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With a count to three, I stood up and started towards the parking lot again. I still didn’t like driving myself anywhere. It was just what I had to do that day. I couldn’t handle a conversation with a bus driver or any of the other residents who used the only somewhat reliable bus system of Dustford. And with the car radio playing, the silence wasn’t so obvious. I’d still feel it, but the pain would be muted somehow.
The parking lot was largely empty when I got there. A few stray cars dotted the horizon. But mine was completely alone off to the left, facing the small sliver of greenery that served as one part of the parking lot’s perimeter. It was a clear divide, though the patch of grass was not well maintained. It had grown a bit long, but the length was obscured by the numerous fist-sized rocks that had come to rest besides the grass.
Maybe it was intentional, I mused as I stood beside my car for a moment. My eyes looked from rock to rock, searching for a pattern. And there might have been one, once upon a time, but right then, I didn’t see it. The carelessness was understandable. Stella Maris was a big campus with many landscaping needs. The faculty and staff parking lot was not going to be high on that list.
But I was just stalling. I knew it even then.
With one last sigh, I reached into my pocket for the car keys. From there, it was one swift, largely driven by autopilot, and in the blink of my eye, I was sitting in my car with my bag tossed casually into the passenger’s seat.
It was the glance towards that side of the car that snapped me out of my very useful and productive trance. But when I looked over at the bag in a seat that had been mine just a few days before, my stomach twisted as the door locks clicked into place.
I didn’t like driving myself. Chris had seemed happy to do it, though. He would climb into the driver’s side with a smile lighting up his face. And at first, I thought he was so happy because I had picked out a good car. That despite my lack of knowledge and singular desire to be a pain in the ass to the car salesman, I had somehow ended up with a car that did handle well, one that was a pleasure to drive or some taste of a luxury I couldn’t name or understand. But if so, Chris could have just bought himself one. I knew he could afford it. Happy Flour and Pasta Pizzazz were both doing well. They gave him a nice income. And while I knew that–while I had all the pieces to this puzzle–I had never properly put them together, not until right then as I thought about what he would have seen from that seat. I looked at the view or some poor substitute for the view as he knew it and realized what it was he found so appealing: me. He liked my car not because of my car but because of me.
Did I ever doubt that he loved me? No. It was just easier not to think about it or the implications. It was easier not to think about it when I was weighing the damage I was doing to him by my very presence. It was easy to lose sight of it when I was focused on something else entirely.
He loved me. And I loved him back. Why couldn’t that have been enough?
I fell forward until my head hit the top of the steering wheel, but knowing there was still some momentum to my body, I put my hands on the wheel beside my head and kept myself halfway upright. It seemed better than completely collapsing and blowing the horn to punctuate what needed to be a private breakdown. And it was shaping up to be a full breakdown. I needed to cry. That was the only way to deal with the storm brewing in my soul. I could feel it building, crushing my gut and twisting my heart. My lungs were seemingly immune but only because they were frozen in place.
I could breathe, though. My breathing was light and somewhat shallow, but it was sustainable. I was okay. I was doing alright. I could keep going.
Slowly, I started to straighten up, though I felt no better, but a parking lot was no place for the impending breakdown. I needed to get back to the cottage. I might have hated it, but it did give me some sense of privacy.
With one final sigh, I reached for the ignition only to find the keys were missing. Eyes wide, I looked down, and sure enough the car keys weren’t where I expected them to be. For a while, I stared in disbelief as I tried to scour my mind for some sort of explanation or a half-formed memory of where I had just put them. But that was the problem with autopilot, the part of my brain that had carried me into the car was the only part of me that knew where it had set my keys. That memory was wholly inaccessible to me.
I started patting my pockets and glanced into the cup holder. Both leads led me to nothing. My hand did brush against my phone, and shortly after that brief bit of contact, I felt it vibrate.
When I did, I froze in place. It was probably Stephen, I figured. I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. 7:15, it read. So with the time difference, it had to be 4:15 in the afternoon where he was. His day would be winding down. He could check his phone and see my bland message. Maybe he would even respond, though I didn’t set him up for any sort of response. It might have just been something he wanted to do in the name of keeping my attention and earning some sort of spot in my life.
At the thought, I groaned. Then my phone vibrated again. A double message, I assumed. That did not bode well. It meant he had more to say than what a single text could hold. Maybe it meant he had sent some sort of picture as well. An annotated page of my book perhaps? If so, then cue the psychological analysis I definitely wasn’t ready for. Cue the examination and the terrible results. Cue everything I wanted to avoid.
My hands fell against the steering wheel again, and I felt a rush of exasperation run through my body. I tried to sigh, to alleviate some of that pressure, but my lungs locked up on the inhale. I managed to take a softer breath, a shallower breath than I would have liked, but I was willing to take the scraps.
