Dusk & Dawn

19- back to the past

"Without surgery, Dr Topaz, how long will I last?"

"I'm not one to judge, Raine."

"I need to know,"

"Without surgery, four months at least Raine but we can't tell how much the tumor has spread. "

"I know."

I've done more driving than I had in a pretty long while. And one would think I'd crash my car with these heavy thoughts in my head but I made it quite alright if you ask me. As I drove into the sketchy neighborhood Tasha Johnson used to live in, I realized a lot had changed in the hood in three years.

I needed to get out. The sympathy, the arguments, the thoughts, they were all suffocating and I didn't think much about where to go to escape from them. I didn't think at all and that's why I headed back to the city I used to live in, one that harbored the memories of my father, my childhood, and what my life used to be like.

East Texas.

I knocked on the door to the house where Tasha used to live in. An old granny came out after peeping through the hole. Her brows furrowed to see me,

"Good evening ma'am," I greeted the lady who had a crochet pin and wool in the grasp of her left hand. She looked behind me, taking a quick glance at my car before turning back to me.

"What is a fine lady like you doing in this rugged neighborhood?" She threw me a good natured smile and I finally relaxed.

"Do you happen to know a Natasha Johnson?" I asked and she smiled again.

"You a friend of my granddaughter's?" She asked.

"Yeah, but I left town three to four years ago," I answered

"Well, come on in and have some tea," she invited me into their house. I looked around the living room, pictures of when Natasha was little hung in the living room.

"I assume you lost her contacts?" I heard her voice from the dining room.

"Yeah, we haven't talked ever since." I answered watching her approach me with a tray of tea. I took the tray from her and gently placed it on the table.

"Tasha is on a scholarship to Yale, she won't be home until spring break," she explained to me and the corners of my lips twitched up to a smile knowing that she made it into her dream school. She was always fussing over her grades and worrying about school so much that she needed timeouts and that was when we went to parties.

"Kindly tell her I stopped by if she calls?" I told her.

"Why don't you leave your number here, what's your name darling?" She handed in her mobile phone for me to press in my number.

"Raine Parker."

"Excellent."

After taking a sip from the tea, I dust my hands off of nothingness and stood up from the chair. She dropped her mobile phone on the table and

"Are you by chance the friend of Tasha's that had cancer back then?"

"That'll be me," I sent her a nervous laugh watching her face morph into the endless sympathy I had traveled away from. 

"Your mother came apologizing to us back then. Where do y'all live now?" She asked me with a smile as she took my hands in hers.

"Midland, my mom works at the county hospital," I responded and she nodded like she was glad. As she stared into the empty space, I took that as my cue to leave.

"I better get on the road, it's a slow trip back to midland."

"Isn't midland too far a journey for tonight?" She asked. "You can pass the night here and hit the road tomorrow." She offered me.