Capacity, page 1
Capacity
©2020 Danielle James.
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
“It doesn’t matter how long we may have been stuck in our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn’t matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years. We turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.”
--Sharon Salzberg
Part One: The Dark
CHAPTER 1
The running water in the bathroom lulled my fuzzy brain into a trance. I glanced down at my white cotton t-shirt then at my smooth forearms and wrists. I wondered if the blood would stain my white shirt.
Of course it will, Lumi.
I nodded absently at the voice of despair in my head, agreeing with it as I plucked a small fillet knife from the vanity. My eyes were tired and swollen from a night of tears and inconsolable grief. Exhaustion tugged at my skin, gnawed on my bones, and set fire to my brain.
Still, I padded into the bathroom. Steam thickened the air around me and turned the tiled floor slick. A humorless laugh fell from my lips in black and dusty scraps as I caught myself on the wall. As if falling would be my worst fate.
The fucking irony.
I held on tight to the knife as I eased into the water. Heat scalded my skin. I winced but didn’t cry out. I was done crying. Scalding hot water was nothing in the face of the black hole swirling in the pit of me.
I didn’t waste time once I was settled in the tub. Hot and heavy water leeched up my shirt until I was soaked. I didn’t care. Nothing would matter in a few minutes if I did everything correctly. I was too meticulous to make mistakes so I knew I’d do everything flawlessly.
With my fingers balled into a tight fist, I shoved my arm out in front of myself and pushed the tip of the fillet knife into my vein moving toward the crease of my arm. I used enough pressure to slice the vein. I felt the fire spreading through my bones as my life force poured from the deep gash.
I had to move fast or I’d lose feeling in my hand before I could cut my other wrist. With shaky fingers, I repeated the process on my left wrist. I pushed out a sigh when crimson melted into the hot water. Threads of red skated on the surface before turning the tub into a morbid, cloud of scarlet.
The blood did stain my white shirt. It turned a deceitfully happy pink. It was the last thing I remembered seeing before darkness ate at the edges of my vision. I didn’t try to hold on because there was no reason.
I’d already been dead for more than a year. I was doing nothing but finalizing the way I felt. I was making the inside match the outside.
I was tired of the nonstop ache in my chest. I was tired of the nightmares and the empty feeling where my heart used to be. I was tired of sobbing to the point of exhaustion at night only to get an hour or two of sleep. I was tired of the pain.
Nobody tells you grief is a sting that worsens over time. They don’t tell you that you’ll be able to stay afloat while everyone is checking on you and bringing food. You’ll be able to sleep a little and eat a little. You’ll feel like you’re moving on…
Then the bottom falls out and you’re finally alone.
When I realized I was supposed to continue walking the earth without my heart—without my son—that’s when the real grief set in. It was heavy and jagged. It showed no mercy on my battered spirit.
Well, grief was going to win tonight. I was going to stop fighting because without my baby boy, my world was black. He was the vibrant color. He was the sunshine.
I would join him soon because that’s how it should have been.
…
Hazy light bled through my closed eyes. It wasn’t warm and golden like sunlight. It was harsh and artificial. My eyes weren’t even open and I knew those damn hospital lights anywhere.
I wasn’t dead.
Or maybe if I was, God chose this hospital as my personal hell. Adequate payback for my suicide, I suppose.
The longer I laid listening to the nurses move in and out of the room, the more I realized that I wasn’t dead. I was alive and back in the hospital I used to work at.
I opened my eyes and the harsh light grew brighter, making me squint. I swept my fuzzy gaze around the sterile room until I landed on a pair of familiar chocolate brown eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t slip into a coma.” Cora Atkins walked to my bedside and shook her head slowly. “The nurses said not to get my hopes up that you’d wake up because you’d lost so much blood. You had to have two transfusions.” She held up her pointer and middle fingers for emphasis.
It felt like I’d had two damn transfusions. I was so weak I couldn’t lift my arms or flex my fingers. My head throbbed to a slow, relentless beat that amplified every ache running along my arms. I looked down to see them wrapped in fresh white gauze from my wrist to my elbow.
“What happened?” I finally managed to rasp out a couple of words from my desert of a throat.
Cora leveled me with a look that held very little sympathy. “You know what happened, Lumi. You tried to kill yourself.” Her tone was an odd mixture of anger and hurt.
“I know that, Coco. Why didn’t it work?” I asked. A lone tear skated down my cheek and splashed on the blue and white hospital gown I was dressed in.
