The Wild Blue Tempest

This is based on a poem i wrote. Have fun.

The Wild Blue Tempest

            “Seeing the world through my eye’s, is different from that of a normal person’s. My doctor’s tell me I was smart once, a Yale graduate in law. But of course you know that already. Last time I told you about our beginning, we danced and ate and drank together in happy abandon. You recall my tale of how I wooed her? The long hours I spent at her window? Yes, yes, I daresay I told you plenty of that. Believe me when I say those 6 weeks were the best of my life. Even as my eyes dim now, and the wrinkles spread deeper into my face do I remember the tenderness in her eyes and softness of her touch, how I used to trace the palms of her hand with my fingers, and watch her tremble in laughter. I strike you as old fashioned no? A ratty old man with no ambition or drive. No son, I was just like you, free-spirited and young, I chased a fair bit of tail in my time. No this was different, it’ll be the same for you I’m sure boy, just you wait. You’ve heard the wonderful beginning of my story, now; hear the wonderful, albeit terrible end.”

            Those deep blue eyes stopped me dead in my tracks, like they did every day I had seen her. We celebrated her seventeenth birthday yesterday, on a chilly March day. I took her to Ricker square, blindfolded and anxious I led her to the center of the grassy plain. I whipped off the red scarf over her eyes and my jaw dropped with hers as I drank in her face as love to happiness to surprise and back to love danced across her beautiful features. Fifty feet ahead a large bright red and blue striped hot-air balloon was slowly filling itself in preparation for flight. Her hand grasped mine as she read the words “Happy Birthday Honey, I Love You” Written across the front of the wicker carriage. She pulled me forward and jumped in after me. She looked right at me, deep and long. She leaned in close and brushed my lips with her own; I closed my eyes and held my head close to hers. As we pulled away she whispered “I love you Aaron,” ever so softly so the balloon operator wouldn’t overhear.

            The balloon ride was magical; she laughed and cried, smiled and scowled, hugged and praised me. I basked in its glory, a true day of happiness. If I think hard now, I would say it to be the best of my life. As we drove back to her house she told me that she had had the best birthday of her life, because of me. I brimmed with pride and she kissed my hand and each of the fingertips one by one. I blushed unabashedly and continued to keep my eyes on the road. We got to her house and we stepped out of the car, and I went to take her hand but she dropped it away just as I reached for it. Unperturbed we went up her steps and entered her home to be greeted by her mother who squashed her daughter in a bone breaking hug and giving me a swift kiss on the cheek. “You’re a darling Hun, you know that?” Asked her mother, “After what you did for her today” she said as she walked over to her husband. With a swift rap on the head of her husband she cried “Take notes!”

            “I went home that night in a mostly cheery attitude. We had argued briefly over her despondent attitude while watching her television shows. Regardless, the day to night had been almost perfect. I truly loved her you understand, she was my everything. But I digress; you aren’t here to hear of my still beating broken heart are you? No, no, let me be more to the point, yes more to the point…”

            I wake three days later, in my cold 12x10 bedroom on the 2^nd floor of a small rustic home on the outskirts of Plainsboro Virginia. I check my cell phone; I have two missed calls and a single voicemail. There is a missed call from my mother and Angela, my best friend. I call my mother swiftly to hear that my little sister was sick and they had taken her to the hospital without me. I was too follow as soon as I got the message and to bring her laptop and magazines and such. This was her third trip to the ER in as many months. I wasn’t angry though, far from it, her liver was failing for reasons the doctors couldn’t pin. She is only eight, and I can hear her cry herself to sleep every night from down the hall. My brother Matthew, is ten, and is seen as a delinquent at the local elementary school; he’s been suspended twice for fighting and is working his way towards a third. The kids at school are, cruel to say the least; they mock my sister and tease her being a sickly orange yellow color because of her liver. In her defense my brother has broken many noses and one poor child’s jaw. I call Angela swiftly, barely listening to what she has to say, I am too preoccupied with my sister, I hear phrases like, “talk” and “I have some bad news.” She tends to be a drama queen so I let her ramble. Hanging up the phone after agreeing to meet later at Al’s Diner, I check my voicemail. It’s my one and only, Chelsea. “I’ve gone to see your sister, I hope to see you there, if not tell her I send the best again and that she gets better, I love you Aaron Creeley, remember that. Always.” Click. I freeze, the message though heartfelt, is cryptic, she phrased it as though to never see me again. I push it from my mind, I will see her at the hospital.

