropped his eyes and let go of Dave's hand.
He didn't close those wide eyes until they began to tear up. He tried to breathe.
"And-and Angie? And Aalyah? Are they-?"
"Your wife, Angie, is in stable condition now, in the I.C.U." Dr. Sanjaya informed him. "And your daughter, Aalyah is stable as well, in a separate part of the I.C.U."
Rey gazed up at her as though she held his heart in her hands- which she did, Dave found.
"And-and the baby…?"
Rey's wife, Angie had been six months pregnant at the time of the accident. They had been trying for a while to have a third, final child, and when Angie was finally able to conceive she had had to stifle her husband.
"Oscar, wait to tell the news until maybe…three months along," she had requested.
"But Angie, that's such a long time from now, and I want to tell my parents, and Dave, and my uncle…hell, I'll even tell Mr. McMahon, if you let me."
Rey had been so happy.
But the last try, he had made the mistake of telling friends, and even one little person in the media during an interview that his wife was pregnant.
He had been happy then, too, and he hadn't been thinking.
He felt terrible months later when Angie miscarried.
So he agreed to keep their third child a secret for a while. "Angie, I'll wait until the baby's born to tell people about it, if you want me to. Whatever you want me to do." And he'd said it with a proud, tearful smile. He was such a devoted father, and tried so hard to be a good husband.
So, the life of their third child, even though the baby was only six months old and still within its mother, meant a lot to Rey despite the fact that he did not know the child at all yet, and couldn't have.
Dr. Sanjaya exhaled sadly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Gutierrez, but your wife was crashing while you were still in surgery. We were unable to get her consent or yours to perform an emergency delivery, so I had to make a judgment call in order to save her life."
Rey looked at her and nodded sadly. "That's…that's all right. If it could save Angie, then that's what had to happen."
"Your baby did not survive, I'm sorry. It was too premature."
Rey nodded. He licked his lips anxiously. "And Angie…is she okay, now? Is she awake? Does she know?"
Dr. Sanjaya clutched her clipboard to herself. "Your wife sustained some injuries to her head. She stabilized after the delivery, but she slipped into a coma."
Rey swallowed. "Do you know if she'll ever wake up?"
Dr. Sanjaya nodded. "We estimate by the end of this week she should regain consciousness. Her system may be stable for now, but her hormones and blood flow are fluctuating, due to the premature birth. We need to monitor her for a while."
Rey smiled a small, hopeful smile. "By the end of the week? I'm so glad to hear you say that."
Dr. Sanjaya nodded. "Yes."
"Is my daughter awake? Can I see her?"
"Aalyah is stable right now but you won't be able to visit her for at least another day."
Rey frowned at little.
"You see, Mr. Gutierrez, after the plane crashed and medics discovered your family, you were found holding your daughter in your arms. A long piece of metal pierced your calf. You nearly bled out, but they got to you just in time."
Rey glanced down at his leg, understanding suddenly what had happened to it. One side of it needed stitching because that was the side that had been cut open further to remove the metal, and to have his muscles repaired. The metal hadn't gone all the way through his leg, so only one side of it needed attention.
"Was Aalyah all right? Why is she in the I.C.U.?" Rey asked, still confused.
"Because Aalyah was pierced with a metal rod as well. Through her back. It was close to her heart."
Rey's eyes widened.
"It was a separate piece of the plane than what pierced your leg. There was nothing you could do, Mr. Gutierrez."
Rey seemed to be processing this information and equating it to a whole pile of things that he could, in fact, have done.
Dave looked at Rey. He wanted to comfort him, but he was helpless.
"Doctor, um…?"
"Sanjaya," she supplied.
"Dr. Sanjaya," Rey said with a sad smile. He offered his hand and she shook it.
"Nice to meet you."
She smiled.
"I was wondering if I could ask you one last thing."
"Of course, Mr. Gutierrez. What would you like to know?"
"Well…it's two things, actually."
"Shoot."
"Am I going to get better?"
"Yes. Once your leg heals, you will need some physical therapy in order to walk again, but for now you will need to use a wheelchair and we plan on keeping you for observation for another week."
"By then…will Angie be able to come home? And will Aalyah?"
"That is difficult to judge just yet, Mr. Gutierrez. It all depends on how quickly they're healing."
Rey nodded slowly, thinking.
"Was that all…?"
Rey looked up at her again. There was a palpable sadness in his face.
"I was wondering if I could go see my son. And the baby, too."
She nodded.
"Mr. Batista, would you be willing to take him?"
Dave nodded. "Yeah, of course."
**
After Dr. Sanjaya left, Dave pulled back the covers.
"I don't like hospital gowns," Rey said softly, looking down at his. He eyed his leg and tried to shift it.
"Oh, no you don't," Dave chastised. He worked a hand behind Rey's back and scooped him up from under his thighs.
Rey braced himself against Dave, a little surprised to find himself in his friend's arms.
Dave eased him down into the wheelchair and handed him a blanket, tucking it over his legs.
"Dave, I'm not in a nursing home, take it easy."
Dave smiled. "Yeah, well…it's cold where we're going."
Rey looked up at Dave worriedly. "Is it?"
"Yeah."
Rey looked down at his lap and fiddled with the edges of his blanket. "Did you go in?"
