Chapter 24

I RUN BEHIND white robes and blue scrubs pushing my dad on a gurney through white halls and double doors until someone stops me.

“You have to wait here.”

That’s all I understand before trying to follow the mob taking my dad away. There are more voices and more gloved hands pushing me away from a door I can’t pass; all those voices keep repeating that I have to wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

The word is pressed on my brain and still that’s the last thing I want to do. I pull out my phone and open the texts I sent to Ben, hoping he'll answer, but there’s none. I tap the call button with shaky hands.

The phone rings one, two, five times. I hang up and start to pace the aisle, searching for the next thing to do. I pull out my phone again and call, begging for him to pick up this time, but it goes to voicemail.

I try once again but my phone falls from my hands and it’s a struggle to pick it up. When I do, my back finds the cold tile wall of the hall. My legs start to lose stability and I end up on the floor, clenching my phone to my chest, my breathing picking up and my sight getting blurry.

I close my eyes and I count down. Ten, nine, eight, seven. I imagine Josephine’s image soothing me. Six, five, four. She’s here with me. Three, two, one. I open my eyes and Ben is running down the corridor towards me. Pushing the wall away from me, I get on my feet and run to my brother. Only when I’m wrapping my arms around him do I let myself fall apart.

Words start to spill out of my mouth as I try to explain what happened. I hope he understands what I’m trying to tell him, that I woke up when I couldn’t feel Dad breathing anymore, that the ambulance arrived faster than I’d expected, that I heard words like cardiac arrest and aneurysm, that I’ve been trying to reach him this whole time and now I’m here being a useless puddle of tears that can’t keep it together.

“It’s fine, I’m here.” He pats my hair as I pull him down to the floor, or maybe he’s just trying to hold me up and gives up when he realises there’s no use. We both kneel on the floor, hugging each other as my muffled cries fill the empty place. Ben finally gets up to move me to the benches outside of the emergency ward.

Somehow, lucidity starts to make its way back to my head. We aren’t at St. Barts. It’s half past four in the morning, only thirty minutes since I woke up and realised my dad wasn’t breathing. No one has come to tell us anything, but from what I can remember during the ride in the ambulance, nothing good can come out of this.

I drop my head between my hands, trying to hold everything together. I can’t lose it again. I need to focus on other things, on questions other than the ones already filling my head.

What happens now? What will happen if my dad doesn't come out of this? What do I do in a world where my dad ceased to exist?

Something cold and small hits me in the face, not hard enough to hurt but enough to chase all my queries away. I straighten up when it hits my chest again. My necklace has slipped out of my blouse. The gold pendant sits between my fingers, smooth and cold. The J mocks me, telling me you’ve lost her anyway. I hate that I can't even reach the only person I want to be here with me, the only person I’d show my unfiltered grief to.

“I can call her,” Ben says when he catches me fidgeting with my necklace. “I can ask her to come.”

His face is totally calm as if we aren’t waiting for the worst. I want to say yes. My heart screams and bumps against my chest at the thought of Josephine walking down the hall. There’s nothing I’d like more than feeling her arms around me and her voice whispering that everything will be alright. But it’s not fair. Not so suddenly nor so soon. I don’t want her to wake up to the sound of my brother’s call just to find out the man who’s like a father to her might not survive past this day. I shake my head and get up from the seat.

“I’ll be back in a moment, I need the bathroom.”

I walk through the corridors of this unknown place, hoping to find an alternative ending to this nightmare, but every corner I turn, I’m surrounded by closed doors and unlit light bulbs.

After countless steps, a door catches my attention. I’m in a corridor where various rooms are decorated with plates with the names of doctors and specialties. Dr Theodore Eullie, Physician is engraved in a golden plaque, the words tinted with black ink. I stare at the door and feel emptiness inside me. I don’t flinch at his name, not even at the irony of it all. There’s no anger, only a void.

I pull out my phone.

E: Hey.

E: We need to talk.

I don’t wait for an answer. I turn off my phone and go back to my brother. I sit next to him, grab his hand, and rest my head on his shoulder, building up the strength I’ll need for the next few hours, some of that strength I’ll use when the nurse on duty walks out of those doors.

I wake up when my brother jolts at the sound of the nurse’s voice. A girl no older than twenty-something is standing in front of us. Her short hair is bleached and an empty perforation in one of her brows. This night was probably too much for her, almost as it was for us.

She talks to us but my brother is the one who listens. I’m too focused on her demeanour, the trembling hands and dark circles under her eyes. She must be on her twelve-hour-shift, must be at the end of her semester or putting in some extra hours that she needs for her curriculum. She's here but, mentally, she just wants to go home. I never thought I’d be on the other side of this.

Arthur Lamb has been admitted to intensive care. Arthur Lamb has a student talking to his family, telling them they have to wait for the doctor so he can explain the situation better. Arthur Lamb’s children understand that what will be said is much more simple but too hard for a student to deliver. Arthur Lamb’s hours are scarce and his daughter doesn’t need a doctor to tell her that because she herself is one.

