Out on the street with a small cardboard box that contains all I took from the office, I stand for at least a minute trying to get my head around what just happened.
Then I drop the box of crap on the sidewalk and walk away from it and my job and everything I’d worked so hard for. I gave it everything I could. I was working the night Gloria was attacked instead of out with her. And for what?
Gloria. She didn’t look good when I was there, and I need to tell her I’m sorry for bothering her about her whereabouts.
And, I realize with a certainty that makes my chest clench, I have to tell her how awful I feel about Anthony. We’ve never discussed it, none of us in the family have, but that nurse made it sound like she might not make it and I have to let her know I’ve never forgiven myself for taking our brother away from us.
I make it into the hospital without incident this time, though if my feet get any more painful I might need a doctor myself, and go up to Gloria’s floor and down the hall to her room.
Though they both have their backs to the door, I know it’s Mom sitting beside the bed, holding the sleeping Gloria’s hand, while Dad stands looking out the window.
“Hi,” I say, “how’s she—”
They both turn tear-stained faces to me.
I freeze, my mind wiped blank. “No,” I whisper, backing away until I bump into the doorframe. “No.”
Dad comes toward me. “Honey,” he says, his voice rough, “she’s gone.”
“When?” I manage, wanting to hit him for saying it. Until he spoke the words, it wasn’t real.
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “About half an hour a—”
I don’t hear the rest. I jerk away from him then turn and run down the hall. Halfway to the elevator I trip in my stupid heels and fall hard to the floor on both knees, but I feel nothing. I get up, kick off my shoes, and keep moving, ignoring him and Mom calling me.
I can’t stay there another second.
What is the point, with Gloria gone?
I should have been there. But instead I was fighting for a promotion to let me work with a bunch of people I hate. If I hadn’t been trying to force Gloria to tell me where she’d been, I wouldn’t have run off and I wouldn’t have been at the office and—
And maybe she wouldn’t have died. Maybe I stressed her so much that she couldn’t—
Again, again, I focused on the wrong thing, and again a sibling is gone forever.
As I burst out of the hospital, I hear a child say, “Mommy, why doesn’t she got shoes?” but I don’t wait around to hear the reply. I take off down the sidewalk, bare feet on New York concrete, half hoping I catch some horrible disease. I deserve it.
I only have the strength to run for a few seconds but after that I walk and walk, keeping my mind blank by making my body keep moving, and I don’t know where I’m heading until I end up there.
I sink onto the pavement outside the ferry terminal, ignoring the quickly averted eyes of the people around me, and stare at the area where a random attacker changed the course of Gloria’s life. If she’d been five minutes earlier, or he’d been five minutes later, maybe the whole world would be different right now. I wouldn’t have gone after the size zero thing so maybe I would have been thinking better and wouldn’t have screwed up my presentation, and maybe I’d have received the promotion I’d been working toward since the day I started at the company.
Maybe maybe maybe.
I can’t bear the maybes. I’ve been seeking control since the day Anthony died, and I’d thought I had it, but now I know just how fragile that illusion is, how tiny and lost and alone I really am, how little I can do to make anything work right.
I know, and the weight of it presses me to the ground so I can’t move.