Dave swallowed and walked behind Rey, manning the wheelchair. He took Rey to the door and propped it open with a doorstop.
"No, I just looked in through the window in the door."
Rey bit his lip. "Why didn't you go in?"
"You can. I just- I was just waiting for you."
Rey nodded.
"Ready to go?"
Rey took a breath. He seemed afraid, but this was one of those fears he definitely felt he had to face in life. He never would have guessed it would happen this way. He thought he'd be there for Dominik's death, if the poor boy died young. He thought it would be in a car or on a bike, or sometime possibly far in the future. Maybe even in the ring. He never gueseed he would wake up one day without the memory of his son's last day on earth, his son vanished forever, his life extinguished like the flame of a candle.
"I guess," Rey answered him.
**
It was cold in there. An orderly propped a door open for Batista as he wheeled Rey in.
"What's their name?"
"Dominik Gutierrez. And, my wife had a baby, and it died before we could name it."
The orderly looked through the drawers in the giant metal filing cabinets on the walls. He found the letter G and went halfway down. There was a tag tied with a string hanging from the handle. It read "Gutierrez, Dominik."
Rey swallowed anxiously and his eyes widened horrifically as the drawer was pulled out. There was the body, right there. And so Rey had really woken up and Dominik was gone. Just like that.
"Dominik..." Rey said softly.
The orderly came over to him. "Your baby is in a different wing of the hospital now. We recently put in a morgue like this nearby the children's ward."
Rey nodded in acknowledgement the way one nods when they've been jarred and shaken by an unnaturally strong force.
"Can you give us a minute?" Dave whispered.
The orderly nodded understandingly and went outside the door.
Rey looked at his son from a distance for a moment. The boy was covered by a cloth over his lap. He was naked otherwise, and his body was unusually pale. He had inherited his parents' gorgeous, caramel skin, but now he was a milkier shade. His mouth was barely closed and his soft pink lips wore a bluish tint. He looked like a slaughtered prince.
Dave had never been able to believe how much Dominik looked like his father. When the boy was younger, his face seemed to be straight out of Rey's elementary school pictures.
He turned to Rey, who had dropped his eyes and shakily lowered his face into his hands, crying quietly.
"Dominik…mijo…"
And then he heard Rey murmuring in a worried, prayer-like voice, "Lo siento no te pude proteger. Te amo. tu madre te ama ... Dios en el cielo, por favor, proteger a mi hijo y le perdone sus pecados …"
I'm sorry I couldn't protect you. I love you.Your mother loves you too...God in heaven, please protect my son and forgive him his sins...
Rey was breathing in gasps.
Dave had never had a son, and he had never lost a child. He tried to imagine one of his daughters lying there and put himself in Rey's place, but he couldn't quite make it.
All he could think was, Jesus, Rey, you didn't deserve this. Dominik didn't deserve this.
He watched Rey wipe his face after a while and harden himself. Dave saw that Rey didn't want him to see him cry.
"Dave…can you help me over to him? I want to say goodbye."
Dave moved Rey's wheelchair closer.
Rey pulled himself up with difficulty, and held onto the arms of the chair. He gazed down at his son's face for the last time.
"Dave…do you think he was in any pain?"
"They didn't tell you the details 'cause they're still busy with Aalyah and Angie, but…but they told me what happened to him."
"Was it quick…?" Rey asked softly, smoothing the hair out of Dominik's face lovingly.
Dave swallowed. "Yeah, it was quick. He died instantaneously, Rey. His skin's bruising as we speak, but he knocked his forehead hard. He died of blunt force trauma."
Rey swallowed. "What on earth did we all get knocked around for? I'm sure we were all strapped in, we always do. How is it that I ended up with a metal rod through my leg and Dominik hit his head if we were still in our seats?"
Dave shrugged. "Rey, it…it knocked everybody in the plane around pretty bad. It wasn't just you and your family. A lot of people…didn't make it. It was a really bad crash."
Rey turned back to Dominik and his shoulders hunched angrily. "My son dies, and I can't even remember how…I don't remember…I don't even remember getting on the plane, why can't I…?"
Batista shuffled over to Rey. "Don't blame yourself for that. You're just drawing a blank. Dr. Sanjaya said it's better for you that way, Rey, you don't want to remember what happened."
"I-I have a right to know…what killed my son…I want to remember him, if I told him I loved him, if he was hurting…I need to know that. I can't sleep at night just knowing he's in some fucking drawer in an ice cold hospital morgue!"
The echoes of Rey's voice reverberated around the chilling metal room.
Rey sniffed and his lips trembled, but he managed to stave off the tears so close to the surface of his eyes.
He bent and kissed Dominik one last time. He blessed him with the sign of the cross and murmured, hand on his son's heart.
"Si Dios quiere, voy a verte de nuevo algún día. Te quiero, Dominik. Adiós."
God willing, I will see you again one day. I love you, Dominik. Goodbye.
Then he collapsed back into his wheelchair and Dave looked at him.
"Get me out of here," Rey said softly, fiercely.
Dave nodded and got the orderly again.
He wheeled them both out before Rey could see his son being closed back into the cabinet, all alone in his drawer full of cool, uncaring darkness.