To Her

Two doors. 

Both exist ahead of me.

The doorknobs glisten, catching light from somewhere in the room.

There are murmurs from the audience. Is there an audience?

The doors look nearly identical, the wood dark and polished.

I notice a crack in the one on the left. A mark of age and history. She awaits behind that door. She was admitted six months ago. Brought in because of stomach pains, diagnosed with something much worse...what was it?...she sits there now, awaiting the darkness to absorb her, to take her away from a world without love.

I love her.

Do I?

I love Samantha. She cries behind the right door. Listen, I hear someone say. Who? Who said that? 

Everyone.

I try to look away from the doors but my head won’t turn. Her sobbing is muffled behind the door but it still pierces through my brain. 

“You need to get help,” she had said.

Help where?

She slammed the door in my face. My mother was mad at me that day, the day she found me in the basement with my stepbrother. He let me smoke. She never liked my stepbrother. I wonder where he is now. I wonder if he ever went to the hospital. 

I never did.

I got an email yesterday. Her condition isn’t good. My mother could be gone any day now. Any minute now. Someone holds back tears in the audience. She’s right there, behind that door. If I could just-

I promised Samantha. I promised her I’d get better. I knew this would happen.

“I love you, but if you don’t stop,” She couldn’t look at me, 

“I’m not sure I can keep doing this,”

My mother said to me during my third time back at rehab. I remember the tears she didn’t want to show me. My stepfather had just died.

The doors are growing, as if they’re moving closer. Time is moving. Time she won’t get back. Time no one will get back. 

Samantha waits. But she has a home, she has a family. But I need to tell her.

I will keep my promise. 

Or did I already break it? 

The audience gasps.

I met Samantha in a bookstore. I went there to look like I was in college. She was studying philosophy. Of course, I thought. She was beautiful. She is beautiful. 

“I don’t know much about philosophy, but it always sounded interesting.” God I must’ve sounded like such an idiot.

“Well, you can always study some.”

“How ‘bout you teach me some? Over a cup of coffee?”

She hesitated, but she didn’t say no. We got that coffee the following week. I remember it like it was yesterday. 

Was it yesterday?

“I never got to ask, what do you study?” Her eyes were shining. They opened up a world for me. A world where I could be someone new.

“Economics.” What the fuck did I just say?

I want to scream at myself. It was always built on lies. 

Would she have loved the me I had hidden?

I tried to hide from my mother. For a long time. I finally had to call her at rehab. There was no one else there for me. Samantha had decided she and I were on a break. 

“Please just hear me out-”

My mother has always known the hidden me. 

I have to go to her.

I blink and the door is right in front of me. It’s covered in cracks and holes and dust and dirt. She’s leaving.

I grip the handle. It feels familiar. A sensation I’ve felt before. Like coming home.

But home has been ruined.

I ruined it.

The door creaks. I have to use all my weight to get it open. It’s like I’m opening a jar of a thousand lives. A future where she’d be proud. The audience applauds. It fades as I step through the door frame.

She’s there. In the bed. Staring at the wall ahead of her. Can she see me? The window looks out to some nondescript city landscape. There’s an empty vase beside her bed.

“Mom?” 

I see her eyes widen. Her head slowly turns.

“I thought you’d never come.” She smiles.

“I’m sorry.”

Samantha.

“Don’t be sorry. You’re here now.” She lifts a finger towards the chair next to her. “Come, sit.” 

I take a step, and the world shakes around me. With every movement the world blurs. I glance back to see the door phase into the background. Just another part of the four walls encasing a life lived and a life lost.

I take a seat in the chair. It feels as though there is no chair. For a brief moment, it feels as though there is no room. 

“Where have you been all this time?”

“I don’t know.” I can sense her eyes trying to decipher mine. There are worlds here you shouldn’t see.

“Samantha.”

Did she say that or me?

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” 

“Yes.” And so are you.

“Where have you been all this time?”

“Waiting.”

The walls slide in. I can’t look away from her bed.

“For what?”

“Change.”

Two doors.

Both exist ahead of me.

Where am I?

Where is my mother?

The doorknobs glisten, catching light from somewhere in the room.

The audience laughs.

The doors look nearly identical, the wood dark and polished.

Her hospital bed is gone.

I never went to the hospital.

The audience sits, waiting.

I never visited her.

Why didn’t I visit her?

The doors are growing, as if they’re moving closer.

I’m running out of time.

I notice the clean, glossy finish of the right door. It welcomes me.

Where am I?

The audience is silent.

I cannot move past the two doors.

I am existing outside of space. There is nothing here. 

Change.

Where is change?

I cannot see my mother.

Why can’t I?

She does not want to see me. She cannot see me. I am in a pit, a chasm dug too far deep. There is no way out. She cannot save you. 

And I cannot save her.

But what about Samantha?

This room has existed since the beginning. 

Will I ever walk through these doors?

Where do they really go?

Where is Samantha?

Gone.

They’re both gone.

I’m gone.