scared too. I was scared of dying and catching an illness and getting sick and going to hospital and . . . I’m still so scared. Of everything.” A tear escaped my eye. Hospital was not my only prison. I’d gone from one prison into another one. A self-imposed prison. I’d locked myself away in that clean, disinfected apartment eating the same foods day after day, wearing a watch that repelled mosquitos because I was scared of malaria, removing body hair because I was scared of mites and other disease-carrying insects, scared of driving, of crossing the road, scared of people and their germs, just scared. Terrified.
I walked back to the couch and sat down. I put my head in my hands then shook it from side to side. “The last time I felt truly free and happy was in that field.” I felt a hand come out and grab mine. I looked up to see whose it was. It was my mother’s.
“Before the accident, we couldn’t get you out of the garden in the evening to come in for supper. Always playing, climbing trees, planting flowers—I was sure you were going to become a florist. You loved being outside.”
“And then, one day, I never was.” The painful realization of this loss hit me hard.
“We made some mistakes,” my mom suddenly said. “We wrapped you up and kept you away from life because we were scared, but I’m afraid the way we handled it made you so afraid of life and living. If we could go back and do it all again, we would do things differently. We would be more balanced.” My mother started crying now, not like before. Not small tears. My father reached out and squeezed her hand. His lip was trembling, as if he too was fighting back the waterworks.
I felt Noah tense up next to me, and then he spoke for the first time since this conversation had begun. “You did what any parent would. To keep their child safe,” he said firmly. “You did what you thought was right.” I gazed over at him. He looked almost as broken as my parents did. I didn’t feel broken, though. I felt detached. Like I was sitting outside of myself and this conversation.
“Why do I have so much money?” I asked, changing the subject.
“The man who was driving lost control because the road was cracked and damaged. We both sued city roads for their negligence, and the road accident fund paid out a lot of money, to you and him. He’s in a wheelchair now. He’s a quadriplegic.”
“Oh God,” I gasped.
“We used a lot for your medical bills, and the rest you wanted to put into a retirement fund. So we did.”
“That’s very sensible,” I said, in a mocking way.
“We always thought you should spend some of that money. Quit that job you hate so much and go and do things with it. Get out of your apartment and travel the world. Live life. Live your dream . . . but you never wanted to. You wanted to keep it safe for ‘one day.’ ”
“One day.” I remembered that phrase so well now. And then I remembered something else. “We had a fight about that.”
My mom and dad exchanged glances again. “Yes, two years ago. And we’ve hardly seen or heard from you since then.”
“You were trying to push me to do something with the money. A cruise! That’s right. I remember. You showed me all these pamphlets. You kept saying that I needed to go out and experience the world and explore. I said no.”
“So much of your life was stolen from you, with the accident, the cancer. And when you got better, we always imagined that you would go on to have this big, full, wonderful life. But you didn’t.”
“I might as well have died in that car accident,” I whispered softly, to myself, really. I didn’t need anyone to acknowledge that statement. Because I knew it to be true. The accident happened, and then the illness, which robbed me of so much of my life. But when that was all over—well, then I went right ahead and continued robbing myself. All my memories flooded me now. Each and every one was back with full, bright glaringness. And those two feelings were back again too.
Fear! I was afraid of everything.
Anxiety! So much that it kept me awake at night.
And so I wrapped myself up in a bubble of cotton wool and hardly ventured out