Not My Heart to Break

by W Winters

  * * *

  I spend the nights with Laura, holding her hand and sleeping in the small hospital bed next to her, and the days are split between our little prince and her. I tell her everything about him, from the way he makes little noises to how tight he’s holding my hand now.

  “He’s going to make it for you, Laura, so wake up, Babygirl. Please, I love you. Wake up.”

  Laura

  I would know her anywhere from seeing just the back of her head, but the hoodie is what gives it away. It’s bright pink but faded at her wrists, the fabric worn out so much that she poked her thumbs through the ends of her sleeves.

  “Cami!” I call out to her as she’s sitting on the hood of her car that she parked in the middle of the field behind the school. “You’re going to get in trouble for parking out here,” I yell out to her although there’s a smile on my face that won’t go away. It’s at odds with the gloomy weather. The overcast sky threatening to rain although nothing’s come down yet. I can see the storm ready to break right above us, but we’re dry. So, so cold, but dry.

  “Why did you park out here?” I question her like she’s lost it although she must’ve had a good reason to park her car in the field.

  I feel light but so cold and my heart is heavy although I don’t know why. Or why I’m wearing these scrubs. They’re scrubs, aren’t they? I do want to be a nurse one day… confusion overwhelms me, putting a deep crease on my forehead. Why the hell did I wear this to school?

  “We have to get to class,” I tell her, picking up my pace to get to her because I don’t think she can hear me and I’m so lost right now. The tall grass tickles my legs as it slips up the loose pants. I don’t remember how I got here or why we’re out here. I must’ve hit my head hard on something. Thank God I found her.

  She doesn’t answer me, even when I bang my fist on the car. The metal is hard but it doesn’t hurt like I expect it to. That’s when I realize how quiet it is.

  Is there even class? There’s no one else here, no one on the roads. A shiver runs down my arms, making me cross them as I look up to Cami.

  “Cami!” This time when I call her name, she looks at me, peering down from where she is on the roof of the hood of the car.

  “Hey,” she says, but her voice sounds so far away. There’s something wrong with my hearing. There must be. I really did hit my head.

  “What are you doing out here?” I question her and the wind whips away my words. I can hear each one being moved in the air, further away from Cami. I stare down the empty field, watching the overgrown grass blow as if I can see what I’ve just spoken hiding among the dried-out crops.

  The cold slips down my spine. “We have to go inside,” I tell Cami with all seriousness. There’s something wrong. I can feel it. And it’s far too cold to kick it out here. “Hey, let’s go inside,” I suggest to her again and this time my hearing is fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

  “This is where I like to stay. Sometimes Derek comes back here and if he’s not here, I can still remember our first kiss right over there.” She points off into the field.

  “You and Derek?” I ask her, shocked and when I blink, I remember. Like a forgotten dream. “That’s right!” I say and the smile grows larger on my face. “You two,” I say as hope blooms but then fades and I don’t know why.

  I feel like I’ve lost days or maybe weeks. Why don’t I remember?

  “Come sit with me for a minute? We have some time,” Cami says in an eerily calm manner but it eases something in me. I just want to talk to her, to be beside her, so I agree. Climbing on top of the car, I sit next to her but when we brush shoulders, she’s so cold.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just reminiscing. It’s so good to see you. You have no idea.”

  Something is definitely wrong. It all feels so wrong. “We should go,” I warn her again. “It’s going to rain and it’s so cold.”

  “It won’t rain,” she tells me and smiles. Her lips are a beautiful shade of red. The color is from matching lipsticks we got together when we got our friendship rings. “I promise it won’t rain.”

  “Hey, I got you coffee, but I think it’s cold.” In an instant, the surrounding environment changes to a house I don’t recognize but it seems familiar. My stomach sinks and lightheadedness nearly makes me topple over. What the hell just happened? Fear chokes me and I feel sick.

  We were just at the school. We were at the school.

  “Cami, there’s something wrong. I’m not okay.” Gripping the hood of the car, I clench my teeth and try to calm the terror that rides through me. “I’m hallucinating or something.”

  Slowly, my eyes open and just like I thought, we’re suddenly in front of a house. There’s a red door. And I know I know this house. It scares me. The memories of it evade me still, but I’m terrified.

  “I want to go,” I say and my voice is firm this time but Cami grips my wrist with her ice-cold grasp.

  The shudder that runs through me stops my heart. Or was it already stopped? I can’t feel it anymore. I can’t feel anything.

  “I’m scared,” I plead with her. I’m never scared. So little is able to scare me but I’m not okay right now, I’m not at all okay. “Something’s wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says and she’s quick to pull back. “I’m sorry,” she repeats with less shock and more finality. “I forget sometimes.”

  Sitting on the edge of the car, I debate running, but my head spins and I think I’m going to be sick.

  “Don’t think about it right now. Don’t think about that night or why you feel the way you do. Just… just talk to me please. Please. I miss you so much. Even when I see you, I miss you still.”

  Her light blue eyes gloss over and I get back to where I was, crawling closer to her and huddling together, my knees in my chest.

