JOSH

 

I walked us through the sparkling sunshine of the gardens for some time, occasionally coming across other patients, many of them joined by guests of their own. They would just nod and leave us be, so it was no hassle. After ten minutes of walking silently through the place, I began to feel particularly fatigued, the sun’s rays becoming overbearing, and my weak, withdrawing body felt the need to sit down.

“I need to take a rest for a moment,” I stated gently.

“Of course,” Sarah replied.

I stopped us at the nearest bench, placing her beside it, and almost threw myself onto it, sweat pouring from me, my glutenous legs shaking.

“I wanted to be alone with you,” Sarah began saying not long after I’d sat down, “because I wanted to talk with you about…Well, about you.”

“About me?” I wheezed as I shut my eyes to stop the sweat from dripping inside them.

“Did you know that we met once before?”

“Yeah, the night you hit me.”

She was silent for a second or two and I sensed that she was still embarrassed by it.

“It’s okay,” I said, “you don’t have to feel ashamed about it; I fully got what I deserved. I was an asshole that night.”

“That doesn’t excuse me striking you.”

“Well you’re excused.”

“Thank you,” she muttered lightly.

“Whatever happened to that girl, the one on the floor?” I felt the need to ask.

“She got attacked again that night and we called her an ambulance.”

“Who attacked her?”

“Her pimp, drug dealer or whatever he is. He cut her mouth with a knife and she had to have stitches. He mutilated her.”

“That’s bad luck. Where is she now?” I nonchalantly inquired.

“She left the hospital a week ago and there wasn’t much more we could do. I don’t know where she is now.”

“Probably back with the same guy that hurt her. They usually do. People like her have no self-respect.”

“But that doesn’t mean they’re not worth saving.”

“If you say so.”

I was tired and my lassitude made me edgy. I didn’t want to argue with her, I certainly hadn’t set out to, but she had such unconquerable optimism that I found annoying, as well as futile. So I just bit my tongue for the moment.

“It wasn’t that night,” she said after almost a minute of silence between us.

“What wasn’t that night?”

“When we first met.”

“Oh, when was it then?”

“It was many years ago when we were just children. It was in Florida at one of your father’s golf courses. We were about seven or eight at the time. Your father was throwing some kind of party and I was in attendance with my parents and sisters.”

“My father threw many parties,” I said to this, “especially at the golf course in Florida, so you’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, I’m sorry. My life has often gone by in a whirl. When I’d be home from boarding school there’d always be some function or other; it was the only time I ever saw my father—among a crowd! Was I rude to you?” I asked as an afterthought.

“No, not at all.”

“That’s good,” I said with relief.

“You were very sweet actually. You took me out into the swamp to your treehouse.”

“Ah! The pirate’s lair!” I exclaimed, knowing exactly what she meant.

All at once I was struck with the lightning-bolt memory of having taken the red-haired girl there. During the proceeding years, the recollection of her had often come to me, floating into my head like a butterfly, and from time to time I’d wonder about the girl who had held my hand—where she was, what she was doing, what she was like now, was she happy. And now here she was sitting next to me, our fates crashing together like the rivers of a delta. Was it the little girl that I had seen when I peered uneasily into her eyes that night after she hit me in the street? Was I seeing in those jade eyes the innocence of my own childhood reflected back to me? And was it that which made me feel so guilty under its watch?

“I remember,” I mumbled, my eyes searching the blank space ahead. “It burned down a couple of years after that when there was a forest fire. You’re the only girl I ever took there.”

“I am?” she said, smiling all over.

“I often wondered about you,” I continued, half in a daze. “I never saw you at any more of my father’s get-togethers, until eventually I even forgot your name.”

“I never forgot yours,” she assured me in a bright tone.

I turned to her and was once again caught in the vortex of her look, the garden melting away into a blank, watery shadow. Under the beating rays of her eyes, I felt the need to open my heart to her, open my soul, to show her how wounded I was, to confess everything. But I held myself firm, something else inside me claiming that it would be foolish, and looked away.

“What made you risk your life and save all those people?” she suddenly inquired as the sunbeams danced off of her shining red hair.

The question caught me out. I’d asked myself the same thing several times these past ten days. In truth, I’d been haunted by it. If on the very morning of the crash someone had asked me whether I was capable of risking my life to save others, I would have answered without a doubt that I would remain in my car and do nothing. But I hadn’t.

“I really don’t know,” was the only answer I could give.

“It’s just, that night I hit you on the street, I could tell that that wasn’t you; that you were playing some role.”

“Aren’t we all playing some kind of role, Sarah? I’m a spoiled trust fund kid, so I should act accordingly.”

“By destroying yourself?”

