Acceptance
Isaac is not in his bed when I wake. He’s not in the house. I check every corner, dragging my half useless leg behind me. My guess is that I’ve been unconscious for at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more. I step outside in Isaac’s oversized clunky boots, sinking into the fresh snow. The blizzard has all but covered the lower half of the house. Snow piles in graceful sweeps of white. White, white, white. All I see is white. It looks like the house is wearing a wedding dress. If there were tire marks, they are gone now. I walk as far as I can before reaching the fence. I am tempted to touch it. To let the volts shake my body and send my heart to a screeching stop. I reach my gloves toward the chain link. My light wool gloves that do nothing to stave off the frigid air. I might as well be wearing lace on my hands, I think for the thousandth time.
Isaac is out. My hands pause midair. I have no idea if Elgin will take him to a hospital. My hands move an inch toward the fence. But if she does, he will live. And I might see him again. I drop my hands to my sides. She’s crazy. For all I know she’s locked him up somewhere else where she can play more of her sick games.
No. Dr. Elgin always did what she said she was going to do. Even if it meant locking me up like an animal to fix me.
The last time I had seen Saphira Elgin was a year past the date I filed a restraining order against Isaac. I’d been seeing her once a week for over a year. Our visits, that had started with her extracting one sliver at a time from the lockdown that is my mind, eventually became more relaxed. More pleasant. I got to speak to someone who didn’t really care about me. She wasn’t trying to save me, or love me to better health; she was paid (a hundred dollars an hour) to take an unbiased look into my soul and help me find the crickets. That’s what she called them: crickets. The little chirping noises that were either alarms, or echoes, or the unspoken words that needed to be spoken. Or that’s what I thought anyway. Turns out Saphira cared above and beyond her pay grade. She entered God’s pay grade. Toying with fate and lives and sanity. But that last time, the last time I saw her, she’d said something that in hindsight should have been my clue in to her insanity.
I’d told her I was writing a new book. One about Nick. She’d become flustered at that. Not in the extreme outward way a normal person becomes flustered. I don’t even know if I can pinpoint how I knew it upset her. Maybe her bracelets tinkled a little extra that day as she jotted notes down on her yellow pad. Or maybe her ruby lips pulled a little tighter. But I knew. I’d confessed to her that I’d messed everything up, but I wasn’t sure how. When we ended our session she’d grabbed my hand.
“Senna,” she’d said, “do you want another chance at the truth?”
“The truth?” I’d repeated, not sure of what she was getting at.
“The truth that can set you free...”
Her eyes had been two hot coals. I’d been close enough to smell her perfume; it smelled exotic like myrrh and burning wood.
“Nothing can set me free, Saphira,” I’d said in turn. “That’s why I write.”
I’d turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when she’d called my name.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
I’d half smiled, and gone home and forgotten what she’d said. I’d written my book in the month after that meeting. I only needed thirty days to write a book. Thirty days in which I didn’t eat or sleep or do anything at all but clack away at my keyboard. And after the book was finished and catharsis was complete, I’d never made another appointment to see her. Her office called and left messages on my phone. She eventually called and left a message. But I was finished.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I say it out loud, the memory aching in my brain. Is that where she had the idea? To put me in this place where for a time both the sun and the moon were hidden? Where like slow, seeping molasses I would discover the crickets of truth in my heart?
My zookeeper thought it kind to be my savior. And now what? I would starve and freeze here alone? What was the point of that? I hate her so. I want to tell her that her sick game didn’t work, that I’m just the same as I’ve always been: broken, bitter and self-destructive. Something comes to me then, a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
“F*ck you, Saphira!” I call out.
Then I reach out in defiance and grab the fence.
I cry out because of what I think is coming. But nothing comes. It’s then that I acknowledge that there is no humming. The fence used to hum. My vocal chords are frozen, my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I unstick my tongue and try to lick my lips. But my mouth is so dry there is nothing to wet them with. I let go of the chain link and look over my shoulder at the house. I left the front door open, it’s swung wide, the one dark spot beneath the veils of snow. I don’t want to go back. The smart thing would be to go get more layers. More socks. I threw on one of Isaac’s sweatshirts before I left, over the one I was already wearing. But the air cuts through both like they’re made of tissue. I head back for the house, my leg aching. I throw on more clothes, stuff food in my pockets. Before I leave I climb the stairs to the carousel room. Kneeling in front of the chest, I search for the single puzzle piece that escaped the fire. It’s there, in the corner, overlaid with dust. I place it in my pocket, and then I walk through my prison for the last time.
The fence. I lace my fingers through the wire and pull up. In Saphira’s exit with Isaac, she might have overlooked turning the fence back on. If she comes back I don’t want to be here. I’d sooner die free, cold and in the woods than locked up behind an electrical fence, turning into a human ice cube in that house.
Isaac’s boots are big. I can’t fit the toes into the octagons that make up the pattern of the fence. I slip twice and my chin bumps down the metal like something out of a Looney-Tunes cartoon. I feel blood running down my neck. I don’t even bother to wipe it up. I am desperate … manic. I want out. I claw at the fence. My gloves snag on twisted pieces of steel. When I rip them away the metal catches the skin on my palm, ripping into the tender flesh. I keep going. There is barbed wire along the top of the fence, running in loops as far as I can see. I don’t even feel the spikes when I grab onto one and swing my leg over the side. I manage to get both feet balanced precariously on the far side of the fence. The barbed wire wavers against my weight. I sway … then I fall.
