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What’s the point of putting myself through this if the outcome isn’t survival?
My phone rings in my bedroom. Summoning strength from God knows where, I stand to my feet and walk into the bedroom. Right as I reach for the phone, the call from Laura disappears, and all of my notifications pop up on my lock screen.
Holy shit.
Six missed calls from Laura.
What in the hell is going on?
Immediately, I call her back, and she answers it before I even hear a ring.
“Thank God! What is going on?” she snaps.
Oh my God, does she know? There’s no way.
“What do you mean?” I feign ignorance.
She scoffs, “Charlotte! You missed the interview with Barrett Olson! Hello!”
No way. That wasn’t happening until three p.m. over the phone. Pulling the phone away, I can only imagine this is some elaborate prank because I think it’s only, like, eleven a.m.…
Six p.m.
I was asleep for another ten hours? How is that even possible?!
“Laura, I-I’m so sorry. I-I don’t know what happened.” My eyes well with tears, and my heart stirs with disappointment I’ve never felt.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to get that interview? How many months I had to spend jumping through hoops to get Barrett frickin’ Olson, Nighthawks royalty, to agree to do an interview after a twenty-five-year media hiatus?” She sharply inhales. “I gave it to you for exposure, Charlotte! To get your name out there! And you forgot?! Now, I’m getting my ass chewed the fuck out because I made the fuckup of a century with a legend.”
My lips part, but nothing comes out. I don’t know what to say. There isn’t anything that will justify the damage I just did. She put herself on the line for me, and I let her down in the biggest way imaginable.
“I’m sorry…” I whisper as my heart breaks in two.
Even as unprepared as I was to lose Reed, Abby, and Anna, I was never prepared to lose Laura. She is my best friend in this entire world and has been for as long as I can remember. I would understand if she hated me after this, for ruining potentially the biggest groundbreaking interview of her career. Yet again, my cancer kills another one of my relationships.
She scoffs, “Yeah, I bet. Look, I need to go cool down and do some damage control with his agents. Take a few days off or a week. But get better before you come back to the office. Because this can never happen again.”
A beep sounds in my ear as she ends the call.
How can a nap be so detrimental?
“Arhhhhh!” I scream from the bottom of my lungs and throw my phone across the room and into the wall.
Tears bubble up inside of me, and I let them loose like a bomb going off.
Grabbing a pillow from the bed, I place it over my head and scream, “Ahhh!”
How did I lose everyone?
“Ahh!” I scream again.
I roar into the pillow, releasing every ounce of anger, sadness, and fear that has been trapped inside of me.
As I deplete every drop of energy I have left, my cries and shouts turn into pitiful whimpers as I curl up in my bed. Wrapping my arms around my pillow, I cuddle the only thing that I have left—the inanimate objects that I can’t push away.
How did I end up destroying everything by trying to save it?
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