Kismet (4 page)

Time passes.

How much, I’m not exactly sure—a day, maybe two. Despite the haze, and my attempts at forgetting, the interaction with Dr. Stevenson is still fresh in my mind. To make him less intimidating I decide to just refer to him as Stevenson. There’s something about him that makes me feel like my carefully constructed walls are in jeopardy. Like they’re not as strong as I thought, filling me with doubts about my resolve to be alone. Perhaps it’s because I want to remain tucked safely behind those walls, and I fear that he can chip it all away until it crumbles down around me. He seems confident and somewhat cocky, things that I wish I could be. Things that I never was. I can’t remember a time where I felt sure of myself. It was always about just making it one day at a time.

Despite the fact that Stevenson, scares me, I refuse to cave. My walls are up. Permanently. I am glued in place with my anguish.

My pain.

My tears.

My guilt.

They are all reminders to me. Reminders of all the love and the life I lost, and of all the hurt that has filled my short time on this planet. I have lived through more heartache than one person ever should.

It started when I was only five. I had never been very sure of myself, and making friends was always something difficult for me. My only friend outside of my brother and his friends was a girl over at the farm next to us. Olivia spent her days with me, roaming the barn and fields. We grew anxious to start school that summer, nervous… excited even. Especially when we found out that we were going to be in the same class. My excitement grew into uncertainty, so much so that I was so scared that first day. I’d always been an anxious child, and the only thing that helped was knowing that Olivia would be there to hold my hand.

I got to school that morning and found my seat marked by my nametag. I sat quietly, sneaking peeks at her empty desk, waiting for her to come. Only she never made it to school that day. My only friend, Olivia, fell in the pond near her house as she walked to the end of her road to catch the bus. Her parents found her when they left for work a mere half an hour later.

That was the first time I ever felt alone. My parents were aware that I struggled with anxiety, but after losing someone so close to me, I didn’t know how to cope with my grief. I cried for days, and once I ran out of tears, I turned it all off.

Everything. Off.

When I stopped talking as a child, my family took me to so many specialists, doctors, and therapists, that I eventually lost count. It took me years to heal my small heart. There were lots of appointments, therapies, and just plain hard work.

So even though I’ve been through it all before, here I am again. My struggles, my victories, everything I thought I was… gone in a flash, again.

Eventually my thoughts come back to the present and I realize that my beloved I.V. is gone. I know that my sweet drugs, my only real solace, have been replaced with a dose of pills in the morning, and another at night. I have been showered and dressed by the nurses. My dark blonde hair has been washed, combed and pulled into a low ponytail, my permanent attire of hospital gown and scrubs replaced by actual clothing.

My mother brought clothes from home for me. I know that she must’ve searched painstakingly for something appropriate for me to wear. I imagine she had to dig through storage totes since my closet is currently saturated with maternity clothes. She knew that I would have come undone slipping my still enlarged abdomen into clothes that had once brought me so much joy. I want to thank her for being so thoughtful, but I don’t. I’m wearing some old sweatpants paired with a t-shirt, both obviously from a bin of clothes from high school.

I stare at the TV again, not really watching what’s on, while the people around me busily prepare for my departure. A nurse fusses over my stitches and bandages, while my father and brother chat mundanely across the room from me. I hear my mother talking in hushed voices with Stevenson. I can’t make out the whole of their conversation, and I don’t really care to, but since the men in my family are speaking at an annoyingly loud decibel, I couldn’t if I tried. That being said, I hear a mix of their words.

“…Considering the trauma… low self-worth…
Selective Mutism
, which should be familiar… happens only in adults with previous mutism… as far as treatment… anxiety reduction… exposure exercises…”

These are all words my family and I are all too familiar with. My family knows all the ins and outs of my diagnosis. They know the therapies—what has worked in the past, and what didn’t. We’ve been down this road before, and to think of traveling it again makes me sick to my stomach, but I can’t see how things will get better. My reasons for living are gone.

I shake my head, thinking about doctors. It hadn’t taken long for them to label me again, deciding what is best for me and my emotional well-being. I want to be pissed, to have some sort of reaction to something, but I just can’t muster a single feeling. I truly don’t care. They think they know me, but they don’t. All the degrees and training in the world can’t touch my emotional damage. I have nothing left to live for.

“Are you ready, sweetie?” my mother questions, just as she shuts the TV off.

I shift my attention toward her. My eyes make contact, but I can’t feel anything. Instead, I stare right through her, feeling
nothing
. A part of me, somewhere deep within the anguish, finds this sad. My own mother can’t awaken something in me. No memories, no emotion… just pure nothingness. She closes her eyes and takes a deep cleansing breath. I can tell that this is all wearing on her. Looking at how broken she is, I know I should feel something. But I don’t.

She looks years older than she did before the accident. Not that she looks terrible, she just actually looks her age. My mother had always been the envy of every woman in our small community. Tall, with gorgeous long, blonde hair, and beautiful facial features, she was the most gorgeous woman I had ever laid eyes on. Her skin was the perfect accessory to her great bone structure, and as she remained beautiful through the years, the other women in town loved to speculate about the work that she must have had done. Of course, she hadn’t, she just had great genes. I can’t help thinking that they’ll all be glad to see that she’s a mere mortal after all.

“All right then,” she coos. Ignoring my silence and emotional absence, she directs her stare at my brother, “Tommy, push your sister out of here. Let’s get her home where she belongs.”

