A World Apart

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Logan

There are five stages of grief, all of which I am well acquainted with. You would think by now I'd be accustomed to the process, able to speedrun my way through it, knowledgeable of all the shortcuts and tricks to acceptance. But it hits you different every time, and it never gets any easier. 

There's no path set in stone for grieving. You can start off in any one of the stages, jump around periodically, spend months in some and minutes in others, then revisit them later on. It surprises me though, that I haven't started this one off in denial. Usually it's the foundation that my tower of mourning is built on. The utter disbelief and complete renunciation that they are truly gone. 

Denying the truth is difficult when it's so clearly in front of you though.  And that's where she is, in front of me, lying so still on the table, color already draining from her cheeks. Stella. I can't get myself to move or even look away. The drawn out beeping of the monitor flatlining as it seeks for a heartbeat that isn't there anymore has faded from my ears. Instead, an unstable ringing has taken its place, dizziness and nausea with it. 

She's fine. She's fine. She's-

My mantra is cut short, its magic robbed of any fakee solace or comfort. She isn't fine. 

She's dead. 

Maybe I am in denial. Or a state of shock perhaps. It's difficult to tell with yourself, to pick out a single state with the myriad of emotions swelling inside. A toxic manuscript of every bad feeling imaginable that renders it unreadable. It's easier to class the stages of grief on those around me. The rest of our group has joined me at some point, and only now do I finally look at them. 

Joey is clenched tightly in the grips of denial, his display of it more clear and fierce than mine. He's shaking his head before he's even taken the whole scene in, barely even gives the AED a glance before denouncing it entirely. 

"The machine's broken," he says, more so to himself than us. "It's- we have to find another one." 

Joey keeps repeating this in various ways, that it must be faulty, that it's mistaken, that her heart can't really have stopped. I understand where he's coming from. It's his own mantra, his way of lying to himself like I do chanting 'She's fine'. And like me, his voice betrays him, tone cracking under the weight of a lie that even he doesn't believe. 

Maisie is caught in her own twisted version of bargaining. It's a surprise to me that she can even understand the situation at all, considering her indifference towards her dead brother in Vegas, convinced he was merely sleeping with his eyes wide open. But the weight of the room around her must be heavy enough for her to discern the gravity of it. 

"Can't we just wake her up?" she asks. "What if we go back and get her friend?" 

Maybe she doesn't fully understand then. It's a punch in the gut even having the suggestion posed. The thought of clarifying things to her is an unbearable one, too painful to speak it aloud and add sound to the otherwise silent reality. Speaking it will only make it more real, too real. 

Then there's Ava, who's fortunate enough to be untouched by the loss. She isn't strangled by any stage of grief, which is all right because she didn't have much chance to know Stella. I wish I could be in her position, offering a look of sympathy for the rest of us but ultimately free of the pain associated with it. 

Finally there's Gale, melancholic eyes enlarged by his spectacles, almost boastful in their show of depression. Their window of life reflecting her withdrawn presence from it, tears escaping as if attempts to add her back to it. Seeing these displays so clearly represented on each person, it only adds to the confusion of my own. What I thought was denial pales in comparison to Joey, who's now asking if this is some sick prank, an impractical joke for all the ones he usually throws.