A third vibration came through, and I realized that this wasn’t a text message. It had to be a phone call. The buzzes were too evenly spaced for anything else.
My heart dropped. I hated phone calls. I did my best to avoid them. And given that it was after business hours, I had an excuse to just not answer, but I couldn’t take that excuse. I had to answer. I was expecting an important phone call and had been for a few months already.
With a shaky hand, I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
Unknown number, the caller ID told me above the number itself.
Just like the label suggested, the number was unfamiliar to me. But what was Lynette’s phone number but an unknown number? I had no clue what it would be. And while the number currently calling me didn’t have a Rhode Island area code, I knew that meant nothing. I, myself, lived in the Midwest with an Arizona area code. Locations changed, and phone numbers didn’t always. And I had no clue what Lynette’s geographical history had been. In theory, anything was possible.
I felt my breath caught. This could be it. This really could be it. And I wasn’t ready.
What had I learned about our dad? Seemingly nothing new. I had fragments of stories and good times. I had a few testimonies of people that knew him: one story that was worth sharing and another that at least proved Dad wasn’t homophobic. Neither was nothing. But Dad would have thought it was nothing. A few more months might have helped, but then again, maybe I never would have been ready for this call.
At the thought, my pulse quickened, and my heart pounded in my chest. My lungs, which were already tensed, slowly grew tighter with each passing moment.
This grand quest for my father’s story was an impulsive decision that might have meant nothing. That was difficult to swallow, but I forced the lump down my shrinking throat all the same. This might not have been the Holy Grail I told myself it was. On one hand, it was so impossible, but even if it was not, I could never know how relevant Lynette found it. Maybe she wasn’t after that. Maybe she didn’t care. There were parts of it that she did need, like his very complicated medical history that was full of bad news that could not be softened. “Everything but cancer” was nowhere near as comforting as one might think, but I could give her that and the history itself. Or I could tell her that she better just have her and her daughter tested for literally everything. Everything but cancer, but there was a chance cancer was on her biological mother’s side. So even that small bit of comfort I thought I could offer was potentially out of reach.
I closed my eyes. All I had to offer was bad news. Dad wasn’t great. Neither was his health. I might be like him. You might have his terrible health. My jaw clenched as I tried to swallow the words, but no matter how hard I tried to force them down, they sat at the top of my throat, blocking my airway. Or what was left of my airway.
I reached up and rested a hand at the base of my neck. It was a response to what was happening there. Everything was tightening up again. Everything was constricting. It was getting harder to breathe.
How do doctors manage with bad news, I asked myself. How does anyone give bad news without crying? Crying was not the answer, but it was tempting. Maybe I would feel better if I did. I would probably feel worse.
Regardless, this was not about me.
I took a sharp breath in as the phone rang a fourth time. I felt no better for the additional air. Partially because it simply wasn’t enough. But more relevantly, I wanted to be a different person when Lynette finally called me. I wanted to be the sort of person she would have been proud to call a sister. Like Judith. If Judith was her sister, Lynette would have been proud of her. But had I done anything to become that person or deserve her pride? No, I hadn’t. I was still me. I was still Mia. “Broken and worthless” Mia. “Can convince you that she has things together but the illusion will eventually fall apart” Mia. “Finds comfort in isolation but desperately wants to not be alone” Mia. I had done nothing to change myself. I just wanted to be different. I ignored my problems as if they would just go away on their own.
I really was my father’s daughter.
Fifth ring. I was running out of time. I had to answer. There was no guarantee she would call back if I missed this one. She might not have cared enough to try again or been too nervous for a second try. This was potentially my only chance. It was my only known and guaranteed chance.
I gasped for breath. It didn’t come. I was barely breathing.
My throat tried to cough, tried to clear whatever was blocking the entrance into my lungs. But there was nothing there. The airway was clear but shrinking. The other issue, though, was my lungs, locked in a deflated position where there was hardly any room for any puff of air. They needed to expand but wouldn’t do it. Then again, it might not have been their choice. They might have been stuck, held in place by something I couldn’t see. When I tried again to inhale, a stabbing pain struck my chest.
Suffocation is never pleasant, but it had never hurt this bad before.
Suddenly, I was coughing. Each cough came with another piercing pain in the muscles of my throat and upper chest. Each recoil was a desperate gasp for air. My ear drums were pulled into my head, straining until they threatened to pop.
I looked down and could see my hands shaking. My phone slipped from my grasp as the agitation grew worse and spread through my entire body. It wasn’t a tremble anymore; it was a full-blown shaking. With it, the rattling in my lungs returned. It was stronger this time and louder. It was more foreboding this time. It was the grim reaper’s call, I realized.
I kept gasping. My mind wanted to force my lungs into their regular rhythm, but no matter how forceful the insistence was, I could not gain control over myself. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t force myself to breathe.
