Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 15:08:59 -0400
From: Michael Raburn <mraburn@bellsouth.net>
Subject: Dylan's Hope 14

THIS WORK IS FULLY PROTECTED BY U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS.  NO PORTION OF
THIS WORK MAY BE COPIED OR REDISTRIBUTED BY ANY MEANS WITHOUT THE
EXPRESS CONSENT OF ITS AUTHOR.

THIS WORK DEALS WITH A FICTIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO MEN.  IF
READING ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OR SEXUAL CONTACT BETWEEN TWO
MEN IS EITHER ILLEGAL IN YOUR AREA OR OFFENDS YOU, PLEASE LEAVE NOW.

ANY SIMILARITIES TO ANY PERSON LIVING OR DEAD ARE PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
THIS WORK IS ENTIRELY FICTIONAL.



DYLAN'S HOPE

Michael A. Raburn


Chapter 14


A loud knocking on the front door woke us.  Sarah jumped up from the sofa
and opened the door to let in the visitors.  Slowly, not wanting for the
dream to vanish I pulled my head from Dylan's lap.  I glanced up at his
face then to his blue eyes that were trained on me.  He smiled his quirky
smile and brought his hand up towards my face like he always did.

"No, he's dead," I thought, scrambling away from him on my knees.

"Jon." Sarah called to me.

Still moving back from Dylan I looked to her and the two men standing
beside her.  "No, Jake can't be here.  He's dead too."  I whispered,
crouching like a cornered animal.  I heard footsteps coming down the hall
and looked to see Robert and Andrea come into the room still dressed in
their robes.

"No, this can't be happening."  I screamed as the blackness began to
surround me again.  Like a chill had settled into my body I began to shake
uncontrollably.  I was hyperventilating and could not get control on my
breathing nor my emotions.  Huddling against the wall that stopped my
backwards movement, I cried, rejecting the visions in front of my eyes.

"He's having a seizure." Sarah yelled.  "Get me my bag and call 911!" she
screamed, running towards me.



The next few weeks were a blur of darkness, nightmares, and sedation.
Truthfully I remember very little of what was happening around me since I
was so deep in the hallucinations that had become my world.  I've tried to
piece together what happened based on bits of conversation I overheard,
what I can remember of what the doctors told me, and the stories my friends
and family have related.

The paramedics arrived at the cabin to find five distraught people, Dylan,
Andrea, Robert, Mark and Jake and one very in control but concerned nurse,
Sarah.  And me of course, sedated, still lying in the pile against the
kitchen wall where I had tried to hide myself.  Sarah was on the phone with
my primary care physician in Atlanta and they had concluded that whatever
was going on was beyond the scope of the small rural hospital.  They
decided that I needed to be transported to my old alma mater, Emory
University Hospital for treatment and diagnosis.

Andrea managed to shake off her ever-rising panic and organized the other
people to close up the house, get dressed and figure out which cars they
would be riding in.  Dylan on the other hand, stood in the middle of the
floor looking totally lost, tears streaming down his face.  Finally Andrea
had to take him by the hand and get him to our bedroom and into some
clothes for the trip.  With a hug and kiss on his cheek, she turned him
over to Sarah's care.  He left the house in mismatched socks and without
any extra clothing.  Luckily Andrea and Robert remembered and packed a bag
for us before they followed us out.

As they loaded me and the stretcher in the ambulance Sarah hung up the
phone with my doctor after he promised that he would meet us at the
emergency entrance to the medical center.  She grabbed Dylan's hand and
tugged him towards the ambulance.  Mark and Jake stayed behind to finish
closing up the house and Robert pulled his car around so Andrea could get
in then they followed us towards Atlanta.

Evidently my doctor had warned them what to expect because when we arrived
at Emory they were ready and since I was still sedated they rushed me past
emergency and into the CT facility.  Dylan had to be threatened with a shot
of his own when he refused to leave me with the doctors and technicians
while the scan was done.  Sarah finally convinced him to get some coffee
and that I would be well taken care of while they were in the cafeteria.

"What am I going to do if he dies?" He moaned.

"He's not going to die." Sarah tried to reassure him even though she was
only hoping when she said it.  Everything pointed to something being
terribly wrong in my head and she had seen enough in her nursing career to
know that the prognosis was not good.  "You need to be strong now for Jon,
Dylan.  He's going to need you to keep it together." She urged.

"I, I, I think I can do that for him." He stuttered.

"Sure you can, brother.  We'll all help Dad get well." Andrea said, unshed
tears filling her eyes.



Mark and Jake arrived about thirty minutes later and were directed to the
cafeteria to join the group.

"What was all that about us being dead?" Jake asked.

