THE SHEERS ON THE WINDOW FLUTTERED beneath the breeze of the fan as the first of the sun’s rays peeked through them. The minutes ticked by on the clock beside her, with no regard to her predicament. What little fitful sleep Maria had found the previous night was occupied by Sylvia. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blood from her dreams pouring down her wrists and dripping from her fingers, and it was getting harder to force it from her mind. She didn’t think she had it in her.
Her mother was waiting for her on the couch when Maria finally dragged herself from the bedroom. She’d been browsing through the coupon pages of the newspaper. “Good morning, Maria,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” Maria replied, clearing a spot for herself on the couch. “Just not quite myself.”
They sat side by side, mother and daughter, too intimately close for eye contact as they stumbled through an uncomfortable session of You Can Tell Me Anything.
If kids are being mean to you at school, you can tell me.
If you’re struggling with your classes, you can tell me.
If boys are trying to pressure you into doing things you’re not ready for, you can tell me.
“It’s nothing, Mom. There’s nothing going on that you need to worry about.”
It was an easy lie. Easier, perhaps, than it should have been. Who was there to help her, if not her mother? Her husband and her children and her life were somewhere out there, waiting for her, and all she had to guide her back were disjointed dreams and memories and the words of a dead patient.
I’m here to save you, Dr. Forssmann. I’m here to protect you and your baby.
“… his lunch break today.”
“What?” Maria asked.
“Dr. Warner. He said he’d see you on his lunch break today. And he wants to get some kind of scan of your head and do some blood work, too.”
“Sure,” Maria mumbled, but the two Sylvias in her mind—the sallow-faced girl who sat in her office vowing to protect her and the skeletal creature who pointed her to the grave—were struggling for her attention. Were they sending the same message?
“Are you okay, Maria?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and as her mother rambled on, blissfully unaware that a dead woman’s haunting voice was echoing through her daughter’s mind, Maria could hear only Sylvia’s words.
The first time I was here … you ended up being someone very important to me. Now I finally understand why.
“… come out there with me? The tulips are already sprouting, and I think the lilies will start in the next week or two.”
“I think I’ll just hang out here,” Maria said. She’d forgotten how important her mother’s garden had once been, and the hours they’d spent out there in the kind of silence that taught them more about each other than a thousand conversations ever could. If only time had been on her side. There were no words to explain where she was going or why she had to leave. She dropped her head onto her mother’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around her neck. It was a strange and uncomfortable embrace, not the kind either woman would have chosen for a last good-bye, and Maria dared not imagine what she would be leaving behind. Would her parents remember this? Would they mourn the loss of their daughter? Would they even go on living in this world after she left?
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Maria said, “but promise me you’ll keep up with your mammograms. Don’t skip any years.”
“Mammograms? What are you talking about, Maria?”
“Just promise. Please.”
Her mother reached over and pulled her in for a proper hug, the aroma of her Giorgio perfume flooding Maria’s senses and forcing her back to a time when this really was her home, when the woman beside her could offer her sanctuary. “I promise I’ll take care of myself,” her mother said. “But let’s focus on you today. Let’s get you feeling better.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom. I hope you know that I never meant to do this to you and Dad.”
“You haven’t done anything to us, sweetie. Don’t worry yourself about it. Dr. Warner will know what’s going on and you’ll be back to yourself in no time.”
Her mother eased away with a gentle grace, reminding Maria that her father would be home shortly to accompany them to the doctor’s office and that she should rest before it was time to go.
And then she left.
She slipped out the back door with her gardening shoes and her wide-brimmed straw hat like their lives were not extraordinary, like her daughter was not about to disappear forever. Her mother’s absence was more intrusive than her presence, and as Maria’s fingers skimmed over the grainy, crisscrossed fabric of the couch, she could almost believe that this life was all she had. Through the window, she watched as the freshly sprouted weeds in the garden were plucked, one by one, and when her mother’s steps finally led her to the tulips, Maria eased herself from the couch and slipped into the kitchen.
