The Truth About Falling

by H. M. Sholander

  The hospital. My mom’s doctor. I know in the pit of my stomach something’s wrong. I know that it’s the end of the line because they don’t call me anymore. They don’t bother me with trivial things like Mom not being able to breathe or her having another heart attack.

  Those aren’t trivial by any means, but they’ve become her norm. Those things have become part of her life, like they are supposed to happen all the time.

  My heart rate picks up, my stomach twisting in knots, every cell in my body on high alert. “What’s going on?” I demand.

  “Please come to the hospital as soon as you can. I’ll see you when you get here.” The line goes dead, and I drop my phone to the floor, not bothering to pick it up from where it landed at my feet, the screen shattering with the force of the contact.

  I stare at the broken screen, seeing firsthand what I know my heart looks like–cracked, broken, shattered.

  Breathing becomes harder, the air thinning around me and everything becoming one giant blur. No shapes, no color–it’s like when you flip to a channel on your television that you don’t have, and the screen flickers that horrific black and white mess. That’s what everything is–one giant mess–shaky, fuzzy, dizzying.

  I inhale as much air as I can, willing everything into focus. “I…I need…need to go,” I stammer.

  “Everything all right?” Joey asks from somewhere in the distance. I can’t place him–can’t see him–but I can hear him, so I know I’m okay–okay as I can be.

  “I don’t think so,” I mumble, moving like a zombie to my bike, knowing exactly where I left it, not having to think about maneuvering through the garage.

  Joey comes up behind me, grabbing my elbow. “Let me drive you. You’re in no state to ride that bike.”

  I shake my head, which makes me lose my balance–like all the sudden I have vertigo as the shop shifts, moving in circles while I stand in place. “We’re about to open. You can’t leave.”

  “Someone will be here soon. I’ll send a text to Harry.” He ushers me to his car, opening the passenger side door and depositing me inside before closing it behind me. He rushes to his side and slides in quickly, sticking the key in the ignition. “Where to?”

  I don’t want to go. I don’t want them to confirm what I already know. I want to be oblivious–to go on living thinking my mom is alive, lying in bed with a soft smile on her face. But I have to. “The hospital.”

  He nods and heads in the direction of the hospital, leaving the garage behind.

  I hold it together the best I can, knowing that the inevitable has happened, knowing that the one person I had left is gone.

  I fight back my tears, not wanting to freak Joey out as he drives closer to the hospital. I want to scream at him to stop–to turn around and take me home, but I don’t. Instead I sit, paralyzed, in the passenger seat of his car as I grip the door handle, needing it to ground me.

  The hospital is in my line of sight. It’s huge, white and dingy. Even from the main road, I can see the parking lot full of cars and ambulances out front with their flashing lights.

  My stomach lurches, and I swallow back the bile rising in my throat.

  My chest constricts, agony ripping through me, building and building until I won’t be able to take it anymore.

  Joey comes to a stop in front of the hospital, and I jump out, offering a quick thanks before I slam the door and run in to the hospital–run toward my demise.

  I hurry to Mom’s room, running through the halls, not bothering to slow down when someone yells at me to stop running. I keep going, pushing forward, hoping I’m wrong, praying this isn’t it. Because I just saw her yesterday. I was here with Hudson, and she was happy–she was alive. Her smile wide and her voice light. I was talking to her, and then I left.

  My chin trembles as my footsteps become heavier the closer I get to her room.

  I left her alone to suffer–I left her alone to die. I just know it. It’s a feeling I can’t escape, and my instincts are usually right.

  I stop in front of her door, but a nurse halts me with her voice. “Jade? Come this way, please.”

  “Where is she? Is she okay? What’s going on?” I fire off.

  She leads me to a different door and places me inside a small room with four chairs. “Let’s wait for Dr. Collins.”

  Just as I’m about to argue with her, Dr. Collins steps through the door softly closing it behind him. “Jade.”

