“Wait, here. Take our phone number. We don’t have a cell phone. Our sons are always telling us to get one, but I just don’t know how to use them.”
I pulled my phone out and added her number. I paused before saving it: this was my fifth number in only a few days and this made me smile.
“Goodbye!” Tiaan and Mienkie said together as we pulled off down the road.
I turned around in my seat and waved until they disappeared over the rise.
“That was a really nice, unexpected surprise,” I said, as we joined the main road.
“It was. I really liked them.”
“Me too,” I mumbled thoughtfully, thinking about all the strange ways that life had thrown people into my path recently. If it hadn’t been for the elevator accident, I wouldn’t have met Noah. If it hadn’t been for the storm, I wouldn’t have met Tiaan and Mienkie.
I looked at the road in front of us. The storm had definitely left its mark. Little streams and dams seemed to have popped up all over the place, as well as . . .something else.I sat up straight as a feeling gripped me.
“Stop the car!” I suddenly heard myself say. “Stop it.”
Noah pulled over.
“What is it?” he asked, looking through the windshield. Only, it wasn’t what was on the road that I was looking at; it was what was on the sides of the road that had caught my attention.
“There.” I pointed into the vast fields that lay to the left and right of us. I reached for the door handle and began pushing it open.
“The flowers,” I said, as I climbed out of the car to survey my surroundings. Because there, spreading out from the sides of the road on both sides, all the way into the distance, into the open fields and up to the faraway mountains that dotted the horizon, were pink and white flowers. Pops of color on the otherwise muted background. A colorful carpet stretching out as far as the eye could see.
“Cosmos,” I said.
“Yes,” Noah replied. “That’s how you know it’s autumn in South Africa. The cosmos comes out, and soon it’s chocolate Easter eggs.”
I walked up to the first flower I saw. Pink, with a bright yellow center looking straight at me. A darker, brilliant pink in the center radiated outwards to a soft pastel pink that you just wanted to somehow capture and use it to paint all your walls with. Because it was the kind of color that could only be associated with happiness . . . but . . .
But, what?
I moved deeper into the field, touching the cosmos as I went, running my hands over the flowers, picking up pollen like a bee making honey. Making something sweet . . . but . . .
But what was this feeling?
Walking through this field of sunshiney brightness, two very different emotions started growing inside me. I could feel one coming from one part of my brain and the other coming from a very different part. A hidden part. Both feelings rose up inside me, and their crashing together felt inevitable and imminent. One feeling: freedom, happiness, the best and most beautiful happiness ever; and the other feeling . . .
Darkness.Pain. Tragedy. Everything that was bad about the world.
How could these two feelings coexist, let alone both be building up in me at the same time, rushing towards each other, about to collide? God only knew what they would form when they met in the middle of my consciousness. I looked back at Noah. He was standing by the roadside watching me as I walked deeper and deeper into the fields of flowers.
And then, like the eruption of a rumbling volcano shaking the ground beneath your feet, they collided. My body physically jolted. The sensation took my breath away and a sensation of physical pain wracked my body. It was so overwhelming that I felt my knees going weak. I couldn’t stop it. My legs wobbled. My head spun and I couldn’t stop myself from falling.
My knees collided with the ground. Hard. My head disappeared into the flowers, until all I saw around me were stems. Green stems, as I kneeled down in the field for a reason I just didn’t understand.
“Zoe! Zoe!” I heard Noah shout from behind me, and even in that moment a small smile flicked across my face.
Zoe! I liked that name so much. But I stayed like that, looking at the stems in front of me, until I felt those two great, comforting hands slip under my arms and pull me up to my feet. I don’t know why I was on the ground. Why my legs had buckled under me and made it impossible to stand up. Why the earth below had reached up and grabbed me and pulled me down to it, as if it wanted to show me something from a different perspective. As if it wanted me to look at the world from my knees?
“Zoe? You okay?” Noah spun me around until I was facing him. I looked at him, into his eyes, but it was as if I wasn’t really seeing anything. I still wasn’t present in this moment. Something had severed me from it.
“Zoe?” He shook me and I snapped out of it.
“I . . .” I mumbled.
“Come on, let’s get you to the car. When last did you eat or drink anything? It could be your blood sugar. Do you feel any chest pain? Any breathlessness? What about any tingling sensations? Can you smile for me, please? Smile.” His words came at me like a steam train. One after the other after the other. “Zoe, I need you to smile.”
