She walked over to the sliding door of the room and closed it.
“I’ve done some terrible things since you’ve been gone Peyton,” I said, touching her face softly, “I’m not sure I’m the person you think I am.”
I put my hand on her arm and felt something begin to awaken inside of me. I felt part of me leave my body. It was my shadow. It walked away from me around to the other side of her hospital bed. All I had ever noticed before about my shadow was how dark and dangerous it was. Now all I could see was sadness and deep concern. It stared at me as if asking what to do. My shadow placed its hand on Peyton’s other arm, and I felt a small shock reverberate through my hand and pulled back. My shadow watched me. My right hand began to emit a blue light.
“Take off the ventilator, the IV, everything,” I said.
Joyce had her hand up to her mouth biting her nails, and her other arm wrapped around her waist. She looked at me confused.
“What? Are you sure?” she said.
“You’d better have faith that this will work,” I said.
“Faith in what?” she asked.
“Something bigger than us,” I said, removing her IV. Joyce began to help me. As we removed other items, machines started buzzing and beeping, but no one came rushing in.
“Why aren’t they trying to help?” I asked.
“She signed a DNR,” she said, “and I told them not to disturb us when the time comes.”
“Start praying,” I said, returning to her bed.
My shadow had been in the background observing, knowing what was about to be asked of it.
I laid my left hand on Peyton’s right hand and extended my other hand above her chest. As I did so the blue light began to emit around me. My shadow put its right hand on Peyton’s left hand and it’s left hand over mine, and a red light began to swirl around it. I experienced a twinge of worry, but dismissed it, I needed its strength.
The machines beeped loudly, it was hard to focus. I saw her chest moving slower and slower as her life attempted to escape her.
“Do something, Danielle,” Joyce beseeched, pacing the room nervously.
“Come on, Peyton . . . come back to me,” I urged her.
“Access your emotions, Danielle,” Joyce said.
As she spoke, memories flashed before my eyes of me opening my front door and seeing Peyton there, when we went to the park in the pouring rain, the first time I had my arms around her, when she grabbed my hand at my brother’s baseball game, at Christian’s when she ran her fingers through my hair, at Abel’s when she kissed me. I suddenly felt all the love I had ever felt for her, and all the pain I had ever caused everyone who loved me.
The blue light and red light collided, and a blinding purple light engulfed the room, emanating from between my shadow and myself. It was the perfect balance between love and hate, the rawest emotion. It was so strong it pushed back on me, but I held onto my shadow’s hand tight, as it looked at me uneasily, and I knew I must be showing it the same expression. The energy overwhelmed the room. Joyce collapsed to the floor. As I held onto Peyton, I felt the poisonous disease pulsing through her veins. I felt my soul slowly attempting to eradicate it one cell at a time. I tried to contain myself, but I knew I would have to lose that control and let it take over.
The memory of the day of the accident returned to me. The expression in her eyes as if she knew that second would be the last second of her life, and instead of closing her eyes in fear she had looked at me. Her green eyes locked onto mine, mine locked onto hers. I knew in that instant I had to save her. There was no other option.
I felt everything become deranged. The poison began rushing out of her, and into me. It was like razor blades being dragged over every inch of my skin, and battery acid being poured on top of that.
The orb solidified, sucking all the light, life, sound, and time in the room into it. Time froze for a moment.
It drove itself into Peyton’s chest. And the purple light exploded throughout the room creating a shock wave that shook the walls.
The force knocked me backward, and I collapsed to the floor. My shadow floated back into its proper home inside me.
From the floor, I attempted to catch my breath. I pulled myself up from the side of the bed as best I could, still feeling the poison linger like a cold sweat.
I wasn’t sure if I had saved her, or given her the final push into the afterlife. I took hold of her hand and scrutinized her intently. The machines continued to beep out of control. I glanced back at Joyce, who had her hand to her chest still trying to pick herself up off the floor. I looked back at Peyton waiting for a sign.
Joyce made her way to the opposite end of Peyton’s bed, taking her other hand.
“Peyton,” she said, touching her daughter’s face tenderly.
The color began to return to her face, black rings around her eyes faded, and her skin was glowing as if she’d spent a day in the sun.
Peyton turned her head slightly toward her mother’s voice with her eyes still closed.
I was so surprised I stumbled back into the chair behind me. Joyce looked up at me with a mildly irritated expression as if I were disrupting the moment.
“Mom,” I heard her voice say.
“That’s right,” Joyce said, wiping her eyes as tears escaped to run down her cheeks. “I’m here.”
I was shocked, it worked. I wanted to jump up and down in consummate excitement.
“Who else is here,” she asked in a groggy voice.
Joyce looked up at me. This was my chance to make things right, to tell her I was sorry, to . . . my thought froze all of a sudden. Show her what? That I’m still the same person as when she last saw me? The person who hurt her the most, abandoned her, and left her to die.
I put my hand up and shook my head so that Joyce would not acknowledge my presence. She was clearly perplexed.
