I shook my head.
“No. No, I’m sorry Doctor Emma, I shouldn’t have come.”
“Kylie, wait!” Doctor Emma exclaimed, but I was already leaving. I don’t know why I left. I think I was so used to talking to Daniel, who understood completely, that Doctor Emma getting it so wrong, blaming my alcoholism, it rubbed me the wrong way completely.
I went straight back to my room. I wanted to talk to Daniel about this. I knew what he would say. He would tell me I should do it as well. He would tell me that I’ve got the gift of healing, that it’s obvious it was what I was put on this planet to do, and I would argue with him. But now, as I ran through the conversation in my head, the arguments I was putting forth sounded weak, even to me.
I tossed and turned, getting terrible sleep from time to time, before waking up completely exhausted the next day. What on Earth was going on with me?
* * *
It took another four days before I saw Daniel again. He came to group therapy on crutches, and I smiled as he sat down next to me. I missed him over the last few days. I didn’t realize just how much I’d missed him. A lot of the time I would find myself wondering how his knee was healing, what he was doing, whether I should try and sneak past the guards and visit him.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked when he collapsed into the chair, leaning the crutches up against the side of it.
“It’s alright. The pain is getting better, which is nice. Ibuprofen doesn’t do too much to stop the pain. But hey, it’s all worth it. I can deal with the pain, I’ve been through worse.”
“No, I can’t imagine ibuprofen would help that much. I’m glad it’s getting better though. Any update on rehab times?”
Before Daniel could answer, Doctor Emma interrupted and started the session. For the next hour I zoned out, thinking about nothing except the man next to me. I could hear him breathing, I could feel his every movement, his arm occasionally brushing lightly against mine. I felt like I was going to faint every time he touched me. My heart beat raced, I felt the slightest sheen of sweat forming on my skin, my breathing got ragged. I wanted Daniel more than I’d ever wanted any man before in my life.
Finally, Doctor Emma let us go. Daniel and I waited for the others to leave, as his crutches made him quite a bit slower than everyone else. We walked through the hallway together.
“My physio is going to be here in a while, do you want to hang out for a bit before then?”
“Sure.”
As we made our way back out towards the courtyard, Daniel told me about his last few days.
“Mainly I’ve either just been in bed all day, or had a bit of rehab done. Not too much more than that. The rehab is tough, but nothing I’m not used to. Honestly, it’s a relief, knowing that if I follow what the doc says I can probably be back on the ice in a few months. Now that I’ve had the surgery I’m looking forward to it more than ever.”
“That’s good, I’m glad. I’m glad you’re taking steps to get back to where you want to be. I’m sure you’re going to be fantastic when you get back out there.”
“I hope so. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with my knee now, everything’s going as planned. There’s always a chance that when I get the brace off I’ll notice a problem, but at this point the physio says that most major problems post-surgery would have been noticed by now.”
“Awesome.”
We got to the courtyard and sat down under the trees.
“It’s funny, when I came here, I never thought I was going to play hockey again. I’d convinced myself I wasn’t going to. I’d convinced myself it wasn’t for me. And yet you changed my mind. You changed my mind completely, Kylie.”
“Well, sometimes other people can see things more easily than you yourself can.”
“That’s true. Hey, I wanted to tell you as well, I spoke to some of the team doctors and my coach today. I’m going to stay here for another week, and then I’m leaving.”
“What? You’re leaving? Already?” The news was like a shot to the heart to me.
“Yeah. I need to get back into training with the team as fast as I can. I spoke to Doctor Emma about it, she thinks I’m ready and I’ll be fine, especially with the support network I have.”
“But... what about me?” I asked. I shouldn’t have, I know. I knew this day was going to come, but I didn’t want it to.
“Well, you’re not going to be here for much longer, are you?”
“I... I sort of... I never planned on leaving.”
Daniel looked at me.
“What do you mean, you never planned on leaving?”
“I was going to stay here forever.”
“That’s just... not healthy. It’s not possible, Kylie. You’re going to have to go face the real world sometime,” he added, softly.
I felt the tears coming. There was no way to stop them. Emotions flooded my body. Sadness, anger, it was all there. The knowledge that Daniel was leaving, that I was never going to see him again, it was absolutely destroying me, and I didn’t know why. It was like every emotion I had felt over the last few weeks came bursting on top of me. Like the dam that had been holding it all back suddenly burst, and a torrent of pain flooded over me, drowning me.
“You don’t understand. I ruined my life. I can’t do anything. I want to become a doctor, you know? I realized that the other day, when we were at the hospital. I still want to become a doctor.”
“Well why don’t you?”
“BECAUSE I KILLED MY SISTER!” I shrieked. There. I’d said it. I actually said it. I hadn’t said those words aloud, ever. I had always kept it to myself. It was my own private burden to bear. It had all become too much. The last few days, realizing that I still wanted to become a doctor, knowing that if I stayed here forever I would lose Daniel, the enormous mix of emotions melding inside of me was driving me crazy, and it led to me telling Daniel exactly why I was the way I was.
