The Turning Point (Short Story)
A call from your parents, making you aware of your sisters admission in the Emergency Room. It’s critical. 9:58pm and they are already hastily making their way to the hospital in near hysterics. It must be bad. Bright white lights, sterile metal surfaces and white plaster walls. Medical professionals in scrubs, hair strewn wildly rushing from patient to file in chaotic sequence. You’d seen it enough times to know what to expect when you arrive to the place where life can teeter on the edge.
You’re still at your apartment, racing around to change out of your once comfy home clothes, sweat shorts and baggy boyfriend-tee, now strangling your body inconveniently. It crosses your mind, why you even care to change clothes during this possibly dire situation. When your sister may be dying or dead, you have the gall to care about how you look to strangers. Guilt and fear momentarily rise in your gut, making you feel panicked and low in oxygen. Your physical body is hit by waves of tingling chaos. What is happening..? Just as quickly as it appeared, the fear and panic disappear, leaving a void. Your soul feels like it’s left your body. The comfortable empty space and lack of feelings that you’ve adopted to carry you through this nightmare is a coping mechanism that you’ll become all too familiar with.
Flinging items out of your wardrobe, you’ve found a suitable change of clothes. Black linen pants that feel rough against your legs but you know will insulate your heat, and a basic sky-blue tee that tucks in to form an acceptable outfit. In your worn Nike backpack commonly used to carry your belongings to and from work, you quickly pack your ID card, painkillers, a cardigan and some bottles of spring water for your parents. You know they would be thinking of nothing else other than your sister. Your work badge, laptop, loose papers and makeup pouch have been pulled out and lie messily scattered across the floor. Maybe this is was the start of your inability to keep a clean environment for years to come.
Your baby sister, who yet again, has tried to take her own life prematurely is in the emergency room. A person who is inseparable from all your childhood memories, whose veins pump the same blood as you, yet in recent years, this familiar person has become a complete stranger by volition and fate. Today’s event another rift which draws you further apart and less able to relate. The void in your soul grows larger. Each of these situations create a huge contrast in your personality from your usual sunny disposition. You become hyper aware of your self in these moments, where you no longer resonate with the beautiful pettiness of a regular life. Going forward, small social humour feels strained and you care less and less about fitting in. It’ll take many years to truly understand how you feel. To know how this moment of your sister’s choices has continued to impact your life well after the fact.
But in this moment you’re only feeling lost. Surely, you should feel something. Anything, by todays near miss. Nope.
***
The next morning, well before 8:30am you begin the long commute from your parents home to work. It feels like a transition towards your past self. A carriage full of people from a crowded morning train sway in unison as it meanders on the tracks towards Sydney Central Station. Finally the train pulls up to the grand concourse. You disembark the terminating train, along with hundreds of others, walking toward todays final destination. The morning air is crisp and you’re overly conscious of all the other people around you. Train announcements boom over the humdrum of footsteps and chatter.
You feel like a black sheep, feigning your way towards a normal Wednesday. You hope that no-one else has had to spend the night at an emergency room, waiting for news on a family members’ life status. So quickly, your mind has wandered back to yesterdays events, a rumination moment. If others around you were suffering, you wouldn’t know, just as they wouldn’t know your pain.
Walking through the glass office doors you walk straight to the lobby, still lost in thought. Entering the elevator, the shiny metal doors promptly shut. You’re grateful that you haven’t had to bump into any colleagues to make the usual small talk. Can you even put on a smile and feel normal?
{To be continued}
