Page 9 of Lana

Tomorrow.

She pressed her fingers against her pounding right temple and went to the bathroom in search of some ibuprofen. When she opened the cabinet and pulled down the medicine box, she saw the prescription sleeping tablets her therapist had prescribed after she’d lost her child. She’d refused to take them then because she was scared of being drugged, of being unable to respond, because even though Zoe hadn’t seen or heard from Lana for months, she had still been all Lana had left. And if something happened to Zoe—like a fire breaking out with her being unconscious and unable to respond—Lana would’ve been left with no one.

But what did it matter now?

No one relied on her.

She popped a pill from the packet and swallowed it. She stuck her mouth under the bathroom sink and swallowed a mouthful of water.

She straightened, looking at her reflection in the mirror. Red nose, pale skin. Dull green eyes lined by black circles. She was the ghost of her former self. Grief had all but destroyed her.

She wondered if she’d looked this bad when the sheriff came over—red, swollen eyes aside.

She looked at her green eyes, unable to remember the last time they’d sparkled.

Yet again she asked:Why, God?

She’d grown up going to church. She’d been a practicing Christian all of her life, but she didn’t know if she believed anymore. She felt like God had abandoned her when she needed him the most.

Dead parents, dead husband, dead baby. Dead sister.

She sighed, picking up her toothbrush, diverting her eyes to the task at hand. She wondered why she was even bothering to brush her teeth, why she’d bothered to stand up in the nursery. What did she have to live for?

She shook her head, recognizing these thoughts were the result of the crippling grief and depression she lived with. She was a psychologist and knew the clinical signs; she knew how to provide effective treatment for others, but she didn’t know how to fix herself. Her therapist hadn’t made much progress with her either. But Zoe knew she hadn’t really committed to healing—it felt too hard and she was too exhausted to put in the work.

She brushed her teeth, then her hair, and changed into her pajamas.

She walked into the living room and lay on the couch, pulling the throw blanket up to her chin. She hadn’t slept in any of the bedrooms since she’d arrived. The bedrooms should’ve been filled with her husband and child—but instead their emptiness was like a knife in the heart.

She felt a restlessness that had haunted her since her parents’ deaths, and it had only worsened since she’d lost her husband and unborn child. That was the strange thing about post-traumatic stress... it left no bruises, no physical wounds. The wounds were like scar tissue in her heart and mind. When people thought of traumatic stress, they thought of wars and battlefields—but the heart and mind were battlefields of their own, laced with landmines.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to concentrate on her breathing like a meditation until the sleeping pill kicked in.

Tomorrow she would face the world, but for now, she wanted to fade into the darkness.

She looked out of the kitchen window at the rising sun and her heart felt a little less heavy.

This was why she’d bought the old church house. The house itself was magnificent—and she’d almost laughed at the irony of a failing Christian—abandoned by God—living in a converted church. But, really, it was the view that had sold her.

She made a coffee and walked to the back porch. She sat on the swinging chair, sipping her coffee while the sun rose over the rolling woods.

It was a new day, and everything was a little easier in the daylight. When night fell her anxiety crept up her throat like spirits rising from the ashes.

She exhaled a long breath.

Despite having her moments of weakness like she’d had last night, she would not allow herself to be weak. She would not allow life to destroy her. She was going to find something worth living for.

She knew what she had to do today, but she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready to face the reality that her only sibling was dead. She would have to plan yet another funeral.

Zoe squeezed her eyes shut as visions of rows of refrigeration unit cells flashed in her mind. She willed the visions to banish when she could almost smell the morgue—a familiar chemical smell similar to a hospital, but different. She been in enough morgues in the past few years to know the smell of a morgue was different; not terrible, not the smell of decomposing bodies, but unique in its own way. Death had a way of clinging to everything.

“No funerals after this one, please,” she whispered, a plea to no one in particular. Part of her still wanted to believe there was a God, because then there was hope, but everything that had happened to her indicated there was no God, or if there was, he absolutely had abandoned her.

She finished her coffee and then drew a deep breath.

God or not, she was alive, and she was used to doing hard things.

Today might break her, but she refused to let it kill her.

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