  “You don’t have to miss me. I’m right here,” I say to comfort her even though something’s wrong. I’m vigilant, looking out for whatever is coming. Something’s coming, I know it.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak out. It’s just that sometimes I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t understand.” It’s even colder here than it was in the field.

  “Don’t be scared.”

  “I’m terrified,” I confess to her, beseeching her to get off this car and go back. Back home, back… back… I don’t remember where we were.

  “I don’t like it here. I don’t… Cami, I want to get the hell out of here,” I practically yell at her but I don’t mean to. “I’m just so scared.”

  “There’s no reason to be.”

  “Cami, stop. This isn’t funny.” Trying to reason with her is… it can’t be done.

  “I think you should remember. Sometimes we go back to a happy place and I couldn’t know what yours was. I’m so sorry.”

  “Remember what?” At my question, she places her hand in mine and there’s warmth, the only warmth that surrounds us, but it’s followed by a flood of memories.

  Slowly, each one taking its time.

  Bringing me back to yesterday. To the sight of my body lying in a bed.

  I have to rip my hand away to hold my stomach.

  “He’s okay,” Cami whispers. “Please,” she begs me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and I lean into her, the tears streaming down my face. “Don’t leave me. It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve just missed you so much.”

  Wiping my eyes haphazardly, I come to the conclusion that it’s only a nightmare. Or maybe a twisted dream. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.

  “I miss you,” I manage to say, as if… if this is real, I could at least tell her that.

  This is all a torturous nightmare. It has to be.

  “I miss you too.” She brushes her shoulder against mine again and this time it’s not so cold. “At least I get to see you sometimes.”

  I wonder if it’s her I’ve been seeing, the girl in the din
er but as I’m thinking it, she shakes her head.

  “You have to stop being so sad, you know?” Cami gives me a half smile and swings her legs down the front of the car.

  “I’m not sad.”

  “You’re a horrible liar,” she tells me and I don’t know why I lied to her.

  “I feel so guilty,” I admit. Thinking back on that day, the day here in this house. The last time I ever saw her or it. “It was supposed to be me.”

  “We don’t get to know fate,” she tells me as if it doesn’t matter. As if her dying wasn’t a horrible tragedy. It was horrible and the worst thing in the world. She wasn’t supposed to die. It was supposed to be me. She should have had a full life. She was sunshine in a world that desperately needs it.

  I can only shake my head, everything coming back so much clearer. I want to wake up. I need to wake up from this nightmare. “I miss you so much. You’ll never know how much I wish it had been me.”

  “You know what I was thinking all the while when I was in your house and they were hurting me?”

  When she squeezes my hand, it’s warm, so warm, as if she’s really here with me. I hold hers with both of mine. I wish this weren’t a dream. I wish this were real.

  “I was hoping that you wouldn’t come back home until they were gone. I’d made that decision, Laura. They thought I was you and I let them believe that. That was my choice.”

  It kills me to hear her say that and I search my mind for any part of me that would think she’d want that.

  “It’s not okay. It was supposed to be me.”

  “All the while I kept thinking of what excuse I would give if you walked in. How I could convince them that you were only a friend and to beg them to let me send you away. That’s how I made it through it all. There were so many lies I could tell if you did come home. It was quick you know, in the scope of things.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

  “You shouldn’t be. It wasn’t in your control.”

  Her skin looks so youthful. She hasn’t aged a day, but her eyes are full of a wisdom that she didn’t have before.

  “Even as I was lying there dying, I prayed for you to not come home until they were really gone. Then I heard them leave and all I could think then was that I hoped Seth found me and not you or Derek. He wouldn’t have let you see.”

  She rocks me as I hold her tight, wishing I could go back.

  “You know what, though? What I’m really looking forward to?”

  Wiping my eyes, I take in a shaky inhale to ask her, “What?”

  “Babies and sometimes young kids can see us. Sometimes they know and I think it’s because they don’t know better to be scared or maybe it’s because of something else I don’t know. But I’m hoping he’ll be able to see me.”

  The second she says “he,” I see my son. I see a flash of him. In a little plastic box with wires attached to his chest and I gasp as I pull back from her.

  I hate this nightmare. I want to wake up. Please let me wake up.

  “My baby,” I say and put both hands against my flat stomach and silently pray for him to kick. To tell me he’s all right.

  “He’s all right. I’ve made it my mission to watch over him.” Cami smiles so bright and so wide as she adds, “He looks so much like you.”

  “You saw him?” I question her and a panic sets in. “I haven’t held him. I need to make sure he’s all right.” I close my eyes tight, trying to see him again. I need to get back to him. My little prince.

  “You should probably wake up; they need you.”

  “Come with me,” I beg her and I don’t know why. I know this is only a dream. One I both love and hate. One that scares me and one that I cling to. “I miss you too much.”

  “Hey, I’m already there. Every time you remember me, a part of me is there. It’s why I like to stay in the field. Derek has the friendship ring… he knows I picked out these rings specifically because the pattern on the bands looks like the little daisy flowers on the edge of the cornfield where we first kissed, you know. It makes me laugh really. I got them for us, but anything that had to do with us always had to do with them… didn’t it? It was supposed to be the four of us together forever. Did you tell him that when you gave it to him? Because he says that a lot.”