Her dark brows pulled together in the center of her forehead and her chocolate eyes turned onyx. There was no mistaking the concern vibrating from her. It was so potent that anyone else would’ve mistaken it for anger. I knew Cora though. I’d known her since we were freshmen in college. She was harsh and tough. She didn’t make excuses for anyone, not even herself and she damn sure wasn’t going to make them for me.
“It didn’t work because you didn’t anticipate having a best friend like me.” Her eyes flitted over my face then fear washed her features clean of anger for a moment. I watched her smooth brown skin and long dark lashes. I studied the way her lips fell into a frown that dampened her usually vivid features.
Coco slid her fingers through the crop of mahogany and copper curls on her head then said, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you don’t even know what today is, do you, Lumi?”
“No, what day is it?” I asked. My tone was blank and devoid of all emotion. I couldn’t understand what I did wrong. I wasn’t supposed to be alive. I didn’t want to be alive.
I cut to kill. Not to flirt with death or kiss its cold cheek but to become one with it. To mend my bones to its scythe and fade into nothingness.
“It’s September fourteenth.” Coco let her words hang in the air, pausing our conversation.
“Fuck,” I groaned. It was all I had the strength to say right then. I was full to the brim. There was too much sorrow and loneliness swimming inside for me to remember something trivial as my fortieth birthday.
“It’s your fucking birthday, Lumi. I caught a flight down here to Texas to surprise you because I hadn’t heard from you in a week and I walked in on the most awful scene.” Her voice wobbled before cracking into a million tiny fragments. Fragments that I caused.
My empty chest twisted seeing my best friend in so much pain. That’s why I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to see any of the tears or anger. I was supposed to be with Kaiden.
Even thinking his name in the shrouded privacy of my mind hurt too much. His name brought with it images of his smiling face and sparkling brown eyes. It brought the sound of his laughter and the crash of his toy cars. It brought the sight of his small shoes at the front door and by the couch and sometimes in the kitchen because he never picked up his shoes when I fussed.
Tears heavy like stone broke me down and turned me to dust in my hospital bed. My shoulders jumped up and down with my sobs. Just when I thought my tear ducts had dried up, there was another flood waiting.
“Oh, Lumi, come here.” Coco threw her arms around me and tried her best to hold my broken pieces together. I was coming apart all over the place. Far too quickly for Coco or anyone else to stop. I was quicksand. I was grainy sludge with no hope of being a full person again. I was some mixture of human and vampire because the only creatures I’ve ever known to walk above ground without a beating heart were the kind that sucked the life from others. That’s what I felt like while my best friend sat at my bedside hugging me. I was a vampire sucking all the warmth and love from her, unable to reciprocate.
“I called your mother,” Coco said once she pulled away. Her eyes were red with tears. “We need to have an intervention. I’m not religious like you are but I believe in a power higher than you and me and…”
“I’m not religious anymore either,” I said. Just like that, my mood switched from wrought with emotions to desolate and dry.
“I know it’s been a while since you’ve been to church but…”
“I don’t want to set foot back in that place. I looked for help and they asked me what I could do for them.” My words were bitter. Even speaking about church left my tongue sour and my teeth grimy.
When I was trying to piece my life back together after losing Kaiden, I naturally turned to the church. You don’t grow up in Texas without growing up in the church. I was like all the girls my age; I was in church every Sunday and on Wednesday’s for bible study.
When I got older, I sang in the choir, I cooked and baked for all the repasts, I helped organize church functions and I gave back to my brothers and sisters in Christ whenever I could afford to. I lived and breathed the church until I asked for a sliver of the help I’d given them and received a request instead of an offer.
The pastor wanted me to tithe more. To give more of myself. To pour from a cup that was bone dry. He said getting involved in the church would help take my mind off things.
“All my prayers went unanswered and my heart is still broken. What exactly can the church do for me now?” My wrists moaned with pain. Their slow cries weren’t heard but I felt them in my bones.
“Nothing,” Coco said. She seemed just as over church as I was. “You don’t need church to heal though.”
“Heal?” My laugh was harsh and icy, a perfect fit for the barren cavity in my chest. “My son is gone.” My unsteady voice reached a fever pitch. Coco’s back went stiff as a board. “He’s never coming back. He was shot in the throat and there was nothing I or anyone else could do for him. He was dead before he ever hit the ER. I couldn’t tell him goodbye. I never got to make any decisions about whether to take him off life support. I never got to make peace before his light was snuffed out. He was only five years old.”
