Page 58 of Wild Flower

Still, I’m a masochist.

I pull up my sister’s number and hit dial. When the call connects, I don’t even wait for her to say hello. “Valeria Kaine,” I launch in, “I haven’t listened to a single one of your messages or read your texts. Why? Because I’m not interested! I don’t want to play this ping-pong game of going in and out of the hospital ever again. Thank you for caring. Thank you for trying, but I live across an ocean on purpose. So respectfully, piss off.”

I roll back my shoulders and walk onto the back deck where the jungle arches overhead like buttresses in a cathedral. I was hoping for fresh air and all that BS, but instead humid Hawaii fills my lungs like a wet blanket.

There’s silence on the other end of the phone.

She hasn’t hung up. I don’t hear that empty void, instead Val’s breathing is on the other end of the phone, and I can hear cars whooshing by near her.

“Val? Did you—”

“I’m standing on the overpass where the accident happened,” she says.

A hand grabs all my internal organs and twists. Cancer is a bitch, but it’s a cakewalk compared to the day you get the call that your parents no longer exist. I snag the medallion at my chest and grip.

“It’s been eight years, Val,” I croak out. “Stop torturing yourself.”

I can imagine her on the sidewalk of the overpass with her mane of dark brown hair blowing in the wind from the freeway traffic. There’s a frown on her face as she stares at the spot where cars crumpled into fists with our parents inside them. It was a drunk driver, wrong side of the freeway, head-on collision. And yet, that’s not what Valeria standing on that sidewalk is looking for, though it is what she pretended she was searching for the first few years she’d make the pilgrimage to the accident site—understanding, to be able to picture it—as if horrors needed a witness.

Now, I think there’s just a hole in the center of her chest and she thinks standing where our parents took their last breaths might fill it. Only, that hole is bigger than the mansion I’m looking at. It’s an entire Grand Canyon that only air and emptiness can fill.

“It’s not even the anniversary,” I say softly. That’s when she normally goes—yearly, like she’s visiting a gravestone.

The buzz of traffic crackles through the phone.

“Val, you’re freaking me out. What’s—”

“When are you coming back home? From Hawaii?”

My shoulders sag. “We talked about this.”

“No, you got a free-badge of health and flew across an ocean like you’d be invincible forever, and I’m the one left here with the ghosts.”

“Then don’t go to the damn spot of the accident, Val!”

“You’re going to be a ghost, too,” she says with a sharpness that makes me grip my medallion even harder. “That’s the choice you made, right? Fuck off. Go to Hawaii to die.”

“I’m fine!” I correct. “I’m healthy and—”

“Ignoring every call and text I send you. You’re not calling doctor Hayes in San Diego, and you’re not calling Renner in Hawaii. So basically, you’ve decided—”

“Val, stop!” I hiss into the phone. “I love you, butthisis why I don’t answer the phone. I don’t need a lecture on—”

“No, of course not,” she interrupts. “You’d rather mess around and be reckless, go surf and drown in the undertow, rather than actually giving yourself a future.”

“We have different philosophies on this.” I grind my teeth. She wants to believe in meaning and purpose, a guided plan—as if there’s a reason for cancer and tragedy in our lives. “None of that will bring our parents back.”

A shadow casts over me.

There are two things I know for certain in this world. There is no safety or control. Ever. A drunk driver will tear the world out from under you, and then cancer will laugh in your face. And second, everything burns brighter when you realize it’s not meaning and purpose you need, but passion. And I don’t mean sex (though that can be part of it). I mean a passion for everything: food, art, life. The pull of the ocean on your ankles is a blessing, reminding you to fight for every breath and savor it.

Passion is not found in a hospital room with chemicals being pumped through your veins. I refuse to be that zombie ever again. If the cancer comes back, I’m jumping off a cliff and submitting to the ocean. I won’t be tethered to an IV pretending to drip myself back to life.

“Your philosophy is going to find you an early grave,” Val says with a tightness in her throat that reveals just how much she believes it.

“And yours has you standing where our parents died, feeling weepy and lost. Neither one is winning this game.”

“I’d feel better if you’d call Renner and set up an appointment.”

---