Bittersweet Reunion

(Sensitive content note- contains descriptions of cancer, hospitals, and homophobia)

Shadows cast the room intermittently. The unsteady on and off of the overheard lights made my eyes hurt. I wanted to rub them, but did not want to ruin the makeup I had so painstakingly applied this morning. Each time the light went dark, the woman on the hospital bed transformed into a skeletal figure. The shadows exaggerated her dark under-eyes and sunken eye sockets.

“I’ve been asking them to get this damn light fixed all week.” Meredith’s voice was a croak. Every word sounded like it took a tremendous effort for her to get out. Those sunken eyes turned in my direction once more, and it felt no less unsettling than it had when I stepped into this room three and a half minutes ago.

“You don’t have to sit all the way over there, you know,” she said. Despite the effort it took for her to talk, she had spoken far more than myself since my arrival.

I stiffened. The chair had been in the far corner of the room when I came in, and I had sat down in it once it became evident I wouldn’t be told to leave. I was hoping she would let me continue to stare at her from across the room until I came up with something to say. There had been words in mind. I’d prepared an entire speech in the taxi on the way here. It had all been forgotten the moment my eyes landed on her.

I squatted and hobbled the chair over by gripping onto the arms. The action caused an uncomfortable squeak to emit from the friction against the tile floor. I flinched and plopped back down into my seat. Meredith rolled her eyes at me. Loud noises in this place felt wrong. This floor of the hospital was quiet apart from the beeping of the monitor and the occasional bustling of nurses and doctors outside. Disrupting that would be like disrupting something sacred.

“If you came all this way to watch me die, you might be waiting a while,” she rasped. “The doctors said I still have at least another six weeks in me.”

“Don’t talk like that.” My lips seemed to move of their own accord. My voice didn’t even feel as though it was coming from me. The subject of death made me uncomfortable. The subject of Meredith dying even more so.

Meredith’s chapped lips parted in feigned shock. “She speaks,” she said. There was a pause where she looked me up and down, analyzing me with those sharp eyes of hers. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

I must have made a face, because her lips curled upwards and she laughed. The laughter turned into coughing, and I moved to grab the glass of water from the bedside table. It surprised me that she allowed me to press the edge of the glass to her lips and hold it steady while she sipped. This was the closest I had been to her since entering the room, and I could finally get a good look at her face. Her face had been changed by both time and the cancer. There were harsh lines and spots. Her golden hair was long gone. The sparkle was gone from those once shining blue eyes. I placed the cup back on the table when the coughing had subsided and found my seat again.

“Where does your husband think you are today, Lorna?” Meredith asked.

The way she could pick me apart and read me like a book had always terrified me. It had been over twenty years since we had last seen each other, and her skill had not diminished. “I told him I had a business trip,” I replied. It was believable. I had taken business trips before. The lie gave me enough of an excuse for my absence to fly across the country, spend a day here, and then fly back.

“And if he does some digging and finds out there was no business trip?” She pressed.

“He won’t,” I responded instantly. She pursed her lips in a silent question of my confidence.

“Our son is playing a football game tomorrow,” I explained. “He is much more preoccupied with that than whatever I’m doing.”

“You have a son. You always talked about wanting kids.” Meredith said this dreamily, more to herself than to me.

I responded anyway with, “He just turned nineteen.” I felt the need to say something to fill the void of silence. It had been tolerable when I first entered, but now that we were speaking, it felt wrong to stop and there was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to know if she had kept tabs on me the way I had her. I knew she married, but divorced a few years ago. I knew she never had any children. She had never been that interested in children.

“Is that husband of yours treating you well?” Meredith asked.

“Yes,” I answered. In truth, Ben was too good for me. He was kind, patient, and understanding. He was an attractive man. A church-going man. He took care of me. He had supported me when I stayed home to raise our son, and when I was ready to go back to work, he encouraged my career.

“Is it everything you dreamed of then? The white picket fence, husband, kid, and a dog?” Meredith pressed when I did not give her more than that one-syllable answer.

Sitting here with her brought to mind the confessionals my parents dragged me to weekly. As a child, they made me sit in a dim room and tell the priest how I had misbehaved. When I was teenager, my parents had told me I needed to confess my unnatural thoughts so I could earn forgiveness. I felt a pressure to confess my every wrongdoing to Meredith now. I wanted to tell her my every regret. Tell her how often I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep because I hated the life I had chosen for myself.

Instead of answering her question, I asked, “Did you ever check up on me?” I needed to know if she had spent years obsessing over me the way I had her.

The eye roll she gave looked like it took some effort. “You may not have moved on, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t.”

I scoffed. “I moved on plenty. I have a husband and a child.” I had spent the last twenty years in a state of self-loathing.

“Then why are you here?” Meredith questioned. “We haven’t seen each other in twenty years, and now you show up while I’m on my deathbed.”

My mouth clamped shut. I had moved on. I had a big wedding, a nice house, and a child. My parents had forgiven me for everything that had happened with Meredith. We never spoke about it. It seemed like everyone else had forgotten about it. Except for me. Physically I may have moved on, but inside was still a teenage girl in love with her best friend. She sat covered in a layer of dust. Forgotten. Frozen.

I was probably the last person Meredith had expected or even wanted to see in this hospital room. I knew when I came in here there was a strong chance she might refuse to see me. It had occurred to me that if I were allowed to stay, she might question my motives. I didn’t have an answer for her. I wasn’t sure that I totally understood why I was here. I convinced myself for over two decades that I had moved on. All while wondering every day where Meredith was, what she was doing, and if she was satisfied with her life.

“Is that the bracelet I made you?” Meredith’s hand reached out with urgency, and I obediently held out my wrist. Her hand was cool and clammy. It looked as skeletal as the rest of her. The pale skin stretched over her bones was marked with trails of blues and purples.

I watched her bony fingers toy with the beads of the bracelet. I wore it often. It was simple, made from a combination of beads and different braids. It was worn and faded from many years of wear. No, I don’t think I had moved on at all.

Her hand fell away far too soon, and the room fell into silence once again. Silent, apart from the beeping of the monitor that reminded me how little life Meredith had left. I couldn’t even look at her. She had every right to hate me with how suddenly I had dumped her after ratting us out to both of our families. I had been a scared teenager. Being myself would have meant losing the only parents I had. We had both suffered the rage of our parents after my confession. At least Meredith had been brave enough to continue being who she was in spite of it.

“If you came here for forgiveness, you’ve got it. I forgave you a long time ago, Lorna.”

There were the words I wanted to hear, but hadn’t been able to ask for myself. Something inside me crumpled in response. My makeup ended up smearing though I tried to prevent it.

“Oh, please don’t start crying,” Meredith said. “If you start crying, then I’ll either have to cry with you, or kick you out.”

I let out a laugh, and tears came with it. The laughter was short-lived, and more tears followed. “I left you. I ratted us out and then pretended I never knew you.”

“You broke my heart,” she replied bluntly. “But we were both scared kids. You did what you had to.”

I did what I had to and regretted it every day of my life. My parents would have disowned me or sent me off to one of those countryside camps had I not. That didn’t stop me from thinking of the million ways I could have done something differently. It didn’t stop me from wishing I had divorced Ben years ago and found my way back to Meredith. I considered it at one point, about ten or so years ago, but by then Meredith had been married. I likely would have been too much of a coward anyway.

“We loved each other well, with the time that we had,” Meredith said in a soft voice.