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I thought when I returned that Rachel would be able to understand. It never occurred to me that she would also leave. That she would take the opportunity to be gone. That I would never even get a chance to explain, to apologise.
Getting to my nan was what mattered most in that moment and so I didn’t go back to write a note.
I remembered that. I remembered that all too well. The deciding. The closing of the door. The glancing back one last time and reassuring myself it wouldn’t matter. A note. Just like it wouldn’t matter when I finally proposed whether or not I got the dates right. Rachel wouldn’t care.
Because she loved me. Because I loved her. And she would be there. Always.
The plane ride was split between downing whiskey and throwing it up in the tiny jostling bathroom. My nan had raised me. Taken me in when my mother left. And I was an ocean away the second she needed me. I wanted to drown that pain. But I knew, I guess in the depths of my stomach, that I deserved it.
I rode the whole cab ride to the hospital at the edge of my seat. I pounded the headrests for the driver to go faster till he threatened to kick me out if I didn’t stop. I rocked back and forth after that. The driver had to tell me when we were outside the hospital. Then he had to tell me to get out. Then, when I still hadn’t moved, he had to storm out, wrench open the back door, and grab ahold of my arm.
If the glass sliding doors hadn’t been automatic, I might have stood there forever outside. A reason to not go in. A reason to stay where I was safe. Where I didn’t know what I already knew. But the doors slid open and a wave of people behind me forced me inside and the woman at the counter asked who I was there to see.
There was no avoiding it. No way not to see her eyes scrolling down the computer screen. No way to miss the slight hitch in her breath. The quick licking of her lips. The little sigh before she looked up at me.
“If you’ll just come with me.”
I couldn’t say no at that point. I couldn’t run from her as she guided me slowly, too slowly to a dim, quiet side hallway. I couldn’t refuse when she asked that I sit.
She told me that my nan had suffered a second heart attack that morning. That she didn’t suffer. That she was gone.
“How much?”
“What’s that, dear?”
I stared at the blank grey wall across from me as I repeated, “How much did I miss her by?”
The woman made a sound, something like, “Oh”, something like, “Please don’t make me answer that. No good comes of asking—”
I sent my eyes to her. “When. Did. She. Die?”
“Mr Donovan, I—”
“When? Please.”
Her shoulders sagged. She consulted her clipboard like she didn’t already know. She didn’t look at me as she said, “Miss Donovan passed about fifteen minutes ago.”
I saw myself in the doorway of Rachel’s apartment, pausing to consider a note. I felt those ticking seconds go by like freight trains in the night. Each impossibly long. Each unbearably loud. Each rattling the floor beneath my feet.
I saw the cab I missed at the foot of Rachel’s apartment, saw it drive off, its headlights fading. I felt the restlessness of my feet as I waited too long for the next one. I heard the driver’s voice, “Accident just happened up ahead. Might add a bit of time.” I heard the man’s voice behind the counter when I finally got to the airport, “Well, there’s a connecting flight in ten minutes, but there’s no way you’ll make it.” I heard the TSA agent’s voice when I tried to explain, “Everyone’s trying to make a flight, sir.” I saw the closed doors. Heard a voice who thought they were being helpful, “It’s no big deal. There’s another one out on a different airline in no more than fifteen minutes.”
In the end I heard my own voice, loud and clear in that dimly lit hallway as the nurse patted my arm.
“I will never forgive myself.”
I didn’t mean to scare the nurse. She was just doing her job. She was just trying to be as kind and gentle as possible while doing it. She didn’t deserve to get frightened. To jolt back. To gasp and cover her mouth when I screamed and hurled my phone against the wall. When I decided that wasn’t enough, I drove my fists through the drywall, crushing the shattered pieces of my phone beneath my boots. When I lost myself so completely in my rage and grief that I didn’t even realise she was no longer there to apologise to. She’d run off to get security. I was being dragged away.
It seemed I blinked and I was in a chair. In an empty hallway. A different one from before. No holes in the wall. No shattered phone. It was the morgue. I blinked and it was another chair, another hallway. The funeral home. I blinked and it was another chair, another hallway. The crematorium. Plenty of holes in the fucking wall there.
I blinked and it wasn’t a chair, but a bed. An empty one. Not a hallway, but a room. An empty one. I stared at the ceiling and hot tears poured from the corners of my eyes to stain the pillow. Because there was one person I wanted to call. One person I wanted to ask for comfort. For support. For love. There was only one person I wanted to call and it was the one person I couldn’t.
Rachel’s number was broken to pieces in my mind just like the phone had been on that hospital floor. I could grasp at a digit here and there, but it was as useless as half a phone battery, its edges sharp enough to slice straight through your palm.
It was days later (I wasn’t sure how many) and I was just realising that I had no way to contact the woman I loved, an ocean apart, but it might have well been a whole lifetime away.
I couldn’t hold the shattered phone in my hands. Couldn’t even try to begin to piece it back together. It had surely been swept up by some janitor. Thrown into a black plastic bag. I imagined the shards of glass tumbling from the back of a dump truck. Rain splattering the dark, empty screen.
And Rachel’s number there. Somewhere. But unreachable. Lost in the dark.
It was what I deserved. To be alone like my nan had been alone. To expect someone to be there and be proved wrong. To lie there and know it was my fault.
All my fault.
I will never forgive myself.
