30 Feet Strong

by Hannah Paige

  “Why, Pam?” the question sounded childish, and yet for some reason, Pam felt the infinitely smaller one of the two people on the bench that evening.

  “Because you’re not here, William Thomas. I’m imagining you. I suppose I should have expected this. Hallucinating is just another stop on this crazy train.”

  “You’re not crazy, Pam. You’re just a dependent person.”

  Pam scoffed, “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  William Thomas—the hallucination, Pam reminded herself—shrugged, “It’s just the truth. It’s not supposed to make you feel better or worse, it’s just honesty. But you already knew that. You just miss your husband, Pam. You loved him and you miss him. That doesn’t make you insane, that makes you human.”

  “How do you know about him?” Pam’s voice caught on the last word, despite her effort to prove to herself that she was strong enough to have a conversation concerning Darin.

  “If I tell you, will you believe that I’m real? Will you believe in me?”

  Pam’s heart ached at the question, like the boy was slowly pulling it out of her chest and towards his own, “I want to believe in you.” She felt herself shrink on the bench as the sunset’s orange-sherbet rays shone through the windows on her skin.

  “I’m very real, Pam. I was born on September 11th, 2001, the same day that your husband, Darin, was taken from you. I can see him, your husband. He’s kneeling right in front of you.”

  Pam stood up, finding her strength in the boy’s words that tore at her soul.

  “He’s wearing a red flannel shirt, blue jeans with a hole in the left pocket, Nike tennis shoes that look to be more grey than white at this point.”

  Just like that, Pam couldn’t find her breath. Her hand flew up to meet her mouth and warm, salty tears dripped down on her fingers. She had asked Darin a thousand times to throw out those shoes, but they were his favorite. He claimed that ‘I’ve only just broken them in!’ And the hole in his pocket was from when his pants had caught on their bed frame. He’d let out a stream of curse words when he looked down at the torn pants, but Pam had just laughed. She used to laugh so easily back then.

  She spun around, “How is that supposed to convince me that you’re real? You know all those things, those things I know about Darin. I must have made you up. You’re like my own little angel, telling me everything I want to hear: telling me I’m pretty and brave and not crazy, just heartbroken. You sit there and tell me that you can see my husband, that he’s still here with me, because that’s all I’ve wanted to hear for the past ten years. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand why all of that just makes you seem even more too good to be true?”

  William Thomas smiled, “Pam, I’m flattered by such titles, but I’m not an angel and you didn’t make me up. I’m just a boy with a gift who is trying to help people. If you take my hand, then will you see? Will that convince you?”

  Pam hesitated and her thumb flew up to her mouth; her teeth instantly latched onto the nail and she started to gnaw away at it, “I don’t know. Can people feel hallucinations?”

  He shrugged, “I don’t know, Pam. You’re the one that brought them up in the first place. I don’t know anything about imaginary people. I specialize in figments of people’s memories, not of their imagination.”

  Pam thought for a second, “I want to talk to your mother. She’s real, isn’t she? She’s spoken to a couple of the nurses, so if she sees you then—well, she seems level-headed, at least.”

  William Thomas frowned, then stood up from the table and went over to his mother’s side of the room. Pam watched the two of them exchange words and the woman joined Pam at her side, taking her son’s seat on the bench. The sunlight spilled over her, but she was too tall to fully bask in the pool of light, and her limbs and head and feet sat in the shade, extending past the spot of light.

  “You wanted to speak with me?” she looked nervous.

  Pam nodded, “Your son,” she stopped herself, “I mean, the boy over there. Do you see him?”

  The woman frowned, “Of course I do. He’s my son.”

  “So, he’s not a hallucination? I’m not just imagining him?”

  She laughed, crossing one leg over the other, and seemed to loosen up a bit, “He can be a bit overwhelming, I know. But he’s real. I would know, I have the stretch marks to prove it.” She chuckled at the side comment that was supposed to make Pam laugh too, but only caused her to sink deeper into the mud at her feet. She bowed her head.

