Reincarnation

            I pulled the car off of the highway at exit nineteen, the sky letting a light rain glaze the road and windshield.

            “Is everything alright?” I chimed, looking at Barry’s grimacing face.  The road in front of us speckled with glittering rain as passing headlights reflected towards his pained face.

            “Ocular migraine.  You know?”

            “Anything to help?”
            “Do you have sunglasses lying around here somewhere?”

            “Yeah, I think,” I reached my hands into the middle divider.  I felt soft cloth, plastic forks and spoons, napkins, but no glasses.  “Come on.”

            “It’s okay, but I’ll just have to shut my eyes.  No biggie.”

            “No one second.”  My eyes shifted from the dark, straight road ahead of me to the middle compartment.  There they were�"big, oval sunglasses.  “Here you go,” I smiled lifting my gaze, his eyes opening to welcome relief.

            “The road!”

            Everything eaten by light, the world in front of us a murky heaven�"all at once turned to hell.  I grabbed the wheel, tried to pull away, but I only hurt him more.  The car creaking�"Barry screaming curses like air, and that light, so white it felt angelic.  Then the crash. The car smacked directly into his door, smashing his body crookedly as the glass flew across the interior.  The car crunched like tinfoil popping in the microwave, James screaming in agony like a dying animal.  I couldn’t help him as I watched his body bend into unlivable shapes.  In that moment, life and death didn’t matter.  The crooked wreckage of James.

            He always liked to bathe alone after the accident. 

            “Just let me take care of myself.”

            “It’s okay to accept help you know?”

            “But I don’t need it.”  He wheeled his chair toward the bathroom. 

            “Please, I still love you.” I pleaded because I knew why he wouldn’t let me help.  The scars on his back from surgery, from the glass, from the claws of the crushed metal car.  He would never let me see them.

            “I can take care of myself Mary,” he muttered, steering his wheel chair slowly into the bathroom.

            “Just let me help.  Remember how fun it can be?” I tried to smile playfully, but he didn’t bite.

            “This isn’t a game anymore,” he smiled back, weakly under his dark green eyes.  Some heavy obstacle between us.  A car.

            “Well, I’ll be waiting for you.”

            “Don’t wait up.  You barely sleep as it is anymore.”  He stopped in the doorway to the bathroom.  “You know Mary, I love you.”

            “I know,” I smiled. 

            The way his body had been laid so peacefully in the coffin seemed absurd in comparison to how I found him the next morning.  The limp limbs, the red stain�"everything in the bathroom still seeping with red tracks.  He was everywhere and nowhere, throughout and missing.  White as the linoleum floors, the tiled walls, the porcelain tub.  Just another accessory to stand against the crimson trails.  Cold and lifeless, even his chair once so active sat still, wheels locked.

 

            “A preacher makes no sense Mary,” his mother said.  “Suicides don’t go to heaven, isn’t that the rule?”

            “James was a good man, he just got lost.  If one mistake measures his entire worth, then the rest of us might as well give up now.”

            “Look, we loved him, but he chose this.”

            “At least a funeral�"a basic funeral?”

            “Of course, but not too much.  We would really like to keep it hush hush, if you know what I mean?  He took his life, but think of Stacy�"well, being the sister of the boy who killed himself is a hard life.”

            And we buried him�"James, without a sermon, without a hallelujah, or even a mourner outside his parents, sister, and myself.  The family left together after throwing a fist of dirt each.  His sister, tall lanky, unmoved next to his father thick and lonely, left abruptly.  His mother waited one second, grasping my hand in her own, kissing me on the cheek, and then walking away.  I lied down next to him one more time, as close as I could get on the cold earth. Darkness and still nothing more, no one came for me.

            “A night, another moon,” I muttered, staring at the lights appearing across the sky.  Falling stars, meteorites burning as they get too close to the earth, unable to exist in the atmosphere.  To be the landing ground for such a force, the catcher’s mitt of some celestial baseball game�"I could only imagine how it would feel to burn.  I watched the heavens progress for hours, lying with my back on the ground, with a thin layer of grass and topsoil acting as my mat.  The world spun in front of me, but I knew that it was actually moving beneath.  A rumbling force spinning forever on an invisible line. 

            The sun peaked over the horizon, and I knew I had to get up, leave, before the gravediggers came to open new plots for the day’s funerals.  Dusting the earth off of my black dress, I watched the clouds fall down onto him.  James sleeping peacefully the whole night and through the rest of forever.  Two bundles of roses rested next to his granite nametag, sacrifices to his spirit. 

