Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Quotation
Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It
Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing
Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I
Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling
Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II
Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier
Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone
Chapter Seven - Truth Be Told
An Unnamed Life Lost
Luis Angel Greer
Copyright © 2019 Luis Greer
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An Unnamed Life Lost
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or otherwise, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version 1.0ς
Published by Luis Angel Greer at Smashwords.
He who learns must suffer
and even in our sleep
pain that cannot forget falls
drop by drop upon the heart
and in our own despair
against our will
comes wisdom to us
by the awful grace of God
-Aeschylus
Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It
It was a morning when I could have slept longer
But even though I couldn’t yet feel my body
I knew she wasn’t in my arms
I knew I wasn’t in hers
So I decided to wake up
To right what was clearly a wrong
It didn’t take long after my mind was made up
For the sensations of my body to return
It didn’t take much longer after that
For me to realize she was no longer beside me in our bed
I stopped for second… for a few seconds
What might be the longest seconds of my life in retrospect
As I questioned if actually opening my eyes was worth it
I rolled onto my back
Reaching out my hand to her pillow; just to make sure
I then returned back to my side as I opened my eyes
That habit; that seemingly innocuous habit
Has become perhaps the greatest regret of my life
I laid there for a minute or so
I could hear the vent in the bathroom was running
I figured she was doing all those things she does first thing
Try to making herself look more beautiful
More perfect then I always saw her
I grabbed my glasses and my phone from the nightstand
And went out into the house
As I walked past the bathroom door
I considered for a split second knocking, saying “Good morning.”
But I didn’t
I grabbed a mug from the cabinet
I loaded a pod into the machine
And then I opened the blinds and door to let in the morning light
When it was ready I moved it to the other side of the sink
Added a packet of sugar and quickly gave it a stir
Before making my way towards the front porch
As I reached my hand out for the handle I stopped
I realized I hadn’t heard anything
Not the sink
Not the blow-dryer
Not the shower
Not the clinking of bottles
Or the cursing of a miss-drawn line
So I called out to her, “Is everything alright love?”
No answer from her in either the affirmative or negative
So I let my hand fall away from the door
As I began to walk back towards the bathroom
“Do you want anything for breakfast?”
Still no answer
“Love?” I could hear in my voice a worry I wasn’t yet feeling
I reached out and grabbed the doorknob
“I’m coming in.”
I cautiously opened the door
I was waiting for her to yell at me from the toilet
Headphones in while reading some stupid article on her phone
It was then that I heard her
But it wasn’t her yelling at me to get out
It was the sound of her crying
I pushed the door open
Slamming it into the wall
My eyes quickly taking in the sight
Of her lying curled up on the bathroom floor
I moved to her as I dropped to my knees beside her
I quickly put my hand on the ground beside her to brace myself
It was then that I felt it slide
Before my eyes even looked I knew it wasn’t water
I asked her if she was alright
I asked her what was wrong
Where the blood had come from
But she didn’t or couldn’t answer me
I decided I was going to call for an ambulance
I told her I was going to get my phone to call
And without speaking, without looking up to me
She grabbed my wrist and she locked her grip around it
She wasn’t pulling me down
But I could feel my blood having trouble passing into my hand
I lowered myself back down and I placed my other hand over hers
I went to tell her it’s going to be alright, but I stopped
As she finally spoke through her tears and her heaving breaths, “I’m sorry.”
Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing
It isn’t that she doesn’t remember
Or that she cannot express them to me
Those moments before she woke
Those which led her to know even while worlds away
That something was wrong
The problem, if you chose to call it that
Is that in the here and now
I don’t want to cry for them
I don’t want to cry in the way that I know I would
If I allowed myself to write that part of their story now
So instead let me speak of those moments
When she awoke
Of what brought us to the moment
As I took her hand in mine
Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I
She was startled awake
As she moved from the world she was in
Back into the world where our bodies were
Much like how I feel in this moment
There was a part of her that didn’t want to remember
That didn’t want to carry with her into the waking world
That which she had just learned
She woke
Without need for her body to register the sensations
She immediately rose, perhaps quicker than she should have
But in that moment she already knew
With all that she was
That there was nothing she could do
To undo what had happened
Without much t
hought she made her way to the door
She paused for a moment before passing through the threshold
She looked back to my still sleeping form
So unaware that she was awake, that she was is in distress
She thought for a moment about calling to me
But she didn’t
She thought for a moment…
She thought about going back, to conceal the blood with the bed sheet
But she couldn’t
And so she turned her body
Her eyes watching the bed for as long as they could
As she closed the door behind herself
She let her fingers linger on the lock
Before letting her hand slip away as she stepped further in
She looked into the mirror
She hated herself
She didn’t want to see her reflection
She hated her vanity
She hated the world for creating a desire in her to be beautiful
Looking at herself in this mirror
A mirror that was only in our home
Because she needed it to be
Because out of all things that I had before I welcomed her
A mirror was not one
She ran the water
Then she looked at the handle
She saw the blood she had left on it
And she closed the valve
She didn’t know…
No one ever talked about what you do in this moment
She could still feel something like a lingering pain
She knew that she should wake me
That we should go to a doctor
That even if…
Even if there was nothing that could fix this
That she still needed to take care of herself
This is about when I woke
When my regrets about being lost in my selfish morning habits begin
When I wish… and that isn’t a word I use lightly
When I wish I had looked to her side of the bed
When I wish I had known that she was in need of me
She heard as I passed by the door
As I readied myself for the day
It is then that in retrospect I begin to regret that I was awake
Because that is moment she let her mind move on
To the thoughts of what it would mean for me
Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling
She didn’t know how to feel
In that moment as she stood in our home
Waiting for those little lines to appear
She didn’t understand how she was supposed to feel
Waiting for it to display her results
She had missed her period
It was only by a day
But she knew she hadn’t felt the same
Not since that night; not since…
There was something about the… something was different
So she bought the test
She bought it hoping that she was wrong
She bought it hoping that she was just late
That it was her nerves
That it was something easily explainable
But as she stood there
The alarm from her phone ringing
She couldn’t bring herself to look down
Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to say
Because she felt that something within herself was now different
And that nothing in her life had ever felt more right
Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II
We were normally safe
We were so safe that when she found out
She was easily able to track it back to the week before
To the exact moment we let it happen
To the moment she heard me ask “are you sure?”
