16. run run run

16

RUN RUN RUN

DAY 11 - 12

I don't feel the scrape of spiny desert brush on my ankles and calves. I don't feel the burn in my muscles, working beyond the limits of their endurance. I don't hear the footsteps racing after me, the voice calling my name.

What stops me isn't my protesting limbs, my wildly thrumming pulse, or the shoe I lost somewhere along the way. Not my screaming, gasping lungs. My burning, sand-scoured eyes.

Not my breaking heart.

It's the chain-link fence around Oasis that brings me to an abrupt and painful halt.

My fingers curl around metal links and my knees give out. I taste blood where I bit through my lip on impact.

"Amelia!" An anguished, masculine yell.

Sand flies up behind me as he skids to a stop. I feel the vibration of his knees hitting the earth. Fingers curl around my shoulders .

"It's okay," he says between panting breaths. "I've got you."

The darkness funnels to dangerous density, spinning toward its target with poisoned tip. My body follows, a puppet to the primal demand. I register the blue of his eyes, tortured and red from the run. His handsome, flushed face. The perfect hair no longer perfect but sticking in all directions. The swipe of his tongue across a full lower lip.

I lunge forward and kiss him. Hard enough that I feel the press of his teeth, the warm give of his dry lips. He gasps. I take advantage, driving forward, dipping my tongue into his mouth. Tasting him harshly, completely. Drinking him down.

It's seconds. A lifetime. Then his hands on my shoulders wrench me back.

"No," he says breathlessly.

Another level of me breaks.

I swing both arms, kick my legs, landing blows wherever I can reach as hard as I can. I'm screaming.

"Liar! Fucking liar! Oh God, oh God. I wrote Daddy on his cup. I hadn't even taken the test yet, but I knew. Goddammit!"

Chastain finally subdues me by hogtying me with his arms and legs. I'm flooded with his scent. Hot, clean skin. The tantalizing musk of sweat.

"Let it go, Amelia. Let it out."

I'm tumbling.

Freefall.

No parachute.

I was on my way to my favorite gelateria , a couple of freeway exits away from Jameson's. The night before, he'd joked I should name the baby Gelato or Gelata because I couldn't go a day without the stuff.

I was in a good mood. Singing along to a popular song on the radio. The windows were down, the sun shining.

Brake lights. A chorus of honks. Screeching tires. Time slowing to a crawl. A white wall swinging across the highway several cars ahead of me.

Nowhere to turn. Slamming on the brakes while cranking the steering wheel as hard as I could to the left. Spinning.

Drifting.

Impact.

Pain. Both indistinct and sharp.

"The only reason you're alive today is because you turned," Chastain says into my ringing ear. "That split-second decision caused you to hit the guardrail instead of the semi head-on."

"I should have died." My voice is scratchy from abuse. Broken, just like me.

"If you should have died, you would have. But you didn't. You're here. And you're safe."

I laugh. A horrible, wretched sound. Leaning back—slowly, so he doesn't think I'm going to attack him again—I find his eyes with mine.

"Take it back, Leo."

He shakes his head, tears glistening in his eyes. Fire melting ice. "I'm so sorry, but I can't."

This time the darkness is gentle, a sweep of silken feathers. Calm filters through me. And resolve .

"Are we done for the day?" I ask blankly.

He frowns concernedly. "Amelia?—"

"I said, are we done for the day?"

He hesitates, torn, then nods and releases me. I reach for the fence and pull myself up, not feeling the bite of sharp metal links. When I'm standing, I look down at the man on his knees before me.

"Congratulations, Dr. Chastain. You've won."

His brows pinch together. "Please, Amelia?—"

I cut him off. "Eleven days until you leave. Eight more days of therapy. Tomorrow we can talk about my stay in the hospital and what happened there. Then we can spend a few days discussing all the reasons why I shouldn't blame myself. And finally, we'll end on an uplifting note. The life I can rebuild when I get out of here." I tilt my head. "Isn't that your agenda?"

He reaches for me, but I sidestep. His hand falls and he looks down.

As I begin the long trek back to the facility, I call over my shoulder, "Don't forget to make that appointment for surfing lessons. And for fuck's sake, man up and ask the mother of your child to marry you."

Funny thing, the power of the mind to protect itself. Even funnier—the machinations of the heart. Between those two forces, how and where can the Self exist?

My roommate in college was a meditation junkie, always going to retreats in the mountains and listening to podcasts from gurus around the world. I went to a retreat with her once at one of those campsites for the rich, with cabins and a full-service spa and a community hall for listening to lectures from highly paid speakers.

Only one memory sticks out from that weekend, a few words spoken by a guest speaker. A Tibetan Buddhist, I remember his eyes most of all. Fathomless, dark. A calm lake under moonlight.

After the lecture, I stood in line with fifty others to thank him. When it was my turn, I asked, "Where do I find myself?"

He smiled and said, "Wherever you're not looking."

At the time, the answer annoyed me. Why did spiritual people always have to be so fucking vague, smiling like they have a secret they're not willing to share?

I don't have any answers now, even less than I had before. But at least I finally understand what he meant. Because now, right now—as I lie in the dirt behind my cabin watching the stars, as my mind sews itself back together—I'm not looking. I'm nothing.

And I can feel it. What the Buddhist called No-Self. The acknowledgement that if all things change, and change is a constant, it follows that there can be no permanent, unchanging Self.

I understand.

I am changed.

It hits me at 4:00 a.m. when I'm curled on my side in bed. My arms, tucked over my stomach, begin to shake. Then my legs, my shoulders. A soul-quake, tectonic plates of Self ripping apart.

I'm only dimly aware of Tiffany and Kinsey on the bed with me, holding me between them and murmuring words of comfort. I hear Callum's voice, too, threaded with worry.

What's happening to her?

Should we get the doc?

What if she's having a seizure?

"It's not a seizure," snaps Kinsey. There's a gravity in her voice I've never heard. "She's grieving."

Grieving.

Such a small word. Such a commonplace emotion. We grieve everything, don't we? Death. Time's passage. The loss of an animal or person. The end of a favorite TV drama.

But grief is a process. There are stages and adjustments and gradual acceptance. I robbed myself of the natural cycle. The rhythmic wave of loss—the pound, the push, and finally the soothing caress—is instead a tsunami blotting out the sky, tearing apart everything in its path. I can't see anything; I feel everything.

Scars rip open, and there, in the deepest part of my psyche, I see them. My mother and brother. Spaghetti crowning Phillip's head because it was more fun to play with it than eat it. My mom's laughter, bright and sunny, floating across the backyard as Jameson and I tried to teach Phillip how to do a somersault. A thousand moments, a thousand memories.

Flashing lights .

Caskets.

My father's hoarse cry.

Jameson's sobs.

And now mine.

The tsunami passes, taking parts of me with it.