Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

36

36
I had been putting my clothes away in a box for the lack of a better alternative escape from myself.
My decision to move out had presumably reached my father and I had expected some resentment.

So far, nothing.

I sigh as I fold the last t-shirt in, a strange sense of conclusion engulfing me.

Why did I think he would be affected?
Is it the last fleeting wisp of hope for us? Am I silently afraid to leave, afraid to go back on my word?

I let the doubt go unanswered.

I grab Ted and empty him over the floor, letting the contents spill onto the carpet with a soft thud. Crumpled up cheap motel tissues, snacks wrappers, a pack of half-eaten chewing gums and in between all that, the brown leather journal, its pages flying open.
I still remember the soft smile on my grandmother's face when she nudged it towards me on my eleventh birthday.

"Words are important, Lynnie. Stories are irreplaceable, it doesn't matter whose." She had said as I accepted the gift with a pout.

Lynnie. She refused to call me Brook like everybody else. 

I hated that name.

I wonder for a moment if I should call her.

I force myself to flip through the pages of my own story like a convict forced to recall his crimes when a different hand barely scribbled onto a bottom corner catches my eye.

You are beautiful. You got this. :)

The familiar giddy optimism. The pretend happiness.

When did she get to write this? Is it before I walked out on her, abandoning her to the bleakness of her own company?

Did that push her into the hands of her undoing?

She had already told me I was not enough, could I have been anything otherwise?

Now that she is sick, will her mother come? Will she finally care for the wreckage she caused and callously left behind?

Had Mr. Collins even told her?

I stand up and pace around the room, fingertips fiddling with that darn corner of the yellow paper.
I want to protect it because I couldn't protect her. I want to hide it away until I'm ready to read those letters and grasp their truth.
I want to rip it off and stuff it down the toilet drain.

I only make it as far as the table before grabbing a pen from the stand and pulling its cap off with my teeth.
I put the pen to paper, the coarseness of the paper startling me.
Had it really been that long?

I grip the pen tighter between my fingers.
Maybe it will help.
Maybe if I write it I will believe it.
No one can lie on paper, right?

I drag my hand across the page, my palm stinging from the friction.

I am not scared. I am well. 

Things will pass.

I look at the pathetic handwriting and the even more sickening words and scratch it out.
I scratch it until the page rips into the next one.
A rage had seized me by then. I was going to put something on that paper.
I try again.

One of these days, she is going to rip me off like a child plucking petals off a flower.
And where do petals go?
No one knows. No one asks.

Madness takes hold of me.
I need to see her. I need to tell her something even though she may not hear it.
I run out of my room and down the stairs when the heavy baritone tears through the silence.

"Where are you going?"

My father, whom I hadn't encountered in days now, swaggers out of his office. The door was left open this time.

I was in no mood to lie. "To the hospital."

"Return to your room."
"Why?" The hysteria in me slowly begins to trickle out.
"As long as you are under my roof, you will do as I say."
There is a ferocity about him today. He smells of his whiskey.
I laugh and reach for the door. "It's a little too late for that, Father."
"You step out through that door and you will never set foot in again!"

His shout echoes through the night.
A curtain drops in between us again.
My mother peers down at us from the balcony, her slipper slapping against the floor informing us of her presence.

"Go, Brooklyn," Mom says. She must have heard the commotion and stepped out to see. The conviction in her voice sends warmth rushing through me.
"Go and see her. If that is what you want."

"Nancy." My father speaks through gritted teeth.

"He has someone he cares about, something he owes his loyalty to." She snaps at him.
"This is my house." He presses his lips into a thin line.
"That is my son. And if he goes, I go."

I run out before the floor can slip from underneath my feet.

*

This is the busiest I have experienced her floor ever be.
The air of normalcy is underwhelming, almost reassuring like someone explaining with a hand on my shoulder, 'People get sick, they come to the hospital to get well and then return back to their lives'.
Nothing could have prepared me for what was coming next.

Her door was left ajar, a sharp smell of lemony floor cleaner burning into my nostrils. The bedding was stripped down to the mattress and no sign of her.
Her personal belongings have been removed from the stand beside her, even the glass to drink water from, the flowers I had taken to her and a picture her father set down, as she had never been there in the first place.

"Where is she?"

I stride into the room in a rush of adrenaline. An orderly standing by her bed with a mop in his hand looks up at me and shouts, "You can't step in here!"

That is when my eyes fall to the floor and I see the ocean of reddish-brown blood slathered onto the cold white tiles. I look down at my feet and stagger back, my shoes leaving red imprints along the way.

"What did you do to her!"
"You are not allowed to be in here!"
"Where is the girl!" I grab him by his collar, suddenly overtaken by fear-driven fury and pin him against the door.
"Call security!"
"Where is she!"
"She is in Emergency-"

Pairs of hands rip me away from him.
"Let go of me!" I shout, trying to squirm out and scream in frustration as I fail.

They drag me away from the room and I follow my bloody impressions getting fainter and fainter with every step away.