Band on the Run.

I finally talked Cheryl and my mom into going home after the doctors decided to keep me in the hospital for another week after I declared that I no longer wanted to live. They were planning on putting me through group therapy with other girls my age who have gone through the same thing. I wondered if maybe I could talk Cheryl into going with me, although she didn’t lose her baby the same way I did. None the less, it was terrible to watch her go through it. Sometimes when we went to my house I would look out at the field and I would think about the awful deed we had done, I remembered clearly how I felt as I sat outside the bathroom door waiting for her to give me the word. Maybe taking away me and Roger’s baby was punishment from God, maybe Roger knew this and that’s why he told me yesterday that he had gone atheist on me. Not just atheist radical atheist.

“Nothing in this world happens without reason,” I could clearly remember Melanie saying as she used my stomach as a pillow while we laid on my bedroom floor years earlier, “Every time you think that something awful has happened just for the simple fact of happening you just need to slap yourself in the face because it did happen for a reason you just have to find that reason out.” She told me this after I found my father in bed with our housekeeper. She was always very good at comforting me, especially when it came to my dad and all the awful things he would do leading up to his final departure.

“Are you hungry?” Roger asked quietly as he takes his seat beside me, I shake my head. My fingers still gently traced the outline of the Welsh cross my mom had given me before she left, her mother had given it to her before I was born. The never ending patterns carved into it were meant to keep away evil spirits, they believed that if a spirit tried to attack you they would get stuck and would wind around in them forever.

“Why don’t you get rid of that thing? It doesn’t do you any good.” He tries to take it out of my hand but I yank my hand away from him and stare up at him with fire in my eyes. He backs away and sits down again, “Just because you have no faith, nothing to believe in, doesn’t mean I have to join you.”

He throws his hands up defensively, “I’m sorry, I just figured that you had lost faith too.”

“No, because even if it’s stupid and childish, I need something to believe in. I want to at least believe that there is something out there that is going to guide me and that when we die we don’t just turn to dust.” I looked down at the cross and I thought of Melanie again, her bright eyes popped into my head and I knew this time the image wouldn’t go away as easily as it has in the past. I could almost feel her beside me, that’s when I knew.

She was in the building somewhere, she was going to find me or I was going to find her. Either way, she was here. She would be here and she would comfort me in the midst of this tragedy, I realized how desperately I needed that.

“Nicole?” A soft voice came from the door, I looked up and there she was. Roger’s eyes grew wide, “Oh shit.” He mutters and stands up, everything he said from that moment on came out in one big word.

“HiyathereMelhowareyouweareprettygoodweareengagedandinlove.”

I stared up at him blankly; Melanie says nothing until I say hi. She says she saw my mom in the lobby and she had told her what happened, she practically pushed Roger out of the room and sat beside me on the bed. I felt butterflies in my stomach as she touched my hand, “How are you doing?”

I looked down at our hands than back up at her, “I feel like a failure. I would die if I knew it would’ve given the baby a chance to live.”

She smoothes down my hair, “Maybe that baby wasn’t meant to be born, maybe it was meant to go up into the universe, or Heaven, or whatever you believe so that it could protect you and the children you will give life to in the future.” I instantly hugged her, those being the most comforting words anybody except Cheryl had given me at all the past week.

“I was just so excited you know? I finally had something good going for me and it was taken away.” I sobbed onto her shoulder, she rocked me gently until my cry ceased. The conversation turned to Roger and for the first time I spilled all of my doubts to her. I felt like I was making a mistake, I mean I loved him but Roger was just so…Roger, and there’s no telling what will happen now that Syd is out of Pink Floyd. I just didn’t know what to do at that point, to make matters worse having Melanie right there with me reminded me of the reasons I had loved her so much all those years ago.

“I’ve missed you a lot Nicole, I always wondered how you were doing.” She says quietly, I was tempted to tell her that it took me almost a year before I moved on from her, but I just simply told her that I missed her too. It was then she suggested we run away, I don’t know if that were her intentions the whole time but I was tempted. Very tempted, so tempted that I agreed.