Simon leaned heavily against the wall and closed his eyes. Later he would go down and see her. Right now, he just wanted to thank God she was alive. He slid down into a heap on the sidewalk and wrapped his arms around his drawn-up knees. He hadn’t felt like this since his daddy died.
For the third time that morning Simon awoke to unexpected sounds. He was still sitting there in the access way between Long and Mallet Portals. It was easily past nine and a construction crew had moved in along with structural engineers and inspectors to find out what happened. Now everyone knew that no one had died, the macabre scale was zero. Almost no one stood around gazing at McGuffey. It could have just been another remodel for all they cared.
Simon massaged the crick in his neck and stood awkwardly. “I have to go she her”, he thought, “God let her be okay.”
He began to walk down the road as fast as his stiff cold legs would go but he didn’t get more than 50 feet before a siren wailed behind him. Campus Security was pulling him over.
“Hey Peters. Hop in. We need to talk.”
“Sure Officer Burdick. But I really need to get back to my dorm. I wanna go see Ginni this morning.”
“Yea…that’s sorta what I want to talk about.”
Burdick turned his face to look out of the windshield and maintained a stony silence. Simon was far too tired to push his luck.
They pulled back into the driveway in front of Gildersleeve and McGuffey Portals. They could easily see the gouge carved out that used to be Ginni’s room. A dozen men were looking at the walls while twenty more cleaned the ground.
“Peters, I want you to take a good look at that building. Is there anything you know of that could do that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Gas explosion, maybe?”
“That wasn’t a gas explosion Peters and we both know it.”
Simon looked at the older man and wonder what exactly he was getting at.
“Why don’t you ask the engineers? They should be able to figure it out.”
“I did ask them. Know what they told me? There is not a damn thing in this world that can make that happen.” He handed Simon a large piece of masonry. It was pure white and looked heavy. He was shocked therefore when it landed in his hand and felt like Styrofoam. His fingers easily picked it apart. The whole thing began to crumble into flakes and dust.
“Your girlfriend’s room, the walls, supports, bricks, everything, turned into that. It couldn’t take the weight and whoosh!”
“So why are you asking me? What do I know about how they built that place?”
“Look!” Burdick’s friendly manner had disappeared. He was going to get to the bottom of this and no smart-aleck punk was getting in his way. “All I know is that normal bricks don’t fall apart like that. Otherwise the whole building would have collapsed wouldn’t it? Which leaves me with the question: ‘Maybe one of you science geeks was doing something you shouldn’t have? Experimenting with acids or…Tachyon Beams or something?’” He looked sharply at Simon, obviously hoping for some guilty reaction.
Simon was just as intent on finding out what happened to Ginni but he wasn’t in any mood to be accused of it himself. “You watch too much Star Trek”, he sneered and turned to climb out of the car.
“Peters, I know you and Shelton had a thing going on. I also know she broke it off last night. Some of the girls came by afterwards to talk about it. You need to stay on campus for a while until this is all sorted out.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. If you can’t find me in my dorm then I’ll be in the lab or visiting Ginni.” He slammed the cruiser door just a bit harder than he intended and turned to look at the mound of rubble. Burdick drove off, kicking up a cloud of brown and white dust. Simon’s eyes were full of tears but they didn’t come from the dirt in his eyes. Life seemed a bit emptier knowing that Ginni might not be around anymore.
The bright morning light sparkled on something and caught his attention. He walked up to the yellow caution tape and just inside, under a milk white beam of wood, lay a few links of a gold chain. Simon reached down and hooked it with one finger. He drew out a necklace upon which hung a blue pendant surrounded by diamond chips. It was warm in his hand, just like the tears which flowed freely from his eyes.
Back in his room, Simon raged against the universe. He threw chairs against the wall, overturned the couch and broke nearly every glass in the cabinets. Nothing was safe from his tormented fury. His grip on reality had loosened to the point that he tore off his coat and shirt, intent on throwing himself naked out the window (because it seemed like a good idea at that instant). His fingers trembled in anger and he couldn’t work the belt buckle. He froze, still as a statue, breathed in deeply and screamed out the call of the Damned. When his lungs gave out he collapsed on the floor sobbing.
