by Lori L. Otto
I remember the morning after... when he confirmed that we were okay... that we were lucky.
“I’m sorry,” a man’s voice whispers through the darkness. “What have I done?” I mistakenly thought I was alone... and I don’t recognize the voice.
“Who is that?”
“Emi?” the man asks, surprised.
“Who are you?” I question nervously, wishing I could move to turn on some lights. My body is weak, though, and my stomach is nagging me with dull cramps.
“It’s, uh, Jack.” I pull the blankets tight against me, uncomfortable. Who? And why is he here? What is he sorry for? “I’m Chris’s friend. We met briefly at the party,” he explains further, likely sensing my fear.
“Where’s my brother?”
“He just stepped out a minute ago to get some coffee,” he explains. “He hasn’t left your side in thirty-six hours.”
“What day is it?” I ask, clutching my stomach curiously at this feeling I’ve never felt before.
“It’s early Monday morning, about three o’clock.” I slept for two-and-a-half days. Visions of Nate in his sunny loft filter in and out, hazily. Was I dreaming? Was I there? Was he here? I wonder how many more days I’ll have to sleep through until I get to be with Nate again. “Emi, can I get you anything? Water?” You can get out of my room. I don’t even bother to answer.
After a few minutes of silence, the unfamiliar voice cuts through the darkness again. “I just sent Chris a text message. He’s on his way back up.” I stare at the bouquets of flowers. In the moonlight, they all just look grey. Grey daisies, grey roses, grey lilies... a few grey potted plants. Everything looks ugly, lifeless.
“Thanks, man,” I hear Chris enter the room.
“Anytime,” his friend says. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
“Goodnight, Emi.” Again, there’s no use in talking to him.
“Why hasn’t Nate come by?” I step on the end of Chris’s friend’s goodbye, unable to wait any longer to ask the question.
Chris walks into view, obscuring the seemingly-dead flowers. I tear my eyes away from the bright moon outside and search my brother’s face as I wonder quietly where Nate is. Does he see this moon?
“Emi,” he begins with a sigh. “Are you hungry, Em? They’ve been tube-feeding you for days, you have to be hungry.” Maybe I am, but his avoidance of my question makes me sick to my stomach. I remember what he told me before, and go back to staring into the vast nothingness in front of me. My life means nothing now if what he had said is true. I don’t answer him.
Chris sits down on the bed. “Mom and Dad and Jen, they want to see you, Em. Donna, too. I called them on my way up. They’re on their way.”
“I don’t want to see anyone but him.”
“I know,” he says. “Mom and Dad have been here all weekend, hoping you’d wake up. They just left the hospital a few hours ago.”
“I don’t care.”
“Sure you do, Em.”
“I don’t care about anything but Nate. Why hasn’t he come?”
“He can’t,” Chris answers. “Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t believe it. I was there, with him. I told you.”
“I know,” he whispers, and I hear his voice waver. “Emi, this is hard on all of us.”
“Don’t even say that. You have no idea.”
“I don’t, Emi. I know that. But he meant something to all of us.”
“Don’t say that like he’s not still with us,” I warn him. I need proof, hard proof that he’s gone. But what would that be?
We cry together. He hugs me, and with his help, I find the strength to sit up in the bed, holding on to him for dear life. “I hate to see you like this,” he chokes out his words. “I would do anything to take it away, Em. If there was a way.”
“I want him back,” I whisper, my tears beginning to soak his shirt. “He’s out there, somewhere.”
“No, Emi. I can’t bring him back,” he cries.
“Then I want to find him. I want to be where he is.”
“Oh, Emi, don’t say that...”
“I belong with him. My life is... his...”
“We love you, Emi. Your life is yours, live for us.”
“I love him so much,” I tell him.
“He loves you, too, Emi.”
I immediately pick up on the present tense of his verb. “He loves me? So he is here...” I knew he was...
