Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
JADEN
Two minutes. That’s how long it’s been since Nyla declared our patient in the remote house on Spruce Hill Lake dead.
The number haunts my mind as Nyla, apparently lost in her own thoughts, leans against the porch railing and Ray, shoulders slumped, trudges over to the ambulance to report in to dispatch. Because foul play can’t be ruled out, dispatch will inform the police.
Twenty-five minutes. That’s how long it will take for them to show up here with lights flashing.
Three hours. That’s how long, in my experience, we’ll have to wait at a minimum until the law enforcement officers have finished their work for the time being and have no more questions for us.
That’s almost two hundred minutes in which I’ll be closer to death than I want to be.
I erase the numbers from my head and replace them with new ones.
Thirty-nine hours. That’s how long I haven’t seen Nyla since I brought her home from the fair.
One hundred milliseconds. That’s how long it took to make her smile today when our shared shift started.
Zero point six seconds. That was the interval between the beats of my heart when she was sitting so close beside me in the ambulance that our thighs were touching.
Spruce Hill Lake lies calm before us, the water reflecting the gentle colors of the evening sky—a delicate purple that turns into a warm orange. I glance sideways at her, see her elfin face, which looks thoughtful.
‘Do you smell that?’ I ask Nyla, to remind us both of what is still good despite everything.
She looks at me sadly. ‘What?’
‘The fresh scent of pine and damp moss.’ I take a deep breath.
‘That’s what you’re thinking about right now?’ she asks me with a mixture of pity and incomprehension. ‘A person just died.’
I haven’t forgotten that. I turn my head toward her, our gazes meet. ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.’
She studies me intently, seeming to search for something very specific in my eyes. ‘So we just act as if nothing happened? That’s your solution?’
I knew she would say something like that, that she wouldn’t look away, that unlike me she could bear it. She is so much stronger than I am, and not for the first time I envy her for it.
‘What’s your solution?’ I ask cautiously.
‘I don’t know either,’ she answers, surprisingly.
‘Probably no one really knows.’ Absentmindedly, I take in the beauty of the Canadian wilderness around us and wonder whether having this conversation changes anything.
Not the facts, certainly, but perhaps… something in us?
‘I always thought life was about making the best of the situation you happen to be in,’ I say.
Whatever that is.
‘The best, huh?’ She plucks a wood splinter from the post beside her. ‘Like the other day, when you got that call in the cafeteria at Halifax Harbor Hospital that hit you so hard you then wanted to climb down an unstable cliff with no safety at all?’
Yes, that was a mistake, and I really ought to admit it to her at last. But what would I say if she asked me why?
Suddenly, she steps closer, a knowing sparkle in her eyes. ‘Or like last week, when we had that man with the heart attack in the car and you could bear the thought that he might not make it so little that you had to tell jokes to him and to yourself?’
She noticed that?
Astonished, I look at her, and in the same moment, it hits me that my expression must be proof to her that she’s right.
‘Or like the day before yesterday, when we had that critical case in the ER and you refused to even consider that his heart might soon stop beating?’ she continues, her gaze still fixed on me.
She says all these things and looks at me as if she knew much more. I should probably get myself to safety from her, but somehow it also feels good not to be so alone with it.
Nyla reaches for my arm. ‘You’re afraid of leaving the moment.’
It’s not a question but a statement. Words with which she steps onto dangerous ground. ‘Please, let’s not …’
‘What are you running from?’ she asks, and in her face I see how much this question torments her.
Even if I wanted to answer, I can’t. It would lead to where I don’t want to be. To where that wound in my heart gapes, refusing to heal.
And yet suddenly I am right there.
Rain. Everywhere. In fine lines it falls to the ground around me, beads on my forehead, pelts down on my shoulders. It soaks the earth of the hill, little streams carve their way through the dirty brown down into the grass, and from there it winds on until its path is stopped by the marble stones.
An insurmountable obstacle.
End of the line.
‘Today we bid farewell and commit Camille Reynolds to the earth.’ The priest’s words echo in my endless emptiness.
Someone breaks into sobs.
I just stand there, motionless, numb, empty. I feel nothing except the paper in my breast pocket. Heavy as concrete, desolate as every single word that leaves the priest’s mouth.
‘Her body will decay, but the memories and the love will remain.’
No. They can’t. Not if I’m supposed to go on living my life without her.
The priest takes a shovel and lets earth trickle onto the coffin. Again I feel that damned thing in my breast pocket that she was so insistent on giving me.
‘May she find peace, and may we find comfort in the knowledge that she lives on in our hearts.’
Comfort? There is no comfort. My Camee is gone. Forever.
Nothing of her lives on. I live on! And I have to deal with that.
What’s the point of grieving? What’s the point of feeling the stab in my heart? So that the burning becomes even more intense, even more unbearable? So that I can’t breathe anymore, can’t think? Can’t exist?
No.
I don’t want to be afraid, don’t want to worry, don’t want to drown in grief. Life is too short for that, and the damned thing in my breast pocket proves it.
In the end, all we have is the present moment. This one breath we’re taking right now, this one beat of our heart. That’s all there is, and that’s all there will ever be.
Ever since Camee’s funeral, I’ve done nothing but live.
Block out what hurts. Forget what’s bad for me.
Enjoy what is. It was the only way to deal with all the terrible memories, and I never wanted to stop.
But now, while the past rolls over me like a storm that uproots trees and knocks out power lines, it happens anyway.
‘Why are you so afraid to leave the moment?’ Nyla asks me again, and I realize we’re still standing on this porch.
Her fingers curl gently around my arm. Almost tenderly, as if she wanted to comfort me. But I don’t need anyone to comfort me, just as little as I need this conversation.
My own thoughts feel like lies. Lies I’ve been telling myself for far too long and can’t believe anymore. But between these lies, something glitters that might be the truth.
What if it were okay to share the memory with Nyla? What if I needed her and the way she sees our world? If she could show me the way out of the dead end my life has become?
But what if that would be the worst thing that could happen to me? The thing that would finally ruin me?
‘And why are you so afraid to live the moment?’ I manage to reply in the midst of the chaos Nyla is causing inside me.
For a while she is silent, looking torn. ‘It could destroy my life,’ she answers at last.
In her eyes I recognize the same feeling that I am experiencing. And I know that right now she has answered not only my question to her, but also her question to me.
Living in the moment could destroy her life. And leaving the moment, facing everything that is waiting for me in yesterday and tomorrow, could destroy mine.