What We Once Were

Epilogue

One Year Later...

Bridget Elizabeth Carter died on August 15th 2020 at exactly 8:47 p.m.

I will never be able to fully describe how it had felt to hear that monitor build me up with so much hope. How that final squeeze of her hand had carried me to a place that I've never been to before.

But then, seconds later, the monitor flatlined as the nurses threw open the door and tried everything they could to bring her back. They told me later that she'd had a seizure that had been too much for her body to handle.

She'd been too fragile, and she couldn't fight it this time.

I remember jumping onto the hospital bed, holding her body in my arms as I screamed in agony at the pain she'd caused me when I knew she'd left me for good this time.

It felt like the world had collapsed on top of me and suffocated me. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. I couldn't feel anything except the soul sucking force draining my life—my purpose—out of me as someone pried me away from her for the last time.

Alex had been in the hallway when she'd heard me wail.

She'd known exactly what had happened. We'd both held each other and sobbed in the hallway for another hour before we both engaged in an understanding silence as we took care of Bridget's final medical needs.

We didn't speak a word to each other for the rest of the night.

The next day when I saw Juliet, my heart broke all over again as she ran into my arms screaming and crying. She kept crying for her mom and asking for her and I couldn't even fight my tears. She hugged me for a while before she began to hit and scream at me for taking her mom away from her. I kept crying as I struggled to hold her in my arms and whispering "I'm sorry" until she said it back, apologizing for getting angry with me and that it wasn't my fault.

If only that were the case.

If I'd gotten there a little earlier, she might be here with us. If we had gone to work together, this wouldn't have happened. Part of her death was my fault, and that was something I'd never be able to come to terms with.

For the next several hours we both sat on the floor of my sister's living room weeping over who we'd lost.

Then for the next three months, Juliet was silent.

Juliet and I went through the motions of our lives with a grey cloud of silence and mourning looming over us. We didn't speak more than a few words to each other or anyone else for three months before I decided we both needed to see a counselor.

I was a wreck for those three months. Austin, Viviana, Jordyn, Alex and Tatum all took turns checking in on Juliet and I. Neither of us were very cooperative or said anything to them, but it never stopped them from coming and caring for us.

Heeding Bridget's final request, I received full custody of Juliet. A little part of me had come back to life once that day had come and gone. But for those first three months, we barely ate, barely spoke and barely left the house. We would lay on the couch in silence or we would cry and hug each other until we fell asleep.

I hadn't enrolled Juliet into preschool that year, I knew that neither of us would've been able to handle that. We were not ready for that kind of change.

But after the funeral, after those three months dragged on for an eternity; after we talked to the counselors, things began to change.

Juliet began to talk a little more. She smiled a little more and so did I. We went on walks every day around town and we would stop at the same coffee shop downtown in the morning. Rain or shine, we did it every morning.