Dead Lines

34: Grief, Definition of Real

Unedited.

Chapter Thirty-Four 

Some were calling them prophetai. Others were saying hosioi. A few other words in languages I didn’t know were also being tossed around but for the most part, I wasn’t listening. I wouldn’t understand it even if I did. There was so much talk going on around me and all I could see were the three sheet-covered forms in front of me. Everything else was drowned out by grief.

Not many people know what grief sounds like. Some think it’s just an emotion. It’s not supposed to have a noise but for someone like me—someone who has had Death visit on more than one occasion—it’s a full body experience. Grief takes over everything, consumes you so completely that it has a sound. It has a feel. It has a sight and a touch and a taste. Grief commandeers all of the five senses and doesn’t let you go until it’s ready. It’s gray, it’s dull, and it has the flavor of ash.

For me, the sound is high pitched and it cancels out all but my heartbeat and my breath. That is, if I had the ability to breathe which I was finding increasingly difficult just then. I’d barely survived the times before and now—it was too much.

It was a vicious cycle I couldn’t escape and I desperately wanted out.

I stood up abruptly, dropped whoever’s hand I’d been clutching, and walked briskly toward the exit. Someone called out to me, saying one of the many names I’d acquired since becoming Elite.

I didn’t respond.

I just left.

It didn’t get any better.

I made it a dozen steps away from the Agora’s infirmary before I collapsed. The world was spinning so fast beneath my feet, I couldn’t hold myself upright anymore. Like a piece of tissue, I crumpled and fell. Someone must’ve caught me because I didn’t feel the impact I thought I would.

“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

It felt like I was having an asthma attack. My lungs were wheezing, my airways were contracting, panic…

I was swung up into a pair of strong, firm arms and taken—somewhere else. It didn’t occur to me to care where or who was taking me, it only mattered that I was going away. The world swam around me and then darkened.

And I was ok with it.

Sometime later the high-pitched humming dulled down and then stopped.

I don’t know how much time passed but when I came to, I was lying down on something entirely too comfortable for its own good. One by one, my senses came back online and recognition of where I was sank in. The smell was wonderfully familiar as was the feel of the pillow beneath my cheek.

It was my pillow. I was lying on my bed in my own house.

A back of a hand was pressed to my forehead and then my cheek. I opened my eyes and my father’s face blurred into view. There were worry lines on his forehead I hadn’t seen before but they began to smooth out when he saw my eyes open and focus.

He brushed the back of his fingers against my temple and remained silent, letting the full scope of everything sink in before he even tried to utter a word.

“Daddy.”

He sat forward in his chair and squeezed one of my hands I didn’t know he was holding. “Sweetheart.”

I pulled in a deep breath. “What happened?”

The worry lines were back. “Ah, well, I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll figure it out. Ran a bit of a fever too but it’s gone now. Thank goodness.”