Erased

It’s 1:52am and my phone is ringing. I groan, reach to my bedside table and pick up my frantically buzzing mobile. My eyes, blurry from sleep and lack of lenses, squint to see who it is. Their number isn’t saved, but after years of dialing, I still recognize it.

Anna.

A knot forms in my stomach, as if trying to wake me, as if something is wrong. But, it’s 1:52am, it’s my ex-girlfriend from years ago, and I have to be at work in five hours. So, I ignore the call, roll over, and go back to sleep. It’s uncomfortable; the knot perseveres through my dream cycles, and I have a nightmare.

When I wake for work the next morning, I lie there for a moment before waking fully for the day; I recognize the tension in my shoulders, the hollowness in my chest, the sweat sticking to my pajamas, and I try and cling to the quickly fading images leftover from the nightmare. But the images disperse like smoke into air the harder I try to catch it in my hands. I check my phone. There are no texts from her, though she has left a voicemail. I put my phone back down, and hop in the shower. I’m not ready to listen to it yet, if I even do.

I go through my morning routine, ignoring the persisting pit in my stomach, before I make my sugared coffee to go, office shoes in hand, and head out the door.

The morning is busy so I am distracted, but gratefully so. I answer the phones, file papers, and occasionally joke with my co-workers.

At the start of lunch, I feel my phone buzz. It’s another phone call, this time from my fiancé, which I find odd, considering we rarely speak during the work day. The knot in my stomach twists but I answer. I stick the phone in between my ear and shoulder so I can have my hands free to stab at the last few bites of over-dressed salad in the Tupperware container.

“Hello?”

“Hi Nora…” Tyler’s voice is gentle, “I’m so sorry.”

“Wait, what are you sorry for?” I say this with a forced laugh, but there is silence on the other end.

“Ty?” I say, putting my fork down.

“You… you haven’t heard?”

I take the phone in my hand and grip it tightly.

“Tyler, what’s going on? What haven’t I heard?”

Again, silence. Then, as if from far away –

“Nora, I’m so sorry... Anna died.”

When I was three, I remember falling into the waves at the edge of the ocean down at the pier. They were strong, powerful and they completely overwhelmed my fragile frame. I tumbled through them, head over heels, as they swelled up and crashed down, creating a current that pulled me down and under. The water filled my mouth and nose as I gasped for a breath that wasn’t there. I can still remember the waves crushing weight, the taste of the salty water on my tongue, the blind stinging in my eyes. But most of all, I remember the imploding pressure in my chest as the last bit of air started to leave my little lungs.

“She… she killed herself.”

Those brief, few moments felt like hours, trapped in the ocean’s ebb and flow, waiting for that pressure to finish me off. But it didn’t. I was pulled from the sea, resuscitated. Suddenly, that painful pressure was gone, and I could breathe again.

“Last night. They… found her this morning.”

The ocean is all I can think about as my heart drops to the bottom of my hollow chest, as if I was drowning all over again. Every word Tyler has spoken has been an added weight on my chest, and a tug on the tightening knot in my stomach. I know Tyler is still speaking. I keep waiting for him to say something that will bring me back, resuscitate me, but I know he won’t. He can’t.

“Nora?”

The lunchroom is too small, his voice is too loud, and my heading is now spinning with this new information. I end the call and for a moment I just sit there, the ringing in my ear seeming to echo around the empty and poorly lit lunchroom. I sit there, weighted to the spot, until the ringing cuts off abruptly as my co-worker, Grace, enters the room.

“Oh, Nora! Hey!” She says this brightly; I blink at her, dazed, but she doesn’t notice and plows on, “Been looking for you – listen, I know you’re on break, but the photocopier is jammed again and Janice says you - ”

“Not now, Grace.” I manage to choke this out but she keeps going.

“I know, I know, it’s your lunch but this’ll just take a second – I promise!”

I know Grace is still speaking but, like with Tyler, I can’t register what she’s saying. Without a word, though not out of rudeness but out of what felt like a dazed trance, I stand, silently gather my containers, and brush past her, leaving the door to slam behind me; my eyes are watering and I close them, but not before I saw a glimpse of Grace’s face, flushed a bright red and terribly confused.

I try to move quickly - packing up my lunch, gathering my bag and shoes from my desk, avoiding any co-workers. They don’t need to know; they don’t need to deal with me as I try and process this, though I’m sure I’ve already started the rumour mill in some direction. As I exit the building, I note how odd it feels to walk out into the parking lot in light hours. The sun wants to shine, but thick, heavy clouds are rolling in. The air is cool, as to be expected in November – though it is colder than usual. I put on my coat as I walk out the door. I have my car here, but my legs feel as though they’re moving without me, and they take me to the sidewalk. The wind has picked up and it bites at my face, turning my nose pink. My eyes water again, though I’m not sure if I can solely blame the wind. I kick a rock on the sidewalk. It rolls down the slight decline, gathering speed as it tumbles off the curb and onto the road. It settles a few feet in front of me. I stop, staring down at it as my vision starts to clear. I let out a short, dry cough and my head starts to feel clearer. But with clarity comes reality, and I’m not ready to face it in the middle of the streets, so I let my feet walk me further down the sidewalk – the opposite direction from home, and the very direction my head doesn’t want to go.