“Loved you,” he corrects himself, his head in his hands. “He said... before he...” Chris stutters, pauses mid-sentence.
“What?”
“You called me from the car, Emi, after the wreck... you didn’t say anything to me... just dialed my number, I guess. When I answered, I heard you talking to him, comforting him. I heard you... I listened... the last thing he said, Emi...” He starts to cry again. “The last thing he said was, ‘Love ya, Em. Hold me.’”
“No,” I whisper, trying hard to decipher what did and did not happen. “No, Chris. Tell me again, what did you say?”
“He said, ‘Love ya, Em.’ And then he asked you to hold him.” How could Chris know that? How could he know what Nate said to me that morning? I remember us in bed, how I held him tightly in my arms... my ear on his chest, listening...
“And then what?”
“And then, nothing... just silence... I thought I...”
Listening to his pulse, fading... fading as I fell asleep... my breath races, air straining to get through my tightening throat. My heart stops and I feel nauseous, thoughts of reality and fantasy whirling sickeningly through my muddled mind.
I can’t remember the accident... could this... dream... somehow be my altered memory of the accident? Could he have said those words to me as he lie dying? Did he die in my arms?
“He’s not coming, is he?” I force the words out, forcing the reality in that I had been fighting off for days.
“No, he’s not, Em.”
“Oh, god, why?” I sob. “Why him? Why me? Why did God take him from me?”
“I don’t know, Emi.”
“And why didn’t He take me, too?”
“Maybe He has something else planned for you, Em.” I hear the door creak open and see my mom, stepdad, dad and sister walking into the room. Jen finds the lamp and turns it on, then sits down on the bed, opposite from Chris. She joins in our hug.
“Oh, Emi,” she says, crying. My mom and dad sit at the foot of the bed, my stepdad lingers behind Mom, his hands on her shoulders. Mom starts crying as she rubs my leg. I see tears in my dad’s eyes.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” my father says, and I cry harder. He stands up to kiss me on the forehead. The last person to do that was Nate... in bed... that night... I rub my forehead, as if I could take away the kiss my father had just put there, and bring back the one Nate gave me. All evidence of Nate was gone from this world. He would never kiss me again. Never hold my hand. Never nibble on my ear. Never make love to me. Ever again.
Donna, barely recognizable with her unkempt hair and lack of makeup, enters the room, and everyone just sniffles, cries, everything else is silent. Chris stands up to let Nate’s mom come to my side. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“I am, too,” I choke back. We hug tightly.
“Chris?” my mom says. “Why don’t you take your father and Don to get some coffee?” I observe Chris giving Mom a sympathetic glance, and he hugs me one last time before standing up.
“I’ll be right back,” he assures me. It’s no secret to anyone in our family that Chris and I have a special bond. They all know that I need him more than anyone else. I almost don’t want to let him leave at all, for fear that he, too, may never come back. I know it’s unrealistic... but I never expected to lose Nate, either... never expected him to leave me. Chris leads the other men out of the room, leaving Jennifer, Mom, Donna and me. I lie back on the bed, feeling weak without his support, his presence.
My mother moves up to sit next to me a
s Donna stands behind her. She holds my hand while Jennifer rubs my shoulder.
“How are you, hon?” Mom asks.
“Empty.” I tell her. It’s the best word I can think of, the only word that describes how I feel. I am just... empty. Something inside of me is missing, just completely gone. My heart is broken.
“I know, Em,” she says. “I know this is hard.”
“I just don’t understand,” I tell her. “And what’s worse is that I just don’t remember...”
“Do you remember anything from that night?”
“Yes,” I feel the heat rise in my cheeks. “I remember him performing with his band... and then he walked toward me with such intensity, kissed me, and lead me out of the ballroom.” Everyone sits, silent.
“We went up to our room,” I tell them. “We snuck away. I don’t know why, but we just needed to be together. I felt it, this need... I couldn’t contain it and couldn’t wait to be with him.”
