Spark– Part Four

Once upon a time, I seriously thought I had to be the unluckiest woman on the planet. And the pathetic thing was, my streak of bad luck was all my own fault. I screwed up jobs and relationships. I couldn’t even keep a damn plant alive. I was certain I was destined to deal with the fact I was cursed, until now. My luck changed forever the day the Dana went into remission.

Under all pretense, she shouldn’t be alive. The doctors were fairly certain that when she’d slipped into a coma, she wouldn’t wake up. Her organs would eventually shut down and machines would be the only thing still tying her to earth. I was so scared that they were right. But in my heart, I knew she wasn’t ready to go. I knew because I wasn’t ready to let her go either.

And now the day has come that she gets to go home. She has requested that I am the only one who leaves the hospital with her and she will see everyone else tomorrow. If anyone is hurt by her brush-off, they don’t say anything. After almost losing her, I guess it seems like a small price to pay. Thankfully, her parents do not put up a fuss but I have to reassure them I will call every hour on the hour to let them know their daugther is fine. Dana rolls her eyes at this, but she offers me a sly wink.

"Hey." I come back from the nurses station to find her dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. "Your discharge papers are all ready." She is so quiet that I immediatly go into panic mode. "Dana? What’s wrong?"

She lifts her face up and I can see fresh tear tracks trailing down her pale cheeks.

"Oh, honey, it’s OK." I go to sit next to her. "It’s OK."

She shakes her head. "No, it’s not. I should be dead. And now they say I’m in remission, but for how long? I can’t do this again, Al." As she cries, I can feel her pain so deeply that my heart aches. I can’t tell her with any certainity that she won’t have to relive this nightmare, but we would both know that I’m lying. All I can do is wrap my arms around her as tightly as I can without hurting her and let her cry. I realize now that this is the reason she wanted me with her today and no one else. She was starting to fall apart at the seams yesterday and she didn’t want anyone to bare witness to when she completely unraveled.