I don’t know how long it takes to get there, but when I stop, I’m exactly where I knew I’d end up, but didn’t want to be. A lump rises in my throat as I continue and follow the familiar path down to the pier, past the docks, down to the rocks where Anna and I spent our summer together, years ago now, a secluded haven for us when we didn’t have anywhere else to be. Carefully, I lower myself down the barely visible path of makeshift steps, more eroded and shifted than I remember. Once at the bottom, where the water will be when the tide rises, I take off my shoes, digging my toes in the wet, gravelly mud. I know it’s freezing, but I can’t feel it. The rocks add to the darkness from the clouds and block the wind, which I can hear is starting to howl. My legs ache, so I sit on a wet rock; I can feel it instantly soak my dress pants.

I look around the little cove as I sit. My eyes land on the largest rock in the cove, the only one with a mostly flat surface, and the only one where I know a small heart, with an A and an N, used to be etched. One of the lines of the A is still there, I think.

I hear my phone buzz in my purse, still clutched tightly in my hands, and I’m reminded of its existence, as well as the voicemail’s. But I’m ready.

I pick up the phone, ignoring Tyler’s text that made it buzz in the first place, and open my voicemail. Or, at least, I try to, but, just as my shaking fingers select her message, the thin phone slips from my grasp and falls into the water – it’s barely an inch deep around my feet at this point in the tide, but it’s deep enough to submerge my phone in its iciness.

“Shoot!”

I lean down and grab it as quickly as I can. I fumble with it a moment before I am able to flip it over and inspect for damages. The screen is black. I press the power button, all the buttons, but the screen remains empty. In the odd lighting from the incoming storm, I can see my reflection in it, a black mirror, but I don’t meet my own eyes. My bare feet are completely numb in the frigid waves of the rapidly rising water. I must’ve bee sitting there longer than I thought, if the tide is coming in this fast.

I need to go.

The wind is still blowing strongly as I stumble clumsily, making my way as fast as possible up the rock steps, past the docks, up the hill to the pier. There’s an old man walking a small dog on the path, one last time out before the storm officially hits. I think he tries to wave at me, but I hurry past him instead.

The rain hits as I’m passing the convenience store down the block from my apartment. The parts of me that had somehow stayed dry by the pier are drenched in the time it takes to walk the small distance. Tyler is already home. He opens the door for me. His brow is creased with concern; I’m sure he’s tried to call. He opens his arms but I walk past him towards the bedroom. I try to plug my phone into the cord by my bed, but there’s still water dripping out of it from God knows where, and I can’t coordinate my fingers to get the plug into the import. I can hear Tyler enter the room quietly. From behind me, he takes the phone, murmuring something about rice. As soon as he leaves, I crumple to the floor beside my bed and the dangling charging cord.

Later, while I wait for my phone to hopefully revive itself, I let Tyler help me into the shower. As I shower, he waits by the door. While standing in the billowing steam, I hear his voice. He tells me he’ll drive me to work in the morning – if I feel like I can go. He tells me he loves me. He tells me she was special. He tells me I was important to her. I reach down and turn the tap hotter and hotter until the boiling spray turns my skin red. I keep my face under the stream of water and soon I can taste salt on my lips.

I let him hold me as he falls asleep tonight. It’s the middle of the night but I am awake again, this time checking my phone, plugged in beside the bed, for the umpteenth time. I press and hold power, one, two, three times and then, finally, the screen turns white. After a few minutes it shows my lock screen. I hold my breath as I open my voicemail. The page loads, and my heart drops. The message has been erased. It’s gone.

She’s gone.

I look at the digital numbers on the screen as I exit out of voicemail. It’s 1:52am again. I work in five hours again, but I probably won’t show up. Tyler has one arm tucked under me as he snores. I want to sleep, but all I can do is lie there, red eyes at the ceiling, and let my mind think about what could have been in that voicemail. I think about why she called me and what she would have said, if I had picked up that phone. I think about all the times I had dismissed her pain, realizing it or not, and how little I probably helped – and then I think about how little that probably mattered to her. I think about her pain, and about how much it hurts to realize that she felt she had no other way to make that pain stop. But I don’t let myself think about my pain, I feel too guilty to let myself acknowledge the pain I know I’m trying to feel now; despite how long it had been, despite how it had ended, despite everything… Tyler was right. She was special and the pain I feel, the pain her parents, her brother, her friends – Hell, anyone who had met her – feels for her death is nothing compared the pain that brought her to the point she reached.

I start to feel my tired eyes drift shut, achingly, and I fight to stay awake, to stay thinking. About how this shouldn’t have happened. About how, deep down, I know it wasn’t up to me at 1:52am to ‘fix’ it all – but also about how desperately I wish I could have. I think about how there should have been someone, somewhere there for her, for anyone who felt like this before they felt there was no other way.

But it’s useless; it’s late and the darkness of the night is heavy, as heavy as the waves of the ocean, and the last thought I have before my eyes finally are forced closed, is how I have to find a way to become a part of in ending this epidemic. There has to be a way to slow this pain that’s ravaging our friends, our family, our communities, and our minds. This can’t be it. There has to be more.

There has to be.

***

SUICIDE HOTLINES:

Canada Suicide Prevention Service: 833-456-4566

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline US: 1-800-784-2433

National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK: 0800 689 5652.