Jennifer smiles the saddest of smiles.
“We made love...” I cry, my face becoming hot, holding on desperately to the memories of that night, afraid that they will disappear, and they’re all I have left of him. “It was the perfect night.”
“And then what happened?” Jennifer says.
“We were debating going back up to the party for the toast at midnight,” I explain, confused. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Chris told you that you went to the store?” my sister asks.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know why you went?”
“No.”
“Emi, I don’t know how to tell you this,” my mother says.
“What?”
“Well, there was a bag in the car with you, from the drug store...”
I listen intently, wanting details, hoping something will remind me of the night’s events. It makes me sad to think there are memories of him that I have already lost. It doesn’t seem fair.
“There were some chocolate bars in the bag...”
I shake my head. None of this sounds familiar. “I don’t think they were ours... I hate chocolate and he never snacks... snacked...”
“Emi, they were,” Jennifer says. “They were purchased at the store, along with a pregnancy book and a child’s toy, just before eleven-thirty on New Year’s Eve.”
“I don’t know,” I tell them, confused. All of a sudden, I am optimistic. I remember the morning after the accident, pressing his hand against my abdomen. I was pregnant. The baby was okay. “I’m pregnant!” I announce, hopeful and relieved. How could I not remember this? All my attention had been focused on losing him, but now... to think that a part of him might still be with me...
The women all look at each other, sensing my hope, my desperate need for Nate, or a part of him. My mother shakes her head, a tear falling from her eye.
“You were, Emi...” Nate’s mother tells me. “He told a few days after Christmas... and the EMTs on the scene found the book in the car, and notified the doctors immediately. They did some blood work... confirmed that you were pregnant... and the doctors did everything they could...” Her voice, now weakened with sorrow, wavers. “We were so hopeful.” She pauses, bringing her hand to her mouth, shielding me from the words she had to say. “But you lost the baby...” she barely whispers, standing quickly and moving toward the window, touching the bouquet of daisies tenderly.
“Oh, god,” I cry. We all do. I grasp my stomach, the emptiness I’m feeling now clearly and cruelly defined. “I want to die, Mom. I can’t do this.”
“We’ll be strong for you, Emi, sweetie,” Jennifer says. “You don’t have to be... not now... but we need you.”
“We love you,” Donna adds.
“And Clara, she adores you. She wants to see her Anni-Emi...”
“And Nate-Nate,” I cry. She loved Nate, and he was so good with her. He was going to be the perfect father. He would have been. He was going to be. We were pregnant. We were going to have a baby together.
“How did this happen?” I ask. “Who hit us?” I’m angry now. I want to know who stole my perfect family from me. Who took my soul mate, the love of my life, and my tiny... baby? Who took my entire life from me? I suddenly remember that voice from earlier, Chris’s friend, apologizing... I feel bile rising in my throat, to think he was in the same room as me...
“It was a 21-year-old kid from Rochester. He had a carful of friends. They were all drinking.”
“So he was drunk?”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t Jack?”
“Jack who?” my sister asks.
“Chris’s friend. The one who was just in here.”
“No,” Donna says. “It wasn’t Jackson.” I briefly wonder why he was apologizing, to whom he was speaking...
“Then why...” I let it go to find out more about the boy who did kill my love, my hopes, my dreams... everything. “Is this kid... is he in jail?”
“No, Emi, he died in the crash. So did two of his friends.”
A drunk driver did this to Nate. All of a sudden, I look at Nate’s mother. She nods at me and begins crying even harder. Her husband killed himself by driving into a tree after a night of drinking. And now her son was lost in another drunk driving accident.
“It’s not fair,” I cry.
“No, it’s not. And Emi, we were all so hopeful,” my mother says. “We prayed so hard for that little baby, we did. The stress and shock were just too much.”
“They said it was between six and seven weeks old,” Donna tells me, brushing my hair out of my face as her son had done so many times.
