Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 3

The accident wasn’t last night. It was over a week ago. That was the first thing I learned from Penny. I also learned how she died.

         She’d always been a big woman, she told me. Raised in the south and transplanted to upstate New York with her daughters after she and her husband divorced to get a fresh start. It wasn’t the fresh start she’d hoped for. After a few years of not being able to find work and struggling to keep up on the bills and provide for her daughters, she became depressed.

         But her vice wasn’t sadness or moping around feeling sorry for herself, like I had managed to spend several days after my death doing. She threw herself into cooking, and more so into eating. She went from 150 pounds to over 300 in a single year, and her health took a nosedive. Her arteries were smothered, and her circulation was on the decline. She knew she was in bad shape, but she never justified spending extra money on herself that she could have used for the kids. And so, she never went. One night a few months ago, her heart gave out.

         “I went real quiet,” She explained. “Sleeping, and everything.”

         Her youngest daughter found her the next morning.

 

         As for me, I had been reduced to a stalker. I sat with Jason every day until they released him from the hospital. Penny came to check on me now and again, telling me to come to the cemetery in my own time so that we could talk. I couldn’t leave him yet. I watched as they pulled the love of my life out of the medically induced coma he’d been in since the accident. I watched as his mom came in, and for a minute all I could think of was how happy I was that he was okay. His first words killed me all over again.

         “Where’s Remi?”

         I watched as Mrs. Myers choked up and told him what I already knew—that I was dead. What I saw next was like having my heart ripped out of my chest. I haven’t seen his perfect smile since the night of the accident.

         The hospital released him after a few more days, and I followed him. He went straight from the hospital bed to his bed at home. He woke up in the middle of the night screaming. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t speak. He was broken. If it were anyone else, I would tell them to put their big-boy pants on and move on.

         He shrank away when Trey, Lena, Garett and Katrina came to visit. My perfect Jason became a hollow shell, and it terrified me. It was my fault. The fact that anyone could have this horrible of an effect on another person was profound to me. I hated every fiber of what was left of me.       

         His nightmares got worse every night. The one person in the whole world who I thought was unbreakable, the strongest person I had ever met, was broken, and I was the one who broke him. I couldn’t stand seeing him like this. Finally, I took the first step past watching him, and lay down on the bed with him. The mattress remained still, he didn’t budge, but the sobbing stopped. And mine started.

         I curled up in a ball against his side and my entire body wracked with every sob. I felt sick, and sorry for myself. I felt weak. It was a feeling I had never had in my life, and it was crippling.

         “Come on, sugar.” I heard a soft voice coming from the other side of the room. I looked up to see Penny standing at the other side of the bed with her umbrella tucked under her arm. She leaned down and pushed Jason’s hair out of his eyes. I gripped onto his arm as tightly as I could and shook my head. It didn’t matter—he couldn’t feel it.       

         “I don’t want to go.” I sounded like a stupid child. At the moment, I couldn’t give a single fuck—I just wanted lay there and feel sorry for myself.