Chapter 36. Sage
TWO WEEKS LATER
My watch has gone off twice today with a redundant message that states something to the effect of, “Hey, your heart rate looks like you’re dying, but you also haven’t moved. Like, at all. Don’t you have to pee?”
I learned by day three that you don’t have to pee as much if you don’t hydrate as much, and maybe I’ve cried enough, anyway, that the water doesn’t have to find an alternate route. I’m not sure how that all actually works, but who knows, maybe like the heart my fucking watch won’t shut up about, that part of me is just broken, too.
I get out of bed every day, at least. It’s been two weeks, and I still manage that. This is the good thing about having creatures that rely on you. It force-starts me into some semblance of a routine. I make sure everyone is fed and their needs are met before I let myself fall apart some more.
The only thing I can’t bring myself to handle is the garden. Anytime I pass it, I feel like it’s mocking me, my naivety on full display.
I thought being with Fisher would be like cut flowers in a vase. Something lovely I let in, even knowing it couldn’t last forever. The problem is, I messed up and planted him here in all my places. I gave him my dirt, my heart, my home, and now he’s been uprooted again and I’m left with the upturned mess of it all.
The day before I am supposed to head back to school to set up my classroom for the year, I wake to find Wren on the pillow beside me. I’m not sure why my nervous system doesn’t muster up any shock or startle at all.
“How can you stand it?” I ask her. “How can you stand seeing Ellis everywhere you look?” I had a summer with Fisher, and no corner is the same. She and Ellis had each other since kindergarten.
“Time,” she says. “Time’s the only thing that increases your pain tolerance. Eventually, you see the good that came from it more than the pain.”
I think it’s those words he used that shred at me the most, when he said it had been a privilege. Because it was, wasn’t it? Even feeling how I do now, I would do it all again for the privilege of loving him, of being loved by him. He didn’t fix me, and I didn’t heal him, but we loved each other wholly.
“Now,” she says, “you get up. And you brush your goddamn teeth because your breath stinks. And you keep going.”