The figure approached me, and I hoped she would end me. I did deserve that after all. In truth, I deserved all of this. I’d tried to make it right. But some sins can’t be cleansed by helping another. Some sins are ours to carry.
Yellow stopped in front of me, but I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care what she did to me. I’d lost it all.
From behind her, a soothing voice with a lilt from another time. She wore a Victorian style dress that was stunning, set against her red hair. Unlike the children who had plagued me, her face was pristine although very pale. Her eyes were large, giving her a sad, sad appearance. She had a matronly look about her even though she was young.
She stepped forward, reaching for the hand of the being before me. She did not speak to me, but just looked at me.
And then she spoke, her voice stirring a familiarity in me. I’d heard her voice before. It seemed like it had been in a life long, long ago, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew I’d simply been transformed for the worse in a short period of time.
“Come on. She will do her penance now, young one. You can stay as long as you like to see it through. Redwood asylum welcomes you.”
And with that, I was truly, completely alone. Even the dead had left me to sit, ponder, and consider all the mistakes that had led me to such destruction.
Before Redwood
Ifought against my closing eyelids and heavy heart as I swerved back onto the unfamiliar road. I’d taken a new way home, hoping a change of scenery could assuage my heavy heart. It had been a tough few months, tougher than any other time in my life. Tougher than the year both my parents died, in some ways. The loneliness had been creeping in again, and with it, that familiar darkness I’d tried to usurp.
Too many deaths. It was the harsh reality of my life in the ICU. Too many times, I’d brushed against death, had felt the spirits of the deceased linger. I’d danced in the guilt of failure, something many nurses experience from time to time. For me, though, it was harder. In every lost patient, I saw the faces of my parents who I couldn’t save.
It wasn’t my fault. That’s what they told me at the hospital when I’d said my goodbyes after the car wreck.
It wasn’t my fault. That’s what my co-workers told me after every flatline, every goodbye I had to witness from family members of my patients.
It wasn’t my fault. But that didn’t matter. It was all too heavy, too much.
I swerved back onto the road again, dusk wreaking havoc on my already scattered brain. I considered what it would be like to careen into a tree, to let it all go, to stop having to feel the pain.
But suicide was for the weak. That was what Mama had always said. It was the only thing that kept me from ending it all. It’s what helped me paint on the faux smile at work, made me pretend it was all okay.
Through the winding streets of town, I drove on. Children riding bicycles as the sun set. Gleeful laughs heard over the sounds of my car’s engine as families and children celebrated the coming weekend. Friday vibes were alive and well, which made me feel even worse. Tears stung my eyes and clouded my vision. I stamped on the gas, needing to get away from the cheerful sights that only underscored my pain even more.
And that was when it happened. The flash of yellow darting between two cars.
The flash of red pigtails that I saw too late.
The bump and thump my car made as it heaved its way over the figure in the road. I gasped, glancing in my rearview mirror to see the flattened body in the road, her yellow party dress glowing even in the dim sunlight that remained.
A shriek. Some cries. Some neighbors rushing out. A frenzied woman kneeling on the road.
A decision for me to make. Stop and face the death once more. Or keep going into the great unknown.
I wiped away my tears and steadied my gaze on the horizon.
It was nothing. Just a pothole, I told myself. Just keep going.
And before I could change my mind, I stomped on the gas once more and drove off.
It was all nothing. Over and over, I convinced myself that I hadn’t done it. That it had been my imagination. And over and over, as I put miles between me and the town that haunted me, I told myself I just needed a fresh start. Somewhere I could disappear, could live a quiet life away from the pitying eyes of the town. A place where I could focus on helping the living, the troubled, the lonely.
A place like Redwood Psychiatric Hospital, I realized, the name coming to me like a sign from the universe.
It was all nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
And so I drove on.
Epilogue
It was a chilly, gray Wednesday when the new nurse came into my room with her perky brunette ponytail and too-wide smile. I stared at her hands as she handed me the paper cup of medicine. They were shaking, but her enthusiastic chatter tried to cover the fact. I said nothing, staring straight ahead, blonde hair hanging in my face. My bare feet touched the stone floor of the cell. I had lost track of how many years I’d been in the room, a prisoner of my mind, of Redwood, of life itself. I counted down the unknown minutes until my escape. Being sold for science or for sex or for anything would be better than the stagnant life I had in the walls of Redwood.
“Be careful with this one,” Anna whispered, pulling the girl to the side of the room as if she were actually being
