The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (smallest ebook reader txt) 📕

soft T-shirt for sleep. Her body would shock and horrify anyone, she felt, scarred, the infusion port poking out of her upper right chest.

When she turned around, she was met with the women, standing together, tops off and breast-less bodies displayed. Two were missing one breast, the other three both, like Clair. Each had a unique tattoo covering their old scars. Maggie, the tallest of the group had a vine stretching across her chest; Andrea, a rose over her left breast; Celia’s bilateral scars were covered in Celtic swirls, with the tree of life in the center of her chest. Sandy, the oldest member of the group, had written across her chest, ‘Do Not Resuscitate’. And Robin, the newest and youngest member of this elite club, as they called themselves, had a butterfly on one side, a dragonfly on the other.

‘To transport me to the other side when it’s time,’ she said, as Clair admired the artwork.

Sandy told Clair they had all met and become friends in a breast cancer support group in Madison. This pilgrimage had been their goal for a few years. When Robin joined them, they decided it was time. She was getting married in four months. They had their tattoos done a month before, Sandy told Clair.

‘It’s a must do,’ she said. ‘It will transform your perception of your body. Decorate yourself instead of being scarred up.’

As she fell into sleep, images of her shell, nestled into a grassy floor, fish swimming above, its mouth opening and shutting to let in tiny creatures for substance. A swirl of filament, iridescent and inviting, called her to follow. Wrapping her arms around her body, she allowed herself to be carried along, until voices, footfalls, and doors opening and closing released her from the current, tossing her back onto the ground of her reality. She clasped the scallop shell in her hand, tucking it deep inside the pocket of her jacket, feeling its heat. You’re here with me, I know, she said to the shell, to the world around her. We are all here together.

Chapter 28

Adam

Adam grasped the phone in his hand, holding it like it was his lifeline, salvation.

‘Where is she?’ he shouted into Jet’s voicemail, his grip on the thing causing tiny bleeps to interrupt his message.

He was walking as he talked, the wind stirring up leaves. Small birds, drinking from puddles forming on the parking lot, skittered out of his way. He looked up to the third floor of the main hospital building, across the lot. He imagined Clair there, in Jet’s office. They would be talking about him. He hoped that was where she was. The idea of her anywhere else, on a plane to God knows where, was unfathomable.

As he strode up the wheelchair access ramp, through the automatic double doors, he noticed people stopping to look at him. He clicked off the phone, shoving it into his coat pocket. Smoothing his hair back with his hands, he forced an expression of calm demeanor.

Once past the elevator stand, he bolted up the stairs, causing staff to turn sideways to avoid being jostled by him. Many were holding their lunch trays, eating as they climbed. No one commented. It was a hospital and strong emotional responses were familiar.

Adam called behind him, ‘Sorry, in a rush.’

Once through the door onto the third floor, home of the psychiatric unit, a quiet permeated the hallway. Adam knew this place well, and yet it still seemed like a strange land, alien and separate from humanity. A place apart, where broken minds, hearts, and spirits were medicated into compliance, counseled into normality. A momentary sense of outrage infused him, turning his face hot, his hands cold. Oh Clair, he moaned inwardly, what happened to us? How, why did I allow this to happen?

Jet’s door was closed. He knocked quietly at first, then strongly when there was no response. A voice from an intercom asked him, ‘Sir, how can we help you?’ The voice came from the door to the locked unit, where staff monitored the hallway and entrance twenty-four-seven.

‘I’m here to see Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘Please, it’s an emergency.’

‘Dr Taylor’s with a patient right now. If you have a seat there in the waiting area, I’ll let her know you’re here. It’s Dr Gage, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said into the intercom. Recognizing the voice of Belinda, the day shift unit secretary he immediately felt better, grateful not to have to engage in verbal judo. ‘It’s Adam Gage. Thank you.’

A row of stiff, wooden framed chairs lined the hallway to his right. He sat, the chair uninviting and institutional, upholstered in a geometric patterned vinyl made to withstand body fluid assaults. As he waited, he watched people coming and going through the double locked doors, the clicks and clacks causing him to twinge inside each time someone passed in or out.

He stopped glancing up each time he heard the lock from inside the unit click, hoping to see Jet. Instead, he stared at the door, willing her tall, slender shape to appear. After what seemed to him like hours, she did. Walking quickly, she glided past him, motioning with her hand for him to follow her. She held an electronic tablet in one hand, opening the door to her office with the other. He noticed her normally straight, almost haughty posture was softened today, even slumped.

Adam followed Jet into her office. It was familiar to him, having spent countless hours there in family counseling with Clair. Jet knew all their innermost feelings, fears, doubts, hopes, dreams. What had brought them together and torn them apart. He felt like an adolescent in her presence, one that never quite reached that grown up bar, couldn’t make it over the hurdle into adulthood. Her white hair gave her the look of an old crone, even though her face and body were those of a much younger woman. He was both drawn and repelled by her. Afraid of her, if he was honest, and her