Tempted | Kai Parker

thirty one: living is hard

I was alone when I got the call.

And I just screamed.

I hung up the phone, and I just screamed until my throat was raw. I screamed until I didn't have anything left in me.

Within approximately thirty seconds, my whole world had toppled over. It felt like the world was disintegrating around me, and I couldn't do anything to stop it decaying. And every single piece of crumbling debris was crushing me in its path of destruction.

It was all so suffocating that my chest seemed as though it was shrinking so small that I couldn't even steal a breath.

When I was a little girl, I always remembered people saying that they remembered exactly where they were when they received bad news. And they'd always bring up the little bizarre details of where they were and what they were doing in anecdotes years later.

Caroline's mom, Liz, she always used to say she remembered exactly what interstate she was driving by when it came over the radio that Freddie Mercury had passed on. She even said she remembered the song she was listening to before the news was announced.

The memory of her telling Caroline and I that story was so vivid. And I always used to think, no way could someone remember such an insignificant detail years on.

But Liz was right.

Because, god, I remember every fucking detail.

I remember gripping the countertop so hard that I thought my fingers were going to snap in half. I remember the way my knees buckled, as I collapsed onto the stone cold tiles. I remember the ear piercing sounds that vibrated through the room as my wails echoed off of the walls.

I remember every single excruciating part of finding out my father was dead.

And yet, somehow, it still didn't feel real.

I didn't know how to accept that it possibly could be real.

But it was. No matter how much I wished that it wasn't, it was real.

Dr. James Walker sustained fatal injuries in a car wreck on his way to work on the 12th of January 2013.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

They told me it was instantaneous. They said he wouldn't have felt a thing. That he would have just faded away before he even knew what had happened to him. God, the woman told me that as if it was some kind of saving grace.

Like that was supposed to make me fucking feel better.

But how on earth was that going to make things even remotely better? If he hadn't died straight away - god, even if the injuries were awful, if he had just made it to the hospital, I could have saved him. I just needed him to hang on for even ten minutes and I could have saved his life.

He would have had to suffer for ten minutes, but then it would have been okay. All he would've needed was a little bit of my blood. My blood could've fixed all of this.

And I didn't even get the chance.

So, that was what I had to live with now.

My father was dead. And he was never coming back.

And I'd suffer through the rest of my life knowing that.

The whole fucking nightmare only got worse when the lady on the phone gently reminded me that they would need someone to identify the body. I was his next of kin, his only living relative, and therefore the one who had to formally confirm his death.