After that life had somehow passed away, he stood and began to clear a path to the door. It took quite a while to pick-up everything the conniption had spread about. His jacket felt heavier than before and Simon reached into the pockets. There he found his own blue stone and the necklace he had given Ginni. In loving gentleness he wrapped them in a fine black silk handkerchief Ginni had bought him just two weeks earlier and hid them in the back of his closet. He would have to get rid of that present someday…but not just yet.
Nobody said much to Simon over the next few days and he was fine with that. Word of Ginni’s accident spread over the campus ensuring that her bedside was always well attended. Everyone also seemed to know that she had dumped him the night before and he did not want to deal with the awkward questions. Flowers appeared spontaneously in her room along with a collection of stuffed animals and one very questionable wreath of black roses that bore the banner, ‘Get well soon or die trying –Love Jody’.
Mr. and Mrs. Shelton had driven into Charlottesville within two hours of the accident and stayed by their baby girl’s bed for every second of that first day. After a thorough exam the doctors had nothing more to say than the emergency personnel, “We can’t find any trauma at all. X-Rays and cat scans are all negative. We’ve tested her blood, heart, lungs, breathing, brain waves, everything. There is nothing wrong with your daughter.”
Hannah and Theo were of two minds about this. They were grateful that she did not have any serious injuries but being in a coma for no discernable reason wasn’t cause to celebrate either. After three days they started going home at night and a week later they only came to visit for a few hours in the evening.
They recognized Simon the instant he came to Ginni’s room that first day. Theophilius took him into a great bear hug and cried on his shoulder. Hannah then laid her head upon his chest and thanked him for coming.
“Simon, you have no idea how much your being here means to us. Ginni wrote us all about you. I still remember when you took her to the dance. She was on clouds for a week. She cared…cares for you so deeply. I know she would be happy to see you.”
He was at a loss as to what he should say. They obviously didn’t know that Ginni had ended their relationship. Should he tell them? And how? He didn’t understand it himself. Worst of all, he still loved her more than anything in the world.
“Missus Shelton, I have to…”
“Please, call us Hannah and Theo.” They both nodded with grief-stricken expressions of kindly affection.
This was all too weird for Simon. They were treating him like a son and he was nothing, less than nothing to them. He had to get them to understand.
“Missus Shelton, you both are being so kind but, Ginni broke up with me last night. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore.” His voice ended in a defeated whisper. This was costing him more emotionally than anything but losing his father and Granny.
Hannah looked at him with mingled pity and love in her eyes, “We know. She called us right after you left her dorm. She didn’t mean it. Ginni cried for two hours before finally getting it all out. I don’t understand what started it all…”
At this point Simon tried to interrupt but Hannah pressed on, as if saying these words would make everything better, “…AND it doesn’t matter. She loves you Simon I just know she does. She was crying because she was afraid she had lost you forever. She needs you here. We need you here. If anyone is going to bring her out of this it’s you.”
Mr. Shelton looked like a man broken on the rack. His shoulders sagged heavily; his head lolled from side to side and the skin had become pale and splotchy. He sat on the hard wooden stool and with a stupendous effort looked Simon in the face, “Bring my little girl back to me.”
Within a couple weeks the Shelton’s decided to move Virginia to a special care facility in Roanoke. There wasn’t any medical danger in doing so and they would be closer. Simon couldn’t fault them, though in his secret heart he hated them for it. Now he couldn’t see her all.
The University provided a number of counselors for faculty and students. Ginni was very popular and a surprising number of kids wanted to talk out their feelings or at least reminisce about how good she was. Simon noticed that everyone talked about her in the past tense and it grew steadily more grating to him. He lashed out at people continually saying, “Why do talk like that?! She’s not dead! She’s not…dead.”
Professor Grosskopf returned from Europe and immediately took Simon to the psychology department where he had a very good friend that happened to be a leading clinical psychiatrist. The therapy sessions were a waste of time if you asked Simon. Nothing but Ginni, alive and wrapped in his arms; Ginni laughing at his jokes and yelling about his dirty rooms; Ginni saying she loved him after all. Nothing else would fill this empty place in his soul. And time stopped for Simon Peters.
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