  The woman in the pale pink blouse leaned forward, speaking in the silence that Pam had left, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of the situation, I only—”

  Pam held up a hand, “No, no, it’s alright.” She looked up and saw William Thomas across the room, talking to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She was leaning back with her face all wrinkled with laughter, smiling at the boy. Pam shook her head at how easily she was swayed, “I shouldn’t have asked you that. My mental state…it’s a little shaky these days. It’s just that your son—he’s so assured and it’s hard for someone like me to believe that someone like him is real.”

  The mother nodded, “My son seeks out, as you put it, people like you: people that have suffered, that have lost someone. I know it seems hard to believe, but my son really can help. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen him accomplish, the people I’ve seen him touch.” She swelled with pride and her smile shifted over to her son. Pam felt a pang of jealousy for the woman as she went on, “It’s indescribable, the feeling of admiration that I have for my son. Sometimes I forget he’s just a boy,” she added.

  Pam marveled at the mother glowing before her and leaned a little closer, “You’ve done an amazing job with him.” She didn’t know if it was the right thing to say until the woman turned her attention back to Pam and smiled. For a second her plump cheeks matched the color of her shirt.

  “Well, I appreciate that, but I’m afraid I don’t know how he’s become the boy he is today.”

  Pam looked at William Thomas, then back over at the mother beside her and noticed that the sun had shifted and now only shone on a small patch on the woman’s chest, on her heart. Pam’s words came out in a warm whisper, thick with emotion. But for the first time in a long time, the emotion wasn’t sadness or grief. It was hope.

  “I do.”

  The mother turned her head to face Pam and beamed at her. And in that moment, as Pam watched the joy spread across the mother’s face—the joy that she had put there—Pam felt her own spot of light grow in her chest. Her heart felt alive, thumping inside her ribcage, and she felt the crack inside her get bigger, brighter, as if it was too big to be considered a crack in the hallway out of her depression. No, it wasn’t a crack anymore, now that Pam thought about it, now that she felt something inside her shift; it was a window.

  Chapter Four

  “Pam, you have a phone call,” one of the nurses called to her the following day at lunch.

  Pam frowned across the table at Ingrid, who shared the same expression of confusion, then stood up and followed the nurse down the hallway to the community phone.

  She held the black phone against her ear and twisted the cord in between her fingers, “Hello?” she ventured. Having never received a phone call here, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to proceed.

  A young man’s voice came on the line, “Hello, my name is Ryan Tate, I am speaking to you on behalf of the team working on Project Survivor Tree. I was wondering if you had a moment to spare for me to ask you a few questions?”

  Pam looked around to see if there was anyone else waiting for the phone. Maybe she had accidentally taken someone else’s call. “Mr. Tate? My name is Pam McCann, I think you might have the wrong number.”

  “Pam? Oh, no, I certainly don’t. You’re exactly who I am looking for. You see, I work for a company that is in the process of creating a documentary film about people just like you.”

  Pam stifled a groan, “I’d really ra
ther not be the center of attention for some depression documentary. I think there’ve been enough made, and I don’t care to share my experience on public television.” She was about to hang up the phone when she heard the young man’s voice once more.

  “No, no! Please, just hear me out! We’re not making a documentary on depression, we’re making it on those affected by the September 11th attacks. My employer is in the process of tracking down several people that have all been affected by that day, and she was hoping that you might be willing to share your story for the documentary.”

  Pam waited for more information, but when Mr. Tate’s pause elongated to an exorbitant period of time, she asked her question, “Now? You want me to do this now, over the phone?”

  There was chuckling over the line, “No, no, of course not. I just require you’re signing off to share your story when we start filming. We’re still working on gaining the approval of all the subjects for the documentary.”

  Pam thought for a moment, twisted the phone cord hard around her finger, “I don’t think you want my story. I’m not exactly inspirational.”

  “Oh, my employer thinks otherwise. You don’t have to answer right now. Take some time, think about it, then call me back. I left my number with the nurse that answered the phone earlier. Please, consider this offer, Pam. This could be a special kind of film. You could touch a lot of lives.”

