Beatless

by Amber L. Johnson

She never left the garage door open.

  We walked in, the silence heavier than ever. Some days Sam would have the television on in the living room and I’d have to turn it off. Or I could hear her watching a show from behind the closed door of her room. Most days she had a cereal bowl in the sink and I’d wash it out of habit. But there was nothing.

  “Let me go check on Sam,” I told Tucker quietly. I expected him to stay behind, but he followed each of my steps up the stairs. Outside Sam’s door, I waited, holding my breath to try and hear something from her room. There was no real reason for me to think anything was wrong. She’d gone into hiding for a few days at a time before. There was just this feeling . . .

  “Aunt Sam?” I knocked on the door and waited. No response came. No sound. Not the creak of the springs in her mattress. Not the background noise of the television or water running. Not even snoring, which she did on nights when she slept too deeply.

  I looked over my shoulder at Tucker, and he tilted his head in question.

  “Aunt Sam.” I banged harder and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. “Hey, I need to talk to you, okay? Can you open the door? You didn’t come to my play last night or the night before, and if you’re sick or whatever, I really think it’s time we get you to a doctor.” Panic was rising in hot waves of nausea while I waited.

  Still, nothing happened.

  “In the kitchen, third drawer on the left from the sink, there’s a screwdriver with a yellow handle. Can you get it, please?” He nodded once and ran down the stairs. I could hear him in the kitchen. I could hear him pulling drawers open. But I could not hear a sound from behind Sam’s door.

  I banged harder, my fists turning red by the time Tucker made it back. His face was almost as white as his shirt and I wanted to tell him that it was okay. That I was overreacting and that we’d open the door and find her sleeping with a spilled bag of Cheerios on her bed.

  But I think part of me knew better.

  He helped me jimmy the metal bolts loose - first the top, which pulled away from the door jamb a little. Then the middle, which caused a bigger gap. By the time we’d gotten the bottom one out, my chest was seizing up with fear.

  And when Tucker pulled the door away, I stared into her room and fought the urge to drop to my knees and scream. Instead, I pushed him into the hallway and said the words I’d been dreading.

  “Tucker, call 911.”

  ~*~20~*~

  By the time the fire truck and ambulance arrived, I’d been sitting next to Sam for well over twenty minutes. She was folded over on the floor, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow. Her shoulder was pinned beneath her chest at an awkward angle, and she was unresponsive. But she had a heartbeat, and she was breathing, so I tried to be optimistic that maybe she’d be okay.

  I felt numb and unsure of what to do, but when they carried her downstairs on a gurney, I finally accepted the gravity of the situation. Then I ran to her bathroom to throw up.

  Tucker stood at the doorway, his arms held timidly in front of him while I clutched the porcelain and emptied the contents of my stomach into the bowl.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m scared,” I confessed, wiping my mouth with some toilet paper.

  “They’re asking if you want to ride in the ambulance.”

  I nodded and rose up on shaky knees. “Will you follow?”

  “Of course. Do you need me to bring anything?”

  I started down the hall, my head swimming and a clammy film of sweat covering my entire body. “A change of clothes. Toothbrush. I don’t know. Bring something for Sam. She’ll need clothes when she wakes up.” Everything was a question as I ran out the door to flag down the EMT. “I’m riding with her.”

  Sam looked so pale and small on that gurney, straps across her arms and feet, while they fixed an oxygen mask over her face. I held her hand and told myself that it was just a fluke. That we’d get there and she’d wake up and say that she took too many sleeping pills because she hadn’t slept in so long. I kept imaging that she would roll over in her hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, and give me a sigh and a side-long look like, Really, Mallory? I thought we talked about being overdramatic . . .

  At the hospital they rushed her inside and I tried to keep up but they made me stop and fill out her paperwork, mostly full of questions to which I didn’t know the answers. And I didn’t have a phone or her purse. I was winging it. They allowed me to sit in a small waiting room while they ran some tests, and it was there that I finally closed my eyes to fight against the impending tears. I wouldn’t allow myself to succumb to them just yet.

  Tucker found me sitting in the little burgundy hospital chair, hands folded over my knees and forehead resting on my arms.

  “Hey, I got here as soon as I could. I tried to grab anything I thought you might need. Or your aunt. It’s probably all wrong.” He dropped a duffel bag at my feet and all but fell into the chair next to me. His hand roamed my back for a minute before he leaned forward to look at my face. “How are you holding up?”

  I shrugged and rubbed my eyes. “I keep thinking they’ll walk out and say she’s fine. But no one has said anything yet.”

  He nodded and wrapped his hand over mine, pulling it into his lap. “Do you need to call your mom?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that I needed to call her. She’d been MIA for so long that she wasn’t someone that I thought of in any situation. I’d had Sam.

  “I don’t know her number by heart. I need my phone.”

  One call from Tucker and twenty minutes later, Sara rushed through the waiting room door, holding my bag in her hands. She sat it on the floor and wrapped me in a hug. “I came as soon as I could. Are you okay?”

