The Locked Door

Bethena, a concert waltz, placed me in a mood. If pain needed emotion then the song would drown me in it. The crescendo of the song flashed before my eyes, and I could see flashes of her life.

The bathroom door was also across to mine. It wasn't the largest room but I needed to see the door. I needed to hear the noises she made, and I had to know it was unlocked. I needed access to be by her side if she needed me there.

Even with the door shut, I can perfectly envision the sliver of mirror that can be seen from this angle. The memory of her sobbing as I ran the clippers over her head. She was an emotive person and gripped the vanity as she lost hers. Tears gave her something to feel. Joy embraced as we learnt how to knit together, an assortment of matching beanies and clothes to donate to charity.

The click as she turned it was louder than the phone ringing, or the code blue ringing through a hospital ward. There was a conversation she enforced on me before I was mature enough to hear it. She was a planner. There was always a solution and she had the map to solve this one. Not the key to a treasure chest but one to the outside world she had been barred from.

Even before, we had rule to never lock the bathroom door. Falling out of the tub resulting in stitches when she was three ensured that rule. Her head had been sore for days, and required a scan to ensure nothing was wrong. There is always a need to check things, just to be sure, but you never expect there to be something wrong. Especially something no one can fix. A simple brain scan was enough to ensure that the bathroom door remained unlocked to this day.

Can it have really been fourteen years already? She can't remember the start like I can, but pain has a way of piercing your heart before love can heal it. She was brave, and like a tree with a split trunk grew regardless of how broken her spirit became over fourteen years.

She might have been a pianist. Fourteen years was long enough to stop her fingers from following sheet music, but I hear her slamming her palms along the keys to just hear something, or feel something. The vibrations giving her control over something that she had the potential to hurt.

She had asked me for this, in the wordless way teenagers do when they yearn for independence. I remember seeing her research the medications she was taking, which had the strictest dosages. The ones with poison control's number printed on the bottle. It wasn't a mistake I stumbled into. She let me see. She was forced to become a planner around a life that couldn't be scheduled.

I had been doing house chores when I had heard the click. My hands fell empty into the sink, dropping the dish she had eaten cereal out of that morning. She hadn't even requested something special, she didn't want this to be a special day. No one else was home and she had planned it that way. She spoke about this day as a when, not an if.

I left the sink full and cold to check her room. To remember how it was in this moment when it still remembered her. The bed made and the note - dated years prior. The only fresh ink printed at the bottom 'play loud music'. She might have been a nurse. Her compassion to save someone from pain would have rivalled any mother's.

There are few hobbies that matched her criteria. One you can take worldwide, and have with you always. If you were home, if you driving hours away for a 10 minute visit which turned into 10 days. To assist you when you heard bad news. That you could participate in once you lost nearly every ounce of energy. When her own talents failed her physically, listening to the power behind the creation of a composer and his command of an orchestra gave her something to feel. A world to view in which she could have laid before her and participated in. She might have been a composer.

Her handwriting had been messier when she fourteen but I knew she missed the dexterity of holding a pencil. Perhaps she had foreseen the inability coming. She had always been smarter than I was. I held her note in one hand, the right. My cellphone in the left. I wouldn't call until I knew for sure. I had done research myself, to know how long she needed before her actions were too late to reverse.

I wanted to love her in this moment. To apologise for condemning her to this life that dealt more pain than joy, and what love would stop her from ending her misery. As much as I needed to see her face and falsely reassure her how it will be okay, I needed her to be brave one final time. This pain for me would be temporary, but hers had been permanent. This was the compromise I had prayed for. This wouldn't take my guilt but he could take her pain.

I repeated the song, a favourite we shared. The song she requested I play at her funeral. I wanted her to know, at this moment, I respected her wishes. I would make the calls, I would make the plans. There was nothing else she needed to worry about. I gave her time before I called anyone. I would retrieve the DNR she asked for, the ambulance would need to see it, even though we had planned it well enough that it would be too late.

I'd been assured that dreaming about all the things she might have been was normal. So long as I didn't forget the things she was. She had been a pianist. A professional even, as I recalled her sister giving her a dollar to stop playing, causing them to giggle.

She had been a nurse. She administered bandaids and healing kisses. She read stories to other children waiting treatment or surgery. She had held back hair while people vomited and rubbed their backs.

She had been a composer. Creatively banging knitting needles, or pans in the kitchen to some tune and singing randoms words. And in the end, she was a rule breaker - she had locked the door.

She might have been lots of things, but at 4:23pm that Wednesday, after breaking down the locked door, the coroner announced her free.