            “You had no right,” I choked on my words.  “B*****d.”  The words slipped out like destiny.  “Goodbye,” I whispered, kissing the stone lightly and picking up my shoes.  “I’ll be back.”

            At home I saw the remnants of a police investigation, the left over trash, tape, and the missing objects taken as evidence that had been forever filed in some cabinet.  Most of all, I saw the bathroom. 

Bare and clean; even the grout between the tiles was starch white.  Not a hint of red, crimson, or scarlet.  His blood had been scrubbed out of the tub, off the floors, out of the house.  Out of my sight, so I wouldn’t remember.  Everything looked like he’d never even left.

In the medicine cabinet, I found a bottle for James. 

            I went to the graveyard again that night with supplies.  Climbing the mortar fence, I dropped my bag on the ground next to his name, resting my body on top of him. Like most ghosts that haunt the living, he didn’t speak to me.  We both silently looked up at the night unfolding.  Eventually the moon rose to the center of the sky, like a beacon beckoning me.  I lifted my body to reach for the bag, the bottle of James’s Percocet clicking, and a bottle of water. 

            One pill between my lips, I swallowed and drank, lying back down.  A few minutes later, I lifted up again.

            “Swallow, rinse, repeat,” I echoed, lying back down.  Again, and again, with each pill, the world got hazier�"warm, fuzzy�"like mother earth’s grass was hugging my sides, tucking me in one last time.  Fourteen�"the last pill in the bottle.  Barely able to move�"my chest a sunken ship unable to surface another breath.  My body stopped.  Blackness consumed me.  The stars and moon just scratches on a neat, black slanted surface as my eyes slowly shut the living world out.

            In the depths of death I could hear a buzzing.   Like a fly hitting a light bulb, closer and farther, in and out, under water, above the surface, over and over again�"some ragtime meter.  I was on an eternal swing, moving away and towards something unseen.  A bee flying�"a mosquito afraid to nestle too close to my skin, but unable to fight its urges.  Warmth overcame my chest, though my arms and legs were numb, like branches of a tree I had no control over.  I was trapped in my own, buzzing body, but not scared, and not stuck: finally free.

            Slowly, my arms began to tingle, cool down.  My legs joined soon after as the warmth wore off.  The taste of metal, of ink in my mouth.  My eyelids heavy, glued shut.  My lips, locked tight with the secrets of the universe.

            “Mary,” I heard an echoing male voice, reverberating of the walls of the blackness.  “Mary?”

            The words went in and out of my ears.  My mouth muscles stood still like boulders in a river.

            “Mary, Mary, Mary?”

            It had to be James; I knew it had to be.  I fought my lashes to open, focused all of my energy towards my face, forcing my lips to move.

            “James?” I blurted through my cracking lips.

            “No, Dr. Morton, Mary.” 

            I fought the blackness, the warmth.  My eyes slowly pulled apart to white.  Like the fires of hell coming at me all at once, my eyes stung like the buzzing bees had all at once stabbed into my retinas, the comfort destroyed.  The warmth of the blackness subsided to the cold white hallway swooshing around me.  Men and women quickly swarming around�"pulling, pushing, my cart while running under dozens of straight white lights.  Masks and stethoscopes, glasses, caps, scrubs, in random order.

            “Mary, can you hear me?”

            “Yes,” I answered, unsure of which drone the words had crept from, each a blurry representation of the last.

            “Do you know how much you took?”

            “Is James here?” I muttered, my head pounding in syncopated rhythm.

            “No Mary, the Percocet, how much did you take?”

            “James?”

            “All right,” the voice said calmly, “First we need to help you.  Take her to have her stomach pumped and put on close watch.  A 72 hour psychiatric hold is immediately in affect.”

            “Wait!” I yelled, trying to lift my body from the cart.  A hand pushed down against my chest, the pressure forcing my stomach.  All at once I couldn’t control my body, I knew what was coming, and I threw my head to the side as the vomit burned through my chapped lips, enflaming the cracks.  The blackness came again, the pain falling into the gentle buzz, the bugs coming home as I rotted in vomit.

            The buzzing began to become more uniform, steady.  Soon it mutated into an “eeteet, eeteet,” continuing over and over again.  My index finger was being held, my arms nudged by thin, cool lines.  I opened my eyes to see the room around me, a monitor keeping my pulse down to the last eeteet, tubes running along my arms, some small clasp on my finger.  I’d failed.

            There were flowers on the desk�"roses, like James’s funeral.

            The doctor came into the room, a white overcoat and glasses, scrubs in aquamarine.  He saw my eyes fluttering in the light, walked over and shut the blinds.

