That void followed her into the next day. She went to the hospital with Keisha and laughed, smiled and joked. Yet the void remained. It just seemed to sit in her chest. They went to the clinic to look for a bandage for Lucy to wrap up her leg since it still hurt. She wondered if she really had fractured it. She walked in and immediately started looking for it. She swung her hand to hold the back of her head in frustration and held it there as she continued looking.
"What you looking for, doc?" she heard from behind her. She whirled and felt that void come up to her eyes. She knew this doctor. He was very friendly but she had never actually spoken to him before. When Lucy met his eyes, he looked a little unnerved. Before Lucy said anything, Keisha told him that they were looking for a bandage. He pointed to the cabinet and Lucy felt...numb.
That was the only way to describe it as she went to the cabinet where another doctor came to help them look and she spotted the bag with it on a desk behind them. They got the bandage and left. The leg seemed to hurt more and more as she walked on it.
When she finally got back to hall, she began to wrap up her leg and realized that the pain seemed to have spread further down her leg. God, she hoped it was not broken. Fractures healed on their own. It was when they were severe that the doctors were supposed to bring them back to their anatomical position and stabilize them as much as they could. And still, they needed to heal on their own. So Lucy did not see the point of going over there and getting an x-ray to just show her what she suspected. Worse case scenario was that she needed surgery. Second to worse was if she needed a cast. She had no pants that could be hiked up past her knee and owned no skirts. Even an examination would be near impossible, let alone putting a cast. So she figured the least expensive and probably most effective way for her would be to just bind it and stay off of it as much as she could.
She woke up at three in the morning. She woke up to pain in her leg and pain in her chest. Tears were running down her face. She wanted someone to hold her. Someone to warm her back and a chest to bury her face in. She found that ridiculous because she did not know what it was like to have anyone else in her bed. So why now? Where were these feelings coming from? How could she miss something she never had? It did not stop the tears from dampening her face and clogging her nose with snot. When would the ice in her chest thaw? When would the void be filled and she could stop feeling this emptiness inside her?
She prayed: "Father, I don't know how to stop feeling this lonely, but I won't go opening my legs for the men who call me pretty. I'm not stupid enough to do that. I want you to send me the man you have for me. I will wait for him. I will not make those stupid decisions that will temporarily stop me from feeling lonely, only to make me feel lonelier afterward". It felt more like a declaration than a prayer.
She did not know if the pricking pain in her leg was worse than the one in her chest, but the more she cried, the more her chest ached. Eventually she rolled over and went to sleep with her tear stained face.
And dreamt. He was a handsome young man named Diego. She put a hand on his chest and felt very shy. She was about to turn away when he held her hand. She looked at her hand, held in his, still on his chest, then looked up to his eyes. His lips. Then he kissed her. Slowly, so slowly as she brought her hand to her hair and scratched. In the dream, she felt his want or need harden his kiss and he pushed her gently into the wall. She felt heat scorch through her as he pressed fully against her. She knew there was more to the dream but that was all she remembered. All her brain cared to hold on to.
When she woke up at ten that morning, the pain in her chest was gone, the hole was still there, but felt like it had been filled partially. It was not that wide anymore. Nevertheless, she rolled out of bed, looked at the sky out of her window and prayed:
"Father, I've never felt this lonely before. Please send the husband that you have for me when the time is right. Please mold me into the wife you want me to be for him. I know this loneliness is necessary for my spiritual journey and enlightenment with you. I still have so much to understand and I know this loneliness is needed for me to get it"
She pressed a hand to her chest as more tears flowed up from her heart and into her eyes. She said between sobs:
"It is just hard...it's just so hard...this loneliness. Especially when I know he is out there. Somewhere. When I want him to be with me. But I know that if the time is not right it would make things even more difficult for us. Please just keep him safe, Father. Give him the strength and I hope he does not feel as lonely as I do"
She opened her Bible and continued from where she was in the book of Proverbs:
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth up the bones"
"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit, who can bear?"
The world stopped. Isn't this what she experienced at three o'clock this morning? The pain in her chest being more unbearable than the one in her leg. Her spirit would be able to handle her leg pain. But what about the spirit itself being wounded?
She continued reading and put some ragi to cook. She watched videos on how to cook the ragi and decided she would take some back home with her so she would make it for the priests when they came over to her family's house. Her Dad already told her they would invite the priests so that was how she knew. She did not know when...but the void was gone. It was not as if it were filled, but it was gone! The wound, or the hole or the space that was in her chest was gone and she felt...whole! She did not know when it happened.
So that was how a wounded spirit felt...like a large, gaping, open hole in your chest that left you feeling cold and empty. Joyless. Lifeless. It was an unseen wound that seemed to grow the longer it stayed. And God was the only one who could heal it.
