I'll Be Holding on to You

we didn't know

The night before the anniversary, I couldn't sleep. I finally drifted off around three. Then I woke up at six and knew in that instant what day it was.

Memories from two years before flooded me.

(Two years earlier)

I woke up early that day, and immediately known it was the dreaded anniversary of our assault. I looked for Hadley but her spot next to Cam was empty.

Not disturbing anyone else, I dragged my leaded body to the back door but she wasn't smoking. She wasn't in the kitchen, or Cam's bed, or my bed. That left crying in the bathroom. I sighed, my heart already super heavy.

"Had?" I tapped softly on the door and then turned the handle. "You alive in here?"

My weak joke turned twisted with no warning, because she was not. Her body was in the dry bathtub, clothed in her Spongebob jammies, ashy purpley gray, staring past me with lifeless doll's eyes.

My mind tried to shy away, like thinking about what's outside the universe. "Oh, bb," I said, stunned. Disbelieving.  I dropped to my knees, my hands hovering, not sure where to touch, what I was supposed to do. Her hair lay everywhere, the only thing about her the same. "But, but you didn't have to do this. We could have gotten through this." I held her hands in mine and they were cool, limber, her nails pale ovals I had manicured only the day before. Dead. Not for long.

But for too long.

The track from the shower door cut into my stomach. "I didn't know," I tried to tell her, unspeakable horror rising in me, drowning me as I held her hands to my warm cheek, to my lips. As if I could share my life with her. "We didn't know." She had to know that.

I imagined her lying here in the cold tub, not wanting to ruin Cam's room or bed forever for us, waiting to die, alone. My heart was screaming.

I heard the door and tried to stand and block Cameron but he saw, and then in his eyes I saw his mind snap.

"NO!" he roared, pushing past me so fast I fell back between the toilet and the cupboard, striking my head on the corner of the counter. "No, no, Haddy, no, you can't," he moaned, climbing into the bathtub with her, trying to lift her and her head just lolled back, hitting the porcelain with a thud, and he clasped a wax figure. A lifeless form. "No you can't do this without me, you can't do this, YOU CAN'T DO THIS WITHOUT ME," he screamed finally because he knew, holding her body to his chest he knew. She already had. "Please not this! Please, Haddy! I didn't know! PLEASE, baby!" He lost words and was just shrieking like a creature afire, clutching her to his chest, her hair tangling around them both.

The empty prescription bottle lay on its side on the rim next to the wall, an equally empty bottle of water on the green rug.

I thought of her saying how does he even know where you live and my flippant who cares?

I thought of how she couldn't even make her favorite drink, hot chocolate, one last time to wash the pills down with because it might have woken one of us up and interrupted her final plans.

I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and then our mom was there, horrified, her hand over her mouth before she did what she had to. Her eyes rested briefly on me but she went to him and wrapped her arms around him, around both of them, around Cameron and the empty shell that had been Hadley, that was all we were left with, because he wouldn't let go and he wouldn't stop screaming and then everyone else was there and my dad was handing my mom a syringe and she injected Cam in his arm and he stopped screaming but I couldn't.