“No one, sweetie . . . it’s just me,” she said.
She was so close to me, just feet away. I could talk to her. I could tell her I missed her, and she would welcome me with open arms, but I just couldn’t.
I took a step back, and another step. Then, quietly exited the room.
I made my way outside to Joyce’s car in the parking lot. After almost an hour, she appeared.
“I was wondering where you went,” she said with obvious concern, taking a seat on the curb next to me, “She’s asleep now.”
“Good . . . that’s good,” I said.
“Are you going to see her?” she asked, waiting for an explanation.
“No . . . I have to leave.”
“Dani, she’ll want to see you, she misses you. She never forgot about you.”
“I know, but I can’t do that to her,” I responded.
“Do what?”
“I can’t keep doing this. I know that she would want me back in her life, and accept my flaws, and accept the pain I carry with me, and help me with that burden as long as I didn’t leave her, but I don’t deserve to be in her life. Not now at least. I’m nothing but toxic. She will always be the world to me, a memory I never want to live without, but there is something missing in me, and I intend to find it. I want to be better, I want to be whole . . . I want to be that person that she thinks I’m capable of being, that person she always claimed to see in me. Until then, I can’t stay. I’ve done all I can for now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You know, I have no idea . . . but I think I know where to start. I’ll need a place to stay for the night and a favor. Do you think you can help me?”
“Of course, anything.”
We got into her car to search for a nearby hotel where I could stay.
“You should be self-sufficient for a while. I covered most things such as identification, you had a trust account from your great-grandmother that matured on your twenty-first birthday with a sufficient amount of money to support you comfortably for at least a couple years. You’ll probably need to work on getting your driver’s license.
Oh, and I have your social security card, birth certificate, and . . . death certificate as well.”
I laughed to myself at her last comment.
After a short drive, we arrived at a generic hotel with plenty of vacancies.
She went into the reception to make a reservation and escorted me to the room. It was a standard hotel where you entered the rooms from the outside balcony. We went inside and there was the typical queen size bed, nightstand, TV, and mirror. There was a faint scent of bleach from the sheets that caught my attention. The blankets that adorned the bed were a dark maroon color with gold trim. I laid my bag on the bed and sat down.
“This hotel is awful,” she said, standing with her arms crossed, appearing to avoid coming into contact with anything in the room, “We can go to another one.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’ll probably just head back to the hospital tonight once you’re all settled in here, and just sleep there. Are you okay with staying here alone? I can come check on you in the morning,” she said, hopefully.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said.
“Here,” she reached into her oversized purse, “I’m sure you want this back.”
She handed me my journal, in all its tattered glory. I smiled.
“Thank you.”
“So, what was the favor you wanted?” she asked, returning to our prior conversation.
“Oh, yeah . . .” I said with a twinge of hesitation, “Do you have any . . . medication?”
“I don’t have any of your medication, but if you need something to take the edge off,” she said fumbling through her purse, “I have my Clonazepam, it’s anti-anxiety, it should calm your nerves.”
“How many do you have?” I asked.
“Oh, plenty. I just filled my prescription. How many do you want, one or two?”
“I want all of them,” I said.
“Well, I can give you a few for the next couple days, and write you a prescription so you can get it filled, that way you’re taking something that is legally prescribed to you. Yes, I think it would fit in well with your prescription regimen.”
“No, I want them all tonight,” I said, my face expressionless.
Joyce grew silent.
“Why?” she asked.
“You know why,” I replied.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can, just leave them on the dresser when you leave. I’ll do it when you’re gone.” I said.
“Why do you have to do this now?” she said with frustration.
“Because — “I started.
“Danielle, you could die! Then what?”
“You know that’s not going to happen,” I replied, as reassuringly as possible.
“Danielle,” Joyce said sitting down on the bed, “I want you to know you are not a terrible person, you have the ability in you to do so much good in this world. You’ve just been cast with this dark shadow around you. The things you have endured would haunt anyone. You will find what you are looking for, I know it. You just need to start by forgiving yourself for the things you did and not accepting blame for the things that you can’t. Danielle . . . what happened to your mom . . . that wasn’t your fault.”
Her words brought a lump to my throat. She leaned forward, kissed me on the forehead, and got up from the bed. She crossed to the dresser and placed the bottle of pills on it. She then walked to the door and opened it.
“Find your way back,” she said without turning around and left, closing the door behind her.
When she left the room, I stood up from the bed and removed the blanket so that all that remained were the white sheets and pillows.
“Well, we’re halfway there.”
I tossed my journal and the bottle of pills onto the bed. I went into the bathroom and filled one of the plastic cups provided for guests with water.
I returned to the room and set the water on the night stand, then picked up the bottle and popped the top off, pouring the pills out onto the bed. I counted them one by one. . . . twenty-eight. I sat back against the headboard and selected one pill, picked up the water, took a sip, and tossed the pill back with it.
