Chapter 36 #2
It looks like a tiny crate, a mini version of the one Chuck used for Blanche, even after I told him she panicked about it, even after we knew she was fine staying at home without one.
Never eating anything she's not supposed to.
Never having an accident inside the house (after three weeks).
He told me after how Dorothy was trying to rescue Blanche from it, or begging to be in the same crate.
When I came back home and realized what happened, Blanche soiled herself and took twenty-four hours to be herself again. Dorothy never left her side.
When I told Chuck, he shrugged like it was my fault.
But at least he never crated them after that.
And it seems right now, it's not Blanche who's worried.
It's Dorothy who's worried about Blanche.
Like they're truly sisters. Best friends.
Bonded. Dorothy, who brings socks as thanks or some sort of canine comfort, whines and cries not in a dramatic way but in a subdued scarier way. And it has Blanche panicking.
If I move the carrier… or close the door to the bedroom, maybe it'll help. But as soon as I move, Dorothy rushes away and Blanche runs after her toward the dresser. Where the ornament is. Last time, when she got too close, it fell.
I have to protect the ornament.
I lunge forward, my bare feet against the cold hardwood.
I should have worn my thermal socks. The chill makes my toes tingle then go partially numb—the familiar pins and needles of neuropathy flaring in response to the temperature drop.
It's been years since treatment, but some things never fully heal.
Dorothy and Blanche suddenly halt their charge as LoverBoy appears in the doorway, but I'm already in motion. Without full sensation in my feet, I misjudge the distance, my right foot not quite landing where I thought it would. I stumble forward, clumsy and off-balance.
I hear echoes of all those well-meaning voices from my past. "If you'd just stay calm, Eve." "Your anxiety isn't helping your healing process." "Maybe if you weren't so tense all the time." As if cancer was somehow my fault. As if staying alive was only a matter of the right attitude.
The voices crescendo with Chuck's – clinical, precise, crushing.
"You're too emotional with patients, Eve.
Too clinical with me. Too much. Not enough.
If you'd try harder, we wouldn't have these problems." His voice, always there when I finally thought I was doing something right, ready to point out how spectacularly wrong I was.
I grab for the dresser to steady myself, fingers clutching the edge too hard.
The furniture shifts, just slightly, but enough.
My heart races as I see the ornament begin to wobble.
I reach for it with my other hand, but those voices make me second-guess every movement.
Too fast? Too slow? Too much? Not enough?
I hesitate for a split second. Long enough time for disaster.
The delicate glass hits the hardwood with a crystalline sound that seems to reverberate through my entire body. Despite all my caution, I'm still the one who broke it.
When I pick up the pieces, my blood runs cold.
It's not cracked or split. Oh no, it's shattered into a dozen jagged fragments, some no bigger than splinters. The beautiful glass heart that my grandfather crafted with his arthritic hands is now nothing but dangerous shards scattered across the floor. I carefully gather what I can, the larger pieces cutting into my palm as I collect them, leaving small smears of blood on the clear fragments. I push the carrier away so that the dog hurry back to the bedroom. And I close the door leading to the living area so that the dogs don’t get their paws on it.
I stare at my trembling hands, my throat tightening painfully.
This lived through everything: my grabby hands as a toddler, my first heartbreak as a teen, my cancer diagnosis, the brutal treatments, my divorce, the move to Chicago, to Pine Creek, only to be destroyed completely now when I finally found.
..what? Hope? A future? After surviving everything else, it broke because of me.
Not because I wasn't trying hard enough, but because I was trying too hard.
From the bathroom, Adam's voice mingles with the shower spray, singing along to the loud Christmas music without a care in the world. The contrast between his joy and my devastation feels like another crack forming inside me.
I don't want him to lose everything. Because of me.
But instead of swallowing this pain like I've swallowed so many others, instead of handling it alone because "Eve is so strong, Eve can handle anything", I do something I've never allowed myself before. Something I told Adam he should learn to do.
Lean on people when you get bad news. And not only share the parts of you that you think might be palatable. My friends have started to teach me that after Chuck, but I'm really putting it in practice now.
I slide down to the floor, my back against the bed. With shaking fingers, I pull out my phone and call the only people who might understand how the smallest thing can break you wide open. And how the smallest man can still cast the longest shadow.