Chapter 31

Thirty-One

SARA

Life becamea blur after her death. By the time I was out of the hospital and done with rehab, I had already decided I couldn’t go back to New York. My grief was too intense. I moved back home, but after learning of my father’s affair, I couldn’t bear to live there anymore. There was nothing left for me but hard memories. Then there was Megan. She couldn’t stand the sight of me. Being in the same room was a struggle. She never said it, but I knew she blamed me for our mother’s death. Not that I could argue with her; I blamed myself too. It didn’t surprise me when I found the note one day, telling me she was moving to Seattle with her boyfriend. She apologized for not saying goodbye in person. It was easier that way, she said.

Perhaps, it was.

It was on a cold doleful day when I finally said my goodbyes to the ghosts haunting me in that home. My bags were packed and waiting at the door. My mother’s bedroom was a place I hadn’t been able to enter since coming back. But on that day, when I was ready to leave it all, I walked into the quiet, lonely room and sat on her pink, paisley arm chair underneath the bedroom window. The shades were half drawn and a dim light penetrated the room through the pale curtains.

Her brass bed was neatly made in a matching duvet. I stared at the empty mattress for a very long time. I wanted badly to cry. I wanted to feel the deep sorrow I had seen in my sister’s eyes. I wanted to miss her, but the only emotions I was able to conjure up from inside me were guilt and anger.

You left me!I shouted to her inside my head.

As if she’d had a choice.

I couldn’t see reason. The accusations kept spilling out—at her, at me. Why did she have to come with me that day? Why did I let her get in the car? Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t she fight harder?

Tears rolled down my cheeks. I thought I would feel relief, but crying fueled the anger I’d bottled up since the accident. If she hadn’t died, I might not have been so guilt ridden. I might not have given up on my life. I was mad at her for dying and driving me away from dance. I blamed her for my misery. I thought I would never be able to forgive her for leaving me the way she did—alone, scared, destroyed.

I could have been mad at God for taking her from me. I could have been angry at life for messing up my world. Yet, I chose to be mad at the only person who had ever truly loved me. Lord knows those heartless thoughts haunted me for years. I was not able to look at myself in the mirror and not remember what had gone through my mind that day. I sank into the deepest and darkest corners of myself.

I let hate and pity consume me.

Now, four years later, as I sat in my office, digging through my past, another memory sprang up at me. I always thought enduring the fact that I survived the accident—when I wished I’d been the one below ground—might have been more bearable if at least Josh hadn’t left me. I guess it made perfect sense why Josh would leave me. I went numb after my mom died. Happiness was a foreign concept. With the blinds drawn shut in my room, I’d stay in bed for days, sleeping away my life. It was the only peace I ever enjoyed—being doped up on pain meds I knew my body didn’t need, yet my mind and heart craved with ferocity.

For years, I remained perturbed as to why he would choose to abandon me at the worst time in my life—without telling me why or at least saying goodbye. I’d always understood Megan, but for some reason, accepting Josh’s rejection? That just hadn’t been in my realm of possibilities.

Thinking back on it now, maybe I was so shutoff from the world, I missed the signs. Perhaps he did try to tell me, and I was simply not listening. Still, I could not help the sting in my heart every time I remembered the day I found out he’d packed his bags and taken off to Africa to pursue a dream I never even knew he had.

The day I found out, I had awoken from a three-day fog of pain killers and vodka. It was the first time the clouds in my head dissipated enough to give me the clarity to want to get out of bed. I’d risen with the resolve that had eluded me for months. As soon as I opened my eyes, I rolled over, picked up the phone, and called Jen.

“Sara, is everything okay?”

“I…need a shower.”

“I’ll be right over.”

A half hour later, Jen was sitting on my bed, waiting for me to get out of the bathroom. As I came out, an uneasy smile stretched on her face. I guess she wasn’t sure what to expect, but the look in her eyes told me she was hopeful I was finally coming out of my depression.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I do miss the sun.”

She opened up my closet, picked out a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and gave me my sneakers. “Let’s go for a walk.”

We must have done about ten laps around the track at the park behind my house. I told her the last few days had been rough. My body felt feverish and I’d woken up in cold sweats, fragments of nightmares still splintering in my brain. Every time I woke up, I simply took more pain killers chased with a shot of vodka.

She gasped.

I assured her I wasn’t trying to kill myself, at least not consciously.

I told her about my latest dream.