  I wanted to lie, but I didn’t have it in me. “I’m not. I keep going over and over the last few weeks in my head, and I should have known something was wrong. I don’t pay enough attention.” I stood and pulled my bag closer, kneeling down to dig my phone out. The battery was almost dead, but there was enough to let me make a call. I stepped out into the hallway and gathered the nerve to call my mom.

  “Mom? You need to come home. Now.”

  ***

  Hours passed and they felt like days. Tucker and Sara stayed by my side, only leaving to get food or coffee from the cafeteria.

  It took so long for my mom to arrive at the hospital that I didn’t hear her walk into the room, calling my name. Exhaustion had taken over and I had fallen asleep right in that chair, curled against Tucker like he was the only thing that could keep me afloat in my sea of darkness.

  “Mallory Ann Durham. Wake up.”

  Her voice startled me awake. The bright lights of the waiting room were harsh when I opened my eyes.

  My mom stood in front of the chair, her face red and eyes bloodshot as she stared. “Your phone is off.”

  I sat up and pulled the little blanket I’d been given up around my shoulders. “It’s dead.” Tucker opened his eyes and went to reach for me before my mother spoke again.

  “And who is this?”

  He blinked his eyes to clear them and then sat up, too. “I’m her boyfriend.”

  Her head swiveled between the two of us. “You have a boyfriend? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Guess we’re even,” I whispered.

  She huffed and took the seat next to me, letting her head fall back to stare at the ceiling. “Have they come to talk to you, yet? Have you heard anything?”

  “No. Nothing. I’ve just been waiting here for someone to tell me anything but there’s nothing . . .”

  I let the sentence trail off as a doctor stepped into the room, asking who was there for Sam. I sat straight up, my heart slamming in my chest, a small ray of hope in the back of my mind. But the look on his face was apologetic, and I knew.

  Before he said a word, I knew.

  Before he said coma.

  Before he said slipped away.

  I already knew. And a part of me died
with her.

  Tucker held me in his arms as the truth hit me like a thousand gallons of ice cold water. I was drowning again, and the only thing I had to cling to was the boy whose arms had become my only real home after so many months. He let me clutch at his shirt, wailing and crying harder than I ever had in my entire life. The loss of her was so enormous that I couldn’t breathe, my lungs rebelling at the news.

  I couldn’t stop the pain even when I tried. It was futile, so I let it wash over and take me under while Sara looked on and Tucker held me together, letting all of my broken pieces fall around us in that tiny room.

  I wondered if he would be there to help me pick up the shattered pieces of my life and help me put them back together some day.

  ***

  My mom didn’t come back to the house with me. Not at first. There was paperwork to be signed. There was adult business to attend to. And I didn’t want any part of it.

  Tucker carried all the bags back into the house, and I hesitated at the front door, unsure if I could walk inside. She wasn’t there anymore. I was never going to see her on the couch again. Or hear her laugh. I’d never lay in her lap while she played with my hair and gave me advice that I only half listened to. Never again would I see her face when I walked through the front door.

  It hit me again and I started to sob, my hands clutching the door frame while I tried to fill my lungs with air. Tucker rushed over, pulling me though the door and helping me up to my room. When we walked past her open bedroom door, I stopped and took a tentative step forward. Tucker held my hand as I put one foot in front of the other and stood in the middle of her room, letting the tears fall freely. It was so quiet, but it felt, for the briefest of moments, like she was still here.

  ***

  Tucker stayed the night and I didn’t care what my mom thought of it. I needed his comfort. He understood. I worried that it would be too much, given that we’d just said that we loved each other and had put a label on the relationship. Part of me expected him to say he couldn’t handle it - that it was more than he bargained for.

  Instead, he held me close to his chest, and let me cry until I couldn’t anymore. He ran his hands through my hair in that familiar way that caused my chest to ache. And he looked at my face, his light blue eyes soft with understanding, and told me that he’d be there no matter what.

  Finally, for the first time in my life, I believed someone when they said they wouldn’t leave me.

  I didn’t go to any of my classes on Monday and my professors were okay with it. The heaviness in my chest didn’t let up and I wandered the house listlessly, every room reminding me of Sam. There were more than a handful of times that I shuffled by her room, the door still leaning against the wall where we’d left it. Her bed was still unmade. Her computer was still sitting on her desk. And I walked in to sit on her bed, my hands feeling along the comforter and eyes memorizing her furniture - such a reflection of who she’d been.

  There were stacks of paper on her desk and I contemplated leaving them for Mom to go through, but there was a tiny voice in the back of my head that whispered, “Look, Mal.” And it sounded just like Sam.

  There was a leather bound diary on top of what looked like some legal documents. I moved it to the side, my fingers sliding over the page filled with her handwriting. And the laugh that escaped my mouth was filled with so much sorrow, that I had to hold onto the desk to keep myself upright.

  It was a living will and it simply said,

  Myra,

  Mallory gets everything.

  I pulled the chair out and sank down into it, holding the paper in my hands, staring at the words. And then my attention went to the leather diary again, and I hesitated for a few seconds before sliding it across the worn wood.

  Opening it, I began to read.

  Dear Mal,

  By the time you get this letter I will be gone. They’ve given me a year to live.