            I speed slightly over legal limits through traffic on the highway, hastening myself to the hospital. As I pulled into the hospital parking lot swiftly and parked the 04 Chevy Malibu in a front spot in a fit of luck and walked briskly to through the sliding doors into the now all to familiar waiting room. “Aaron, your family and that girl Chelsea are in room 332, in the ICU.” Said Emily, the nurse on duty. She patted me on the back as I walked by.

            “Be strong.” She breathed…

            “Listen close now boy, this parts important. This is where it starts. This is where the beginning of the end begins! Now understand this, it is not poetic, nor do I ever intend to portray it that, what happened to me was a bloody mess, but look at me now eh? Fit as a fiddle! Goes to show you no matter what, you can get through it. Nothing’s impossible son! Just gotta keep your mind on the goal, stay focused, that’s the key. If I had known that then, well, I’ll never know. Hey! You listnenin’? Pay attention, this part’s important you know!

            I’ll never forget the scene that met my eyes as I entered the ICU. My sister was sleeping, ever so peaceful, like she hadn’t slept in months, I smiled glad she was getting her rest. I looked around and spotted Chelsea just as she spotted me. My smile faded in an instant to be replaced by a sense of confusion. Chelsea was crying, not a slow sob or tearful bliss that accompanies one of uncanny happiness. No Chelsea was bawling her eyes out, thick wet tears were leaking out of her crinkled eyes as she buried her head in my chest. I wrapped her in my arms as I studied the room in fervor. Something was wrong. Something seemed morbidly out of place; the more I looked the more I realized the reality of what was staring me right in the face. The machines, normally centered around my sister’s bed had been stripped away or turned off, there constant beeping at a halt. My family had their heads down, on their knees they wept freely like Chelsea, without any reserve. Lastly I noticed something that should’ve triggered the tears to fall like they had begun to, from the moment I stepped into the ICU. I stared and I stared, for a whole minute I stood as a statue, like granite, hard and immovable. My small sister’s eight your old chest, had refrained from rising and falling for the entire time I had entered that accursed room.

            The room seemed to cave on me, the stark whit tile, looked to shatter on my very existence, as Chelsea let go I collapsed, to my knees I fell, like the salty beads of water draining from my tear ducts. My sister could not be dead, no she was sleeping, she was only sleeping, turn the machines back on, I thought desperately, turn the damn machines back on, now! I rose, strong again, a steely look in my eyes and a hard set expression replacing the grotesque grimace I wore but moments before. “TURN ON THE DAMN MACHINES, TURN THEM BACK ON NOW!” The last thought exploded as a shout from my mouth. I moved over to a doctor, and grabbed him by the cuff and raised him a whole six inches from the ground…

            “Now as unlikely as that seems now kiddo, seeing as I have to use this dang wheelchair nowadays, I was a pretty formidable cat back then, I was tall, damn tall, 6’3, 220 pounds! So it isn’t that hard to understand I could lift up a doctor now is it?..”

            “Go back, now, and turn my sister’s machines back on now, I want to see her pulse understand? GO!” I screamed full on in his, spit flying from my mouth and hitting him around his face. Fear grabbed his features in an iron grasp, “Sir, I’m sorry, there, there’s nothing I can do. Sir please! You have to believe me!” He stuttered. A firm fragile hand wrapped my wrist, “Put him down, Aaron, put him down now.” The heat of anger left me in an instant, the drive to destroy and demolish every machine and computer in the room disappeared like smoke on a windy day the second I stared into the deep blue eyes, they swam with determination and anger, frustration and power. She was showing me yet another side of her I’d never seen before, and I loved her all the more for it. She was it, my true love, my life, she was the girl poets dream of and artists envision, she was my Wild Blue Tempest.

            “My sister’s death hit my family like a semi-truck, an analogy of such irony I have trouble making it. You could say I never fully got over it, and it’s true I mourn her still, to this very day. And my mother, may she rest in peace, went a little nuts over it, she was never quite the same afterwards. The only shining part of my life was Chelsea, in my woeful ignorance inspired by the death of one so close, and the bright hope of what my new found love blinded me to something far too important. She was fading Alex! Fading like the light on the horizon at dusk! And in my stupidity I missed it! How! How did I miss it?..”

            We were with each other always, almost every minute of everyday we weren’t sleeping, we were together. She tried to drown my sorrow with a wide range of activities that spanned form picnics alone to ball games with thousands of people. Essentially it worked, while I never forgot Sam, being with Chelsea kept the most horrid thoughts from my mind. As the days passed I became dependant on her company, excluding all my other friends and family from anytime with me away from her. Some of my other friends became angry, still other’s understood. The one that truly hurt me was Angela; I had been ignoring her calls and dodging her in town. Though like all of God’s plans, this one was to happen no matter what.

