40.1
For I Have Promises
voices
Gentle voices whispered into her dreams.
It’s all my fault, Kyle. It’s all my fault that she’s lying there like that, that she's -
It’s not your fault. You couldn't - it's -it's not your fault, Claire.
But it was her turn! The first voice sounded again, muffled and wet. It was her turn and she let me have it. I wish it was me instead, I wish I could have - nobody wants me anyways, it wouldn't make a difference -
Shh....
But...
She isn't going to die, Clara.
But it should have been me.
I`m glad it wasn't you. Mel's strong enough to look after herself but she never would have survived if you hadn't.
You know how much she loves you, Claire....
She shouldn't, though. I -
Shhhh....
- but I -
Shhh, Claire, it's not true. Don't blame yourself, there was nothing you could have done...
I’m sorry, Mel. Soft breath brushing warm against her face, a salty, lingering scent touched the air. I’m sorry I killed you -
- please don't be mad at me, please don't die while you're mad at me, I'm really sorry, I knew I shouldn't have - my first can't be my last - if you die - no one will want me ever again -
I wish it wasn't you, Mel.
It should have been me.
I love you.
If you die please don't stop loving me, Mel...
I need you...
c'mon, come back, I said I was sorry!
Silence -
Where were the voices? There was nothing without them - emptiness - she couldn't hold on any longer - a thin light linked her to the voices and when they were gone she slipped away into the nothingness -
fear - darkness -
- no, no, not yet, I'm not ready -
- she fought - she couldn't breathe - where were the voices, where was the air? -
Melodie...
- she caught on to the voice - she surfaced -
- the air rushed back into her lungs - relieved -
- she breathed -
Melodie, I'm sorry, I love you, come back and give me a second chance. Even though I never deserved the first one - I never wanted you to be taken away from me, I fought and cried and drove Dad crazy - I know I said I did but I never meant it - I never really meant that I wanted you to die. I know you didn't -
We can be real sisters this time. I'll never let them send you away again. Sister's promise...
More voices broke in, scattered, half-silent, creeping into her brain from swirling ether and she wasn't sure if they were real or half-imagined...
Open your eyes…
Stay with us, Mel, come back to us, we love you…
Won't leave you this time...
Promise -
We promise -
- another chance -
- another promise -
Let us love you this time, the way we always have; the way we never could...
...please, we promise –
An anguished cry from a voice – shock - she knew that voice - knew that promise -
I promise!
How could that one word, promise, hold inside of itself so much longing, so much bitterness? Why did it taste of tantalizing hope, the image of some future dream come true? And at the same it spoke of nothing but promised days of longing with no end - no fulfillment...
She stirred in her sleep, trying to reach those voices, (maybe this time the promise would come true) she struggled against the darkness, vainly, there must be some door to awakening within her dreaming
there was nothing
voices
promise
Nothing. Even the pain was gone now. She strove again to reach those voices -
She couldn't hear the words, but she felt the voices reaching towards her, filled with light and warmth and promise...
She slipped away…
What was "she"? Reality faded...spirits drifted timelessly through dull empty ether
Please, Mel, stay with us!
Don't let go -
- we're right here waiting for you -
if you tell me how to find you
I will come
A hand touched hers, a soft, warm hand…a gentle kiss planted lovingly on her forehead…
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chapter 1
There was the red-bricked building that housed the orphanage where she had spent many of her childhood years, looking oddly strange as well as familiar. She could not recognize any of the faded features of the children who wandered its cramped halls like silent ghosts, yet she knew that she had been intimately familiar with many of them at some point in time. She also knew, a vague knowledge that she couldn’t connect with, that she had been one of them once – were her eyes also haunted by that droop of eternal sadness, was her face etched with the hopeless longing of an abandoned child?
Hope. The word reminded of her of the face of another child, a face that was filled not with pain or longing but cool determination. The face of a child who had seen so much loss and abandonment that she had long ago closed her heart to its pain.
Sasha.
Hope is a fire. Warm in the beginning, leaving nothing but ashes behind.
