The Cold

What started all this? I ask myself as the surging white light begins to fade from behind my eyelids. I open my eyes and look down.

The smear of blood has vanished from the front of my windbreaker. My muscles no longer ache from the exertion of running for my life. I breathe a small sigh of relief and shake my head slowly. This is the last one. I have to get it right this time.

I look around and see no one. It appears I’ve started in a grocery store this time. The only sound is the eerie buzzing of fluorescent lights. Light glares up at me from the slick tiles beneath my feet. The open emptiness fills me with unease, like a dream about to unfold into a nightmare. I need to get out of here and find it.

When I reach the doors, the snow is zipping past the windows in torrents. There was a blizzard the night my birth mother abandoned me. When I was twelve, I was told she’d left me considerately tucked into a bassinet at an orphanage. But the past two times I’ve been through this, I’ve found myself in different places. I never find myself right away; it always takes a decent search. The first loop, I wasted my time trying to talk my adoptive parents into helping me, only to be met with horrified confusion. The second loop had a messy ending that still makes me want to vomit when I think about it. This third loop is my last chance: I get to the orphanage, or I don’t survive and cease to exist. I have to find myself, and quick.

I’m hurrying past the cart return and toward the door when I spot the familiar blur of white from the corner of my eye. Seriously? In the floor of a grocery store? I whirl around and, sure enough, there it is. The small baby, sleeping peacefully, swaddled in its blanket—my blanket.

I lift it into my arms carefully, cradling its head and shielding it from the blistering cold wind I’m about to walk into. Every time I think, is this how she carried me? Trudging headlong into a blizzard? Did she survive? Or did she sacrifice her life to save my own? Maybe she actually did leave me at a grocery cart return or in a cardboard box by a dumpster. No, that’s ridiculous. Shelly would’ve told me.

I’m never prepared for the wind. It rakes its claws across my face, sending me stumbling backward and shuddering at first contact. But I steel myself, place my feet down firmly, and keep walking. That’s what she had to do, and now that’s what I have to do. If I die again, I will be erased from time as we know it.

Starting inside a random grocery store isn’t ideal, but it’s better than a dark alley. At least I recognize some of the landmarks of my hometown around me, though they’re blanketed with snow and half shrouded in darkness. The orphanage can’t be far from here. I wonder how long I have until we both freeze to death. Neither of us have the protective layers needed to fend off the cold for long. I could try to find something, but I’m too afraid of wasting time. Instead, I decide to march onward down the street, fresh snow crumpling beneath my feet and collecting in my eyelashes, praying the orphanage isn’t far.

I’m quickly losing feeling in my fingers. I clutch onto the baby’s blanket tighter and peer down at the bundle in my arms. Still asleep, but no longer peaceful. Soon she’ll be squirming around and wailing. That’s how they found me, anyway: kicking and screaming. And that’s how they’ll find her, too. I won’t waste my last chance.

The further I get, pressing forward as the wind pushes me back, the colder my body grows. My toes ache and then lose feeling altogether. My lips are frozen in an icy determined grimace. I blink furiously as heavy flakes of snow blow into my eyes. Where is the orphanage? Where is it? I can’t go much farther.

The city reads my mind. At the next streetlight, I see it. The baby starts to cry. I feel a second wind, a burst of hope, and I make longer, faster strides through the thick snow toward the building. When I reach the window, I see there are no lights on inside—why would there be, this late—but I can see inside the front windows by the streetlight.

And then I see it. The bassinet. It sits under the window, just inside. How do I get inside? I did not come this far just to fail. I tighten my arms around the crying child and kick the bottom of the door angrily. I’m sure if I could still feel my toes, I’d be in pain, but my whole body feels numb. Miraculously, the heavy door eases open partially. It must’ve been unlocked. I feel myself trembling violently as I shoulder my way in. It’s perfectly silent inside. The children asleep upstairs are safe from the blizzard raging outside. The only light to see by is the streetlight across the road. I set the baby down gently into the bassinet, shushing her with quivering lips. “We’re gonna be okay now,” I tell myself. “Shh, it’s okay.”

I look down the darkened hallway and wonder, briefly, if this place is abandoned. But no, it can’t be. This is where they found me. Right here, just like this. I got the baby here safely. I’m right where I’m supposed to be. So why is nothing happening? Where is the white light?

My energy is gone. My legs give way beneath me, and I collapse next to the stairs. A new thought dawns on me through the haze of exhaustion. What happens if I die now? The trembling slows as I bring my arms in close, curling into the fetal position to try and warm myself. It doesn’t matter. Does it? Because I’ve done it, I’ve brought the baby here. That means I go on. I did what I needed to do. It shouldn’t matter if I die now. I close my eyes. Then the white light seeps slowly in from the corners of my vision and envelops me. It feels warm. 

When I wake, the white is around me again, but this isn’t an empty grocery store. This is a hospital room. I’m in the bed, tucked under a blanket, and my parents are sitting in chairs watching me.

“Katie?” Shelly asks. My adoptive mother. “Are you awake?”

I nod slowly. “Was I…did I…?”

“You’ve been in a coma,” David (my adoptive father) tells me. “You and your friend Lily got into a bad car accident.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”

The cold had felt so real…I thought I was waking up from hypothermia. A car accident…? That doesn’t make any sense, unless…it was all just a dream… “Tell me the truth,” I sputter, then start at the croaking sound of my voice.

“What, honey?”

“Tell me…the truth. About my mother.”

Shelly shakes her head. “I…what do you mean, sweetheart?”

“What happened to her?”

“I…” She looks to David nervously. The nurse clears her throat quietly and backs out of the room. “She left you at an orphanage.”

“But what happened to her?”

She looks at me, sadness shining in her eyes, and reaches for my hand. “She didn’t make it. I’m sorry sweetheart, I didn’t know how to tell you—”

“She froze to death. Didn’t she?”

She nods slowly.

Tears spring to my eyes. “She didn’t abandon me. She loved me. She protected me.”

She nods again. Her own eyes begin to water. “Yes, she did.”

“I dreamt about her,” I say. I take the tissue she hands me, crumpling it in my feeble grasp. “I know how she felt. Out there in the cold.”

“Well, you’re here with us in the warm now.”

“Yeah.” Because of her. “I am.”