Love in Limbo

Chapter Seventeen

The previous two days have been a blur. My Mom has taken up residence in the chair beside my bed, she stares at me periodically and asks if I'm okay, but how do I explain that I'm not okay, and that my heart has been ripped from beneath my ribs and shredded into a zillion pieces.

I spend all day trying to recover every second of the day of the accident. I want to remember Kelsey's laugh, and the warmth of Jess's hugs, deep and committed to showing you she cared, that she was fiercely loyal to those she loved, sometimes to a detriment to her own self and happiness. I no longer had tears to shed, they had dried up and I had returned to a state of numbness, and almost avoidance of their death. I only wanted to remember them as if they were in the next room, or as if they had gone to college in my absence, as planned, and were living a life of their own. A life that would sometimes lead them home to me, to us, on holidays and important moments in our lives like our weddings and our children's births. Jess was with Beau, in New York, as planned, Kelsey was in California, as planned, and I was here, unplanned, but ready to live again. In a few months it was the summer, and they would no doubt return. Wouldn't they? If I didn't hold out hope that this was all a bad dream, and that they were returning then I knew the alternative was that I couldn't live myself. Knowing that, and accepting that right now...I wasn't strong enough to survive it. I couldn't live in a world where they no longer existed...where they didn't survive, but that I somehow, did.

"Hi" came a voice from the doorway. My Mom stood to greet the guest. I couldn't place her voice.

"Hi...how are you" my Mom replied

I turned in the bed to find her reaching the door, and sticking out her hand. She shook the mysterious visitors hand, and assisted her inside. I turned myself entirely and sat up in the bed. My Mom smiled at me, as she entered the room with a frail old lady attached to her arm, and slowly walked her to the chair beside the door.

"Will you let me get you a wheelchair" my Mom asked.

"Don't worry..." the lady returned, taking frequent breaths "my granddaughter is due in about five minutes, and she will be frantically searching for me with a wheelchair in hand. Most probably cursing the year I was born" she began to cough as she laughed at herself.

I watched her curiously as she righted herself in the chair, slumping slightly as if she didn't have the strength to sit up straight. She had an oxygen tank that rolled along behind her and was now sat at her side like a dutiful pet dog at her feet. She found my eyes on her and her lips curled into a large and broad smile that swamped her small features and lifted her wrinkled cheeks.

"It's so good to see you Cassie" She said eventually, through breathless little gasps from her physical exertion. My Mom sat down in the chair beside my bed and looked confused. She straightened out her shirt and pulled her lilac cashmere cardigan gently over her shoulders to her neck as if she felt a chill.

"How do you know our Cassidy" she asked.

The lady turned her attention to my Mom, her smile softening and her cheeks untightening, letting the wrinkles fall naturally back to her chin. She didn't appear that old in comparison to others in the facility, but she had obviously lost a lot of weight and the elasticity in her skin with it.

"I'm sorry to come by like this. I know you won't recognise me Cassidy, and I know I am a strange face to you..." she says, gesturing with her hands at herself "I met you whilst you have been here" she confirmed. My Mom nodded in response. The lady continued "I have visited with you and wished you well on your journey back to your family. I have been a cheerleader of sorts I guess"

My brow furrows as I take in the information. "You visited me" I ask. "That's so...so kind" I add with a smile.

"Oh it was nothing...not as if I have anywhere to be or a social calendar to observe. I felt you needed the company" she says whilst readjusting the oxygen under her nose.