Page 15 of Free to Fall

I lift my head and meet her concerned eyes. “Who the hell should I share them with? My family?”

“If you’re comfortable.”

I scorn her suggestion. “Because that’s exactly what I want to do—give my parents more to worry about when it comes to me.”

“They’d do anything for you,” she reminds me.

I don’t reply because I know she’s right. Instead, I use the opportunity to try to pull myself together. When I’m done, I’m shocked to find Alice holding out a leather book with gilded edges. I take it. “What’s this?”

“Your new journal.”

Warily, I ask, “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Whatever you want. Write in it, don’t. Tear out the pages, don’t. Set it on fire, don’t. But live your emotions through it. It’s yours, Laura.”

My fingers tighten on the pebbled leather imperceptibly. Mine. Something for me to unburden my chaotic emotions to without expectations. I jerk up my chin. “I’ll try.”

“Good.”

That session transformed me.

I’m still learning to accept the things I can’t change—death, pain, anguish. I thought I knew how before, but now I accept I was merely an observer. Now, I’m in the thick of the emotions and every trite platitude I’ve given patients over the years haunts me.

I didn’t know.

How could I?

Still, I don’t need a crutch, which is what I feel the bottle of pills I clutch in my hand is. “I can do this. I don’t need drugs.” Pulling open my nightstand, I drop my anxiety medication in the drawer, determined to not use it again.

If I’m going to live, I’m doing so on my terms. I’m no longer hiding behind my pain. My eyes are wide open so I can avoid my triggers. Before this happened to me, I knew the world could be brutal. Now that it’s taken a bite of me, I refuse to let it have another.

But one thing I won’t give it is my soul, despite it having a thirst for it. That I’m locking away until I know it’s safe.

Which may be never.

From the Journal of Dr. Laura Lockwood

The guilt of having survived is more than I can bear.

It isn’t manifested solely by thoughts of the ER but by a smell, a taste, a touch.

I feel raw when I smell the freshness of the floral notes beginning to bloom in my neighbor’s yards. It reminds me of the fact Karimat was choosing her wedding flowers with Uncle Phil.

It’s the taste of coffee, knowing how I fueled myself up with it to power through an extra-long shift. Did the caffeine cloak my fatigue? Obscure my judgment?

It’s touch. Pulling on an outfit to go to therapy. Attaching my name tag to access the building—a building I haven’t been banned from except by Moser’s verbal decree. Feeling tears fall down my face. All small physical acts that amount to one simple realization.

Dead people can’t do any of those things. It’s as simple as that.

Chapter

Seven

My thumbs instinctively rub the two recently healed tattoos inked on the inside of my pinkies. Residing just below a small scar left as a souvenir from one of my early exploits in the ER, my new amaryllis tattoos fit along the arch of my fingers—stitching color against skin. The artist went so far as to have the petals crying tears of blood into the underside of my fingers.

“I couldn’t have asked for something better if I had years to design it.”

“You asked me to remind you of who you are.” Kitty cupped my hands. “There’s been bloodshed. The legacy of Amaryllis isn’t just a legend for you, Gore. I didn’t think you’d want to forget that.”

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