  “She’s gone,” I croak, not needing either of them to say anything because I know what this room is.

  I’ve seen family after family placed in here only to come out with red eyes and blotchy faces. I know what this room means. This is the room where they tell you the person you care about is dead–gone, vanished.

  “I’m sorry. It happened thirty minutes ago.” Tears stream down my face, but I don’t make a sound, not a sob, not a whimper–nothing. “She didn’t suffer. We administered pain medication, so she didn’t feel anything. She went peacefully.”

  “Peacefully,” I scoff. Nothing about this is peaceful. Not for me, at least.

  “Would you like to see her?” Dr. Collins asks.

  No. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to remember her as a lifeless form laying on a bed, her skin pale and cold. Her spirit, soul–whatever you want to call it–is gone. She’s gone. I want to remember her the way I saw her yesterday. Content. Proud. That’s what I want. “No.”

  “Okay. We are very sorry for your loss. Everyone here loved your mother. We’re sad to see her go. I wish I could have helped her.” He mumbles the last part under his breath, but I heard him, and I don’t blame him.

  I wish he could have helped Mom, too. I wish he could have saved her.

  I wish I could have been enough for her to live.

  Before I didn’t know if I wanted to be around when she drew her last breath, but now, I wish that I had been here. I wish that I could have held her hand and told her I loved her one last time. I wish that I could have given her some piece of comfort when she slipped away. I wasn’t here, and that alone is enough to push me over the edge–leaving me feeling like a monster, like someone who didn’t care enough to stick by her side 24/7.

  But in the end, nothing would have been enough. I would have felt this overwhelming despair no matter what I did. The grief, no matter how hard I tried, would have crept in and consumed my mind and soul. But there’s little I can do to push the guilt gnawing at my chest away. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself this wasn’t my fault because I’ll always feel like it was.

  I stop listening to Dr. Collins as he hands me papers to sign, every fiber in me going numb, blocking everything out.

  I’m trying to keep it together long enough to make it home…home. Do I even really have a home? Because the place where I live was never home. The house I grew up in, it was home once when I was a little girl, but then a new reality set in–a reality where I didn’t have the perfect parents, and they weren’t happily married.

  So maybe I’ll go to the place where I live, but it certainly isn’t home.

  When I’m done signing paperwork, I leave with nothing more than a letter size envelope in hand, leaving with only the memory of Mom’s face–her scent, her laugh, her smile. That’s all I have–the things my mind will remember, the things that eventually I’ll forget no matter how tightly I try to hold on to them.

  I don’t bother calling a cab because I need to walk. I need air. I don’t want to be suffocated in a cab, potentially falling apart while a stranger drives me to a sketchy trailer park–drives me somewhere I don’t want to be.

  As I walk away from the hospital, the people around me go about their lives like everything is fine. A couple standing by the curb hold their newborn baby, looking down at the baby with nothing but love. I pass a man smoking a cigarette, his gaze fixed on his phone.

  Everyone around me exist in this time either bored with the routine of their lives or full of pure bliss as they celebrate leaving the h
ospital with their loved ones still intact–still alive, breathing.

  Life is weird that way. I’m having the worst day of my life, fighting to keep myself standing from an aching loss that I don’t know how to overcome. And others–they’re walking around like it’s an ordinary day, like nothing is wrong.

  No matter the kind of day you’re having, the world keeps turning, spinning, going on without you. The world–people–don’t care what you’re going through because as humans we’re selfish, glad we aren’t the ones suffering like the person standing next to us.

  I watch them smile and hug, holding on to each other for support while I drag my feet across the sidewalk, gripping the envelope in my hand like it’s a lifeline.

  Being numb is the only way I’m holding myself up–it’s how I push one foot in front of the other.

  I walk two miles to my house in a daze. When I open the front door an hour later, it’s quiet–too quiet.

  I’m alone.

