“What happened last night?” I ask, searching my brain for news I may have heard but not registered. David was right; information spreads like wildfire in the hospital. Good or bad, everyone seems to know events as fast as they happen. “I think I’m out of the loop.”
Over the last few weeks, I’ve started to make friends. It’s a new concept for me, given the last years of my life. Friends were the casualty of my nomad existence, a necessary loss for my survival. But now, seeing these same people every day, watching them dedicate their lives to helping others who are suffering, I realize that the world is not just black and white. It isn’t just my suffering and the darkness that became my umbrella versus those who seemed to have everything right—instead, there are shades of all the colors, each one seeping into the other, changing the landscape, an evolution of the human soul.
“Tessa died last night.”
I stop, my hands gripping air. She was the little girl I worked with when I began. Who titled her book ME. I saw her regularly after that, and she seemed to be getting better, stronger. “What happened?” I ask, dread settling in me like a lost friend.
“She sat up, asked us to call her family.” The nurse stares at me, her face filled with wonder. “They arrived immediately. Tessa started naming members of her family that had passed on. People she had never met before. Told her mom and dad that those people were there, that they would take care of her.” The nurse continues to input information into the computer. “She said everything was going to be all right.”
I don’t want to listen anymore. I want to leave the conversation, go back to taking pictures, believing in what I know to be real. “What did they say?”
“They listened. They held her. She closed her eyes, and a few minutes later her heart stopped.” The nurse shakes her head in seeming confusion. “It was a code blue. They did everything to resuscitate her.”
“Where was the miracle?” I demand, my heart breaking, angry at life’s unfairness. Tessa was young, just a child. She had just started to live, the future unwritten, waiting for her to decide on the story she would tell. There should be a rule somewhere, somehow, that happiness is the default, the fallback for every situation. Every turn, every twist should lead toward a better beginning. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel; instead, the entire path is paved with sunshine.
“She came back to life. Minutes after they pronounced her dead, she came back.”
I don’t respond, have no answer. I have never wondered about more than here and now . . . it is all I have had the capacity for. If there is a life after now, a profound reason for what happens today, then I have missed the memo or purposely ignored it. Either way, I have no opinion on life after this one. But the breath I hold, the sadness I swallow, leaves my body in one swoop. She is alive. For now, she is still alive.
“Do good in this life so your karma allows a wonderful life next time,” Mom used to tell us. Karma was both a threat and a beacon; the life lived now would determine the future.
I leave the nurse, still shocked by the previous night’s events, and make my way to Tessa’s room. I know it by heart, her room just a few hallways down from where I am. It is late, so I know Tessa will already have had dinner. Most likely her parents have left for the night; with other children at home, they can only be spread so thin. I listen at the door for voices. When I hear none, I quietly push open the door. Peeking in, I see what I need—Tessa sleeping peacefully, her skin healthier, her vitals better than ever before. Nodding to myself, I start to close the door quietly as David approaches.
“So you heard?”
Though the hospital is large, it is nearly impossible to avoid someone. Similar patients, same diagnostic areas—all of it leading to an eventual encounter. Being near him, in the quiet of the hallway, I automatically go to our last encounter, when I almost lost myself with him and after.