I opened up my journal and flipped through it as I continued to take the pills one by one with the water, then two by three.
After several minutes, the words began to blur slightly. I reached for the last pill and swallowed it. I flipped the pages slowly through the journal from start to finish. The words became a whimsical dancing of pages as each page flipped by, and my consciousness slipped away. I reached the back cover and it read:
Happy 13th Birthday to my favorite niece—Love Christian
Then everything slipped away.
I awoke in the place I hadn’t been in a very long time. Pure white. My peaceful place. I rolled over in the soft sheets and sat up, running my hands through my hair.
“Good to see you again, Dani,” came the familiar voice of Anarah.
I looked to my right, and she was sitting at the end of the bed.
“Yeah,” was all I could say in response.
“You have a lot of healing to do,” she said.
“Well, let’s get started,” I said.
“We can’t yet,” she said sadly.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I think you know the answer,” she said, looking to the left side of the bed. There, just as I had left her, sat Peyton.
“She’s still here,” I said.
“She is, and the healing process can’t start until she leaves, she’s blocking that process. Dani, it’s critical— ” she began, but I cut her off.
“I understand,” I said, watching Peyton, who regarded me with a smile.
As this transpired, I noticed there was an orb of light that wandered about. It changed from blue to red to green, and purple and floated throughout the room aimlessly.
“What is that?”
“It’s what still remains here of you. It’s the part of you that you left behind. It’s been waiting patiently for your return so that it can reunite with its owner.”
I looked over at Peyton.
“You told me a long time ago that if other people come here, once they leave . . . the mind loses them,” I said.
“You invited her false essence into here, in order to remove it, you have to extract everything that reminds you of her true being,” she said, “You won’t remember her, she will only exist in your memories as a blur of an acquaintance. Someone you might have seen in passing, if at all.”
I dropped my head and rubbed my hand against my forehead.
“But how could I forget her? She’s everything.”
“Your mind will erase her . . . it will detour and distract should she come into your mind, it will rearrange your memories to devalue her presence.”
“She always made me second guess the belief that I was a terrible person. If she never came into my life . . . how would I ever believe otherwise?”
Anarah sat quietly without response.
“Will she remember me?” I asked.
“Her memories will not fade immediately . . . but over time,” she said.
“Peyton,” I said, addressing her and getting up from the bed.
“Dani!” she responded as if realizing I was there for the first time.
She stood up and hugged me. I kept my arms around her for a long time. I didn’t want to let go. Almost everything about her was just like Peyton. Her eyes, her skin, the smell of her hair. Almost everything. I stepped back.
“What is it?” she asked.
I looked into her eyes for the last time, hoping if I studied them long enough I might never forget them.
“I need you to leave,” I said, and even though it wasn’t really her, the words hurt. My voice shook with every syllable.
“But I don’t want to leave you, Dani.”
As she said this, I knew the only time Peyton had addressed me as Dani was the day of the funeral.
“But you have to. You’re not real
. . .”
“You don’t really want me to leave, do you?” she asked, frustrated. I began to separate from our embrace, but she continued to reach for me.
“Don’t do this, Dani, you know what happens,” she said as tears began to escape her eyes, “What are you going to be without me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Danielle, please don’t do this to me! I need you, please don’t leave me again!” she sobbed through tears, “Please, I am begging you. Don’t you let me go. Give me another chance! I’ll do anything. Please, please, Danielle.”
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” I said as tears streamed from my eyes too.
“Fine, Danielle, run. Run away like you always do. You ran away from your family, your mom, you left me to die!”
Every word she spoke broke my heart into more and more pieces. This pain, this unimaginable pain that had become so foreign to me. I hadn’t seen her for years, but the pain of letting her go was as fresh as alcohol on a first-degree burn. All I wanted to do was say I’m sorry and stay there with her forever. Would that be such a bad life? She was the one I loved, she will always be the only one I love.
But, this was not her.
“You need to leave,” I said one more time, and turned my back on her.
I stood there for a second, wishing it would be over quickly.
“She’s gone,” Anarah’s voice said.
I crawled into the bed and let the tears stream down my cheeks. I tried to contain my emotion. It was an all-consuming pain. Pieces of who I was suddenly vanished. I thought I’d never be whole again. I didn’t have Peyton, I didn’t have my mother, I hadn’t seen my family in years. I had nothing. Where did I go from here? Peyton’s allusion was right, who would I be without her, as if I’d never met her? Anarah lay down next to me and wrapped her arms around me and began to run her fingers through my hair. I pretended she was my mother trying to soothe me as she had done so many years ago. My body trembled against her as the pain tried to escape, but she held me tight. I rested my head against her and began to let everything go.
“Rest now,” she said, “Soon it won’t hurt anymore.”
The orb of light flew closer to me, and little flakes of that light detached and flowed into my body, each hitting like a large droplet of water and becoming absorbed into my being. Each drop that hit calmed my mind more and comforted my soul.
Manifesting Shadow, #1 Page 22