I feel my mother in that fall. Maybe it’s because I’m so near to the Reaper. I wonder if my mother is dead, and if I will see her when I die. I think all of this as I make the three-second spill to the ground.
One.
Two.
Three.
I gasp. I feel as if all the air in the world was pumped into my lungs, and then rapidly sucked out, lickety-split.
Right away I search myself. I can hardly breathe, but my hands are running over my limbs looking for broken things. When I am sufficiently comforted that this fall didn’t break anything, I sit up, groaning, holding onto the back of my head like my brains are falling out. The snow broke my fall, but my head hit something. It takes me a while to get all the way to my feet. I’m going to have a huge knot … maybe a concussion. The good new is if I have a concussion I’ll just pass out. No feeling wild animals rip my limbs apart. No feeling myself freeze to death. No eating tree bark and suffering the claws of hunger. Just a nice, bleeding brain and then … nothing. The bags of peanuts I put into my pockets are scattered around in the snow. I pick them up one by one as I bend my head back to look at the top of the fence. I want to see how far I fell. What is that—twelve feet? I turn toward the woods, my bad leg sinking low into the soft mounds of snow. It’s hard to get it back up. I have worked a nice little path to the tree line when I suddenly turn back. It’s only ten feet back to the chain link, but it’s an arduous journey. I look one last time. I hate it. I hate that house. But it’s where Isaac showed me a love that expects nothing in return. So, I can’t hate it too much.
Please, please let him live.
And then I walk.
I hear the beating of helicopter blades.
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
I force my eyes open. I have to use my fingers to pry them apart, and even then I can’t get them to stay cracked.
Whump-Whump
It sounds like it’s getting closer. I have to get up, get outside. I am already outside. I feel the snow beneath my fingertips. I raise my head. There is a lot of pain. From my head? Yes, I fell. Climbing over the fence.
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
You have to get to a clearing. Somewhere they can see you. But all around me there are trees. I’ve walked so far. I am in the thickest of thickets. I can reach out and touch the nearest tree trunk with my pinkie. Did I stop here because I thought it would be warmer? Did I just collapse? I can’t remember. But I hear a helicopter whipping the air, and I have to make them see me. I utilize the nearest tree trunk and pull myself to my feet. I stumble forward, heading in the direction I came from. I can see my prints in the snow. I think I remember a thicket just ahead. One where I could see the sky. It’s farther than I thought, and by the time I reach it and tilt my head back, I can’t hear the Whump-Whump quite as clearly as before. Not enough time to build a fire. I picture myself crouched in the snow whittling away at a pile of wood, and laugh. Too late to go back to the house, how long have I been out her? I’ve lost all concept of time. Two days? Three? Then I think it. Isaac is alive! He sent them. There is nothing to do but to stand in the clearing, head tilted up, and wait.
I am airlifted to the nearest hospital in Anchorage. There are already news trucks outside. I see flashes and hear slamming doors and voices before I am wheeled on the gurney through the back door and into a private room. Nurses and doctors in salmon-colored scrubs come rushing toward me. I am compelled to roll off the gurney and hide. There are too many people. I want to tell them that I’m fine. I’m a death escapist. There is no need for this many medical professionals or this many tests. Their faces are serious; they are concentrating on saving me. There’s nothing really left for them to save.
Nevertheless, needles slide into my arms over and over until I can’t even feel them anymore. They make me comfortable in a private room, with only an IV to keep me company. The nurses ask how I feel, but I don’t know what to tell them. I know that my heart is beating and that I am not cold anymore. They tell me that I’m dehydrated, undernourished. I want to say, “No shit” but I can’t form words yet. After a few hours they feed me. Or they try to. Simple food that my hollow stomach can handle: bread and something that is white and mushy. I push the food aside and ask for coffee. They say, “No.” When I try to stand up and tell them that I’m getting my own, they bring me coffee.
The police come next. All official looking. I tell them I want to speak to Saphira before I speak to them. They want my statement; they’re clicking the little buttons on the ends of their pens and pushing tape recorders at me, but I stare at them tight lipped until I can speak to Saphira.
“You can speak to her when you’re well enough to come in to the station,” they tell me. A chill runs through my body. They have her. Here.
“That’s when I’ll speak to you, then,” I tell them.
A day before I am discharged I am visited by two doctors; one is an oncologist and the other an orthopedic surgeon. The ortho guy holds up the x-rays they took of my leg.
“The bone didn’t heal straight, which is why you have pain when you put too much pressure on it. I’ve scheduled you for—”
“No,” I tell him.
He brings his eyes to my face. “No?”
“I’m not interested in fixing it. I’ll leave it how it is.” I open the magazine on my lap to signal that the conversation is over.
“Ms. Richards, with all due respect, the irregular fusion of your bone that was caused by the accident will be something that pains you for the rest of your life. You will want to have the surgeries needed to repair it.”
I close my magazine. “I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.”
“That’s a very unique perspective,” he says. “But not practical.”
I fling the magazine across the room. It flies with surprising force and hits the door with a healthy thud. Then I pull down my hospital gown—all the way—until the scars on my chest are exposed. He looks like he might pass out.
“I like my scars,” I say. “I earned them. Now, get out.”
As soon as the door shuts behind him, I scream. The nurses come rushing in, but I throw my water jug at them. At the rate I’m going they’re going to put me in the psych ward.
“Get out!” I scream at them. “Stop telling me how to live my life!”