  I want to fall to the floor. I want my heart to stop beating, so I don’t have to feel this way anymore. I want it all to end.

  I head straight to my room and collapse on the bed, and the dam breaks. The tears fall and the pure torture rips through me, leaving me in so much pain that I feel like every organ in my body is being put through a grinder.

  I cry, and I mourn the loss of my only role model. The woman who was my superhero until she gave up when she refused surgery. She was my everything, and I’m not sure if she ever knew that. I never told her that she’s what I wanted to be when I grew up–strong, courageous, and a shining star in my dark life.

  She was everything I needed, and now she’s gone. Everything about her has evaporated.

  My chest tightens to the point where I can barely breathe, and I scream, letting my pain out into the world, but no one hears it.

  I swear I feel my heart crack, splintering in two as the grief sets in, swallowing me whole. I let it. I let it consume every part of me until the world fades to black, and I have nothing left to give.

  I wake up with swollen eyes, and I’m positive I look like a train wreck with eyeliner and mascara streaked down my face, but I can’t find the willpower to care.

  Nothing seems to matter in the light of day. It’s like I’m not sure what my existence means anymore. And I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to move through life by myself. But right now, that’s what I want more than anything–to be isolated in a world full of people. I don’t want anyone.

  Most people might want the comfort and strength of others surrounding them, but I don’t. I don’t want someone asking me a thousand times if I need anything–if I’m okay. Because the answer is no, I’m not okay, and I don’t need someone constantly reminding me that I’ve lost something I held so close to my heart. I don’t need anyone–I just need to be alone.

  Knocking at the door causes me to startle, my heart rate picking up, reminding me I still have one and it’s fully intact, even if I feel like it isn’t.

  Sliding off my bed, I navigate through my room and down the hall to the front door. When I open it, Hudson is on the other side, his hair in disarray and eyes wild with panic.

  “Thank God,” he breathes out, tugging at his hair before his arms wrap around me. “I’ve been calling you all day. Someone at the garage finally picked up and told me you left to go to the hospital this morning. I went there first, but you were already gone.” He squeezes me as my arms lace around his neck, pulling him closer. “It happened, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say on a sob, unsure how I have any more tears left to shed, unsure how my body isn’t dehydrated from all the crying.

  His hand runs down the length of my back, comforting me the only way he can, and I let him. We stand in the doorway, me crying my eyes out and him being the support I didn’t know I needed.

  Maybe I don’t want to be alone after all. Maybe what I really need is someone even when I don’t think I do.

  I stop long enough for him to guide us to my room where he puts me in bed and wraps his body around mine, and I cling to him, my nails digging in his shoulders as I soak his shirt.

  It’s comfort, support, but I also feel a tinge of anger toward him even though I shouldn’t because none of this is his fault.

  It’s mine.

  It’s hers.

  Not his.

  But because Mom wanted to meet him, I’ll always have that thought in the back of my mind. She’s dead because I granted her last wish. She’s gone because she met Hudson.

  I unravel myself from him and turn over, facing away from him. He wraps his arm around my stomach, hugging my back to his chest, and I clutch my pillow, giving myself something to hold on to other than him.

  There’s a small part of my brain that wants to lay blame on him, so I won’t feel so responsible for all this.

  In the end, I do believe her death falls on my shoulders. I didn’t work hard enough. I couldn’t persuade her to have surgery. I didn’t take care of her like I said I would.

  I wasn’t enough.

  I fell short, just like I always do, never quite good enough to finish anything I ever start.

  “Mrs. Hart, we don’t condone this kind of behavior,” Mr. Harris, my principal, says from the other side of his desk.

  “What kind of behavior would that be?” Mom asks, raising an eyebrow as she stares down my principal.

  “Violence.” He shifts in his chair as the fluorescent light above him hits his slicked back auburn hair.

  “Do you consider sticking up for someone violence?” she retorts, and I pinch my lips together to keep from smiling at her words. “My daughter was helping someone who was being bullied. I think that’s admirable.”

