I Fell in Love with Hope(47)

She was the first baby I ever held, and I had to watch her die.

The sadness was sudden. It was forceful, a propulsion. I wanted to open myself up and let it escape like steam.

I ran away from the hospital grounds. I ran away, and I fell. The cuts hurt, but they alleviated some of the inner pain. It was as if my body felt the damage my heart took and wanted to share some of the burden.

“Sam!” I heard my name as I sat defeated on the road. The sun gleamed off the hood of a car. “Sam!”

There was a noise, wheels swerving out of the way. I turned to look. A large metal thing hurled in my direction. Then, I was whiplashed. Someone grabbed ahold of my wrist and hoisted me out of the way.

I was on the side of the road, a body on top of mine, shielding me. He was out of breath, his head in the crook on my neck and shoulder, one of his knees between my legs like he’d fallen, getting me out of the way.

“My sweet Sam,” he panted, raising his face to look down at me. He dried my tears, his still fresh, burning as they dripped onto my cheeks. “I’ve got you,” he said, shushing me as I began to cry. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

“Why did she die?” I sobbed. He pulled me up into his arms. I kept crying till night came, and he was all I had left to hold. “Why did she have to die?” I asked again, over and over. “Why does everyone die?”

He never answered me.

The emptiness that question left behind still sits like a hollow place where my heart should lie.

—

The memory flashes by in a second. That’s all it takes. The same force that pushed me down back then does again. Only this time, it’s not on a dirt road. It’s one made of asphalt and concrete, busy as the sidewalk traffic. The sun flashes, a car honks. My eyes shut tight, ready for the impact.

“Sam!”

But the car never hits. Instead, I feel a warmth like no other tense around my wrist. My breath hitches. It’s as though I’m breaking the water’s surface, being pulled from the bottom of a pool. The road fades out behind me, becoming an echo of gasps and angry drivers. I land with my feet on the pavement, my body stumbling into another’s.

Hikari’s face comes into view, as close to mine as it was last night. She is as breathless as I am. She was running behind me. I fell into the road, but she caught me. She saw the car, she reached for me, she saved me.

The crowd goes on around us as if nothing’s happened. The traffic resumes behind us.

She saved me.

Her pulse races beneath my palm. Her nose brushes mine, wisps of her hair like fingers caressing my temples.

I feel her. Skin, rougher than I imagined, hilled and scarred, hot beneath the surface. She touched me. The illusion is destroyed. The glass wall made of our almosts is shattered.

She’s real, tangible, right there in front of me.

It makes me shudder.

“You’re okay,” Hikari says, “I’ve got you.”

“Let me go.” The words leave me before I can think of them. They’re not spoken, they’re spat, bitten, aggressive. Hikari opens her eyes, confusion strewn about the flares. I look at my feet, unable to look at her.

“Let me go!” I yell, and this time, she does.

“Sam!” Sony. She sounds like she’s running. No, she can’t be running. C is right behind her, Neo limping along with him. “Sam, are you okay!?”

Hikari rushes backward when they arrive, like a wave that collides with a cliff and recedes back into the sea.

“Sam,” Neo says softly. He checks my back for scuff marks, my neck, and head for blood. Sony stands next to him, her oxygen tank still on her back, her freckles still dancing on her nose. C can see the dread in my eyes. His forehead wrinkles, but he doesn’t reach to touch me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. That’s all I have to say. At this moment, it’s all I know how to say.

My friends are okay. They didn’t cross the bridge. They came back. Yet this urge to hide and run away doesn’t dissipate. It multiplies. I put my hand to my mouth like I’m about to be sick.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, but before they can say anything else, I run back to the crosswalk and into the safety of my hospital.

—

Her touch is like a burn. The mark radiates heat. I walked into the lobby, staring at it. I bypassed the elevators entirely, climbing the stairs up to the roof.

The roof is cool and quiet, and my mind is anything but. In my mind, Sony has blood on her tongue and sleeve, Neo thins away into nothing, and C’s heart ceases between his ribs. In it, blue settles over the building, drowning everyone in it.

Hikari’s touch lingers. Reverting to old habits, I pace. I hover over the spot on my wrist as if Hikari left paint there and it would rub off on my fingers. Every time I replay the moment she pulled me back into reality, I feel the sunlight on my face. My fear burns into ash, and I see all the lies I fooled myself into believing:

Neo and C together in school, writing their book together. Neo is bruise-less, the torments of his father no more. C’s skin is scarless, stormless. He takes Neo to the beach for swims on the weekends and takes Sony along. Sony has her children in her arms, a husband or wife, or anyone in the world she desires. She carries them across the sand into the water, making grimaces and kissing them as the waves gently wash in. Their disease, their stolen time, their deaths are all a thing of the past. They survive, and they are happy, and they live.