Room For More

Chapter One

I edited the chapter. Please do read again.

About Two Years Ago
I was back home. It had taken me a journey of over two thousand miles by air and ten years by time to make it back to where I was presently standing. Not that I had been MIA from the US for that long but I had been from the home I grew up in.
I was back in Philly and most especially I was in back in Ted and Josie's place - my home for about six years of my life.
Nothing much had changed about the small but beautiful house. The butter cream color that covered the outer walls as I'd known it many years ago was still there only that it had faded in different places over the years, giving the building a washed down white surface. It was something Teddy wouldn't remember to recoat. He was perfect at everything else except putting things in their right colors - since that would be hard for a man tagged color blind to do.
Suddenly feeling cold standing by the drive-in of the house, I wondered if the weather was a bit too much to stay in for me. Though it was late spring in America, the weather was still a far cry from what attained where I was coming from. But I knew the goose bumps up my body had come from the fear of what lied ahead rather than the beautiful cool weather I was standing in.
"So that will be a total of 12 bucks. Still planning to pay me missy?" I jumped at the voice of the person behind me. I looked back and saw the smiling face of the man who'd driven me down home from the airport. I'd totally zoned out and had forgotten he was still with me.
"I'm very sorry sir. I wasn't thinking..."
"It's alright. It does happen to the best of us." The man said affectionately.
"How much did you say that was?"
"Twelve bucks."
I dipped my hand in my coat and brought out a twenty. "Here, keep the change. Thanks for your service."
"You're most welcome. Wishing you a lovely stay."
I watched the man drive off until he was out of view before turning back to face my imminent future. If only I could have a lovely stay as the lovely driver had wished. But I could almost perfectly predict how my stay would be. Then, I knew I had little to no choice.
The first time I came to live with Ted and Josie, something bad had happened. I was back as a fully grown woman but not on good terms. I wished things could change but we never could write out our destiny the way we want.

