Page 63 of That Birthday in Barbados
You’re being ridiculous.
I think about what actually happened tonight and wonder if I am blowing it out of all proportion.
I made out with a younger guy. Check.
He decided it wasn’t a good idea for us to have sex. Check.
And I have absolutely no doubt he is right.
It’s not as if I’ve ever had an actual fling. I’ve been with one man in my life. My husband. Ex. Husband.
Did I really think I had it in me to do a vacation romance? A vacation fling? Whatever it would be called. Because there was never any doubt that is all it would be.
I’d be fooling myself to act as if I’m a woman who could leave this island with her heart intact after giving herself to a man like Anders.
I would have left here with my heart in tatters.
Some Cougar I am.
I wipe my hands across my eyes and realize it is time for me to go home. A two week vacation was a terrible idea anyway.
I slide off the bed, walk over to the desk and flip open the lid to my laptop. The screen is bright, and I blink against the shock to my eyes.
I type the airline into the browser and wait for my account to come up, hoping I can change my flight for tomorrow.Please let this happen so I do not have to see him again.I’m not sure who I’m offering the plea to but I repeat it in case anyone is listening.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
?Eleanor Roosevelt
Anders
THE HALLWAY IS endless. The lights in the ceiling overhead are so bright I squint to see my way along the corridor. I put a hand to the wall, feeling as I go.
I’m being pulled forward by a force stronger than myself. I don’t want to go wherever it is taking me. I know it’s somewhere terrible. But I don’t have a choice. It won’t let me stop. Its pull seems to be originating somewhere inside me, from the center of me. Almost as if I am pulling myself. It sounds crazy. Maybe I am crazy.
I open my eyes wider and stare as hard as I can at the end of the hallway in the far distance. I have no idea how far away it is. Or how long it will take me to get there. But I keep going. There is no option of turning around. I want to turn around. I want to go back. Behind me is the life I once had. That life is gone though. I know this as someone who has accepted the death of a loved one, knows they will never be back.
I don’t know how much time passes before I get close enough to the end to see where I am going. And then I recognize the room. The chair by the window. The IV stand sitting next to it.
My heart drops. I’m sick again. The cancer is back.
I reach the doorway and stop, my gaze taking in the two dozen people sitting in loungers with IVs attached to their arms.
I search the faces, but I don’t recognize anyone. All the people I had seen and met during my treatments are gone.
I wonder if they have died. A large knife of grief cuts me through the chest. I turn to run back down the corridor I’ve just traveled through. My feet won’t let me though. They walk me forward to the chair by the window. The nurse who I remember from before is standing at its side, waiting for me. He smiles, but the smile is distorted. His face blurs before my eyes, but his voice booms in my ear. “Welcome back, Mr. Walker. Please have a seat.”
There is no fight left inside me. I drop onto the chair and sit docile while he inserts the IV needle into my arm. I don’t flinch at the pinch, remembering now how used to the brief pain I had gotten. I watch the drip as it begins its toxic flow into my veins. Resignation pours through me at an equally rapid rate. I realize that I had known all along I would be back here one day. I wonder how quickly my hair will fall out this time.
I force myself to look in the mirror on the wall opposite from my chair. The same mirror I had grown to hate before. I stare hard, trying to focus in on myself. I move my head to the side, searching for my reflection. It isn’t there though. I’m not there. Along with everyone I met in this room three years ago, I am gone.
*
I BOLT UPRIGHT out of sleep.
I am breathing as if I’ve just finished a sprint on the beach.