Ben and I stare at the clock on the wall as if our souls have taken the day off. The past hours have been draining. I don’t have the strength to cry but, from time to time, tears stream down my stoic face like threads of silver making their way to my heart.

“Sonia is coming with Amanda and Artie,” he says when the clock hits six in the morning. I nod. She didn’t pick up my calls when I was in the ambulance.

I turn on my phone and I have missed calls and some texts, all of them from Theo. I guess he realised I’ve unblocked him.

“I’m getting coffee.” Ben gets up, letting my hand go last. I watch him walk down the corridor before I bury my face between my hands again.

How did I let this happen? How did I let myself get distracted? This is my fault.

Someone sits next to me. It’s now half past six and I know that’s not my brother, I know because of the scent of Dove soap that I never stopped associating with the memories of him. I still remember all the times I’d buy it to smell them; how, after leaving the mental health hospital, I’d run to the grocery store, looking for the scent that’s here next to me but now doesn’t mean anything.

“It took me a while to realise you were here. It took me another minute to understand what was happening. It’s your dad, isn’t it? Are you alright?” Theo’s voice reaches me in soft waves. He’s wearing deep navy blue scrubs and white sneakers.

“I know you’re just asking to be polite. Look at my face.” We scan each other’s faces for a minute, taking each other in. Trails of mascara stain my cheeks, snot, and redness, in contrast with his freshly trimmed beard, his slicked back hair, and aviator-like glasses. We are just like we were years ago. Theodore Eullie, put together, above it all, and Emma Lamb, bearing the result of a nervous breakdown. “You know how things are going to end.”

“Emma…” He reaches for my hand and I let him.

“Theo, I’m tired.” And those words come from the depths of my soul, raw and direct. I know he feels them too. “I’m tired of holding it together, I’m tired of the resentment and the grudge I was holding towards us. I’m done with the grief of what we could’ve been.”

I wish I could keep my voice monotonous and face stoic, but tears slowly but surely make their way to my eyes. I let myself go. I don’t hold back hiccups or ugly faces. Because I don’t want this with me anymore. I don’t need it.

“I’m done thinking I need closure from you. The truth is I don’t. I never needed it. I had everything: a father, a partner, a family that wanted me to be part of their lives and when you came along, I lost sight of it all. I held on to this idea that I was granted a second chance to say the things I thought I needed to say. But there’s nothing I can say about the past that isn’t already known. Maybe you weren’t there to listen but I was, my mother was, my sister, the friends I made at the mental health facility were, the ones I left behind chasing your ghost were. All of them knew the words I held back and felt the pain they were made of, words already used and discarded that didn’t need to come back. And I wish… God, I wish I could go back in time to tell myself that the grief I felt for losing you won’t be anything compared to losing my dad.”

I stop to take a deep breath because if I keep going, none of what I say next will make sense. His hands cup my face and turn my sight to him as he wipes my tears with his thumbs. He has tears of his own too, he’s just holding them back the best he can.

“I guess…” his voice breaks but he coughs to mask it, “I’ve lost my chance to be part of your story.”

I break a little because deep inside of me, there’s a little if only imagining all the scenarios of him and I giving life to what is now the cold, hard grave of our story. An if only that’ll fade eventually but will appear in someone else’s life.

“I loved you, Teo…” There's a te adoro stuck in my throat, but saying it wouldn’t be true nor fair. I adored him but it’s gone now. His face crumples with a pain that only a person who was too little too late can feel. Theo places a kiss on my forehead, staying there for a moment, and I let him. “I would’ve done anything to stay if only there had been a sign from you.”

“Je t'aime, Emma. Je t'aime de tout mon coeur.” His lips leave kisses around my face and I let him, before he looks me right in the eyes. “I wish you all the happiness in the world. I know right now, the next months or years will be hard, but you’ll get through. You always do. I won’t be able to see it but I hope I can find out about it somehow. I hope the wind, the rain, or the night lets me know.”

He pulls me into a hug and I let him. I even hug him back.

I’m relieved he knows this is a goodbye and that I can’t see him ever again. I find myself inhaling his scent, his Dove soap, for the last time. Theodore Eullie doesn’t try to kiss me, doesn’t try to stay. He just caresses my cheek one last time before he gets up, his navy blue scrubs disappearing in the immensity of the hospital corridor. He walks away.

And I let him.

MY EYES START to open when my shoulders are gently shaken. The first time I blink, my dad’s standing before me, his hands on my shoulders. His warm smile and kind eyes greet me in the backlight of the hospital bulbs before I can blink again. Ben is the one who’s grabbing my shoulders, looking totally different from what I saw just seconds ago. Amanda is standing behind him, her face red and distraught as she rubs my brother’s back. Sonia sits on the benches across from me, hugging her legs and crying. I blink a third time and I see it: the pain in my brother’s eyes, the hopelessness I saw three years ago, before he disappeared.

“Ben…?” My voice hurts my throat when it makes its way out of my mouth. My neck is sore and my heart is about to abandon me. Ben doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to because when he crumbles on my lap and hugs my legs, I know. Amanda hugs me just when I start to scream.