And Then...She Was There
And Then… She Was There
By Felicia Neuhof
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10
It was getting late, time to wash the residue of the long day at summer camp off of my face.
I hobbled on one good foot and one casted foot into the bathroom, shut the door, turned on the hot water… and let it run.
Searching for the washcloth through my bag of toiletries, I picked it out and set it on the edge of the sink.
I ran my hand through the streaming water from the faucet to feel if it was warm yet….
It was still cold.
I looked up into the mirror…
A face stared back at me,
Cheeks and nose red and rosy from being kissed by the sun’s rays bouncing off the lake all day,
But then I stared closer into the deep brown eyes and…
FLASH!
I was blinded by an invisible light and had no choice but to shut my eyes in anguish.
The instant my eyelids met, I was swooped up and transported through time, back…
Back to June, exactly a month previously, and into room 315 of the fourth floor in the north entrance of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Beep…beep…beep…blip…
Blip…blip…blip
Shuffle…shuffle…shuffle…
There he was, propped up in bed,
Hooked up with tubes,
A glowing red capped light on his finger
The doctors appeared,
Time stopped
And they said…
“Two Years!”
His screams of pain that only I heard,
His face of fear that only I saw,
The tears.
The doctors spoke again and said…
SPLASH!
I was awakened from my day nightmare with the overflowing water from the sink onto my dirty feet,
I turned the faucet off, and then collapsed in the puddle I had made, only to add to its volume with my faucet of tears.
Tick, tock, tick... an hour went by and the tears were still coming.
All of a sudden, the door was opened…
And then… she was there
It was Jenny, my counselor and true friend
No words needed to be exchanged in order for her to know what I was caught up in.
She picked me up from my puddle and held me closer than I had ever been held.
I felt her back against my encircled arms rise and fall in an erratic manner and felt her quick sharp breaths
I knew that she was crying with me
We cried and cried… and cried some more
We talked through our tears and she counseled and calmed me with her words of serenity and wisdom.
After about an hour when the steady fountain of tears slowed to a small trickle,
Jenny said, “Let’s go, trust me, I have a surprise for you… just close your eyes”
She swooped me up in her arms and carried me outside, down the stairs, and outside into the full moon of midnight.
I heard the noise of water lapping up against an object, the hoot of an owl, the chirping of crickets.
Then Jenny said, “Ok, open your eyes.”
I did.
I saw the uncovered boat, basking in the moonlight, rocking back and forth, back and forth, in the waves of the lake next to the dock, waiting ever so patiently for us.
We climbed aboard and drove away, out into the middle of the lake.
We shared stories,
We laughed,
We cried…
And then we listened to the sound of the wilderness and the water
We drifted…
And with a whisper of “I love you” from me to her,
We fell asleep under the guarding watch of the gorgeous full moon and the twinkling stars…
Hand in hand,
Heart in heart…
In true friendship.