And then, finally, I let go.
32
Diane
The corridor outside Sara’s room is so quiet it feels vacuum-sealed. I stand just beyond the door, a hairline crack of glass between me and the stillness within. I’m shivering but not from cold. It’s as if my body has forgotten how to regulate itself. The tremors pass through me in slow, rolling aftershocks, never quite leaving.
Cassie wraps both arms around my waist, burying her face in my sweater. She’s crying the way only children can—shoulders shaking, every exhale a whimper that sinks into me and stirs up my own grief. I can’t bring myself to comfort her, not yet. I just stand there, hands limp at my sides, staring at the hospital wall and waiting for someone to tell me what to do next.
Nathan disappears down the hall, his footsteps deliberate. He moves with the same purposeful energy I remember from our walks on the beach, but now it has an extra edge, like he’s afraid if he slows down he’ll dissolve. Judy goes with him, her fingers barely touching his elbow. I lose sight of them near the nurses’ station. A moment later, they return with paper cups of water, each with a purple plastic straw sticking out at a perfect right angle. Judy hands one to Cassie, who takes itautomatically, her grip still clamped around my waist. Nathan offers the other to me.
I don’t realize how thirsty I am until the water is halfway gone. It tastes like nothing, but the act of swallowing makes the room a little less floaty, the floor a little more real.
A doctor approaches us. He wears the same green scrubs and tired expression as every other physician I’ve seen since we arrived. His hands are gentle, his voice set to low. He offers condolences, the kind I know he repeats a dozen times a day. He says Sara’s name like it matters, like the syllables might preserve something of her.
There’s paperwork, of course. Forms to sign, instructions about personal effects. The doctor explains the process, how the body will be moved, what will happen next. I nod at all the right times, but my mind is elsewhere, spinning around Sara’s final words, the promise I made, the impossible clarity in her face as she let go.
Judy handles most of it. She listens, asks questions, signs where needed. She stands between me and the doctor, shielding me from having to make decisions, from having to speak. All the while, she keeps a hand on my arm, grounding me in the moment.
When the doctor leaves, the hallway is empty again. Nathan leans back against the wall, propping himself up.
“What do I do now?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “You don’t have to know right now,” he says.
“You just get through the next five minutes. Then the next,” says Judy. “That’s all any of us can do.”
I stand between Nathan and Judy, Cassie tucked under my arm. She’s quieter now, the crying reduced to an occasional hiccup. Nathan takes my free hand, his thumb tracing small circles on my knuckles.
We stand like that, the four of us, for a long time. Cassie’s shell clatters to the tile and rolls into the baseboard. She scoots after it, kneeling to retrieve it. When she stands, she’s looking up at me with a fierce, determined expression.
“Can we go to the beach?” she asks, her voice thin but steady. “Sara would want us to see the ocean today.”
The question is so simple, so unarguable, that I almost laugh. “Yes,” says Judy. “I think she would.”
Nathan agrees, then pulls himself up, offering me a hand. When he lifts me, it’s like pulling out of a riptide. For a second, I’m dizzy, but then the ground steadies beneath my feet. Cassie slips her hand into mine, her fingers clammy with dried tears. We follow Nathan and Judy down the corridor, past the nurses’ station and out into the bright, unrepentant sunlight of the parking lot.
The world outside is unchanged. Cars shush through puddles on the street. The air has a salt edge, the promise of weather hovering in the clouds. I blink into the light, unsure how to move forward but certain that I’m not alone.
As we walk toward the car, Nathan says, “We could just sit. Or walk. Or not talk at all. Whatever you want.”
I look at him, and the wall between us is thinner than it’s ever been.
“Let’s go,” I say, voice steadier now. “Let’s see the ocean.”
Cassie leads the way, the shell cradled to her chest. Nathan and Judy and I follow, all of us holding on to the only things we can: the space between us, and the memory of what we’ve lost.
The windat the shore is sharper than I expect. It catches the edge of my hospital-wrinkled shirt and flaps it against my ribs,working salt and heat into every seam. Nathan stands a few feet to my left, hands buried in his pockets, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the sky is bleeding color into the ocean. Cassie is already at the water’s edge, shoes abandoned, hair streaming behind her like the pennant of a ship lost at sea. Judy is with her, feet in the water, staring out at the endless horizon.
We haven’t changed, haven’t showered, haven’t eaten since breakfast, and even then it was a half-bagel shared in the waiting room. My notebook is tucked under my arm, not for writing but for holding onto something that feels familiar. I press it to my side with the kind of pressure that bruises, half afraid if I let go, I’ll just drift out with the next set of waves.
We walk, four shadows in a world of burnt orange and mercurochrome pink, until the hospital falls away, and the only sounds are our own feet and the slow, uneven pulse of the surf.
Cassie is the first to speak. “Look,” she says, crouched low, finger tracing something in the sand. She’s found a line of shells, perfect and unbroken, the kind of strand that usually gets picked over by gulls or kids with buckets. She sorts them by color, then by size, then by the faint spiral ridges along their backs.
Nathan kneels beside her. “That’s a good one,” he says, holding up a translucent sliver of olive shell. His voice is gentle, thin-edged.
Cassie nods, her eyes puffy but bright. “I’m making a memorial,” she announces. “For Sara.”