The room seems more colorful than I remember.
Books line bookshelves and there are plants thriving in pots situated on shelves and stationed in the corners.
Is that to make the air cleaner?
Garret agreed to see me at his office instead of at Greenfields and now I’m so terrified of what we will discover, everything around me feels like it’s compressing against my temples.
A shiver moves through me, causing every hair follicle to rise in awareness.
My mind prowls into the dark corners where shadows hide the memories of my past.
The rasp of Garret’s fingers flexing before tightening on the arm of the chair he sits in opposite me causes a stir in my stomach.
His tall, dominating presence when he’s in doctor/patient mode quells any argument I’d usually throw his way when he wants me to open up about my past.
I’m breathing heavily from thoughts of all that’s transpired since I was last here with him, in his office.
He glances at me, creeping his gaze over me, seeing right through to the marrow of my bones.
“Tell me what you remember from that night, Evi,” he orders me.
But I’m fighting the pull and shaking my head in response.
He uses my name with affection, his tone caressing the syllables, confusing me further.
The dynamics have shifted so much from patient/therapist that I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.
“You need to do this. It’s time,” he pushes, offering me a reassuring nod of his head.
His almond shaped orbs like a cat’s prowl and probe, beckoning me to succumb.
But I don’t want to. Instead, I want to beg him not to make me remember, but I know he’s right. It’s time.
The sleepwalking has become too dangerous and the information from other people just doesn’t add up.
The waves of memories haunting me don’t make sense.
He won’t let me avoid this any longer. I don’t want to avoid this.
I need to know. I need to know who I really am.
Fear seats itself in the forefront of my mind.
What if you don’t like who you are?
“Remember. Tell me what happened,” he demands, his voice hardening with authority.
My hands ball into fists as my heart thunders like a battle drum inside the prison of my chest.
Thud… Thud… Thud.
I focus on the balls swinging and clashing on the small Newton’s Cradle that sits on the table beside me.
Closing my eyelids, I search the murky depths of my thoughts, wading in farther and farther.
Mirages flash before my senses.
Disconnected, partial images, like swimming from dark water farther and farther toward the shoreline where the water clears and what lies beneath becomes unblemished, solid surface. Color. Sound. Smell.
My insides seize and sorrow swells in my chest. Icy drops tap dance over my skin.
“Where are you, Evi?” Garret asks.
I’m there in the past, within the body of the old me, gasping for air in cracked, quivering breaths. Small, broken. I’m only a child, staring up at an endless black that spans before me.
“Tell me?” Garret’s voice anchors me.
The sky expands before my pupils, a dusting of stars battling to shine through the thickening darkness of the night. I’m so cold. Too cold; my body heavy, damp. The concrete beneath me offers no comfort.
“I’m lying on the ground. I’m outside.”
“Where outside?”
My observation flitters to the structure made up of discolored wood and glass.
The terror, too horrifying to indulge the memory, battles to seat itself in my mind.
Strangers whispering, haunting my thoughts.
I know this place. I wish I didn’t.
“It’s my home. Our home. I’m in the yard of my old home,” I choke.
Tangled strands of my wet hair stick to my head, hardening like cement. I lift my hand and the small digits show I’m young; a child.
My hand drops with a heavy thud.
The night has turned colder than any before it, blanketing me in an icy chill.
“I’m dying,” I whisper.
I will be a frozen ghost if I don’t get inside.
My body is weakening with every shallow breath I take in.
“You’re okay. Breathe.”
My body spasms, causing pain in my solidifying joints.
My brain is willing me to move inside to the warm, but my limbs don’t feel like my own and they refuse to obey my commands.
“I can hear something,” I mutter.
It’s faint but solid, so I cling to it.
“What do you hear, Evi?”
Hushed voices are sounding from an open window.
My mouth peels open to call out to whoever it is, but it’s only wasted breath, too quiet to be heard by anyone but me.
“I can’t feel my legs. It’s so cold.”
There’s a throbbing in my stomach but it doesn’t compare to the expanding pit inside my chest.
It’s too much pain. I’m screaming internally, wishing it would all end.
“You’re okay. Keep going, Evi.”
