Page 5 of The Strawberry Field
Every part of my body feels impossibly heavy. My chest aches as if something large and immovable is sitting on it, and for a moment, I want to give in. Let the weight of survivor’s guilt flatten me. Take me under.
The thought doesn’t scare me. It actually comforts me.
Because maybe if I disappeared, if I slipped away into nothingness, I could stop remembering the ones I couldn’t save.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to keep seeing Michael’s face in his final hours, the panic in his eyes. Or hear his voice telling me he wasn’t ready to go.
If I vanished, would it be like none of it happened?
Or would it just be another selfish escape?
Either way, it wouldn’t matter. My failure would remain, documented in my therapist’s notes, recorded in hospital reports, carved quietly into my colleagues’silence.
And worse: it would remain in me.
I can’t even remember the last time I ate. Maybe yesterday? Maybe not at all during the drive. I know I had water, sipped at it like it was medicine, but I can’t recall food. And yet my stomach doesn’t protest. It’s grown quiet lately, as if it understood there was no point in asking.
I think about the last time I stepped on a scale. Twelve pounds gone. As though the weight slipped off me when I wasn’t looking. As if part of me had already started leaving before I even realized it, my clothes hanging looser, fabric brushing bone instead of skin.
I should go out. Find food. Find… something.
But the thought of it feels impossible. Right now, even standing feels impossible.
Eventually, I force myself upright. I lock the front door and leave the lights on, unwilling to let the house fall entirely into darkness. My legs are unsteady as I climb the stairs, my luggage pulling at my shoulder again.
I walk straight to the room at the end of the hall. My childhood bedroom, where I read the Hardy Boys and Jane Austen. I open the door, half-expecting it to look different. But it’s mostly the same. A little dustier. A little dimmer. But untouched in the ways that matter.
I flip on the dresser lamp and scan the room, checking corners, under the bed, behind the door. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Mice? Memories?
I kick off my shoes, leave my clothes on, and collapse onto the bed. The quilt at the foot is still folded neatly. I pull it up and wrap myself inside it, cocooning until only my face remains uncovered.
The mattress yields beneath me. The ceiling fan hums.
And for one fleeting moment, I feel something that resembles safety.
Why should I be safe? Why should I be the one who made it through? I tested negative before I left New York. And yet Michael is dead.
What’s fair about that?
Nothing, of course. Life isn’t fair. It’s random. Chaotic. Cruel.
We move through our days thinking we have some control. That if we’re smart enough, careful enough, good enough, we’ll be spared. But that’s not how it works.
A missed step. A mistimed breath. A wrong turn. A stranger’s cough.
That’s all it takes.
I used to believe I was in control of my life. That if I worked hard and studied hard and stayed focused, I could bend life to my will. I actually believed I had that ability. That I had purpose.
Now I know the truth.
I control nothing. I never did.
It took an invisible enemy to teach me that.
Everything I thought I had, knowledge, skill, intuition, it failed me when it mattered most. All those years of memorizing symptoms and protocols. All the nights I spent sleepless in residency, building my endurance, proving my worth. All of it came up short.
Because when it was Michael…I couldn’t save him.