            “Mary, I’m glad to see you’re finally awake.”

            “Where am I?”

            “You’re in a safe place, don’t worry.”

            “This isn’t where I wanted to go.”

            “Trust me, most people don’t want to end up here.”  He smiled at his own humor.  “Do you remember me; I’m Dr. Morton from the night you came in?”

            I recognized his voice in a flash flood of memory; in the blackness as he echoed my name. 

            “Well, I’m your primary care physician until you’re physically healthy again, which might be a little while,” he said, starting to flip through the chart on the end of the bed, “seeing as you beat your liver and kidneys up a bit with your accident.”

            “It wasn’t an accident.”

            “I’ve found most things in life are accidents,” Dr. Morton said, a smile wide on his face as he shut my chart with a quick snap.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes with a friend, she’ll be glad to hear you’re awake.”

            The ceiling was white, still, and easy to focus on.  Not like the stars and the moon gently turning.  It was laid flatly above me, empty and restricted. 

            “She’s been awake for a few minutes,” I could hear Dr. Morton saying outside the door.  “Yes, she’s fully awake and able to talk.  She seemed very aware of everything.”  The talking stopped, a few light footsteps followed by a set of clicking heels.

            “Hello again,” Dr. Morton began, entering.  Adjusting his glasses, he looked down at my chart again.  “This is Dr. Boslough.  She’s from the psychiatric department and is working on your case.”   In walked a woman, average height besides her three inch heals, highlighted blonde hair forced up into a straight ponytail, hazel eyes the color of pond muck.

            “I’m not crazy,” I began, trying to lean up in my bed, but falling under my own arms.

            “Calm down Mary, no one is saying you’re crazy, we only want to help you understand,” she started, moving over to the bed.

            “I am calm,” I muttered, moving away from her as she reached to touch my arm.

            “Okay, good,” she held out her hand to Dr. Morton, and he quickly filled it with the chart.  Dr. Boslough began flipping through, her eyes blankly sliding up and down pages.

            “We all know why I’m here, stop sugar-coating it.”

            “Fine then,” she said, shutting the chart with a snap.  “You tried to kill yourself?”

            “Congratulations.”

            “Please, I want to help.”

            “Then kill me.  That was my plan.”

            “Listen,” she whispered, “there are a lot of people who did a lot of work, put a lot of time into getting you back to healthy, and it wouldn’t be fair to them if you just went and killed yourself now.”

            “Are you trying to guilt me into life?”

            “Why do you automatically think I’m trying to make you feel guilty?  I’m just letting you hear the truth, that guilt is your own.”  She smiled, like a child trying to wear her mother’s clothing, her mouth oddly large on her long, thin face.  “Right now,” she began again, reopening the chart, “your case is all presumption from the way you were found.  You were in the graveyard passed out.  A group of kids had been breaking into the graveyard, found you, couldn’t wake you up, called the ambulance, but weren’t on the scene when the paramedics arrived.  You were found with, let’s see,” she stopped speaking, flipping the page, “One Percocet, an empty prescription bottle, water, and a bag.”

            “Okay, so what do you want from me before I can leave?”

            “You can’t leave, because you’re on suicide watch.”

            “What do you mean I can’t leave?  This is my life and I have a right to do with it what I want!”  I found myself screaming, and all Dr. Boslough did was smile back with a snakelike grin, watching me curdle in her venom.

            “She’s right,” Dr. Morton added in, “You have to stay until she passes you because your case is considered a suicide attempt.”

            “Considered a suicide attempt?”

            “Well,” Dr. Boslough added in, “You did try to commit suicide.”

            “No, I just took too many, it was an accident.”

            “Dr. Morton, what was it she said to you today when she woke up, on the record?”

            Dr. Morton frowned a little, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his scrubs.  “She said something along the lines of this wasn’t where she was going, it wasn’t a mistake.  My professional opinion was admittance to the suicide attempt.”

            “Thank you,” Dr. Boslough sneered, turning back to me with her glistening eyes.

            “What do you want?” was all I could think to say.  I didn’t have much money, but I didn’t need any. 

            “This isn’t about me, Mary, it’s about you,” she said, attempting to touch my arm a second time.  I recoiled as her claws grazed my skin, leaving warm tracks.  “Anyway,” she began haughtily, “judging by the amount of drugs in your system, I’d say you took almost half of a bottle, the prescription was for a Mr. James Morgan?”

            “My fiancé,” I sneered, pulling my legs up to my chest.

            “Can you tell me what he’d been prescribed Percocet for?” she pushed on.

            “He got hurt.”