“Who says I’m destroying myself?”

“Well, if I’m not mistaken I’m visiting you in a rehabilitation center where you’re being treated for narcotic and alcohol abuse.”

I grinned at her. As she’d spoken, I’d detected the same fire in her that had caused her to strike me.

“Why are you grinning?” she asked, her face going a little red, her nose wrinkling and her brows knitting together.

“You’re not gonna hit me again?” I asked, playfully putting my hands up.

Her face softened and she allowed her lips to perform a smile, the dimples on her cheeks showing.

“I’m sorry, I get a little angry sometimes,” she said.

“You’ve got fire in your heart. You care about stuff.”

“I care about stuff,” she repeated, mocking my tone as she did.

My grin rose up on my cheeks once more.

“Like that girl the other day,” I put to her, trying to be a little serious for a moment, “you and your sister really cared for her, even though she spat in your faces. It takes real heart to face something like that. I really admire you.”

“Well, I admire you,” she put back to me. “You saved all those people. Do you know there’s a lot of very grateful families who want to thank you personally?”

“Don’t do that,” I snapped.

“You should feel proud of what you did. There’s nothing wrong with being a hero, Josh.”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s hero,” I said, mechanically getting up from the bench.

“Are you leaving?” she asked with a look of surprise.

It was only then that I realized I was standing. I looked around confusedly and something urged me to walk away, to leave her there in the middle of the gardens and get back to my room, take the last of my pills and sleep for the rest of the day. I wanted to escape her and the day itself. But as I felt this wrathful annoyance pervade my body, her hand reached out and took mine, our fingers becoming impulsively entwined, and I immediately felt calmed. It was indescribable the effect that her soft, warm touch had on me. It was as though that hand had always been within my own. As mechanically as I’d stood up, I sat back down again, a sudden wave of tranquility washing over me.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she said after a minute of us sitting there holding hands.

“It’s okay,” I replied in a soft tone. “I get a little jumpy. I came off my meds yesterday and I guess I’m still a bit on edge. I just wanna relax and not have to talk about all this hero stuff. I just wanna do my time, get out of here and continue my life.”

“In what way?” she said sharply.

The tone of her voice pricked my annoyance once more. Or maybe it was more the question. Whatever it was, I was filled with a barbed anger that scattered intensely through me and tensed my body.

“Any way I like,” I said firmly, letting go of her hand.

“You can’t go back to your former life,” she asserted.

“And what is my former life?” I asked, turning angrily to her.

Her expression looked stern and yet at the same time full of compassion.

“I don’t really know,” she replied, “but I know it didn’t make you happy.”

“You know it didn’t make me happy!” I burst out.

“No,” she uttered in a resolute tone.

“What the fuck would you know about happiness? Look at you in your flowery thrift-store dress covering your tits all the way up to your neck and then all the way down to your knees. A cheap cardigan, probably from the same thrift-store, covering your arms, your face without a mark of makeup. You’re sexless. You’ve cut yourself off from sensuality. You’ve cut yourself off from feeling, real feeling. Look how you spend your nights, going out and being spat at by whores when you should be having fun. You’ve never lived, Sarah. Not one day of your life have you lived. So what the fuck would you know about happiness?”

“I live for others,” she put.

“Ha!” I couldn’t help jeering. “These ‘others’ feel zip for you, and they’ll take and take and take until there’s nothing left. You’re wasting your time living for them. They can’t even live for themselves.”

I stopped. She looked so angry then, just as she had when she’d struck me.

“Take me back to my sister,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, recognizing that I’d hurt her.

“Just take me back to my sister.”

The adamant firmness in her voice made me realize that there wasn’t anything I could say to make her remain and the bottom dropped out of me. I’d never set out to upset her, but in the end I had. I was torn between two opposing states in her presence. One full of intrigue and desire to be around her, drawing me toward her and wanting to give in. Give in to what, I didn’t know, but this part of me wanted to submit fully to her will. Nevertheless, the other state found her hateful. It wanted me to push her away and have nothing more to do with her. It told me to get away and sneered at her benevolence and optimism, which it found hopeless. Where one state found aspiration in her words, the other found contempt.

I didn’t say another word and merely got up from the bench and wheeled her back inside to the reception. There she called her sister and, as we waited for Kay to arrive, we said not one word to each other. A part of me wanted to leave her there and return to my room, but I thought this too impolite and stayed. Thankfully it wasn’t long before Kay came in through the doors to take Sarah away. She took hold of the wheelchair and began guiding Sarah out, and I fully expected this to be the last time we ever saw each other. But as she reached the door, Sarah made Kay stop, turned to me and asked if I’d like her to visit again.

“If that’s what you want,” I stated.