You Scared Me

[[Sensitive content: mental health, suicidal ideations and self-harm, attempted suicide]]

“I’ll be on du—”

“Babe, I gotta go.” Hanging up on Alex, I tossed the phone onto the worn fabric of the front passenger seat, then pulled over on the two-lane highway. My battered Honda Civic creaked and bucked at the sudden change in speed and terrain. Tall grass schriffed under the right wheel wells.  “I know, girl,” I muttered to the faded grey interior. “Just gotta pay some bills and then you can rest.”

Tugging my long sleeves down to my wrists, I glanced to check that there were no vehicles coming up behind me, then hopped out of the car. I slammed the door and ran after the woman I had seen trudging along the side of the road.

A couple cars whizzed three feet to my left as I panted up to her. The woman wore black yoga pants and a once-white oversized hoodie despite the summer evening sun beating down on us. As I came abreast with her, I noticed that the slip-on shoes she was wearing were torn, their soles flopping, grass stems poking out of them in awkward places.

Now that I had caught up with her, I was able to keep stride with her. She was moving, all right. But definitely not a marathon runner. So I could keep up. I tugged my sleeves down again.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you need a ride?”

She didn’t respond. Didn’t break stride, didn’t swallow, didn’t blink. It was as if she hadn't even heard me.

I ran a few paces in front of the woman and waved my arms to catch her attention.

“Do you,” I enunciated loudly, pointing at her, and then at the cars whizzing by, “need a ride?” Feeling like an idiot, I mimicked driving a steering wheel.

The woman looked up at me for a split second and I found myself looking into red-rimmed blue eyes. Distant, hopeless, desperate eyes that felt so familiar, it was as if I was looking back through time at myself. Then she dropped her gaze, stepped around me—closer to the road, not further—and continued walking.

I took a deep breath, then ran after her again, got around her, in front of her.

She moved to step around me again, but I blocked her path. She stumbled the other way, and I grabbed her arm. She probably weighed less than me, the detached part of me realized.

“Please!” I said. She froze, looking down at my hand, as if confused. After a moment, I looked at my hand, too, and realized that she recognized what she saw.

I let go of her and pulled back my sleeve, holding my arm out. The woman tentatively reached out a finger, but then dropped it and just stared at me, pain darkening her storm-tossed eyes.

I pulled my sleeve back down to my wrist—the habit of years now—and lowered my hand.

“Yeah, it is what it looks like,” I rasped. My throat suddenly felt swollen and thick. “I think I understand you.”

The pain in her eyes pitched deeper and I knew instantly it was the wrong thing to say. She turned and dived toward the road, launching her body into the path of approaching traffic.

I lunged and wrapped both my arms around her waist, scrabbling against the loose pea gravel to haul her slim frame out of the road. The oncoming red pickup truck blared its horn as it swerved and narrowly missed us before speeding away. I fell in the tall grass next to the woman, who was now balled into a fetal position and sobbing.

I awkwardly patted her thin shoulder as it shook.

“I used to dream of doing what you are,” I said. Her sobs quieted a little, and I knew she was listening. “I used to picture myself just walking and walking and walking and never coming back. But I was never actually brave enough to do it.” I pushed up my sleeve for a moment, contemplating the scars on my arm, and then tugged the sleeve back down again.

I hauled myself up to sitting, tucking my arms around my jean-shorts clad knees. I brushed at my leg and realized it was sticky. I was bleeding from a scrape, grit ground into my leg. Sighing, I wiped gathering sweat from my forehead and twisted my hair back behind my neck. I eyed the rusting boundary fence along the edge of the field, letting my subconscious count the sagging rectangles. For a long moment, the only noise was the occasional whizzing of the cars behind us and the stranger’s ragged sobs beside me.

“We can only be afraid of what’s inside of us,” I said at last, breaking the silence. “We run away from this pain, or we try to feel a different pain, but the only pain that we can actually feel in the end is the one inside of us. Other people can only hurt us when it echoes what we think inside.”

The woman did not respond except to pull herself tighter into a ball. I folded my hands back behind my head and laid in the tall grass again.

The world lapsed into silence, the red sun sinking slowly, painting the prairie sky like a five-year-old’s spilled watercolor tray.

“I used to do this when I was a little girl,” I mused aloud. “I would find tall grass like this and lie down and look up at the clouds, and pretend I was all alone. No one could find me. No one knew I was there. I was in my own little world.” I snorted. “Oh, the irony. The only creature that ever came looking for me was my dog. No one ever did find me, because they weren’t looking for me.

“My dog was a big yellow retriever mix and she thought it was great fun to come and lick my face all over, and I hated that. So, I gave up putting myself in vulnerable positions where she could do that.” I smiled a little. “She was a good dog. Except for her habit of jumping up on the table and eating food when she wasn’t supposed to. Stole a whole birthday cake once. We had all gone outside to watch my mom open her new wheelbarrow birthday gift and when we came in, Laney was hiding under the table, icing all over her nose, smashed birthday cake all over the floor. My sister cried and said it was all my fault, since it was my dog who ruined the cake she had made for my mom.” I swallowed, remembering suddenly that I didn’t actually want to think about Laney. Or my mom. Why was I talking about any of this?

“I’m such a bad mom.” The first words I had heard from the stranger. I looked at her as she rolled over and sat up, clutching her arms to herself as if to hold herself together. Her blond hair trailed and frayed over her shoulders, spilling out of her lowered hood.