In the dream, I’d been walking aimlessly through the hospital halls. I knew I was looking for something, or someone, but I couldn’t figure out what or who. Confusion set in, followed by panic. Before I knew it, I was running in slow motion, the sound muted. All I could feel was a deep sense of agony in my soul, a longing for something I might never find.

Then it happened, I stopped short in front of a door. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived there, but whatever it was I was looking for, lay beyond the threshold. The air grew icy; my breath a vapory fog around me. I stared down at my feet and noticed I was barefoot, and as I scanned the rest of my body, I saw I was still wearing my hospital gown. Bandages covered many of my extremities, and an IV dripped blood from where I had apparently pulled out the feeds.

I pushed the door open and walked into a dimly lit room lined with empty metal tables. I stood in the middle of the hospital morgue. The air smelled of death; the room was impregnated with the faint tang of iron and rot tinged with traces of sterilized medical instruments.

Then the lights began to flicker, accompanied by the sound of strained electricity trying to push power through. The blood chilled in my veins when my eyes caught sight of the body lying on top of one of the metal tables in the center of the room. That body had not been there before. My bones trembled, ice dripping down my spine. Every instinct in my body urged me to bolt. Still, I walked closer toward it, my feet stinging from the ice-cold floors.

As I approached, my chest constricted. It was my mother’s lifeless form, her blue eyes staring blankly at me. I wanted to scream, but the sound was stolen from my lungs when I heard her disembodied voice speak to me.

“It’s time, honey.” The sweet tone reminded me of Sunday morning pancake breakfasts at the house.

My heart throbbed at the memory. This eerily haunting scene was a sorrowful contradiction to the warmth of our kitchen every weekend. “Mom?” I uttered in a whisper, wishing for her eyes to light up with life, and the frozen, blue lips on her face to flush with the rosy luster of her smile.

They didn’t.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s time to let go,” her voice echoed in my head, as her lips remained sealed.

“I don’t want to let go. Please, come back. Please.”

“Wake up, Sara. Wake up!” she urged in my mind.

“No. I don’t want to. Let me come, too.”

A single tear rolled off one of her eyes. “Where I’ve gone, you can’t follow. It’s not your time.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I love you. Always.”

As I prepared to tell her I loved her too, her dead body sprang up into a sitting position, her arm extended, a finger pointed at the door. “Wake up!” she yelled in a screech, causing me to jolt awake.

Jen stopped in her tracks and rubbed her arms. “I literally just got goosebumps throughout my body.” She looked at me with puzzled eyes. “You think she was trying to communicate with you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. The dream is still very foggy, but at the same time, I can still hear her voice very clearly.”

“I know you’ll always blame yourself for what happened—”

“Look, nothing you can say is ever going to change how I feel about it. I know I’ve been living half-dead for the last few months, hiding like a hermit—too cowardly to show my face. I get it now. I shouldn’t have the luxury of escaping my pain by numbing my body and sleeping forever.”

“You have to stop punishing yourself at some point. That’s what she was trying to tell you.”

“Perhaps. But I can’t let go. Now, I just gotta go on with my life, knowing I’m responsible for her death. Knowing I lost the most important person in my life because of my selfish needs.”

“Dancing is not selfish.”

“That day it was. And I have to live with my decision, but at least I know I never have to step foot on a stage again.”

“What are you talking about? You’re not quitting dance.”

“It’s too late. Even if I wanted to dance, because of my spinal injuries, doctor said I’d probably never dance again. Not like I used to.”

“Christ, Sara. You never told me.”

“There was no need. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I lost her because of dance. It would simply be a constant reminder of her loss. Plus, I don’t deserve to be happy.”

She caught up with me, grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around to face her. “Honey, you don’t mean that, do you? Your mom would never want that.”

I shrugged her hand off my shoulder. “She’s not here, is she?”

“Sara, don’t think like that—”

“Jen, I’m moving on. The best way I can. Please, just let me.”

She stared deep in my eyes, understanding washing over her. It was the only way she was going to get her friend back, at least the remnants of my old self. “Okay,” she said.

I took a deep breath, silently thanking her for allowing me to deal with my grief the only way I knew how. After a long pause, I said, “Time to call Josh, I guess. I haven’t talked to him in days. He must be so worried about me, but I just haven’t been ready, you know. I’m so blessed to have him. After all the shit I’ve put everyone through, he’s stuck around. The way I’ve been treating him…God knows I don’t deserve him. But at least he understands.”

Jen’s gaze dropped.

“What is it?”

She closed her eyes and finally uttered, “Honey, Josh left.”