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Clapping his little hands, he listens to my words as he babbles. Before the last words leave my mouth, I start to drift. Lucas brushes his lips against my forehead. “Sleep, Angel, rest your soul, get stronger.”
Strange words are coming from his mouth, but before I can understand them, I am succumbing to the darkness.
Eventually, I wake up
to an empty room. The flowers have been changed and just a few bouquets are left. I know I’ve been in and out of consciousness and restful sleep for a week now. The therapist comes to do massages and exercises to wake up my muscles. Doing small things is painful, but I push with vigor, as if my heart wants to be somewhere else.
My mum’s avoiding coming. Every single time she sees me, she starts wailing, and I don’t know why she is so upset looking at me. Raine avoids coming as well. Something is wrong, but no one is talking to me.
I had a concussion, so my mind doesn’t yet work one hundred percent. The small test the doctor performs on me every damn day tires me out the most. They ask me every day if I recall what happened. I ask them what day, and get pregnant silence instead of the true answer.
Since I’m alone, I decide to use this opportunity to go to the bathroom on my own. Honestly, I am tired of pissing in the bowl they bring—it is stripping me of my dignity. The pain shocks me as I try to sit. My heart palpitates, telling my brain to stay put.
Stubbornly, I tell my brain to shut up as I stand on my two feet that are shaking like leaves. I push my frail body, one step in front of the other, until I reach the private bathroom. The light comes up automatically, blinding me for a moment. I try to breathe through the pain while a dizzy spell begins to blur my vision. But I stand there, too stubborn to be defeated. The dizziness finally passes and my eyesight clears up, the pain dulling into an annoying sharp throbbing.
Finally, I lift my gaze towards the mirror, and for some time, I look at the person, confused at what I’m seeing. I don’t recognize her at first. This battered woman, with colored bruises and a swollen face, looks back at me in disbelief. Shocked to the core, I trace the jawline and chin that don’t match the recollection of my image.
I stand, shaking, with horrified eyes. In an effort to distract myself, I trace the glass of the mirror with my broken, still swollen, fingers. The unfamiliar image doesn’t go away as I pat the mirror. I don’t look like Cassandra anymore. And why do my eyes have green hues breaking through my pale blue color?
I feel lost. My body begins to shake, vibrating in distress, and I choke, tears breaking from the strange eyes. An animalistic wail shatters the silence as the fear of something I can’t wholly grasp crushes my spirit. Spooked by the weird face, I knock on the mirror. I see immense horror reflected back at me. I beat the image, and then I scream. It doesn’t reveal my face and it’s not a dream. Who are you?!
The pain’s spreading through my limbs and core, like electric currents, and it explodes inside my soul. I try to wake up from the strange reality. Tingles spreading in my limbs announce the darkness pulling me into its comfortable embrace.
Before it can take hold of me, though, I see him running to my aid. The worried face looks strange, as if he’d been pulled apart and put back the wrong way. Something doesn’t seem right. He isn’t mine. People dressed in blue and white clothes rush into the room. I try to destroy the cruel reality in front my face. Extreme fear seizes my lungs as my heart tries to escape my chest. Something breaks inside me, and I begin to collapse, feeling the nightmare lying in wait.
Gradually, the angry ache loses its edge, but something prompts me to hold onto this feeling. The puzzle that is bothering my psyche needs to be solved before they steal it away from me as well. A heavy premonition settles in my bones, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Why, my love, did you let them break me? Why is the woman I once was, no longer here? Before I can find the answers, the darkness envelopes me in its waters.
Beep… Beep… Beep… Whoosh… Beep… Beep… Beep… Whoosh…
Beep… Beep… Beep… Whoosh… Beep… Beep… Beep… Whoosh…
I know why they look at me so strangely. My children, when I woke up, started to cry as if they were watching someone alien. Only my voice is left unchanged. The familiar voice somehow made them trust me. My family has probably been bringing them here to get used to their mother’s new face.
That small tidbit escaped my fragile mind at the time. Apparently, the brain can conjure any actuality if it needs to survive. Depressed, I only make an effort when my family brings my children. My heart wakes from the impassiveness for them.
Unresponsive most of the time, I wait for recollections to come back with the missing pieces. Detached from myself, I lie in bed, listening to my family chatter. The fake smiles I see every day make me want to shut out the world and get away, so I retreat into myself. In my head, I live away from the cruel reality.
I’ve composed my own safe harbor, where I can wait and heal my body, until I rise to find the missing piece of my heartbeat. I definitely know that my heart is missing one beat in the usual rhythm and my soul needs to reunite with it.
So why, my love, do you avoid me? Why you don’t come to visit? I don’t know what I have done to deserve this treatment, but I promise, my heart, I will earn you back.
The next time I wake up, I have company. It’s my dad who came to visit me. He is standing, watching the view through the window in silence for a while. He turns around, shaking his head, and his eyes fill up with tears as he comes close to my bed.
“There is not enough time for me to make up for the time we lost. I don’t know if it will have any impact anymore, but as a father who left you when you were a little girl and then betrayed that trust, I must tell you. Please, honey, don’t give up on your own children. Take it from me. Hold onto them as if they’re your lifesavers in the raging sea of loss and pain. You must find the strength and rise to live again. This face is just a shell, and it will be any shell you want it to be. Make it capable of withstanding the torture of sorrow, the power of sadness drowning you in depression. Be a dragon, burning with fire to live, and a brave lion with a desire to survive.”
This is probably the first meaningful and thoughtful speech he ever made. He brushes my hair away from my face, pieces that escaped from the braid my sister Aisha made. The strong message vibrates through my heart as my confused mind fires off the warnings of something else. After that, he sits in silence, as we both get lost in our own thoughts.
The stitches I see on my legs, and my arms and my aching ribs, tell me all about my injuries. Since the first attempt to reacquaint myself with my new face, I haven’t tried to look at myself again. There are too many missing pieces for me to feel connected.
As I come back from therapy, feeling tired and aching, I find Leif in my room, looking like Bigfoot. Sad eyes are hiding behind overgrown hair. His green-mixed-with-brown eyes watch me with apprehension, filling with tears, and his nostrils flare.
I stand from the wheelchair they used to bring me back into the room, and I slowly walk towards him. Dark emotions run across his features, like spooky shadows, and stop me in my tracks. I try to decode the message behind them, but he grabs my arms and gently pulls me to him, wrapping me in a bear hug before I can crack their meaning.
“Hey, kitten.” He chokes on his words. Whatever he planned to say gets stuck in his throat. He trembles as he gently holds me, aware of my injuries. Leif strokes my back, as if my presence gives him some sort of consolation. Too scared to ask why he is so tormented, I stand there, returning his embrace and breathing in his leather and motor oil scent.
“Are you sniffing me, kitten?” he asks, half-joking, as he tries to lighten the mood.