"I'm not really sure, but he's been having pretty some strange dreams the
last few months." Dylan answered.

"For months?" Andrea asked, shocked that she hadn't heard anything about
them.

"He didn't think they were anything important, but he rarely slept more
than a couple of hours at a time.  He's been having them ever since he was
beaten up."

"Beaten up?" Andrea demanded.  "When was that?"

"Hmm, three or four years ago now, I guess."

"Why didn't anybody tell me about this?" She asked.

"Jon didn't want you to know.  You and Robert were in California and he
made me promise not to say anything."

"Daddy can be so stupid sometimes.  Oh, God, I didn't mean that." She
sobbed.

"I thought there might be something more going on when you told me about
him passing out in the yard." Sarah added.

"Yeah, one minute he was hugging Andrea, then the next he was falling.
When she told him about being pregnant he looked up at me and his eyes just
sort of glazed over, then he was on the ground." Robert stated.

"But, I still don't understand why he would think that Jake or anybody else
was dead." Mark asked.

"We'll just have to wait and see.  His dreams and the hallucinations are
probably related to whatever is going on in his brain." Sarah answered.



A couple of hours later the film had been read and a nurse came to the
cafeteria looking for my family.  The diagnosis was given to the group
after the doctors assembled them in a small conference room.  They had
found a mass, a tumor, a meningioma in my brain.  It probably had been
growing for several years and only in the last few months was it causing
any sort of problems.  When Dylan asked about the dreams and the seizures
they explained that it was probably due to the location and the size as the
cause.

They were certain that the tumor was benign but unfortunately for me it was
in a location that the doctors felt made it inoperable, at least with
conventional surgery.  The prognosis was not favorable.  If it continued to
grow the seizures would only get stronger and there was a good chance that
I would never be rid of the hallucinations.



I was admitted to the hospital for observation and for counseling.  Later
that night I was becoming more aware.  I remember waking in the room and
seeing Dylan sitting beside me on the bed holding my hand.

"Hello, angel." I muttered.

"Jon, thank God you're awake." He leaned over to kiss me.

"Why are you here and not in heaven?" I asked.

He looked up from my face and across the bed.  Sarah shook her head,
indicating that he should answer me.

"I needed to be with you." He answered.

"Don't leave me.  Can you stay for awhile?" I asked.

"I'm not going anywhere without you, my love."

"I love you." I whispered, my eyes again closing.




"Mr. Reynolds, are you awake?" she asked as she entered my room.

"Hmm." I answered groggily.  Opening my eyes I tried to smile at the rotund
lady as she settled into a chair beside me bed.  "Who are you?"

"I'm Helen.  Your doctors wanted me to talk to you for a little while.  I'm
a psychologist."

"Oh, I'm crazy." I muttered.

"Mr. Reynolds."

"Jon." I cut her off.

"Okay, Jon.  Nobody said you were crazy.  But you seem to be disoriented
and I understand that it's related to the tumor.  Who is Dylan, Jon?"

"He's my angel.  He was my lover, my life before he died.  Now he's my
angel.  He's staying with me and not going to heaven until I get better."

"I see.  And Andrea?"

"She was my daughter.  Then she died and she's an angel too.  Jake is too.
Not my daughter.  He's Mark's lover.  Now he's an angel." I explained.

"When did they die, Jon?" she asked, patting my hand.

Tears streamed from my eyes as I remembered the nightmares and that day in
the emergency room.  "A few days ago."

"How did they die?"

"Dylan was shot, Jake was beaten so bad he died in the ER, and Andrea bled
to death." I sobbed, loosing my control again.  "I don't want to remember.
I don't want to talk anymore." I moaned, rolling away from her, facing
towards the window.  I was shaking and the darkness was again threatening
me.

I think she ran from the room, I'm not really sure, but a nurse returned a
minute later and shot something into my IV and I faded out again.  I guess
now that I was having another seizure.



Over the next day or two discussions continued among the doctors and my
family about what would be the best course of treatment.  My physician had
gone to medical school with some people that were doing pioneering work on
gamma knife surgery.  He made several calls and shipped copies of my CT
scans to their medical center so they could be evaluated.

"Mr. Reynolds." The doctor started when he came into the room that
afternoon.

"Jon." I countered.  Dylan and Andrea were with me, my two angels.  I had
convinced Dylan to sit up in bed with me and he was cuddled in my arms, his
head on my chest.  He tried to sit up when the doctor came in but I
wouldn't let him go.

"It's okay, Dylan.  You're right where you're needed the most." The doctor
talked softly to my angel.  "Jon, we've done everything that we can for
you."

"So I'm going to die?" I asked, caressing my love's head.  "Then I can be
with Dylan forever?"