  I went to my final doctor’s appointment today and there’s something strange about a doctor looking you in the eyes and telling you that you’re going to die. Asking what you want to do with the time you have left. Creutzfeldt-Jakob is a cruel disease to have. It’s even worse when your insurance runs out and any bit of help you could have gotten is no longer within reach.

  But I feel okay right now and I’ll be here until your mom gets back.

  I decided that I wanted to spend my last days with you. Yes, I came back here because I lost my job and my house and my husband. But I could have stayed somewhere else if I wanted to. There are places for people like me, but I think it would have ended with your mom being responsible for the cost, and I don’t want that for her.

  So here I am. In your house. In your space. In your life. Because I want to see who you are going to become over the next year. I want to live vicariously through your youth and excitement for what you experience. And maybe I can give you some advice along the way. If there’s one thing adults are good for, it’s telling younger people what they should do.

  Maybe I’ll start tonight.

  Sam

  Epilogue

  Dear Sam,

  You died on a Monday, early in the morning, before the sunrise. I remember every second of that drive home. The clouds were pink and blue; cotton candy puffs in the sky, like the ones you used to buy me when I was younger. The kind you told me to keep our little secret because you knew Mom wouldn’t let me eat it otherwise.

  It felt like maybe you were smiling down on me. Giving me one last treat. Telling me it was okay.

  But it wasn’t, Aunt Sam. It wasn’t okay that you were gone. That you are gone.

  I learned that day that all of the petty tears I had cried over stupid, meaningless people were nothing compared to the ones I shed over the loss of you. Nothing has been that painful in my entire life. Not being left behind. Not my parents divorcing. Not even the crap that happened with Tucker - though it all felt like the end of the world at the time, it all paled in comparison to losing you.

  I don’t cry much anymore, knowing what real heartbreak feels like.

  I sang at your funeral.

  It was one last grand gesture in your honor. My public profession of love for you. Tucker helped me write the arrangement, and he played the guitar while your casket was being lowered into the ground. You probably won’t believe this, but the entire cast and crew of the musical showed up. For me. For you. Randall was there, too. He’s not so bad. And he makes Mom happy - I guess he has that going for him. So you had one hell of a funeral. Dad even showed up and it wasn’t a thing, ya know? He walked over and gave me a hug and I introduced him to my boyfriend. Then we kinda just walked away.

  There were so many people there. I know you felt like you died alone, but you should know that there was standing room only that day.

  I choose to remember you the way you were when I was younger. Your face when we would talk, like you really understood me. How your smile was so big the night we went to eat and you first saw Tucker. You always saw things I couldn’t, and I wish above anything else that I’ll somehow inherit that ability, that it’s genetic and I’ll suddenly just have my eyes opened to . . . everything.

  I read your letters. Every single one. I need to tell you that. I could hear your voice telling me everything that you could never say out loud. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. I heard you, though. Finally.

  You knew you were going to die. It was the reason you came home. Why you’d never see a doctor. I believe you when you say that you thought you had more time. The autopsy confirmed that you did have that disease and I looked it up online. It all makes sense now: how your memory went so fast, your insistence that I learn to drive because your eyes were going bad, your mood swings and the stuff with your shoulder. They said you were one in a million . . .

  I had no idea at the time that I was watching you disappear right in front of my eyes. I blamed myself for a while. I should have known. I should have asked questions. You wouldn’t have answered them, though. I know that
. But at least I would have tried, right?

  I know you thought that Mom would be back before it got bad, but everything got messed up and the timing was off. Or you got sicker faster than you thought you would.

  Mom said you didn’t mean to cause anyone pain. You just wanted to be home for a little while. You never meant for me to be the one to find you.

  You left me everything and I wish you could have seen Mom’s face when she read your will. You left me the car. You left me your life insurance. We paid for your funeral, but what was left over was enough to pay for college for at least three years. Did you see that I got accepted to Vanderbilt? I wanted to tell you. And I’m sorry I never got the chance.

  One of your letters asked me if I ever wondered what life would have been like if I never got sick. And the answer is yes. I wonder what it would have been like if you never came home. If I never had that time with you. If you’d never pushed me to be something better than what I’d let myself become. If I’d never found my voice again. You made that happen and you’re not even here for me to thank.

  Maybe you are.

  I hear your voice sometimes, in the back of my mind. Your laugh will suddenly echo and I’ll have to stop myself from laughing, too. Like it’s some unspoken joke between just the two of us.

  And I thank you. Because you gave me Tucker. There’s no other way to explain it. There aren’t enough words for me to tell you how grateful I am that you did. I owe you . . . for every last good thing in my life.

  I have to tell you that the college offered to let me take a leave of absence for the last few weeks. They said I could extend my finals, given the fact that I was experiencing severe trauma from being the one to find you. But I knew you would hate that. I imagined you standing in front of me; that look on your face, while you told me to suck it up. That I needed to get it over with so that I could move on. That I’d wasted enough time.

  So I took my finals. In your honor. And I finished the first of many years of college ahead of me. I was undeclared, but after seeing what you went through, maybe I’ll pursue a career in medicine. Be a nurse or something? I don’t know.