CHAPTER 1
“I am really sorry, Esther. Please don’t be like this.” My mom said in a soothing voice as she rubbed my back. I reached to my bedside table to grab another piece of tissue to blow my reddened nose and to dry my bloodshot eyes. Truth is, I never wanted to be like this. I had to learn to accept my fate, don’t I?
Emotions are a big part of me, wormed into every trivial detail in my life. When such a big event like this happens, especially so extemporaneously, how can I keep my emotions in check? My heart felt like a horrid war scene with pandemonium ripping families apart. When families are ripped apart, what comes after? The classic salty streams which stains your already dirt caked face.
How can I not sound cynical? Nothing seems to align anymore. Esther, please eat something. Esther, drink more water. Esther, please get some rest, your eye bags are so deep. Esther, please…
The number of times which I have heard this phrase: Esther, please… has spiralled into a number which I have been too ashamed to face anymore. Fitting into the cliché angst-filled teenager, the tears which stream down my face were a fugacious sign of my “depression” towards this fateful event which wrecked his life and has put mine in a room with a ticking time bomb.
I was truly afraid that some of the strings in charge of maintaining my sanity would snap, and before I know it, I would be a bellicose banshee on the loose. The thought of that part of me being so close to reality made me cringe and sent a shiver down my damaged spine.
Looking towards the countless machines I was hooked onto, and seeing the white bandages which covers my bruised skin, I felt worthless. Was I a baneful wall which he was bound to crash into, blinded and full speed? I had no direction to run away from. Was I bound to be a solitude wall which would crumble under that stormy night where the wrath of him would haunt me with a reluctant vengeance? I had no idea, and I do not want to conjure anything.
I wanted to blame my naïveté for betraying me. Ignorance was indeed bliss. The fierce hatred coated words pierced into my already porous heart with a strength incomprehensible to my existing jejune scriptures of an ideal relationship. His mother’s despise to me was apparent every time I stepped foot into his house, but I tried to push that feeling away, and focus on him, and him alone.
I wanted to blame the novels which I have read for misleading me. The surrealism and fiction which obscured my view made the cuts so much deeper, and made everything hurt so much more. Every second in the pristine hospital room I tried to tear down all the images I have collected in my mind and incinerate them, make them disappear without leaving anything but a few pieces of miserable ash.
CHAPTER 2
“Esther, you would be discharged tomorrow!” I grunted as a lacklustre sign of acknowledgment. The overwhelming aura of positivity and brightness which my mother could blind me physically and mentally, if I hadn’t already been. Internally laughing at the vile thoughts circulating in my mind at such a vicious speed was dizzying.
I have not even gotten a chance to visit the columbarium, a tornado of immense grief always permeating the stale, dusty air. Sometimes, it was intoxicating. Others, it just made you feel light-headed. I never wanted to go there unless I was forced to by my mother. But this time, it was an exception.
I complained to my mom querulously to allow me to stop by the columbarium, but she insisted that was not stable enough both mentally and physically. Sulking like a petulant toddler, I lay down in my hospital bed and forced my eyes shut, dragging the prospect of sleep forcefully towards me.
Before I fell into the real pit of slumber, I could hear my mother sighing in resignation before standing up to leave the room. Letting the thoughts I had today rerun in my mind with deadly accuracy, I continued counting sheep, counting breaths, all in desperate effort to fall asleep.
Esther! I felt his hand on me as everything before me blurred. I heard the tires screeching, followed by my own strangled voice screeching as well. His strong muscled arm was across my chest as the road ahead was no longer a road, but an ominous horror movie scene, with the eerie silhouettes of tall trees closing up on us and vanishing in the next second. His hand never left me, despite using his other hand to try to get the large piece of sophisticated metal to function like it was supposed to.
The chaos before my eyes grinded to an abrupt halt. The pulsating pain was unbearable as it spread to every single part of my body, which felt cold and damp. Just as I was making sense of what has just happened, I realised that his arm was no longer on my chest, but has now landed on my laps and is now resting limply, lifelessly on it.
Too scared to move, I closed my eyes and just distracted myself with anything that came to mind. But in the midst of panic and anxiety, one word kept ringing in my ear: death.
What was the point of spending the large sums just to be able to half nurse me back to health? I was paralysed waist down, and living life itself would be a burden which may become too heavy for me to bear. I had to wheel myself everywhere I go…
The temptation which bubbled within me grew stronger and stronger. Soon enough, I could feel my limbs (only the upper ones of course) starting to be jittery. Hazed with a new type of insanity, I could feel this wave of euphoria being the catalyst for something I may regret.
One of the strings finally succumbed under the immense pressure of the layers of emotions which I pile on top of it and snapped. I grabbed all the tubes connecting to my body and ripped them out one by one, counting them as I go.
Each tube which I rip off makes my smile grow wider. This is the only way out after all. This is the one and only way to allow me to see his face again, the one which I have fallen in love with just shy of three years ago. Simultaneously, I felt a foreign wetness on my cheeks. It must be those salty streams again. Maybe these are tears of joy instead.
When the last of the tubes are pulled out and I feel my body weakening, I laughed triumphantly, and felt even happier when only a wheeze managed to escape my cracked lips.
CHAPTER 3
*Esther’s mother’s POV*
I thought she was really recovering. When I heard the news this morning, my heart shattered into smithereens. Maybe this was what she wanted after all, to be with her one and only. It felt only right to have her placed beside him in the columbarium, as a final sign of respect to her poor broken soul.
After a tear-filled five days of her wake, the day of cremation finally arrived. The strangled feeling and the lump in my throat lingered the whole day. The heavy silence which settled upon those who attended her cremation suffocated me beyond means, jerking any remaining tears out of my bloodshot eyes.
In the mid of the day, under the shelter of the building which protected us from the sweltering heat, we saw two young teenagers rest in their final resting place forever.
