Pieces of A Heart

blue tulips

The sense of déjà vu hit her when she crossed the bridge.

She stopped when her eyes caught sight of an ordinary lamp post on the other side of the bridge. Her eyes were drawn to the small bunch of blue tulips carefully placed at the base of the post. They seemed so fragile being placed there, she thought to herself. Like a locket of hearts left open and vulnerable, melancholy dripping from their petals.

A notification from her phone sounded off.

Calendar Alert: date with bf at 2.45am. ♥

A date with Daniel. She smiled; she was already on her way to their meeting place. It had been so long since they last met because of the accident that happened to her last time. She missed him a lot now.

But what happened during the accident remained a blur to her. It caused her to slip into a coma from which she never truly woke up. She could only remember blacking out after hitting her head very hard on a stone balustrade. And the next moment she knew, she was waking up in a white hospital room with her parents' worriedly anxious faces surrounding her. They told her that she was lucky to be alive. She thanked God too early for that.

The lead pencil in my hand strikes through the last sentence impulsively. The sheet of paper I am writing on is badly furrowed and my handwriting is almost illegible. I don't even know why I am writing this myself. Maybe because the burden on my heart is already too great for me to bear. And maybe I'm hoping that these words on my page can help me carry the weight in some way. I've never felt so heavy in my life before.

It's as if a solid metal knife has been punctured into my weak heart. There's nothing I can do but hold the knife in there and hope for the best that it will minimize the bleeding. I cannot take it out and it continues to burden me with its heaviness. So I wonder how much longer I can carry it before it slices my heart in half.

The date never happened. Her phone recorded something that was planned prior to her accident, prior to Daniel's death. The words still rang eloquently in her ears. Daniel died in her accident. But how?

Slowly, her faded memories start easing towards her. The night of the accident, before Daniel died, they had met in a drinking bar near the bridge. It was due to his job being unstable at that time, that the both of them drank more than moderately that night. Mikaela fell particularly drunk because she had not eaten anything beforehand. However, it was on their way back when the actual tragedy took place. And from her strings of memory one by one, she started to clear resolution in Daniel's death.

She remembered that when crossing the bridge, she decided to walk on the opposite pathway across Daniel. Also being as delusional as she was drunk, it was most likely she walked too close to the car's main road by mistake. A car then came from behind her and Daniel saw it.

It was coming and he saw it clear as day. So he did the only thing he could think of. He ran across the road towards Mikaela and pushed her out of the way, at once getting himself killed. The impact of his push them hulled her onto the balustrade of the bridge, knocking her conscious out right there.

She had lost memory of her boyfriend who died to save her. But she remembers now.

And it pains her to remember. It pains her so.

I crumple the sheet of paper in my hands and throw it at the wall in front of me. It's not fair. My character doesn't deserve this kind of ending. Daniel shouldn't have died. Why is it just not fair? I feel tears brimming in my eyes as I stare at a Stanley-knife in front my desk. The tears trickle down my face and drop onto the notepad in my hands, marking the blank page ever so faintly like water colour.

I quickly clean myself up with tissues. Then tugging on my coat, I leave the house quietly without telling my mum. As I step outside, the cold wind blows at my black hair and chills the wet skin on my cheeks. I enter a florist nearby my home.

"Hello, dear, what can I do for you?" the counter lady greets me cheerfully.

"Hi, I'm wondering if you sell tulips here? And blue ones at that," I say to her.

"Yep, we have some right here. How many would you like?" she asks.

"Umm... five will do, thank you," I reply.

I pay for the flowers and reach out take them from her hands. At the same time, my sleeves roll themselves back and reveal the pale skin on my wrist, marked shamefully with a dozen red thrashes. The lady tries not to stare at them as I quickly move my sleeves back.

"Thanks," I say, leaving the florist hastily and making my way towards the bridge.

Reaching the lamp post, I stoop down to replace the blue tulips there. I carefully rearrange them, thinking back to time when I had just found out about his death; the time when I had suffered more emotionally than my sane physical senses. I promised him won't do it again.

"Daniel, let me tell you something," I say to the tulips, "The marks on my wrist aren't there because I hate you for what you've done. You saved my life and I will always be grateful for that. But at times when I fear that I can't take on this burden anymore, and it feels like life is most unfair thing in the world, I think back to how you always used to tell me: what we see is reality, what we remember is an illusion."

A smile escapes me, "So I figured you probably got this from some nerdy quotes website, but you know it really helps me understand the situation I am in. I don't need be haunted by my flashbacks because they are all in the past, an illusion. The life I live right now is the reality that you have given me. And I thank you for that. Thank you for always being there for me, even until your very last moment." I pause.

"And know that I love you forever," I whisper.

She remembered his favourite flowers were blue tulips.

A/N: So how's my story? Please comment, vote and share if you liked it :) Suggestions on how to improve will be appreciated!