For a moment she saw Sasha’s iron grey eyes in front of her, cool as they always were, and then she remembered how they had looked as she had seen them last, and there had been something different in them that last time, not their usual detachment but –
And then the pain returned, a searing agony that ripped her existence apart. For a split second she was still aware of herself, and she struggled to sink back into the icy stream of memories that kept her sane, but quickly the knowledge of their existence faded as she was dragged screaming into –
...she surfaced, the pain faded out of memory, and the other memories again became her only link to sanity. Whatever that might be.
She saw the red bricked building again, and herself as a sad-eyed child wandering its halls. The sights swirled and faded and other sensations carefully constructed themselves, like a giant jigsaw slowly being pieced together by some invisible hand in her mind.
She could feel her mother’s gentle hand on her chin, her mother’s kiss a loving balm on her cheek stained with her own childish tears. And her mother’s voice in the background, notes of pleading and helpless strength harmonizing in her words.
Be strong for me, sweetie. I’m going to come back for you as soon as I can. I’ll come back for you and everything will be alright again. Just wait for me here, it won’t be long, I’ll be back someday. As soon as I can – I promise...remember that Mommy loves you...
Darling, I promise; I promise!
Long years in cramped halls, marked by nothing but an ache of loss in her chest that could only be assuaged by the thought of her mother’s promise. A promise that seemed emptier with every passing day that her mother did not come. Years slipped by, and the echo of the whispered words became a bittersweet torment to a daughter who remembered nothing of her mother but a touch and a kiss and an unfulfilled promise.
...ashes taste good only to those who have nothing else to eat...
There was the promise of freedom in the cool grey of Sasha’s eyes, in the uncaring glance that she turned on the world. Her graceful, slightly stiff posture communicated her total disdain for the world and everyone who was in it. From her confident stride and lazy voice no observer could have ever guessed that she was an abandoned child rather than something of a spoilt princess. Everything about her was a direct contrast to the droopy sadness in the eyes of every other child in the orphanage, in their limp postures and gazes that looked forward to no future. Sasha’s eyes betrayed nothing except an occasional flash of contempt; ill-concealed amusement at the irony of life.
She grabbed onto that promise of freedom with everything that she had, forgetting the promise that had once been made to her by another. I’ll come with you, she said to Sasha, just take me away from here. I can’t stand the sadness in this place anymore.
...and blows away too quickly in a wind...
She saw phantoms of her parents everywhere that she went. Sometimes swirling, silvery images that enticed her, sometimes faded white ghosts of what they might have looked like. Don’t go with them, Sasha said, they’ll kidnap you and never let you go again. Stay here with me, you don’t know what their world looks like. But the blurred images of her parents were so exotic, so beautiful, so familiar although she didn’t remember them. She wanted to touch them, to disappear when they did. But Sasha didn’t let her get close enough to touch them, to disappear when the phantoms did.
...and any that stay hot for too long can start another fire, even more dangerous and uncontrollable than the first.
A bittersweet sadness of watching somebody you love leave you forever, the sweetness of love mingling with the bitterness of loss. That’s what had flashed into Sasha’s eyes in that last moment. When Melodie had chosen to touch the phantom of her mother’s hand. Vanished from the only world she had ever known, into a world that she might possibly never escape. Leaving Sasha once again alone.
I promise I’ll find my way back to you. I love you too much to be gone forever.
I’ll come back. I promise.
Yet another promise that existed only to destroy. The fragility of another heart entrusted, exposed, and destroyed.
Chapter 2
She still won’t open her eyes.
She lay like she would be dead forever. Kyle watched her, willing those eyes to open, wanting to take her in his arms like he had when she was just a baby, and tell her that everything would be alright – her brother was watching her. And he was still watching her now, but the feeling was different, watching her helplessly as the seconds ticked away, helpless to jump into the space where she lay dead and silent, helpless to lure her out of the nothingness of where she was to where he was waiting for her. He could make sure that she would not be alone in her last moments, but that was never what he had wanted. He wanted to walk together with her through all of the struggles of life, not escort her to where she would never be alive again.
