Before I Let You Go(95)

“Yeah, we’ve got a DOA here—another fucking junkie. I hate these cases—”

I stop so abruptly that the female paramedic collides with my back. I turn stiffly to face the inside of the trailer and a raw, primal scream bursts from my mouth.

“No!”

He turns to me, shocked, and the female paramedic takes a step back as if I’m a physical threat. I know they are only human, and addiction wears medical professionals down, and I’ve probably thought the same thing myself—but this is not a faceless patient—this is the little girl who used to fall asleep in the bed next to mine. The girl who used to keep her journal tucked in beside her face like a teddy bear. She had hopes and dreams and she had talents and flaws and she is—was—everything to me.

This is Annie; my Annie. Anne Elizabeth Vidler. How can they reduce this life that mattered to me to a single label?

I look between the paramedics and then I stare the man down.

“She is not a junkie,” I choke. “She is my sister.”

They stare right back at me. They don’t know that I understand their disgust, but they need to know that she was a person, with history and potential and worth, and despite all of the bad decisions and all of the mess and pain of her life, she deserved a better end to her story than this.

I step out into the cold and I walk away from the trailer. I’m wailing, and people are coming out from the other trailers, and a stranger asks if she can help me and I can’t form the words to answer her. For a moment or two, I pace around the filth outside Annie’s trailer, but then Daisy’s screaming penetrates the fog of my shock and I remember that she’s actually sick.

It is just too cold for Daisy out here, but we can’t go back inside the trailer, and even if we did, it’s not much warmer. So I take the baby into my car, and I sit behind the wheel. I run the heater to warm her up and I hold her so tightly against me as I sob.

I have to ring Mom.

I have to ring Sam.

My phone is inside the trailer, on the floor. I can’t go back inside.

Time loses all meaning. A police car comes, and the coroner, and I watch all of these people crowd into Annie’s pitiful trailer and I just can’t bear it. I almost convince myself this isn’t happening; this whole morning just can’t be real. This must be a nightmare—have I fallen asleep on the couch?

I start performing an autopsy on this moment—a postmortem of my failure. Did Annie do this on purpose? How did it even come to this? Where did I go wrong? Why couldn’t I help her? Why didn’t I just agree to visit her with Daisy? How could beautiful, clever little Annie come to this end—dying alone in this pathetic trailer park—all of that beauty and creativity lost to the world forever . . . lost to me . . . lost to Daisy?

Why didn’t I tell her I loved her? That would have made the difference, I’m sure of it. How am I going to live with myself? How can I contact Sam? How can I tell Mom? I can’t stop crying. This feels worse than when Dad died, because when Dad died, I had to be strong for Annie and Mom. There is Daisy this time, but it feels different—maybe I’m Daisy’s, but she’s not yet mine in the way that Mom and Annie were. But what will happen to her? Am I really all she has now?

I’ll fail her, too. No one should trust me to care for this baby. A police officer approaches me, and I want him to handcuff me and throw me in prison—for failing your sister, when the only thing you ever needed to do was take care of her. Instead, he gently opens the car door and asks me sadly, “Ma’am? Is there someone we can call for you?”

I asked Annie that question once, and there was no one. I was all she had in the world, and I let her down.

I nod frantically and look toward the trailer. More people are crowding in. There’s police tape going up around it.

“My phone is on the floor of the trailer. His name is Sam.” My voice sounds artificial, high-pitched and feeble, and now my teeth are chattering. Annie’s teeth did that, just seven weeks ago, in the C-section, and I told her it was going to be okay.

I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay.

Forgive me, Annie. I love you.

The officer is still staring at me and I’m not sure he understood me, so I focus as hard as I can and I clear my throat and I say, “Please call Sam Hawke. His number is on speed dial on my phone, which is on the trailer floor.”

“Okay, ma’am,” the officer says, and I watch him walk away. I take an inventory of my physical situation. Daisy is in my arms, gradually calming at last. She is warm against my body, but not too warm. She is okay.

Annie is dead, but Daisy is okay. I repeat this as a mantra for several minutes, thinking I can force myself to accept it. This doesn’t work. I still feel like I’m dreaming, and in the moments after I acknowledge this, I almost convince myself that I am.

But my heart is still racing and I’m still panting even now that I’m completely still, and my hands are numb, and as I catalog these things I diagnose myself with physiological shock and I force my best physician’s voice into my internal monologue and I assure myself that with a bit of time, the sense of dissociation will pass and I’ll be okay.

Then I remember again that Annie is dead and I’m off again on the roller coaster of early grief; this time all I can think of is about how many times I’ve considered this moment inevitable, and how that doesn’t make it any easier, but it should. I have had years to prepare for this. I should have had a mental coping kit all packed and ready to go.