In my head I scoff at my mother’s naivety. I don’t
belong
anywhere, and for her to think I do makes me angry. But before I can respond, I get my emotions in check and I relax. The wheelchair lurches as my brother begins pushing me down the stark white hallways. Despite having my head down, counting floor tiles, I feel every person we pass give me a look of pity. At least they have come to terms with the fact that my life isn’t worth saving. I just wish they would pass the memo on to my unrelenting family. I could really use the space.

The farther away from the hospital we get, the harder my heart starts beating. Anxiety rises within me as the time approaches for me to get into my father’s Yukon. The closer we get, the faster my breathing gets. I realize that I haven’t been in a car since the accident. The skin of my knuckles turns white as I grip onto the arms of the wheelchair.

A lump forms in my throat, the pressure returns in my chest, and I feel like I’m going to be sick. Michael was the last person to drive me anywhere. But he’ll never drive me around again. I miss him.

God, I miss him.

I’m sucking air faster than I should, my breathing matching a pace I would have kept during one of my 5k runs. But I’m not running. Instead, I’m sitting, in a wheelchair, being wheeled straight out from the comfort of my little bubble and back into the real world.

Tommy senses my apprehension and gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but I flinch at the contact and he moves his hand away. Even though his touch startles me, I feel my muscles relax a bit. Tommy, my Tommy. God, I love him.

Growing up, Tommy and I were inseparable, despite the fact that he is five years older than me. He looks out for me more than he has to because I’m his pride and joy—he’ll tell anybody that. One thing is definite, and that is my brother loves me more than anything else in the world.

He was the town’s golden boy, and his name paved the way for me. I was forever known as “Tommy Garvin’s little sister.” I guess that happens when your older brother happens to be an All-American shortstop. Tommy always looked out for my best interests, so much so that he even enrolled his buddies to keep me out of trouble. A lump forms in my throat when I think about his friends. I wonder if they know? If they wonder about me, and if I’ll see any of them know that I’m going home?

I shake the thought from my head, I don’t need to take a trip down that road. Not yet, probably not ever.

The wheelchair comes to an abrupt stop and my head falls ever father forward once Tommy puts the brake on. He takes me by the hand, supporting my elbow at the same time, and leads me into the SUV. I slide onto the crisp leather seats and wipe the sweat from my forehead. My anxiousness is still heightened, but not enough for me to say anything. Oddly enough, my silence is reassuring to me, and I swallow the lump in my throat. I know I can do this. I’ve ridden in a car before. I squeeze my eyes shut, while simultaneously choking back the bile that churns in my stomach.

“You okay, Gertrude?” Pop glances over his shoulder at me, a worried look on his face.

Why do they keep asking me questions? I have nothing to say. And why is he calling me Gertrude again? The old nickname brings nothing but sadness because I’m not that girl anymore. Gertrude died in a blaze of glory with her husband and children. Why won’t they just accept the fact that she’s gone?

I open my eyes just in time to watch my mother place her hand on my dad’s leg. “Let’s just get her home, John,” she urges.

As Pop turns the key in the ignition, Tommy reaches across the back seat and grabs my hand. The contact startles me from my zombie like state and I glance up at him, considering pulling away. But it’s Tommy, my Tommy, and his hand feels kind of nice. He squeezes and his deep blue eyes plead with me, hoping for some sort of response.

There’s a small part of me that wants to give him hope, a part of me that wants to smile, or squeeze his hand back. But I can’t. I don’t have that kind of strength. Instead, I give him nothing, allowing him to hold onto my hand as I direct my attention out of the window, staring blankly at the scenery as it passes us by.

Much like my life.

The car ride is beyond awkward. Periods of silence were occasionally broken by strained attempts at normalcy. Mom and Pop try to kick start a conversation while Tommy squeezes my hand just to let me know that he’s there for me. My heart aches for my family. They’re trying to give me some sense of who I was, but their efforts continue to fall short.

The tension in the car is palpable, and I can almost hear a collective sigh of relief when we eventually pull up to my childhood home. Well, I guess it isn’t
just
my childhood home anymore. From today on it’s my new home. My dad has already taken care of the house Michael and I owned. I overheard him and Tommy discussing details a few days back. From what I gathered, it’s been cleaned out, our things appropriately packed and put into storage, and it is now on the market. It kills me to know that a new family will move in, totally unaware of the ghosts that live within those walls.

Michael and I bought it while I was pregnant with Zoe. We searched for months for the perfect place, and to say that our search had been painstaking would be a vast understatement. We spent weeks looking at house after house, until finally, after much debate, we settled on a small three-bedroom ranch, just outside of Manchester. It paled in comparison to the house I grew up in, but I loved it nonetheless. It was ours. Well, it
was
ours. Now it would be somebody else’s.

My parents’ house has been in the family forever. A sixth-generation farmhouse, it sits atop a grassy knoll in the middle of sixty acres of prime Northern New Hampshire farmland. The place is full of so many memories that I can’t even begin to touch on them all. Tommy and I grew up tending to the garden, the cows, and chickens. As kids it seemed as if our chores were never-ending, and we were always itching to head out to be with friends. Now it seems like a much simpler time.

A time that I wish I could go back to.

I haven’t been back here in years. Seeing it brings back all those simple life feelings and in spite of my sadness, I find myself looking forward to being with the animals again. In fact, it’s the only thing I’m looking forward to because, let’s face, it there really isn’t much for me to live for anymore. I had always found so much joy in riding and taking care of my horses. My connection with them had been the reason Mom and Pop had decided to start rehabilitating horses in the first place. Once I made that relationship with my first horse at a stable across town, things fell into place for me. Therapy starting working, and I started coming out of my shell.