Courtney Cole - Before We Fall

“Did you go?” Jacey whispers, and I can see from her face she’s afraid of the answer.

“Of course I went. But it was too late to save her.”

Jacey shakes her head in disbelief now, like she’s expecting that I’m just spinning a tale, acting out a scene. “Dom… I…”

She doesn’t have the words. Because the answer is clear. I’m a horrible person. A monster.

I nod curtly, once, determined to keep my composure.

“Emma was a light. Everyone who met her knew that. She was too good for me. And I failed her. She trusted the wrong person, because I turned away when she needed me the most. I abandoned her. The worst part is that she loved me anyway.”

And she did. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw me come in. It was like everything was right in the world, even though she was dying in a sea of her own blood.

“What happened when you got there?” Jacey whispers.

I’m wooden now as I force the words from my lips. I stare back out the window, away from Jacey’s horror, as I see the memories in my head.

“The bed was covered in blood, and Emma was pale and shaking and cold. She’d sliced her arms from wrist to elbow, and I knew that it wasn’t a cry for help. She wanted to die. She didn’t want to be saved. She was surrounded by poems that she had written, all about death. I don’t know how I didn’t see that I’d broken her so completely.”

I pause, trying to untangle my tongue, trying to swallow the emotion that lingers there, trying to swallow the memories so that I can act calm. I’m a fucking actor, for Christ’s sake. I can act calm.

I somehow manage it, because my words come out in a wooden monotone. “There was so much blood. There were bloody footprints everywhere. I’ve never seen so much blood. She grabbed my shirt and clung to me and her hands were so cold. Her lips were so blue.”

She was so pale.

The blood.

The blood.

The blood.

I pause. “There was so much blood. We had towels wrapped around her arms, but they soaked through within minutes. The EMTs came in and she acted like they weren’t even there. She just kept apologizing to me. Telling me how sorry she was for killing our baby… a baby I’d never wanted in the first place. I begged her to hold on until they got her to the hospital, I begged her to try. But she didn’t even make it to the ambulance. I begged, but she died anyway.”

The room is quiet now, utterly silent but for the soft sounds of Jacey’s breathing. I close my eyes, and behind my eyelids a movie plays out. The movie of my life. The movie of the night that destroyed me.

“There was so much blood,” I murmur, seeing it like it was yesterday. Some emotion has slipped through my voice, but only a little. I’m still in check. For now. “I’ve never seen so much. Emma’s entire bed was covered in it. The towels were soaked, my clothes were soaked. It was all over my hands, my face. Her mom was screaming on the phone with emergency dispatch… her dad was crying. Emma and I were on her bed, and she got weaker and weaker so fast, and then she kept trying to tell me something, but she couldn’t get the words out. But I finally figured it out.”

I turn and look at Jacey. “She was saying Cris’s name.”

Jacey opens her mouth, but closes it again. There’s nothing she can say.

“I ignored it. I pretended I didn’t hear. Instead, I just told her that I was so sorry that I’d pressured her. I told her that I loved her and that I would always love her no matter what had happened with Cris. Nothing else mattered in that moment because I knew she was dying. I knew she only had a few minutes left, and I didn’t want to spend those minutes being ugly. In the end, all that matters is life. You forget the ugliness, you forget the pain. Just for one moment.”

My eyes burn and I look out the window, seeing Emma’s face. She was so beautiful, even then, even with her lips blue and her eyes wide and scared and sad. Her body was so slight, so cold as I held her.

“She died in my arms.”

Jacey is utterly silent, horror in her eyes. I don’t know what else to do but keep talking.

“I was drunk, but I’ll never forget how still she was. I didn’t even know she was gone at first… I was clutching her to me, pleading with her, and then all of a sudden I realized that she wasn’t answering. I pulled away from her, just a little, and she was like a rag doll. Her eyes were empty.” I pause, taking a deep breath, filling up lungs that don’t deserve the oxygen.

“She died while I was holding her, and I didn’t even know it. I don’t know when she took her last breath. Even at the end, she deserved so much more than me.”

“Jesus.” Jacey breathes, and horror is in her eyes as she looks at me. She finally sees me for the monster I am, but I don’t get any satisfaction from it. “Dominic, what she did wasn’t your fault. You were young and scared and you asked her to get an abortion. You didn’t ask her to kill herself. She did that on her own.”

“I did do it,” I argue firmly. “I annihilated her. I pushed her. She loved me so much, and all she wanted was to be with me. I practically pushed her into Cris’s arms by neglecting her. It was my fault. And then all she wanted was for me to forgive her, and I made her do an unimaginable thing. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t live with the guilt.”

Jacey reaches over and grabs my hand again, her fingers small and cold. She holds it and I let her, but my heart is cold and empty. For the first time since it happened, I’ve told someone. And it doesn’t feel good.

“No one knows,” I add limply. “Her parents don’t even know. She didn’t leave a note. All she left were those fucking poems about death. I didn’t see the point in telling them all of the ugliness.”

“It might’ve given them some closure,” Jacey points out hesitantly. “They’ve probably been torturing themselves, wondering why she did it.”

“That didn’t occur to me,” I admit shakily. “I was so wrapped up in my own grief. After the funeral, they moved away. Mr. Brandt got a job in New York City and they moved to New Jersey. They couldn’t stand to stay in the same house where she died.”

Not in a house where one room was covered in their only daughter’s blood.

“I don’t blame them,” Jacey answers quietly.

“Me either,” I agree. “It’s one of the reasons I moved to California and rarely come home. Trust me, I totally get it.”

“And Cris,” Jacey says hesitantly. “You’ve never talked to Cris about it?”

“Fuck no,” I spit angrily. “I forgave Emma for what happened, but I’ll never fucking forgive Cris.”

“You’re carrying so much anger and hatred still,” Jacey points out slowly. “You blame Cris, you blame yourself. You’re mad at Emma, you love Emma. Those are a lot of unresolved emotions to carry, Dom. You’re not being fair to yourself. When we hate someone so much, we think that we’re hurting them. But we’re not. We’re only hurting ourselves, because carrying that much ugliness around is toxic.”

A knot forms in my throat, heavy and hard. I can’t swallow past it, and my eyes sting. I look up at the ceiling, I look out the window, I look at the floor. Anything to avoid looking at Jacey.

“Dominic,” she says softly. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, I look at her.

“It wasn’t your fault that Emma died. She died from something she shouldn’t have done. If you’d known, you would’ve tried to stop her.”

I nod stiltedly. At least that much is true.

“And you can’t keep blaming yourself for such a terrible accident. Because it was an accident , Dominic. Emma wasn’t in her right mind. She was just a kid herself.”