1999

I was floating in an endless dark space. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t touch anything. Neither could I move any part of me. There was nothing  working on me except for my brain, bringing into my knowledge the state at which I was.
I was in a frozen state. My body screamed for warmth but all that zinged in me was nothing but harsh cold. I wondered if frozen foods always were like this – lonely and cold waiting for the next customer to pick them up at the grocery shop.
But I wasn’t a frozen food. I belonged somewhere already. I belonged with both mom and dad. I knew I would always have them with me. But where were they now? They probably were in their room and mom forgot to put on the heater in my room. It was a good enough explanation  to explain my  almost literally frozen state but not to explain why it felt like I was hanging in the air, defying all laws of gravity.
Click!
There was a sound. It sounded so far away but I heard it.
Then there was a humming sound like the bees. It seemed there were more than a bee where I was. Their sounds blended into each other forming a harmony of sounds. Concentrating on the sound, I heard a bee hovering over my head. Its sound becoming less of a hum and more of a growl. A grizzly bear is it?
Then I saw a light. A single dotted white light shining into my eye, and thawing away all the frozenness.
Then I saw and I heard and I knew.
It wasn’t a bee or a grizzly bear hovering above me and poking into my eye. It was a man in a white jacket.
“I believe she’s coming out of her unconscious state.” The man above me stated. I squinted my eyes to get a better look at the former grizzly bear who’d come to my rescue. But I found it difficult to open my eyes the rest of the way. My head hurt badly like a blade was hanging out from it – not that I knew the feeling but I could imagine. I put my hand to my head to feel for the presence of any blade but there was none but I felt a piece of clothing wrapped around my head. Seeing my reaction, the man in the white jacket took my hand away from my head and held it in his, warmly.
“Hello Erin. If you can hear me try squeezing my hand.”
I squeezed in soft big hands as hard as I could.
“Good. It’s been a rough night for you I must say but it’s good you’re recovering. Better than we thought I must say.”
“Wh-where am I?” I croaked out with my voice barely hearable.
“You’re in the hospital dear.”
I forced my eyes to open further to see the man clearly. I thought he looked a little bit like that but the sprinkle of grey hair at his temple marked out the difference. “So you’re a doctor.” I said, weighing it out as more of a statement than a question.
“Dr. Evans at your beck and call.” He smiled down at me while he examined my chest with his stethoscope.
“Why am I in the hospital Dr. Evans?”
“You were in an accident. You were brought here for treatment.”
Accident?
“I don’t remember that. I was with my mom and dad. We went for the Christmas Carol at school. And I played the Water Music by Handel on my viola. It was really good so mom and dad took me out for a treat. That’s all I remembered.”
“I believe your sister and her husband will fill you in more on all that has happened between that time and now.”
My eyes shifted away from the sad look that had come to rest on the kind doctor’s face to the space far away from him, closer to the entrance where Josie and Teddy were standing and holding on to each other. I hadn’t even known they were in the room. As the doctor left the room, they moved closer to the bed, stopping at the foot of the bed. Josie reached over and shook my foot lightly and attempted at smiling at me but suddenly burst into tears, shaking so much it scared me.
“I’m so s-s-sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Her cries became louder as she buckled at my feet. Teddy who stood silently by her, rubbed down on her back, consoling her while he looked like he needed comfort too. I wasn’t very close to my sister and her husband. Our wide age gap had naturally put a barrier in our relationship as sisters. She was 15 when I was born and when I was just a toddling three year old she’d gone away to college and had from there moved out of the house. She’d married Teddy at 24 when I was in the 5th grade. Our paths were like two parallel lines with no hope of ever meeting. If at a point in our lives, we’d been close, it must have been when I was still in a diaper and she’d babysat me but I did not have many recollection of those days.
Despite our unfamiliarity with one another, I was sad to see my sister in such a state of pure agony and having no knowledge of what to do to soothe her ache.
“What’s wrong Josie?” I asked her but my eyes were on Teddy who was also looking at me with eyes clouded with regrets and pain.
He cleared his throat and he said, “Erin, it’s mom and dad.”
Teddy had started calling my parents mom and dad after their news of engagement. Mom had insisted since Teddy didn’t have any family. I didn’t really know his story but mom had taken to Teddy quickly when Josie had first brought him home. There’d been not much awkwardness in the first meeting. He’d discussed the love of books, old literature, with mom – she was a high school English teacher. Mom had been surprised to find someone who appreciated the classics as much as she did. And with dad, they’d found a balance engagement in the discussion of cars, especially old cars that never to be seen on roads again. Teddy was an auto mechanic and in his past time, fixes cars and motorbikes from the scratch. They called him the automobile surgeon according to Josie. And before him and Josie left that day, he’d helped repair the lawnmower dad had been thinking of replacing and had given mom a personal review of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome and mom had declared him, “The son after my own heart” after they’d left.
Hearing him mention mom and dad, knowing he wasn’t talking about his nonexistent parents and with the shaded look on him got me instantly worried. I hadn’t seen mom and dad when I first woke up. I’d expected they’d be sitting beside me and not my sister and Teddy. I suddenly realized that this slow-coming revelation could only mean that something must have happened to them. Something very bad, enough for Josie to wail at my feet, already soaking the blanket covering them in tears and for Teddy to look like he was in severe anguish.
The only thing my head accepted in thoughts was that they were dead. If they were still alive, I figured someone would have told me about it. Even the doctor would have mentioned it even if the accident had been life in the balance severe. I believed he would have rushed quickly through their present status wanting to get the part that would bring hope, even if it was just a fading star amongst the dark clouds kind of hope. A hope you can’t fully bank on but still hope enough to lean on. That they were alive, hooked up to life supporting machines but were alive. But I knew I wouldn’t hear that word alive from either the doctor or Teddy, who looked like he was thinking about the best way to break the terrible news to me. I wondered if there really was a list of suitable ways to break the news about someone’s death.
I decided to let Teddy of the heavy burden. “They’re dead.” It wasn’t a question, neither was it a statement to appear like a question. It was a cold, solemn declaration that came out of from a part within me that still remained frozen even after being out of my unconsciousness. I knew it sounded as though I was the one with first hand information, delivering the bad news to them. My sister’s loud wail suddenly clipped short. She raised up her head and looked at me through red tear stained eyes. Teddy’s arm was still wrapped around her.
Josie climbed up close to me on the bed, and with her gloved hands on my cheek, she said amidst fresh tears again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Erin. It shouldn’t be but it is.” She took me in her arms and cried more. She had a strong hold on me while I laid there on the bed, limp and weak like a dead weight, finding it very surprising that I wasn’t crying like Josie and not knowing what to do or say to her. It was as though she was demanding comfort and strength from me to live through the coming days. It was easy to forget at that moment who the adult was between us. I was 12 and I’d just lost the two dearest and closest people to me in the world. She was 27 and had a husband to go to who could still comfort her and love her and give her enough strength to carry on. I wondered what my options were.
Then Teddy who’d been quiet most of the time began to talk in a very calm and collected way as though nothing big had happened, and he was only just announcing what the weatherman had said about tomorrow’s weather.
“Of course, you’d come live with Josie and I. After the doctors have cleared you, of course. I know it’s what mom and dad would want and we’re the only family you’ve got. Everything would be okay. We’d….”
My senses strayed away from Teddy, his look, his voice and most especially his words. Contrary to what he might believe that everything would be okay, I knew nothing would ever be okay in my world again without mom and dad in it.