  “How did you know?” I question out loud how she would know that I gave the ring to Derek at the bar that night, but of course, she’s only a figment of my own imagination.

  She smiles knowingly and shakes her head, as if she read my mind. But of course she did.

  “He started dating girls who looked nothing like me, intentionally… as if blondes aren’t his type. Isn’t that…” she trails off and simply huffs then shakes her head. “He doesn’t want to love again but that only makes me cry harder here. I can feel his pain.” She admits that to me with tears in her eyes. “One day he’ll be happy again. One day he’ll love a girl and just to spite him, I hope she looks just like me,” she jokes and wipes under her eyes. “He needs to love again. That’s what I’m waiting for in that field. For him to tell me how he found someone. I love him too much to ever want him to be lonely. Would you tell him that? Please, tell him that.”

  “I’ll tell him. I promise.”

  “I love you, babe,” she whispers and then she tells me to go. I don’t even get a chance to tell her I love her back before she’s vanished and my world turns black.

  Seth

  There was one rule Laura made that I always followed. All the others I broke. I kept the lights on constantly, which she hated. I came home late and made too much noise. I did all sorts of shit that broke her rules.

  But I never woke her up in the morning. No fucking way. I did once and I learned my lesson.

  The memory makes me a huff a bit of laughter as I sit in the uncomfortable blue chair in the corner of her room. It’s too small for my frame and too hard to sink into. The bags under my eyes feel heavy and exhaustion, both physical and emotional, have beat me down into a man I don’t recognize.

  The memory of her when she woke up before she was ready, years ago when we were first dating, will always make me smile though. I can’t help it. She’s an angel, heaven sent just for me, but a demon if woken up before her alarm goes off. It’s what caused her to shove me away for the first time. True bitterness from being woken up when she had twenty more minutes.

  My Babygirl needed her beauty sleep. Or else she turned into a gremlin spewing curses.

  So I never woke her up and if I had to, I’d sneak out of the room before she could see me. I’d never make it obvious that I was the reason she was up so I could hide from her wrath.

  Another short laugh makes my shoulders shake and that warmth from the countless memories of her shuffling her bare feet while she made her way into the kitchen, desperate for coffee, mixes with profound sadness.

  She looks so beautiful when I think that she’s just sleeping in. She’s just having a wonderful dream and she doesn’t want me to wake her up.

  When reality comes back though, the smile falls and there’s not an ounce of warmth. It’s hard to feel anything other than cold and dreadful. It kills me to see her like that. She needs to wake up. I’m dying without her.

  “You have to wake up, Babygirl,” I plead with her for the thousandth time. “Little prince has another surgery today.” My voice tightens as I speak and I’m barely holding it together. “He did really well with the first one, you’d be proud.”

  They’re pressuring me to give him a name. There’s so much paperwork and they said I need to do it soon, but I can’t name him without her. “You have to wake up. I can’t do this alone.”

  I sit back in the chair, wiping my eyes harshly, pretending like I’m not the shell of the man I was. “I told him you were proud and then I told him about that time you helped Derek after the surgery on his arm. You remember that?”

  I keep asking her questions like one of them will do the trick. One of them will wake her up. She’s going to answer one of th
em. She’s stubborn like that. She can’t let me get the last word in. That’s the girl I fell in love with. She’s going to answer me one of these days and I’ll be so grateful for her to wake up and put me in my place.

  My heel taps on the floor as I grow restless in the stiff chair. I thought the smell of flowers would do it, so I lined this room with them. Two dozen vases and then some. The windowsill is lined with them. All sorts of colorful petals from wildflowers, sunflowers, and orchids. But none of them got a reaction at all from her. I thought a kiss, a squeeze of her hand, something, anything would let her know I’m here and she should wake up.

  But she only lies there, not responding to anything.

  So now I talk and pretend she can hear. Sometimes I hear her answers. Maybe I’m just crazy at this point. I hope somewhere inside of her, she’s listening and that she knows I keep the vases full of water and the second the flowers wilt, I get her fresh ones. I hope she can feel that I kiss her temple, then her jaw, and then her lips every morning and every night. I desperately hope she knows I’m doing the best I can with our baby boy but he’s not doing so well.

  He’s a fighter, but he’s far too young to have to fight this hard. It’s not fair. It’s not supposed to be this way.

  “The doctors said the likelihood of survival is lower for this surgery than the first but if he makes it, then he’ll have a very good shot,” I say then have to pause, closing my eyes and resting my forehead in my hand, my elbow on my knee. My throat is so tight and dry. I’ve been through hell and still I know it’s nothing compared to what he’s been through. “He’s a fighter like you and it was either choose not to do the surgery and say goodbye, or do the surgery and fight.”

  I pretend I don’t hear the tears drip onto my pants and I don’t feel them rolling down my overgrown stubble. “He’s a fighter,” I repeat, swallowing harshly and squaring my shoulders. “He’s got fire in his blood like you do. You should feel the way he holds my hand.” I’m here to protect her and him, because I’m supposed to be the strong one. I will be steady for them through this storm. No matter what happens in the end.