When I heard those words escape my mouth, when I finally said them, I began to sob. The tears flowed even harder. Daniel quickly shuffled over as fast as he could with the brace and wrapped his arms around me.
I flung my face into his chest. I could feel my tears soaking his shirt, my body trembling against him as the tears came. Over and over. Daniel stroked my hair gently, his chin resting on the top of my head, softly holding me while I let the tears flow.
I couldn’t believe I’d said that. I couldn’t believe I’d admitted it. Strangely enough, however, it gave me a sense of relief. I think I was glad to finally have someone to talk to about it. When the tears stopped, I sat up. I stared at the ground as I recounted my story.
“It was last June. Exams were over. My little sister had just graduated from high school. She wanted to go to a party, and I told her that no matter what, I wanted her to call me instead of getting a ride with someone drunk. I implored her. I was in medical school. I knew all the stats. I had seen the images, I had even seen the bodies. I didn’t want my sister to become one of them.”
I paused for a minute. Memories rushed through my head. My sister, waving to me as I dropped her off, her long hair bouncing along as she spun around and ran down to meet her friends. Tears began to well in my eyes once more.
“She called me at three in the morning. I was still up. I’d been studying. Being a doctor was the most important thing to me, and I wanted to be the most amazing doctor in the world. I was going to heal people, to save them. I took her call, she asked me to come pick her up. I could tell her words were slurred, and I was so proud of her to have still called me. She was obviously quite drunk, but I didn’t care.”
More memories came back. Suzette stumbling towards me at the park where they had their party. Her hair was dishevelled now, she had lost a shoe. But she was still smiling, still gorgeous. She was my sister.
“We got into the car. Suzette thanked me for picking her up, and asked if she could have the window down. I figured that was a good idea if I didn’t want to have to clean vomit out of my car i
n the morning. My last memory of her alive was from a couple minutes before it happened. I turned to make sure she was ok, and she was half asleep, leaning against the open window, letting the cool night air into her lungs. I remember thinking how peaceful she looked, how beautiful.”
The next memory was the most painful. I had almost blocked it out, I didn’t want to remember it.
“It must have been two, maybe three minutes after that last memory of looking at her when it happened. The car came out of nowhere. We were on one of those country roads. One lane in each direction, no median strip. The other car was driving in my lane, without its headlights on. By the time my lights found it, it was too late. I screamed and swerved, but the car hit us head on.”
I paused. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t believe I was saying this. I hadn’t told this story to anyone, although others knew it. Daniel simply held my hand and waited for me to continue.
“The next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance. I was crying. My leg hurt like hell. All I could think about was Suzette. I kept asking where Suzette was. I saw my parents, they were crying too. They saw me, and they came over and hugged me. I clutched my mom, asking about Suzette, and she only began to cry harder. That was when I knew. They didn’t have to say anything more. I knew. I had killed my sister. I was driving the car that she died in.”
“I’m so sorry, Kylie,” Daniel whispered.
“It turned out the driver of the other car was drunk. He had come from the same party, he was one of Suzette’s classmates. He was trying to get home, driving himself. We’ll never know why he was going the wrong way, back towards the park they’d all just come from, since he died on impact. I blamed myself for all of it. If only I hadn’t offered to drive her home, she might have gotten a ride with someone else, or slept in the park. Even if she’d gotten into the car with someone else who was drunk, everyone else got home safely that night. Everyone else. Everyone except Suzette. I had made her call me, I had made her get me to drive her home to keep her safe, and I failed. I failed her completely.”
I choked back a few sobs before continuing.
“That was when I knew I couldn’t be a doctor anymore. No one was going to take the person who killed their sister seriously. They just weren’t. Besides, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had thought my entire life that I was put on this planet to cure people, to help them. And the first time I really did it, the first time I did something that I thought might save my sister’s life, I ended up killing her.”
As I finished my story, I just began to sob. There was nothing more I could do. I was absolutely, completely gutted. I had poured my heart out. I had never told anyone about that night. Never. My parents knew, of course, what had happened, but I had never spoken about it with them.
Basically as soon as it happened I had turned to alcohol. I had never been a big drinker before then, but the alcohol made me forget. I became more and more dependent on it.
“I’m so sorry Kylie. I can’t even imagine how you must feel. I know it means nothing, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“Everyone always tells me that, but it feels like it was my fault.”
“Of course it does. That’s natural. You were the one driving the car. I know you’ve gone over things a million times in your head, wondering ‘what if I had done this differently?’ and asking yourself if you should have seen the car sooner. But the thing is, you couldn’t have. It’s not even nearly on the same scale, but I went through something similar when my knee got injured. I asked myself what if I had moved to the side a bit? What if I had balanced myself better? But no, what happened happened. That didn’t make it my fault.”
The tears flowing from my eyes began to ebb as Daniel kept talking. I liked the sound of his voice. It was comforting, it was nice.