"No, you're not going to die.  We want to transfer you to another hospital,
to Wake Forest University.  They think they can help you."

"Can my angels go with me?"

"Of course they can." He smiled.

"Okay, let's go." I said, letting Dylan go and trying to sit up.

"We're not in that big of a hurry.  They'll come and get you in a little
while."

"Okay.  I'll be ready.  Dylan can you get me some clothes?" I asked.

"I'll leave you with him." The doctor chuckled as he left.




I don't remember it but they say that I was a joy, laughing and joking like
a kid during the flight to Wake Forest.  Dylan played his part as my angel
and held my hand all the way from my room to the waiting LifeFlight
helicopter.  I do remember the noise of the engines, but that's about all.

I'm not sure how Dylan or Andrea or any of the rest of them managed during
everything that had happened.  I can only hope now that they were taking
care of themselves cause I couldn't have done it.  Dylan was always with me
unless the doctors would run him out of the room or I was in an area that
was off limits to him.  Andrea was with me most of the time.  Robert had
returned to Atlanta to keep the business going.  Mark and Jake and Sarah
had returned to the mountains when we left Emory.  They called regularly
and Dylan would pass on their best wishes to me.  Mark and Jake checked on
the house every day and even weeded the garden a few times.

At the time all I knew was that as long as my angel was with me nothing
really bad could happen.  He was my savior, my shield; the one thing that I
knew was constant and unchanging.  The nurses at Emory had gotten used to
him sleeping with me in the hospital bed even to the point of getting us
extra pillows and blankets so he's be more comfortable.  Wake Forest was a
little more difficult to deal with.

It all came to a head the second night I was there when a nurse barged into
the room too early in the morning and found us asleep in each other's arms.
She woke Dylan and me loudly shouting that he had to get out of my bed.
She was having none of Dylan's explanation that it was the only way I could
sleep and kept on ranting about hospital policy.

I had gotten to the point in my disease that I could sense the change in my
body when a seizure was coming on and I tried to warn them, but she was too
concerned about who was sleeping where to see what was going on in front of
her.  Finally when I began to bang my head on the bedrail she realized
something was not right and ran from the room looking for a doctor.  It
took much more medication to stop this one than any before.  It also took
twelve stitches to close the wound to my forehead.

I'm still not sure what happened with her or what was said; no one will
tell me.  But, that was the one and only time I ever saw her and orders
were written in my chart that my angel was to sleep with me for as long as
I stayed in the hospital.



Gamma knife surgery involves pinpointed beams of radiation guided by a
computer model of the brain and the involved tumor tissue.  It is a closed
procedure unlike traditional surgery and takes longer for the results to be
evident.  With traditional surgery when the tumor is removed almost
immediate relief is obvious since the offending tumor is gone.  Gamma kills
the tissue but it takes time for it to die and eventually shrink and
disappear.

There was still the risk that the seizures would continue for several weeks
after my procedure until it shrank enough to not effect the surrounding
areas.  And there was always the chance that the seizures would continue
even with the surgery.  The doctors were hopeful that the procedure would
be successful and that I would return to normal.

They had also figured out that most of my seizures were triggered by strong
emotional events like the nightmares and of course that stupid nurse.  I
find it interesting today that the tumor triggered the nightmares and that
the nightmares triggered the seizures.  It was an interesting loop that I
hope to never face again.



We spent three weeks at Wake Forest before the doctors were sure that
results were becoming evident.  The anti-seizure medications were reduced
and would be gradually lessened until hopefully I wouldn't need them.  I
got the stitches out of my forehead after the first week and had the
beginnings of a great scar.  Finally the staff felt like it was time to go
home and loaded Dylan up with papers and appointment cards.  I was released
with instructions to not do anything too strenuous but to do what I felt
well enough to do until I regained some strength.

The nightmares were still with me but did not seem to be quite as vivid.
Never as real as the breakdown but they were still there.  The psychologist
that I met with at Wake Forest had taught me some biofeedback tricks to get
myself back to sleep when the dreams would wake me.  We also talked about
the realities of my angels, but for some reason I still didn't believe him
about some things.  And in the long run it did not matter.  The people I
loved most were still with me and it didn't matter to me what they were.



"Robert, when we get back to the cabin you can have your angel back." I
spoke to my son-in-law from the backseat of his car.  He had driven up from
Atlanta to take us all home.  Dylan and I were snuggled up together
enjoying being with each other.  "I know you've missed having her with you.
Dylan's going to stay with me for a while longer, aren't you baby?"

"Yep."

"Andrea, you can go back with Robert.  I'm going to be fine now." I said to
my daughter, the angel.

The two in the front seat exchanged worried glances but said nothing back
to me.



TO BE CONTINUED