Panicking, my hands fumbled for the door handle, as if escaping this car was the key to surviving, but they couldn’t hit their mark through the shaking. They pawed at the air, striking the door itself a time or two, but they could not find the handle.
Hoping it would help, I turned my face to the door, but my vision was blurring. The shapes around me had lost all definition and became patches of color that slowly lost their vibrancy.
I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t find the handle. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop coughing. I couldn’t find my phone now resting somewhere in the void at my feet. But despite everything going against me, my mind still focused on getting out of that car. Something had to happen if I could manage that. Maybe that would help me breathe. Maybe there was poison in the air of the car. Or maybe the sensation of falling onto the concrete would work as some sort of percussive maintenance. Or maybe I could get help if I got out. The latter seemed unlikely given how quiet the campus had been just moments before, but if I got out, I had a chance of someone seeing I was struggling or of someone coming to save me. It wasn’t a good chance, but there was some shred of a possibility that I could be saved.
I grew more desperate. My hands continued to slap around the car door, frantically searching for the way out, but they couldn’t find it. My eyes couldn’t see it. The tremble was closer to full on convulsing now as I threw myself against the door in the vain hope that it might give way. But it didn’t. It held firm, and I kept coming apart. I kept gasping. I kept trying to push myself. But all I was doing was suffering.
I wasn’t getting out of the car. I couldn’t manage it.
Balling up my hand in a loose imitation of a first, I started striking the window. With a target so large, I found the mark with ease, but I couldn’t hit it hard enough to break or crack it. I was too weak to make any real progress. There was just the soft thud of a weak hand against the glass. I hit it once, twice, three times, but there was no breaking it. There was no cracking it. The attempt was pathetic and futile, and it was all I had.
I kept gasping. I started to try to pray. But I couldn’t find the words. It had been so long since I had tried that I might have even ghosted God.
“Mia,” I suddenly heard. “Mia!”
The voice was muffled by the car door, distorted, and left almost unrecognizable. Had I ever been able to recognize it, of course. In the moment, it didn’t feel familiar. There was no such thing as familiar. There was just the haze and the desperate need for air.
I struck the car window again. My mouth opened as I tried to scream, but with no air, I couldn’t. I was left festering in my desperation, in my panic, dread and fear. I was left drowning with no recourse but to strike the window yet again.
The figure came closer. It was a tall figure, thin if not outright lanky. Their face was just a blur of pale skin. The colors of their clothing were dark, and the silhouette was as crisp as my blurry vision would allow it to be. The figure tried the handle. I heard the jiggle that did not give way. The car door automatically locked when I shut it, just as I had told it to do when I was preparing for road trips to far off places where I would have needed the extra touch of security. But said security had proven to be a double-edged sword.
The figure tried the door again with more force this time. They tried to impose their will upon it and cursed when it did not give way.
“Mia!” they said again.
The sound of my own name said in that voice did not turn my stomach. It was comforting in fact. With that, suddenly, I knew who it was.
“Prof–” I tried to choke out through my gasping.
“Just keep breathing, Mia,” Professor Evory urged. “Just keep breathing. I’m getting you out.”
The dealer had said a self-locking car was a good investment for a woman on her own. I didn’t want to argue or think any more about it. His point seemed to make sense. When I told Chris about as he went around the car kicking the tires and checking the gauges, he didn’t say a word against that specific feature. All things considered, I didn’t think I needed to be against the auto-lock. I didn’t think it was a bad idea.
But now I was suddenly against the auto-lock. No one could get me out of this car because of it. Consequently, there was a chance I would die all because of that stupid auto-lock.
“Prof–” I started again, shutting my eyes for a moment.
I couldn’t breathe. I kept gasping. I kept drowning.
I didn’t want to die, but knowing that there was that chance, there were things I felt compelled to do. I wanted to apologize for all the lies I told, even those that were meant to protect him. I wanted to apologize for never getting my lungs checked out like I told him I would. I wanted to apologize that he would be the one who had to watch me die.
Because I was going to die, wasn’t I? There was no way around it. I was gasping. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.
When I looked up again, Professor Evory was gone. At first, I assumed he had left me. He didn’t want to see my death happen or that maybe he went to go get help. But in the next moment, he came back into view with a large rock clutched in his hand.
“Keep breathing,” he urged. “Help is coming.”
Before I could realize what he was planning to do, he raised his rock-laden hand high above his head. I saw him do that much, but I couldn’t see the impact as he slammed the rock against the backseat window. I only heard the loud crash as the glass shattered. It startled me, and I cowered away, pushing myself against the steering wheel. I pressed my eyes shut as the broken glass fell away as a rush of cool air flew into the car. It did nothing to help me. I still couldn’t breathe. I still could hardly move, and I was losing more and more of my vision.
Hurriedly, Professor Evory tossed the rock aside and reached in through the window. His hand squeezed through the jagged edges of glass as he reached for my door handle.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
I wanted to cry, but instead, I passed out.