“You miscarried two days ago, Emi,” Jennifer adds.
“Probably conceived right around Nate’s birthday,” his mother adds. His birthday. Of course it was. His birthday. I remember his birthday... and I remember we didn’t sleep together again until... no wonder I needed him so badly.
“Who knows about the baby?”
“Just your family and me,” Donna says. I nod. I don’t think I want anyone else to know.
Chris, my dad and my stepfather enter the room, handing coffee to my mother and Jennifer. Mom stands up, giving Chris his place back on the bed next to me. One look into his eyes, and I know that he is aware of the conversation my mom and sister just had with me. He cries first, leaning down to embrace me again, and the tears erupt quickly from my own eyes. He kisses me on the cheek, smoothes back my hair.
“It’s not fair,” I tell him.
“No, it’s not.” I hear soft cries and sniffles around the room.
“What did I do that was so wrong, to deserve this? Is this bad karma? Did I do something to someone?”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with anything you did, Emi.”
“Then with him? What did he do to deserve this?”
“Emi, I don’t think he did anything, either.”
“Well, then why?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, Em... I just don’t know.”
“I want him back,” I whisper. Is there a way to get him back? What could I give of my life, of myself, to get him back? I would do anything. Anything at all. Volunteer all my time. Donate any money I ever make to charity. I’ll never ask for anything else. I’ll go to church every week, every day. Anything in the world, God, what can I do to bring him back?
CHAPTER 2
After a few more days, I’m released from the hospital. Because both of my left limbs are in casts, they’ve put me in a wheelchair and I’m reliant on the help of everyone around me. Knowing that I will be unable to maneuver through Manhattan in this state, my brother has invited me to stay with him in New Rochelle until at least one cast comes off– I say he’s invited me, but I really don’t have a choice. My family wants to make sure I will somehow be able to manage life on my own. They’re not worried about my temporary loss of mobility, but rather the permanent loss of my entire foundation.
Anna was supposed to move in with Chris this next week, but they have postponed that t
o accommodate my stay. I feel bad, holding up their life, imposing on their time together, but this decision was made for me, by them, by my family. If I could get up and walk away, I certainly would.
I would walk away from it all. Run from the reality of my life. Find Nate and the child we would never have in this life... wherever they are, that is where I want to be. I know I am on unofficial “suicide watch” with my brother. He is going to take a few weeks off from his job to stay with me. I know I will never have a moment to myself.
If I have to spend my time with someone on this planet right now, though, he is the only one that I want around. He’s not overly chatty, leaves me to my thoughts most of the time, understands my needs. The time I spent with my mother in the hospital just grated on my last nerve. She was constantly hovering, wanting me to talk about my feelings, expressing her sadness for me, constantly reminding me of how scared they were that night, how worried. She just wanted me to know how grateful she was that I survived. I wasn’t.
My father was the complete opposite. He never really could find words, so when he was with me, he was mostly silent, watching the television with me or reading the newspaper. He avoided the topic of Nate the whole time. I don’t know if it made him too sad to think about it, or if he just didn’t know how to comfort me. Either way, it was just strangely awkward. With him, though, there were times when I could escape, allowing myself a minute or two to listen to whatever show was on. They were brief escapes, though. There was always something– some man, some word, some incident, some phrase, some small token– something– that reminded me of Nate, brought me back to my hell.
Jennifer didn’t come by after that one night, when they told me I had been pregnant. Her marriage was quickly falling apart. She was in a constant juggling act between Clara and her job and her insensitive, preoccupied, selfish husband. She would call every day, though, to check on me. She promised to bring Clara to see me soon, whenever I told her I was ready. I missed my niece, but in truth, I knew it would be difficult to be around her. They had told me that Clara was having a difficult time understanding what had happened to Nate. The concept of “death” was still foreign to her, too grown-up for her young mind to understand. She was lucky.