  Pam hung up the phone and shuffled back to her table, slumping into her seat.

  “Well? Was it the President?” Ingrid asked expectantly.

  Pam frowned, staring straight ahead, still not quite sure of what she’d heard over the phone call, “It was someone from a production agency. They want to make a documentary and they want me in it.”

  Ingrid’s fork clattered to the table-top, “That’s even better! I wish I got phone calls like that. Hey, when you get to Hollywood, would you send me a postcard? I always wanted one with the Hollywood hills on it. But not one from a cheap gas station in, like, Nevada. No, I want an original, the real deal.” She leaned back in her chair, probably fantasizing about Pam shaking hands with Tom Hanks.

  “Ingrid…I don’t even know if I’m going to do it. I’m not exactly what most people would consider a role model. Look at me.” She hung her head, “I can’t even get up in the morning or go to sleep at night without thinking about the same thing all day every day. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?”

  “Now, wait a second. For the past two days you’ve done nothing but go on about that boy. What about him? He’s kept your mind off of Daryl.”

  “Darin. And, I guess you’re right. William Thomas has helped. But I still think about Darin. I still see him in paint colors and furniture, and I hear him when certain songs come on or when they play a movie. I can’t do anything without thinking about him. It’s been ten years since—” her throat constricted on cue. Every time she’d tried to express her husband’s fate to someone this was as far as she got before she melted into a puddle of sniveling tears. She flung her arms out at her sides, “I go from completely fine to a blubbering mess in 0.2 seconds! Look at me, Ingrid! Look! I used to want things. I wanted so many things. I wanted kids with Darin. I wanted to be one of those moms that buys new backpacks every year and makes lunches with little notes written on napkins inside. I wanted to be the PTA mom, I wanted Darin to coach little league or soccer or sit next to me at ballet recitals. I wanted to cry because my babies were graduating high school or college, not because my husband—” Tears poured down her face and her hands flew up to try to wipe them away, but the current was strong, and her fingers only did so much against the tide.

  Ingrid fled the table, then, unable to contain her own emotion while Pam broke down. She attracted a nurse, who came over to Pam, knelt down beside her,

  “Are you alright, Pam?” the nurse asked softly.

  “No, I’m not alright! I am not a mother or a role model or a good person! I can’t make people’s lives better and make my own better in the process because I don’t know what I am anymore. I used to know! I used to know! I’d wake up in the morning and just know! But I’m not even a good—I’m not even a wife anymore! I can’t. I don’t have anything anymore.”

  Her head collapsed in her hands and she felt herself start to shake as she spoke, her speech muffled by tears squishing through her palms that cushioned her eyes, “It’s like, whenever I think I’m going to be alright, whenever I think to myself, ‘yeah, yeah, things might be okay, now.’ I just, I do this. And I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to make it stop. But the pain—I think that it’s gone, but then in a second, I throb, and my hands shake, and I can’t sit still. And I want to make it stop.”

  She heaved her head up to a vertical position and realized that her bloated eyes had almost swollen themselves shut and her vision had diminished to a watery slit, “Let me make it stop!” she sobbed.

  “Pam! Pam, stop! Pam!” the nurse yelled at her, but Pam didn’t know what she was referring to. All she felt was the pain throbbing through her chest and the tears that wouldn’t stop spewing out of her eyes as they cinched shut, “Pam, Pam!” the nurse shouted, “Pam, look at your arms!”

  Pam tilted her chin down towards the inside of her forearm, where all she saw was red. Scarlet blood had erupted out of her left arm and one glance at her right hand, at the pieces of skin that were caked under her thumbnail, told Pam that she had drawn the blood herself.

  “Pam, you need to come with me, now. Follow me, alright? We need to get that looked at.”

  Pam felt soft hands caress her shoulders and lift her up. She hunched over and let herself be guided down the hall to one of the exam rooms. The nurse helped her up onto the paper-sheathed table and soon a doctor joined them. They started to clean Pam’s arm and she felt thick, plush gauze wrap around the wound, but she didn’t see it. She stared straight ahead at the wall in front of her. Her eyes could just make out the off-shade green paint past her throbbing eyelids. It was the color . . .