            After answering one of her increasingly frequent calls in one of the brief instances I had without Chelsea I realized I had never met with her the day my sister died. I wept, like I did most frequently most days, and promised to drive to her house to meet with her to see what was so urgent, before continuing on to Chelsea’s house.

            As I pulled into Angela’s driveway I checked myself in the mirror, I could nothing for my puffy eyes and slacking attire, but I ran a comb through my hair and straightened my shirt out in an attempt to look marginally presentable. I hopped up her steps and went to knock on the door as it was flung open by an equally puffy eyed Angela. She flung her arms around me and pulled me into her house at the same time. “Aaron, you should’ve come sooner, this is gonna hurt even more now. I’m so sorry.” To feel worse than I already did would be quite an accomplishment at the moment, so I pretended to be honestly concerned. To placate her.

            “Aaron, it’s about Chel…”

            Immediately I froze, her appearance had a new sickening tinge to it. What about Chelsea could bring her to such extremes? Especially when she so dotes on how she looks? I grabbed her hand, “What is this about Angela?” A more sinister tone was now underlying the casual tone I asked my question in. She looked balefully up at me, fresh tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

            “She, she’s dying, Aaron, Leukemia, maybe 6 months...”

            “Aha! My folly! You see it boy?! How naïve I was! She was sick, and had been for some time, her despondency now seemed sinister to me. Oh! Her death now fast approached. Oh yes I argued Angela’s points for quite some time, yes we argued and  I am ashamed to say I screamed “I hate you” at the top of my lungs. I called her “Liar” and other hurtful things, and I regret that to this very day. Now boy, listen to how I sealed my fate, and hers.”

            The engine of my old 04 Malibu revved high and whined as I pushed her to the limit in an attempt to make it to Chelsea’s house, as if the faster I made it there, the less chance of dying she had. I pulled into her drive way at a hard stop, she was already outside wrapped in a blanket, and her newfound paleness scared me now. I stepped out of the car with a vigor and called out to her, “Is it true!? Chelsea please! Is it true!?” She began to cry in earnest as she rushed into my arms.

            “Please don’t be mad at me Aaron; I didn’t want to worry you.” I simply wrapped her in my arms and cried deeply with her. I couldn’t lose her, not now, not ever. I was scared, and for what seemed like years we held each other, we wept together the sound of our own sobs mingling together. We agreed upon a car ride for her to explain her condition. Stony eyed I put the car in gear and pulled out of her driveway and onto Dennis road. The local thorough way and worked myself up for a disappointing and frustrating conversation.

            She explained to me her condition, her disease. It was ravaging her blood, radiation and other forms of medication had proven to be ineffective in curing her. She began to cry again, full heavy tears. It broke my heart to see her like that, so broken and vulnerable. Minutes passed and I allowed her to weep freely to let her let it out. Her attitude changed ever slightly after she stopped her crying. Those beautiful wonderful eyes, Those Wild Blue Tempests, became swirling pools of determination once more. “Aaron, there is a clinic in Boston, they specialize in my disease. But I, I don’t think I’m going to go.”

            “What? Why! You could live; you could get back your health!” I screamed and ranted, how could she say this, it was a clear way forward. Her life seemed more precious to me then it did herself. We argued like this for some time until she shushed me quietly and said, “Aaron, if I go to Boston, I’ll never be able to come back, I have to stay there forever. I’m staying for you, to be with you.” My grip around the steering wheel hardened as I pressed the accelerator still harder. I turned to face her and explain that staying for me was foolish and stupid when her life meant so much to me. What stopped me was the halo of white light around her head and body. White hot light framed her body, and some loud penetrating noise seemed to be filling the air as well…

            Now boy, you remember the semi-truck reference I made earlier? Hmm? Well the white light was in fact the head lights of a semi-truck!  It smashed into her side of the car killing her instantly! Bah these tears will be the death of me, get away get away! She was killed! Because of me, can you believe it boy! Me! Me! I ruined my own life!..” He cackled an insane laugh, as the nurse rushed in.

            ‘”Okay Mr. Creeley time for bed and medication.” Said the nurse as she led him away. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, he’s usually so nice.” She frowned. “Will we see you next week Jared?” she was pretty, but no she would not. I had gained all I could from listening to my uncle’s maniacal ranting. My search for the truth in his past had lead me to understand my father’s erratic behavior when pressed about his family. My aunt to be was killed long before her time, because of a man’s stupidity. His own love and devotion blinded him of her true condition. His Wild Blue Tempest was dead and gone because of him.

            Jared Creeley walked out of Mercy Hospital for the Insane and Mentally Unstable, full of disgust, anger, and remorse.