“I can’t even begin to imagine how you must feel. But think about your sister. Do you think she would want you to stay here forever, or do you think she would want you to go back to school and finish your studies, and heal other people’s sisters?”
“It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t think anything, she’s dead, because of me.”
“But what if she did? I think you’re punishing yourself by staying here. You think you deserve to be an outcast, you think you deserve to deprive yourself of the things you want and enjoy, because of what you did. And that’s not fair to you.”
I looked up at Daniel. No one else had ever truly understood why I stayed here, why I intended to stay here forever. Doctor Emma certainly didn’t. My parents didn’t. But Daniel did.
“I’m not wrong, am I?” he asked softly, and I shook my head.
“No, you’re not wrong,” I replied. “You’re completely correct. I took Suzette’s life, I don’t deserve to live one of my own. I thought about suicide a lot those first few months, but I eventually decided I didn’t deserve the easy way out, either.”
“You do deserve to live your life. That drunk driver took one innocent life, don’t let him take two.”
For a while, we sat there in silence. Thoughts swarmed my head, it was so much I was starting to feel overwhelmed. I had never told anyone that story. It was funny, saying those words out loud was a relief. I know it’s a cliché, but it actually felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I knew Daniel would understand, and he did.
That’s what made it so hard to argue against his points. He understood. Other people told me to do things, but they didn’t get my motivations. Daniel did, and yet he still was telling me that I was doing the wrong thing. Was I? I began to really question myself. Was I completely wrong all this time? Was I looking at things the wrong way? Should I be doing what I was doing, living my life in the worst possible way? Was that really still the right thing to do?
I still couldn’t get past the fact that no one would want a doctor that had killed their sister.
“What happens when someone finds out about me and Suzette? What happens when one of my patients Googles me and finds out about it?”
“Then you tell them that even though disaster befell you earlier in your life, you’re now dedicating your life to making sure no one else goes through what you did. Which would be true, by the way.”
“Yeah. I don’t know.” He was right. I couldn’t argue against that. He was right, and I hated that he was.
“Well, you don’t need to make a decision now. You can always think about it. But Kylie, I really think you should think about changing your life. I think you would be happy as a doctor. I’ve seen you with patients. Hell, I’ve been one of them. You have a caring spirit, and it shouldn’t go to waste, especially not since you want to do it.”
“I’ll think about it. You’re right. I’m going to think about it. When are you leaving?”
“A week Sunday. So, nine days from now.”
“You know, I’m glad. I’m happy you’re getting out of here. I want to see you win the Stanley Cup next year. I’ll watch it on TV.”
“I’ll send you tickets, you can come watch it in person.”
I looked up at Daniel and kind of half smiled at him. It was all I could manage right now.
I flopped down on the ground and stared up into the leaves of the tree we were under, thinking about things.
“Do you want me to go, leave you with your thoughts?”
“No, I’d like you to stay, if you don’t mind. I like your presence.”
“Cool, let me know if you want to talk about anything.”
But I didn’t. I just needed to think. I don’t know how long I sat there for, lying down in the cool summer grass, letting the breeze move over my face, Daniel only a few feet away. Eventually we got up as the sun began to edge its way towards the horizon and went back into the building.
“What about your physio appointment?”
“Whatever, one day of exercises isn’t going to make or break me. It was more important to be that I be with you this afternoon.”
My heart swelled with appreciation as I realized what Daniel had done
. He’d skipped his physiotherapy to be with me. I felt so... cared for, knowing that he did that for me.
I skipped dinner, instead going to my room and having a long shower. I had a lot to think about, and I always thought showers were great for thinking. I let the water stream over me until at last the water went cold.
When I went to bed that night, I had made my decision.
* * *
The first thing I did the next day was visit Doctor Emma and ask her whether she thought I was in a good enough condition to be released.
“You’re asking me a difficult question, Kylie. After all, you’re not the most forthcoming of patients. I really know so little about you, I’m not certain that I’m able to answer that.”
“I’m a very private person.”
“I understand that. I know that you are dealing with things much deeper than most who are here, and while I believe your alcoholism is most likely manageable in the outside world, I also know that it was triggered by those memories the first time. If I were to tell you that you’re alright to be released, I want to know that you have someone to talk to. You need to have a support group, otherwise the chances of a relapse are much higher.”
“I have someone to talk to,” I told her. “I do have someone who understands.”
Doctor Emma looked at me hard, then nodded.
“Alright. I think that as long as you have that support network, you should be fine. Remember, you can always come back here. I would also encourage you to attend AA meetings.”
I nodded and thanked her as she handed me an information booklet, complete with a variety of suggested support networks.
“I suppose you’ll want to be released next Sunday?” she asked, and the look on my face almost certainly gave me away. I supposed it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to me. Doctor Emma was no idiot, and she had hinted that she knew about Daniel and I before.
“That would be good, thanks,” I replied so quietly it came out almost as a whisper.
“Consider it done. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to connect with you as well as perhaps another therapist may have.”
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