  “Darin, this house looks like pea soup, we can’t buy it!” Pam laughed.

  Pam felt Darin’s arms wrap around her from behind, “I knew you would say that. But with this ghastly comparison as option two, how good does the apartment we saw earlier seem now?”

  Pan turned herself around to face him, “It seems just as beautiful as it did when we saw it this morning. But it’s only one bedroom. There’s no room for kids there.”

  Darin pushed a lock of hair behind Pam’s ear and kissed her on the cheek, “It’ll just be temporary, until we have a crazy kid of our own to chase after. Then we can buy the pea-green house.”

  Pam heard knocking close by, and it drew her out of her thoughts. She’d been moved back to her room. The bed next to her was empty, which meant it was probably around eight-thirty. Group therapy was the only time her roommate got out of bed, most days.

  Her door opened and Dr. Chase stepped inside, “Hello, Pam. Do you mind if I come in?”

  Pam didn’t respond to the man’s quiet request. He glided over to the empty bed and sat down on it, facing Pam.

  “I wasn’t planning on seeing you for a few more days,” he broached in a cautious tone.

  Again, he was greeted with silence.

  “I heard you didn’t have such a good day, today, Pam,” his words seemed to tiptoe over to her, cower in front of her as they waited for her to respond.

  “No. I didn’t,” she answered flatly.

  “Do you want to tell me why that is?”

  Pam felt her right hand reach up and try to scratch at her forearm, but her nerves reared up in agony and she flinched, laying her hand down at her side instead, “I just have bad days sometimes. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused, Dr. Chase.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Pam. Bad days happen to everyone. They’re like the blisters that you get from a new pair of shoes, they follow the best of days, when you buy the new pair, and lead to even better days, when the shoes are broken in and your feet have toug
hened to the new shoe.”

  She frowned and brought her eyes to meet him, noting that while her eyelids were still bloated, the slit which she saw through had widened slightly, “Did a Lifetime movie or Barney teach you that?”

  Her psychiatrist looked older to her, then—clad in a warm, chocolate-colored sweater, instead of the stark white coats that most of the doctors wore—as he cracked a smile, “I knew you had a sense of humor.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Pam croaked, noticing how sore her throat was.

  Dr. Chase nodded.

  “When does the pain stop? Will I ever just…” Pam swallowed hard, “be happy again?”

  He leaned closer and took Pam’s hand, steadying it between his soft, leathery ones, seasoned by years of cleansing and coating in antiseptic, “I’m afraid I’m not the one that can answer that. Only you can, Pam. What I can do is offer my advice and my encouragement.”

  He paused, but Pam wanted more; she liked how his warm voice filled the room, “I’d like both, please.”

  His hearty chuckle loosened Pam’s bones as she felt his own light seep through her skin, “You’re a strong woman, Pam. You are. Just you. What you have to realize is that, while you were married to Darin, you learned what it felt like to lean on someone, what if felt like to care for and love someone so much that you felt like you couldn’t breathe without them. That’s an important lesson, and a rewarding one at that. The one that you have learned now is much harder. You are standing by yourself, now. You’re doing it. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you’ve taught yourself how to be strong on your own, Pam.”

  Pam felt the weight of his words sink down on her shoulders, “Dr. Chase, I know I’m supposed to trust your opinion, but I really don’t think I’ve learned anything, especially how to be independent or strong or stand on my own feet. I need someone to lean on. Now that I don’t have…” April. Darin. A family. "anyone, I’m here."

  His smile faltered, “But, you have learned the lesson. You have learned how to be strong, Pam. Every morning, when you get out of this bed, you show me that you’ve learned that lesson. You get up and you brush your hair, your teeth, you take care of yourself. Earlier today, when the nurse told you to stop hurting yourself, you stopped. You’re doing it, Pam. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you are. You’re going to be okay, Pam. I can promise you that.”