  Mr. Harris’s nose wrinkles, his eyes shifting between Mom and me. “Not when fists are involved.”

  I was on my way to my locker before fifth period when I saw Stacy, the school bully, push Beatrice against a locker. Beatrice is quiet and timid. She excels at every assignment, and Stacy is lucky to squeak by with a passing grade.

  As soon as I saw Stacy knock Beatrice into the lockers, I marched over to them, passing my locker on the way.

  Stacy threw a stack of papers in her hands at Beatrice as I stopped in front of them, the papers floating to the ground at my feet.

  “Leave her alone,” I demanded.

  Stacy gave me a once over with her hand on her hip. “Mind your own business, freak.”

  I stared at Stacy, unwavering, taking a step closer. “Back off.”

  Stacy turned away from me and shoved Beatrice in the shoulder, causing her head to hit the locker behind her.

  All I could see was my dad hitting Mom all over again. Someone bigger picking on someone half their size.

  I shoved Stacy away from Beatrice, and she growled under her breath. Her hand moved up, and she pushed me backwards, and I staggered on my feet. Before I had a chance to think, I raised my fist and slammed it in her face as hard as I could.

  She cried out in pain as soon as three teachers came running down the hall. I was escorted to Mr. Harris’s office where I waited for Mom to get here.

  Mom crosses her arms, waiting for whatever else Mr. Harris is going to say.

  “Suspension. Three days,” he informs us, leaning away from his desk.

  Mom scoffs. “Well you might be suspending her, but I won’t punish her.” She stands from her chair, and I do the same. “In fact, I would tell her to do it all over again.”

  Mr. Harris doesn’t say a word as we leave his office, slamming the door behind us.

  Mom and I walk out of the school without so much as a word. I struggle to keep up with her long strides as we weave through the school parking lot. But Mom slows her pace as we reach the faculty parking lot. Each spot is labeled, the concrete painted with the teacher’s name whose car is parked there.

  She veers away from the visitor parking lot until she’s standing next to Mr. Harris’s car. Her eyes scan the parking lot as I move to stand next to her.
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br />   “Mom, what are you doing?” I hiss.

  “Hush,” she whispers as she yanks her car keys out of her purse.

  She holds our silver house key between her thumb and pointer finger and drags the key across the passenger side door of Mr. Harris’s car.

  “Mom,” I gasp, slapping a hand over my mouth.

  She glares at me over her shoulder as the key screams against the metal door of the car. The key chips away at the shiny black paint, leaving a long scratch across the door.

  She steps away from the car and heads in the direction of the visitor parking lot. I stand in place, wondering what the hell she just did.

  “Jade, come on,” she says over her shoulder as she walks away like nothing happened.

  I follow behind her, my eyes wide as I hold my backpack on my shoulder so it doesn’t slip.

  She unlocks our car and waits for me to appear by her side. When I reach her, she hands me the keys as she slides in the passenger side seat.

  After rushing around the front of the car, I jump in, tossing my bag in the back.

  “Mom,” I say, shaking my head, not sure what to say to her.

  She turns her body to me. “I’m proud of you for sticking up for that girl. Not everyone would do that.” She lifts her hand to my face, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “That was me sticking up for you.” She beams, and I mimic her action. “Now drive us home, but don’t kill us. I know you barely passed your driving test yesterday.”

  It’s true. I couldn’t parallel park or back into a parking spot. I’m surprised I passed at all. “Thank you,” I say, turning on the car.

  “You don’t need to thank me, honey. I’ll always be in your corner…no matter what.”

  My eyes snap open as tears stream down my face.

  It was only a dream, I tell myself.

  I fist the covers in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut. My body jerks as I cry harder, the sound echoing through my room. I don’t have Mom in my corner anymore. I don’t have her to fight for me, and I can’t fight for her.

  What am I going to amount to now that I have nothing?