Carpe DiEmily (A Romantic Comedy Adventure)

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The morning before her twenty-seventh birthday, Emily stared at the pills, hundreds of them lined up methodically on her kitchen table. Lenny’s kitchen table, to be exact, the one he’d let her borrow when they’d first started dating. Emily had originally loved this quaint little table with its knots and nicks and faded green paint. She’d always imagined eating dinners on it with Lenny in their new house, their kids sitting beside them. Now the table just looked like a piece of old garage-sale junk, the faded reminder of a broken relationship.

She wished Lenny had just taken it.

Last week she’d stood by the curb and watched, numb, as he’d carried the last of his things to his truck—the few items he’d slowly moved into her place over seven years of dating. She’d waited for him to go back for the table but he never had, instead turning to her with eyes that looked a little more watery and red-rimmed than usual.

“See you soon,” he’d said, giving her a long hug. “Let’s keep in touch.” And then he was gone, just like that.

She’d driven down to the pharmacy to buy some Tylenol because she felt a migraine frizzling at the periphery of her vision. In the store, she decided to buy herself a birthday card because she’d be turning twenty-seven in a week and no one else would remember. She also added a Hostess cupcake and a singing candle to her cart. While Emily waited in the checkout line, a magazine headline leapt out at her: “Man Kills Self to Donate Organs to Mother.” She stared at the glossy cover, and then an idea began to form. She was a worthless waste of space, anyway. No one would miss her. Why not give her life some meaning? Why not save someone else?

She pushed her cart back to the medicine aisle and promptly loaded it with every bottle of Tylenol the store had. She also took every bottle of Advil, Motrin, cough medicine, cold medicine, aspirin, and generic pain reliever off the shelves and added those to her cart as well. She ignored the stares of passersby as she wheeled the overfilled cart to the front. When the cashier saw what Emily was loading onto the checkout counter, she called the manager, who rushed up and asked why she needed all those pills. When she said “To kill myself on my birthday,” he shook his head, took her gently by the arm, and asked if there was someone he could call. He said he could never sell her those pills, that it wouldn’t be ethical or right, and what she needed was a friend or loved one to come pick her up. She was just depressed, he said. It would pass. His wife went through a similar type of melodrama every month during her period.

“Is there someone I can call for you?” he repeated.

She shook her head then told him she still wanted to buy her cupcake and candle. He’d sold them to her, watching as she slowly counted out the coins from her purse to make exact change, while people in line waited silently behind her. She could feel their judgment, their pity, but she didn’t care. Another clerk came and wheeled the cart of pills away, and Emily had driven home.

But she’d outsmarted them. Every day since she’d worked on her plan. She’d gone to the DMV and added an organ donor card to her driver’s license. She’d written a will and gotten it notarized. The will was a simple one-page document stating she wanted to donate her organs and be buried in a new dress. Her few worldly possessions, including her grandmother’s china, the dog-eared travel book for trips she’d never taken, her mother’s necklace, and her collection of sensible shoes, were to go to Tyler, the only friend she had left in life.

Emily had even decided to leave Tyler her small savings of five thousand dollars that was supposed to go toward a house, the house she would never live in with Lenny . . . or any husband, for that matter. Maybe Tyler could use the money for his business. Or do something fun with it. He’d know what to do with her savings. He’d enjoy it because he knew how to live. Maybe he’d take the trip she’d never gotten around to, maybe to someplace exotic like France. Emily had never even been out of California, for Christ’s sake! It had just been work, work, work for as long as she could remember.