And she felt a force well up inside herself like nothing she had known before
A moment that she knew, even then, she would never forget
Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier
Outside of a rather emphatic unprompted discussion early in our relationship
The topic of children wasn’t discussed
She wasn’t at a point in her life where she wanted to have them
And I wasn’t at a point in our relationship where it seemed like a good idea
So, while it might have been for different reasons
It was something that we were on the same page about
It was something that never warranted further clarifications
Her family saw her as too young to be thinking of things like that
Her friends didn’t see me as a person she should think of those things with
So there was no outside pressures upon us; so we didn’t talk about it
Normally we were safe
Safe to the point that I never gave a passing thought to a problem arising
We had gone out a week or so earlier
Something that in itself wasn’t rare
What made it a very unique event was that we went out with a group of my peers
I was never one to form close bonds
And between being very comfortable in my solitude and my general disdain for people
I often didn’t have a need to… I didn’t know how to, “maintain” friendships
Through twists of circumstance I reconnected with an old friend
Which came with a “You should come out and catch up.” offer
It was something I would have most likely never taken him up on
But upon hearing that I actually, once upon a time, had friends
And even more, that they actually wanted to know me again, she wanted to go
I never saw her as a child
As someone who needed me to guide or to protect her
But I also couldn’t help but behave more responsibly when I was with her
A byproduct of the way she perceived me I suppose
This night though…
In all the time we were together
She had never heard me say, “I probably won’t be able to drive back tonight.”
But that was where the night brought us
Now while she had cut herself off long before I stopped drinking
She had issues with crashing into medians even while sober
So she wasn’t going to even think of driving, not with me, not my car
I know she spent a while thinking about it as the night went on
In a flash of what if, after about my fourth drink I came up with the plan
It didn’t make sense to pay for a ride home just to come back
No one there was going to touch my car
And there was a hotel not too far away I once had a business meeting in
So I knew where our fall back was
After what I think was another two drinks I made our reservations
I don’t know why I didn’t mention it to her
I suppose it just didn’t fit into the moment
She was kind of the belle of the ball and enjoying the attention
She came to me as the night was wearing down
Clearly having thought about our situation for a while
For her it was almost like a roll reversal I suppose, her chance to be the adult
She prefaced her prepared thoughts with, “So you’re really drunk.”
Which bid a laugh from me as it was the first time she ever said that to me
She waited for my laughter to end; her mistake
As I stole her thunder and moved right into,
“I know right… good thing I got us a room down the street.”
She hit me; well it was more of a shove
“I’ve been coming up with plans for like an hour.”
I nodded, “I booked the room about four hours ago.”
She snatched the drink out of my hand and took it as her own
It wa
s a cute gesture, one she regretted immediately as she drank from it
But she made damn sure she drank it all
The night ended shortly after that exchange
As we were getting ready to leave she realized where the hotel was
And that my plan was to walk there
Which led to her calling me “an idiot” and summoning an uber
Which then led to me calling her princess
As the vehicle pulled up
As I opened the door for her
As the driver greeted us
Pretty much every time something happen until we made it into our room
She hit me the first few times
I think she rather enjoyed it by the end
Now I’m going to spare the sordid details
But we didn’t let the room go to waste
Even as intoxicated as I was, I was still aware of my body
And I avoided causing us… problems; until…
Until I was in a slightly compromised position
I don’t know what she heard or what thoughts went through her mind
But when I warned her that she needed to acquiesce to my need to vacate her
She didn’t…
I could have forced her without hurting her; but I didn’t
I held back as long as I could
I gave her another warning which she ignored
And then I embraced her
Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone
She knew
She knew from the moment she found out that she couldn’t not…
But there was still a part of her that was having trouble accepting it
Accepting that everything she had planned for herself was changing