I bit my lip, silently urging her to keep talking. I grabbed a grass seed head and began methodically picking it apart.

“I just couldn’t do it anymore.” She shuddered a long breath, then wrapped her arms tightly around her own knees, staring dully ahead. “Ryan just won’t stop screaming and crying about everything, Taya is always whining, I don’t feel like I ever have a moment to think. And then today—” Her voice cracked. “Mark’s birthday…and the cake flopped, and I burned the lasagna, and the kids were screaming at each other, and then Mark came home late…” she trailed off, and wiped her face on her shoulder. “I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she repeated hoarsely.

I nodded, tossing the picked-apart stem aside and pulling another to dismantle.

“I’m such a bad mom,” she said again, choking a little. “I walked away from the kids. They started squabbling again--and I just walked out. And I’m…” her voice trailed off as she gestured at her surroundings.

I looked up at her, taking in the damp cheeks and swollen eyes. “You’re not a bad mom,” I said, fiercely. “You’re an overwhelmed mom.”

She laughed, the sound brittle. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yeah, well.” I grimaced. “I’ve lived you.”

She shrugged and looked dully at her torn shoes. I slid my hand slowly to my pocket, freezing when I found it empty.

“Rats!” I hissed. Panicking, I looked around in the sea of waist-high grass, envisioning my phone lost in the waving roadside prairie.

Ryan and Taya’s mother’s disinterested gaze flickered to me briefly, then returned to the riveting image of her tattered shoes. I relaxed slightly as I remembered I had tossed my phone into the seat of the car before jogging after the woman.

I considered her out of the corner of my eye. I had been thinking of calling for help, but I couldn’t without my phone, and I didn’t think it was safe to leave her alone in her current shape.

I cleared my throat.

“Laura? Katie?”

I jolted at the man’s voice that suddenly sounded above us, and I scrambled to my feet.

“Alex!” I screeched. “How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me like that! You scared me!”

But the man standing before me, my man, my handsome adorable aggravating man in the bulletproof vest and navy-blue uniform, didn’t smile or tease. His eyes held worry.

“You scared me, Kate,” he said, quietly. I looked away, tears threatening to blur my vision. How many years would it take for us to live normally? Would normal ever become a thing?

“I’m fine,” I said. But he was already turning away, reaching his hand up to his radio and murmuring to his team about blond hair and one hundred thirty pounds. As he did, I could see tension draining out of his shoulders. Boy, he looked good in uniform. The subtle squeeze of the shirt on his shoulders and upper arms…

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. I was a mess of mixed emotions. And I still needed to pick Benson up from his friend’s house.

Alex turned back and our eyes met for a long moment. Later, they seemed to say. I nodded slightly. Later.

We turned to the woman, still sitting on the bank of the ditch and staring dully at the tips of her dirty shoes.

As if by some prearranged signal, Alex and I sat down by her, each on one side.

“Laura?” Alex asked, gently. The woman started, and I wondered if maybe she had begun to fall asleep.

Laura turned her head and seemed to realize he was there for the first time. “I…I…” Her words trailed off as she listlessly eyed my husband’s badge.

“Laura, your husband is Mark?” After a moment, she nodded, and Alex continued. “Mark is worried about you. Very, very worried.”

Laura shrugged. “He’s better off without me. I just mess everything up.”

Alex exhaled slowly. “He says he would like to apologize to you for some things. Would you be okay with him coming and talking to you?”

Laura stared at him. “I…guess.”

Alex stood and stepped away a pace, talking into his radio again. A few minutes later, a shiny blue sedan pulled up on the edge of the road. A door slammed, and a man—Mark: tall, dark, handsome, professionally dressed—dashed around the hood.

“Laura—” he gulped out, and I heard the panic in his voice. It felt familiar. It was scary how familiar this all felt. I stood and Mark’s frightened eyes met mine for a split second before they found his wife. Mark collapsed next to her, his neat, pressed khakis smearing in the unnoticed dirt as he scooped Laura into his arms.

“Oh baby,” he sobbed, cradling her to his chest. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He pressed his face to her hair, his body shaking. Laura’s arms hesitantly stole around his back, and then they were clinging to each other.

I turned away, feeling as if I was intruding, and Alex was there, reaching for my hand. I couldn’t look up at him, my face burning.

“I—” I started to defend myself. I knew what was coming, just as I knew there was an ambulance on the way for Laura. Just as I knew it would take her and Mark to Marah’s Heart Hospital. Just as I knew it would begin the painful process of psych eval questions and meds and a new phase of life. 

“Don’t you ever hang up on me like that again.” I knew, without looking up, that Alex’s eyes were flashing angrily. And I knew it was because underneath the anger, he was—

Alex’s radio squawked, and we both stilled, just long enough to confirm that it wasn’t a call demanding his response.

He took my hands in his, pushing up both my sleeves, tracing the thin crisscrossing scars on my forearms, turning over my palms gently, smoothing the lines of stitch-marks on my wrists that were burned indelibly on my body and our memories.

Then he crushed me to himself, his pushup-trained arms squeezing me into his unyielding bulletproof vest. I leaned into him, resting my head under his chin, fighting the tears that threatened to trickle down my nose.

“I know,” I said, and how the sob escaped the vise-like lump in my throat I couldn’t say.

I felt a drop of warm water soak in through my hair. “You scared me,” he whispered.