I don’t want to. It hurts too much.
Hot tears pool and leak over my eyelashes, and I fight the memory so I don’t have to face the crushing ache.
The pain opens in my ribcage; a black pit of sorrow, empty and consuming.
Reality floods in; the smell of Garret’s aftershave and the warmth of his office. I’m back in the room with Garret, not dying on the cold concrete floor. Lifting my hand, my perusal takes in the size of my palm. I didn’t die. I’m a woman now.
“What are you feeling? Why did you come back, Evi?”
I shake my head, fighting him and myself mentally so I don’t have to dissect this expanding ache.
“Don’t make me feel it,” I beg.
“Feel what? What is it you’re feeling?”
A gasp escapes my lips as the pain from the memory washes over me like black rain, saturating me in its oily residue. I’ll never get clean.
“What is it?”
“Grief.” I grip my chest to make sure there’s a heart still beating in there.
It’s crippling, desperate sorrow, and it’s drowning me from the inside out. I want to close myself off and fade into the heartache, never to resurface, but it’s too late.
It’s like I’m an intruder to the emotion. It’s not mine to own. It’s the little girl’s who I abandoned when I forgot who she was.
Who I was.
“I’m dying!” I cry out.
Garret moves from his chair to kneel in front of me.
Grasping my hand in his, he squeezes hard, producing enough pain to show me this is real and not the memory I’m living in.
“You’re not dying. You didn’t die, Evi. You were saved. Go back. Remember.”
His words cocoon me in their safety.
My lids flutter closed and I let the weight of my sorrow wrench me back there, the cold expanding over me like wet quicksand, swallowing me in the memory.
Footsteps slap against the wet surface around me and a boy’s face appears, blocking the darkness of the sky.
“Someone is here.”
“Who is it?”
My gaze is unfocused as I stare up at him.
His features are distorted, like I’m looking through a misty window. His voice as he breathes my name is familiar, though. I hold onto it, willing myself not to leave him.
“It’s a boy.”
“Here. Here!” His lips move, calling out into the night, desperation in his tone.
Other footfalls sound around me and a burst of sweet scent fills my nostrils.
“It’s a woman’s face now replacing the boy’s. She’s saying something.”
“What is she saying?”
“She’s alive! Get a paramedic out here now!” the woman shrieks.
Her warm hands caress the cold, tight skin of my cheek. Her calming voice holds affection I’m not used to.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay. Stay with me.”
“Eleanor,” I croak.
“Who’s Eleanor, Evi?”
“Who’s Eleanor, sweetie? Can you tell me where is she?”
Eleanor.
Other voices join hers, but my sight begins to cloud over and there’s a humming in my ears.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get her to the hospital now.”
“I’m dying. Everywhere is numb.”
“No, you’re not. Stay with them, Evi.”
“Did you find another girl inside? She’s mumbling a name. Eleanor?” the woman mutters to someone out of sight.
Eleanor.
“No. Three males inside. No survivors.”
My eyelids are too heavy; they’re falling, pushing me under.
Eleanor.
Then there’s nothing. The sky falls and swallows me into the obscurity.
“Go back to when you were on the ground and called out the name Eleanor. That’s the same name you call out when you’re sleepwalking. I want you to focus on the voices around you. Try to stay with them. Listen to them. Close your eyes and go back.”
Thud… Thud… Thud.
“Did you find another girl inside? She’s mumbling a name. Eleanor?”
Eleanor.
“No. Three males inside. No survivors.”
“I can’t keep my eyelids open.”
“Stay with them, Evi.” Garret’s voice penetrates my thoughts.
Eleanor.
Eleanor.
“She’s her sister.” The boy’s familiar voice murmurs so softly it’s like the whisper of snow hitting the ground.
Thud… Thud… Thud.
What? No. I don’t have a sister.
Wait. Eleanor.
“No.”
My body jolts as if I’ve been struck by a thousand volts.
Memory after memory crashes into me, almost knocking me to the floor.
“Eleanor!” I cry out.
“Who is that, Evi?” Garret asks, his brow furrowed.
“She was my sister, and the cause of it all.”