He clenched his hands in his lap, willing himself to stay with her, but the hospital’s gloomy airs had already worn him down long ago. He couldn’t stand the sight of white anymore; the thin white gown that wrapped around her like a ghost, the sheets that she lay on, like a funeral shroud preparing to swallow her in their embrace. Even the walls are white, a brightly somber white that inexplicably reminded him of a coffin.
His hands itched. What he wouldn’t give for a screwdriver – to be safely ensconced in the darkness under a car in the garage, the touch of cool metal above him, the task absorbing his mind and drowning out the chanting in his head. Dead, dead, dead... a tune that horrified him and yet hypnotized him like a snake charmer’s enchanted tune.
Dead, she’s not dead. It was never her that I expected to die.
“Hey.”
Kyle turned around, surprised. Alyssa was standing next to him, her bright pink tank top incredibly out of place in this building of sombre whiteness, her hands jammed casually into the pockets of her neon blue shorts.
“Hey,” he replied. Why was Alyssa here so early? It wasn’t like her to spend her skipped classes in a hospital. Skip class, yes; in a hospital, no.
“No news about Mel?” Was it possible that there was the faintest gleam of hope in Alyssa’s eyes? Hadn’t she given up sooner than any of them? C’mon, guys. Just let her go already. She’s the smart one, quitting before the game gets worse.
No wonder their parents often worried about her. But it wasn’t like her to do anything drastic, she put on airs, pretended to be what she wasn’t. Kyle knew her better than anyone. She talked of despair because that’s all she’d ever felt since she’d been – like – what? Five? Or thereabouts.
“Nope. What news would there be? And why aren’t you in school?”
“Algebra,” said Alyssa, simply as if that explained it. She took down a folding chair that was propped up against the wall and sat down next to Kyle. “I wanted to check in before going home. I didn’t know that you would be here. I thought you had work.”
“I asked Brian to fill in for me for a few hours.” Why were his cheeks growing a little bit hot? It was natural to love a sister, to want to spend a few extra hours together – even when she wasn’t responding, when she wasn’t aware of it. But it was the sense of urgency that had driven him – he didn’t want Alyssa to know about that. He’d felt as if – as if, if he didn’t see her now, he’d never see her breathing again.
It was ridiculous. There was no immediate danger; all of the doctors said so.
And yet...
“I know,” said Alyssa. She spoke softly, as if reading his mind aloud for him. “I know.”
They sat there together, the hours stretching into nothingness, just sitting there and watching their sister breath, watching her chest go up and down as if their gaze alone could force her lungs to keep on working. Outside the window the light slowly changed into night but neither of them noticed, nor did they care.
They were still sitting there when a nurse, dressed in the ubiquitous white of the hospital uniform, came into the room and spoke to them, her words reaching their ears as if from a different planet.
“You can go home...getting late... we’ll look after her....”
Neither Alyssa nor Kyle moved away from their silent vigilance by their sister’s side.
* * *
No more empty promises.
please, I beg you –
i’d rather be left alone forever
than to wait forever
hoping
* * *
She wanted to stay in the darkness, in the sweet cool heaven where forgetfulness was not a liability but a blessing. A heaviness in her body – (her body, that was both a part of her and yet so far away from who she was) – whispered to her that upon the leaving the blackness, pain and only pain would ensue. And not the usual pain of the body – the burning, biting pain that gripped the body in the worst flames of a physical hell – no, she felt that already; for that sort of pain she had no fear. Another pain, a pain of something terrible that she knew had happened but had forgotten, and never wished to remember.
But already the pain crept up on her, like a strange creeping parasite in her body and heart that whispered you have forgotten me but I will never
forget
to haunt you
The voices were still there. She clung to them, the only fabric of hope in this strange darkness in which – if she wanted – she could be lost forever. They drew her upwards, up into the light; into the terrible world where good and evil lay, both sorrow and joy; mixed together in the strange cacophony that was sometimes hatred and sometimes love.