For Emma

Chapter 16

Numb; that's how I felt, or didn't feel. White walls were illuminated by buzzing lights. My legs tingle and don't move at the right time; waiting a moment letting me struggle before slowly giving in. A feeling of a sheet of ice blanketing me makes me cringe. I open my eyes again. Light. Everything's so bright, so white it's blinding. So bright I almost miss the dark figure slumped into the small brown sofa, sound asleep. Oh.

Just then a tall man approaches, smiling like we know each other.

"Okay, good you're up. Now..." he moves around my bed checking my wrist, but my heads too much in a blur to keep up with what he's doing. "All your vitals are good we'll keep an eye on you and maybe in a few hours you can go home. Now, you suffered minor hypothermia, but you're doing better. Make sure to thank your friend over there-once he wakes up-for bringing you, could have been worse."

I'm so confused that I find myself starring at Jeff while the doctor finishes his thought, I nod at him, and he disappears.

I was running. That's all I remember. My memory brings me nothing but flashes of cold, of my breath catching as my feet move one after the other, of blood, blood dripping from my leg; forming flaws in the blanket of snow. But mostly my memory confronts me with the clear image of Samantha's cross streaked in blood-my blood.

"Emma," Jeff. His mouth forms four letters instead of five. The name that defines my past and for him distance. E-M-M-A. "Thank god, you're alive."

I don't know why, but this makes me cry. Lately that's all I do. I cry, and I cry, and I cry.

"Emma, what were you thinking?" now he's crying and now I'm officially contagious, "What were you trying to do?"

He puts a shaky hand on my forehead then moves it through the tangles in my hair, "do you-did you-want to die?" He doesn't mean it; he can't mean it but that last part comes out filled with anger.

He shakes his head disappointment flaring through him, and I lie trapped in my numb body, and say nothing. I just cry, and I cry, and I cry. And I'm pist. Pist at my mom for not talking about the other night, pist at every other family member I have for not calling, pist at Evan for being right, pist at Evan for kissing me, pist at myself for kissing him back, pist at Jeff for talking to me like a rotten child, pist at Sam for dying, pist at the grim reaper for standing in the middle of the road that night and pointing his ax at Sam's windshield; deciding her fate in the rain.

"Well? Is that it? Do you just want to die, Emily?" There he said it. Emily. That is my name. Not Em, not Emma, Emily. I'm still something to him, even though he found me dying on the side of the road.

"No! No-I don't know!" Now I'm sobbing and it hurts my chest so bad I can't stop. He turns around sharply his brown eye watering and wide in shock, "I don't know anything anymore! Okay? I'm sorry."

I blink and find myself wrapped tightly in Jeff's arms. His tears soaking up the ugly hospital gown and mine are drenching his light blue polo. "No, it's okay. It's okay Emily, let's just get you home. Okay?" He smiles at me in a way that feels like an open door overflowing with light. It feels like he's offering me a place for my sadness, so I don't have to carry it around all the time. It is relief.

* * *

As I hear Jeff's car peel away from my driveway I wait. Not for the door to open. No. but for Sam's ghost to tap my shoulder and whisper, go on. What are you waiting for? Life is waiting on us Em; we are going to conquer the world. But it doesn't come. Her voice doesn't fill my feeble ears; her ghostly hands aren't pushing my broken body towards the door, so I do it. I push the door open and remove my shoes. But keep my coat on. At the kitchen table sits the devil, across from her sits the devil's daughter.