Absolution(60)

She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there. She glanced up towards the window and saw the soft light of a new day filtering into the room.

Another sunrise.

She felt similar to the way she had when she woke up in the hospital, after the accident – detached, not fully aware, reality constantly slipping through her fingers.

The past twelve months seemed to have passed in a blur, yet the rest of her life stretched out in front of her, a yawning chasm of uncertainty. She glanced down at her legs, crossed at the ankles and pulled in close on the floor in front of her. She hardly recognised them anymore. The muscles had atrophied, just like she had been warned they would, despite the regular range-of-motion exercises Callum put her body through and the massage and stretches she performed on a daily basis.

Her conscience pricked slightly at the thought of Callum. The one thing she knew with absolute certainty was that she could never have gotten to this point without him. But it wasn’t enough.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

On the brink of exhaustion, her mind wandered. She thought about Jack. She didn’t talk about him anymore because it just seemed to upset everyone, but she hadn’t been able to banish him from her mind. He remained there, perched on the edge of her consciousness, messing with her peace of mind. The unanswered questions taunted her as much as the random pain in her back and the frequent nightmares.

A phone rang somewhere inside the house. She didn’t even flinch when she heard it this time. It had rung several times yesterday – or was it this morning? She heard her own voice on the answer-phone message, followed by Tom’s. She picked up on the worry in his voice, even if she couldn’t quite make out the words. She didn’t let the guilt seep any further than skin deep, however. She couldn’t afford to.

She looked around for the wheelchair she had abandoned at some stage during the night. In a desperate frenzy, driven to the point of madness as she had tried to exorcise the demons in her head, she had climbed down onto the floor, dragging the canvas with her so she could access it more easily.

That was the thing about her wheelchair: it got in the way. It was as if no one saw her anymore. It didn’t matter what clothes she wore, what she did with her hair, whether or not she wore make-up – they didn’t see any of that. She had ceased to exist. Sometime over the past year, her old self had quietly slipped away, leaving behind a shell, and an incomplete one at that.

She had fallen through the stages of grief the same way you fell in a dream. Slowly, desperately clawing at your surroundings as you tried to stop the descent. First came the denial, then the anger, the bargaining and the depression. When everything else had gone – when the acceptance should have come, but didn’t – the hope was all that remained. And now that had gone, too.

Overwhelmed by a sense of finality that numbed her emotions, she balanced with one palm flat against the floor, reaching over for her chair with the other. Dragging it closer to her, the wheels squeaked gently against the floorboards. She transferred up into the chair and sat there, watching her bare feet resting on the floor.

She thought about what she was about to do. Her stomach contracted, as if her body was trying to protect itself somehow, one last-ditch attempt to change her mind. Sweeping the guilt aside, she lifted her legs up and nestled her feet into the footrest.

Screw everyone else – this was her wish. It was her life, after all. She was tired of putting on a brave face, tired of being conscious of everyone else’s feelings – tired of putting them before her own. She had been selfless for long enough. Now it was her turn.

She released the brake, glancing down at the canvas. She stared at it, the hollow black eyes staring back at her. For the first time, she saw it for what it was.

A reflection of her soul.



As they reminisced, Jack felt as if she had reopened the book of his life and only good memories came pouring out, washing away the pain, if only temporarily. He felt whole again.

These past few years, because everything seemed to hurt so much, he had shut out memories like these, only allowing himself to wallow occasionally, the pain of what he had lost too great. Now, buffeted by Ally’s smiling face across the table from him, he felt as if a little piece of him had been regained. A sense of fullness and warmth enveloped him as he pushed all the negative, self-loathing thoughts aside and concentrated on living in the moment.

He excused himself to get another round and she handed her empty bottle to him, their fingertips touching. Goosebumps crawled up his arm and he smiled down at her. She smiled back shyly and he almost floated to the bar.