Bring Me Back(20)

Dead. He’s dead.

“Ma’am?” he says again.

“No!” I scream. Scream from the very depths of my soul. “He can’t be dead.” I pull at my hair. “This is all a bad dream. Wake up. Wake up.” I slap my face, but I’m still here, firmly rooted in reality. “No, no, no, no, no,” I whisper to myself. “No.” I stand and make a run for the doors. “Ben!” I scream, like he can hear me. The doctor grabs me around the waist and holds me back, keeping me from the doors. “Ben! Please! Ben.” I tug and yank on his arms, trying to get him to let me go, but he doesn’t budge. I sink into his arms and scream. I cry. I pour it all out from my very soul. “Why?” I sob into the doctor’s coat. “Why?”

The doctor surprises me by wrapping his arms around me. “Shh,” he soothes, trying to coax me back into my chair. I let him. My legs can’t hold me up anymore—the muscles have given out.

Loraine sobs quietly beside me. I wish I could be like her. Quiet in my grief.

“Let me get you some water.” The doctor’s speaking to me, but I can no longer look at him. I refuse to look at the man that has just told me that my love, my heart, my soul is gone. If I don’t look at him then I don’t have to face the truth.

He returns with a paper cup full of water and holds it out to me. I don’t take it. I can’t move. Frozen. I am frozen.

He bends down in front of me and taps my knee with an index finger. “Hey,” he says in a soft tone. I stare at my lap. “It’ll be okay,” he whispers. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth.”

He sets the water cup on the chair beside me and leaves.

The waiting room is quiet. I feel the stares. I hear the whispers.

I don’t care.

How can I care when Ben is gone?

“Blaire?” Loraine says my name around a sob.

I squish my eyes closed and more tears leak out. I never knew it was possible to cry this much. It’s like they’re seeping from my pores. I know I need to answer her, but I don’t want to open my mouth again. I’m scared if I do I’ll start screaming and not want to stop. I’ve already caused enough of a scene.

“We should go,” she says. “We don’t need to be here anymore.”

I shake my head.

I’m not leaving.

What if the doctor goes back there and finds that he was wrong? What if Ben is really alive?

Don’t give up hope.

“Blaire,” Loraine says, “he’s not going to walk out those doors. Stop it.”

I grip the thin wooden arms of the cheap chair and hold on so tight that my knuckles turn white. I shake my head roughly once. Twice. Three times. I think I’m trying to shake some sense into myself.

“Blaire. We have to go.”

“I can’t,” I whisper, staring at the shiny white floor. “I can’t leave him.”

I know I should be strong for her right now, Ben’s her son, but I’m too lost in my own grief. I’m pathetic.

She stands and somehow gets ahold of me, hauling my leaden body up. “I’ll drive you home. Can I stay in your guest room?”

I nod. “Of course,” I whisper.

She guides me out of the hospital and to her car. How she has the capability to drive is beyond me. But I guess she’s a mom. She’s used to having to take charge in the face of meltdowns.

She starts the car and turns down the radio; I don’t think either of us wants to listen to music right now.

I’m not sure I’ll ever smile again.

The lights from the hospital parking lot shine through the windows. I lean my head against the cool glass of the car window beside me and close my eyes.

“We were trying to have a baby,” I say the words softly.

Loraine gasps and hiccups on a cry.

“We were so excited,” I continue, “about the future. The wedding. A baby. Life. It’s all gone now.”

Loraine is quiet and I don’t open my eyes to see her. Finally, she says, “It’s not gone now. It’s just different.”

“It’s not the same without Ben.”

She’s quiet again, and then with what must be a lot of effort, she says, “You’re young. You’ll move on.”

My hands clench into fists and my eyes fly open. “How can you say that? He’s your son. Was. Was your son.” I lean my head against the headrest and bang my fists against my thighs. It isn’t fair.

Her lower lip trembles and the red from the stoplight reflects over her face. “It kills me to say that, Blaire, but it’s true. You will move on.”

I shake my head. “Shut up.”

She turns to me. “We have to stay strong. For ourselves. For each other. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Blaire. That’s not the fighter I know you to be.”

I wipe at the tears that have continued to fall. “I need to scream,” I tell her.

“Then scream.”

I do. And she does too.

We both sit there at that stoplight, even as it changes to green, and scream.

I scream until my throat is raw and aching and sore. I scream until I can’t scream anymore and then I collapse back against the seat.