The car keys had all been hidden, but the knife block was waiting for her on the far end of the counter, the glistening steel blades lined up like perfect soldiers. Maria ran the chiseled edge of the butcher’s knife over the tip of her finger, allowing the waves of angst to ripple through her body, before she returned it to its sheath.
It was the paring knife beside it that she needed—not nearly as grand and menacing, but razor sharp and wieldy. The cold metal pressed against the thin flesh of her inner wrist when she slid it up her sleeve, trying to conceal it from the watchful eyes of her grandmother, whose portrait hung on the wall. Maria slinked by her, and the rest of the family, down the narrowing corridor of the hallway and into the sanctuary of her bedroom.
The steel glistened from the side of the tub while the water rose higher and higher, sending an uncontrollable shudder through Maria’s body. It was a deed that would take more willpower than she possessed, of that she was sure, and as she sank into the tepid water, sweat trickled down her chest and into the thin creases of her belly. Will and her daughters were waiting for her when she shut her eyes, splashing through the surf and beckoning her to them under a warm and radiant sun.
“I’m coming,” she whispered, but her hands shook uncontrollably and the blue veins mapping across her inner wrists retreated like they were anticipating her actions. The knife handle was slick in her hand, and the cold steel against her skin nauseating, and despite the steam from the water, goose bumps dotted her arms. Her eyes stung from the sweat that seeped into them.
This was what Sylvia had been trying to tell her, she was certain of it. Slit your wrists and you can go home. But as the weight of the blade sank into the hollow of skin on her inner arm, Maria could feel her resolve waning. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the images from her dream were just fantasy, and the gashes across her wrists that had throbbed even after she awoke were just lingering memories from a desperate subconscious trying to rid itself of guilt. Maybe Sylvia hadn’t killed herself to go home and Maria really had just failed her as a doctor.
“Please make this stop.” Her gaze floated up toward the ceiling, but her words crashed back down around her, drowning in the tub full of water. “I just want to go home. Please, just let me go home.”
God brought me back for a special purpose.
Sylvia’s words hammered into her thoughts, louder and louder, until she couldn’t make sense of anything. How could she be a seventeen-year-old girl sitting in a bathtub about to end her life in a deed so selfish and grotesque?
“I’m going home.” She repeated the words over and over, needing to believe them so her body could do what her mind wouldn’t allow her to do.
I’m here to protect you.
“I’m going home.”
Her body sank deeper into the water as a careless hand drifted over her barren belly and her mind grasped for the fluid image of her family. She reached for the knife one last time as an eerie silence blanketed the bathroom. The ping of water droplets dripping into the tub echoed through her ears, and the sporadic whispers of her own breath amplified in her head.
“I’m going home.”
One purpose. You get one chance.
“Stop it, Sylvia!”
The tip of the blade eased into the delicate skin of her wrist, and with a tenacity she had never known, Maria pushed until the steel disappeared beneath her skin. The pain was exquisite, and as tendons and vessels were torn from her arm she watched in horrid fascination, as if she were no longer a part of her body.
Swirls of pink danced through the water around her before vanishing under her body, and when she pulled the knife from her arm, crimson blood poured from her wound. The only sound was the roaring of her pulse inside her head, beating in time with the flow of blood from her arm, and after the world around her dimmed, it disappeared through a narrowing black tunnel. When the pulsating beat in her head ceased, the silence was complete, and for a moment there was nothing. Not even pain. Just blackness.
“Maria…” The voice was barely audible. “Maria.”
“Will?” She struggled to force the word from her mouth, but he was too far away to hear her.
“Maria!”
“Dad?” The sound of her name grew louder as her confusion deepened. The words, one moment her father’s and the next moment Will’s, intensified, until the man who spoke them was right by her side.
“Maria, hang on! Please, baby, hang on!”
“Will, it worked.”
Her voice was so weak she couldn’t hear her own words, but she was home and Will was by her side. Her smile faded under the watchful eye of her husband as she allowed herself to drift into blackness.