            “I found his records, Mary, I know what happened.  I need to know everything to help you.”

            “I don’t want your god damn help.”

            “You aren’t leaving unless you talk.”

            “I’ll leave how and when I want to.”

            “It didn’t work last time, and now you have people monitoring you twenty-four-seven.  Please, what happened to James?”

            “James killed himself,” I blurted, slapping the chart to the ground, Dr. Boslough’s eyes flickering with rage at being attacked.

            “Paul,” she echoed, “we need to give her some kind of relaxant for now.”

            “But she just woke up,” Dr. Morton begged.

            “You saw her slap the chart, she’s a risk,” Dr. Boslough smiled at him, moving across the room to lift my chart from the ground.

            “You’re right,” he said, fidgeting in one of the drawers.  “You’ll only feel this for a second.”  Within a few moments of the needle entering my vein, I was back into the blackness, a gentle buzz replacing the steady eets.  The blackness serene, but always interrupted.

            “Mary,” the voice echoed, “Mary, can you hear me?”

            “Yes,” I whispered without opening my eyes.  The blackness too fulfilling to give up easily, though the buzz had dimmed to the lights ringing overhead.  Funny how lights make sounds when unseen.

            “Mary, Dr. Boslough really needs you to cooperate, because until she knows about your case, she can’t help you get out of here.  We all want to see you be able to leave healthy.”

            “Fine,” I whispered, my eyes still shut.  The clicks grew closer and closer, as I could imagine her blonde hair swinging back and forth, her eyes slanting as her lips curled into a grimace at my drugged form.

            “Hello again Mary, it’s Dr. Boslough.”

            “I remember you, it hasn’t been that long,” I snarled back.

            “I just need a few answers, so I can help you.”

            “What?”

            “The night of the accident, tell me about it, when James got hurt.”

            I stopped, my eyes opening to the burning white lights, buzzing continuously. 

“James,” I began, the word foreign, like some tribal chant.  “James was my fiancé.”

            “Right,” she began, sitting on the end of my bed. 

            “We were going out for dinner, our engagement dinner.  He was having an ocular migraine that night.  He always had troubles with them, so I agreed to drive.  I told him we shouldn’t even have gone, but he insisted.  I got onto the highway at exit nineteen, and it started to rain.  He asked if I had any sunglasses in the car, because the headlights reflecting off the water hurt his head. I reached into the middle and felt around, but I couldn’t find them.  I looked away for a second, one stupid piece of forever, just a quick peak down to see the sunglasses sitting right on top.  I turned up, handing them to him, both of us opening our eyes to see the lights coming straight for us.”

            I stopped, the words like nails waiting to be forced out�"each releasing with a violent pull.

            “Then?” she asked through her leathery thin lips.   

“He stayed in the hospital for a few months while they helped him regain what mobility he could.  I was out of the hospital in a few days with some minor injuries.  But he was stuck in his bed, hooked up to whizzing and whirring machines.”  I should’ve been in that bed.

            “So he went home, and then he was prescribed the Percocet you took?”

            “He was home for a while on different painkillers, the Percocet was only one of them.  It was the only one left when he died.”

            “But he only filled his prescriptions once according to his history.”

            “He said he’d rather be in constant pain than a daze, but then he writhed in his chair or in bed.  At night he would wake up crying.  I tried to force him to take something, but he wouldn’t.  He finished everything but the Percocet.”

            Dr. Boslough stood up from the bed, my eyes bolting open at the sudden movement.  She shut the chart slowly.  “It wasn’t your fault Mary,” she said, walking out of the room with her heels clicking farther off into the distance.

            For leaving without anything more, when she’d forced me to spill my story, I hated her.  How could it not be my fault?  I crashed the car that crippled him.  I didn’t help him adjust correctly.  I didn’t watch.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t even suspect him of anything like that.

            The heels returned, her blonde hair cutting the air behind her with each sway.

            “Now, we can understand the situation much better, I mean, now that you’ve given us something to work with,” she smiled, a sadistic grin.

            “What do you want from me so I can leave?”

            “That’s not the question that will get you out of here, and that’s for sure.”

            “Then what do you want?  Me to beg?”

            “I want you to be healthy, and I want you to value being healthy, so much so that you won’t go pop another fifteen pills as soon as you get out.”

            “If I’m going to do it,” I snickered, closing my eyes and leaning back, “then I will.”

            She sighed, a long echo of air in her chest, and the heels clicked back out of the room.  In the room alone I could come up with a dozen different ways to finish the job without blood.  I couldn’t do blood, not after seeing the tub.