Coco wiped the tears from her cheeks and cast her stare down. Even she couldn’t give out a dose of love tough enough to withstand my pain. “I know, Lumi.” She reached up to touch my hair. “Nothing I can say will fix the pain you feel. There are no words when you lose a child. Hell, I probably would be right where you are if something happened to Luke.” Coco’s son was a senior in high school in Connecticut where they lived. She had him when she was young so they grew up together in a lot of ways. I knew for a fact that he was her best friend. She wasn’t just trying to comfort me when she said she’d be where I was if she lost him. It was the truth.
“I wish I could show you how much you’re loved right here amongst the living. Lumi, your life isn’t over. You may have turned away from the church but you can’t turn away from your creator. The universe isn’t done with you yet.” Her words were interrupted by a soft knock on the door.
“Lumi?” My mother rounded the corner and I felt sick. I had to look at the woman who gave birth to me and explain to her that I was irrevocably broken. “Sweetheart, I had no idea you were hurting so much.” Coco moved to the other side of the bed after hugging my mother.
“I’m tired of talking about it, Mom. I’m tired of being here without my baby.” Seeing my mother’s kind eyes pulled some sort of plug wedged inside of me. It let all the remaining tears leak from my eyes.
“You’ve got to come home, Lumi. I won’t hear another word about it.” Even though she’d lived in Connecticut for years, her Texas drawl was still undeniable. There was no washing away the sound of home.
“I can’t up and move, Mom.”
“You can and you will. You think after this we’re letting you sit in that house alone? So far away from your family? Absolutely not,” Coco huffed, folding her arms. “Lumi, we can’t afford for this to happen again. I know you. Next time you won’t allow yourself to get caught.” A thick sheet of silence covered all three of us only to be broken by a nurse I didn’t recognize accompanied by Dr. Lawson. He met me with a gentle smile after greeting Coco and Mom. I’d worked with him numerous times in the ER when I was head nurse on the floor.
“I’m shocked you’re awake. You lost a lot of blood, Lumi. Lets me know you’re a fighter.”
He was wrong. I wasn’t a fighter. I was a loser. I wanted to lose. I wanted to give up. “I’m keeping you overnight to monitor your vitals and to make sure you respond well to the transfusion.”
My eyebrow jerked up in response. “Why? A transfusion doesn’t require overnight care.”
“Nurses are the worst patients,” He joked with a sigh. “You’re right, Lumi but I’m keeping you anyway. I’m putting you under an involuntary twenty-four-hour psychiatric hold.”
I fucking knew it.
I made a fist without thinking about the damage I’d done to my arms and cried out in pain. Everyone turned silent and the nurse jumped into action, pushing painkillers into my IV. It should’ve happened when I woke up.
“I don’t need to be on a psychiatric hold, Dr. Lawson,” I snapped once the pain receded a bit.
“You tried to commit suicide a year after losing Kaiden. You left your job. Nobody has heard from or seen you and you’re clearly suffering from depression and anxiety caused by grief. You need to stay here and talk to someone, Lumi. This is for your own good.”
I looked from person to person in that room. Every one of them had compassion and concern in their eyes. Fighting against Dr. Lawson’s wishes was futile. I could wade through twenty-four hours of psych evaluations if it meant I’d leave the fucking hospital.
…
CHAPTER 2
At first, I was mildly aware of the vomit stench in the air. Then the liquor clouds cleared in my head and I became hyper-aware of the pungent stench.
Fuck.
Had I thrown up in my sleep?
I sat straight up in bed and slimy chunks of partially digested food ran down my chest. My mouth was dry and the taste of stale liquor was tucked between my bloated taste buds but I didn’t taste any vomit. What the hell was going on?
I’d passed out drunk and threw up in my sleep enough times to know that I was not the culprit of the slippery food on my abdomen. I hopped out of bed and stumbled over the strap of a blue purse. I picked it up while brushing and wiping furiously at my stomach.
I rummaged through the leather bag and found a wallet. Inside was a driver’s license belonging to someone named Sky Lebowitz. My eyes snapped to the bed and I saw a patch of wrinkled sheets soiled with throw up. I rubbed my forehead and groaned. I was definitely covered in Sky’s vomit.
“Hey,” I called out. My voice was heavy with sleep and dehydration. “Sky?” I hoped to fuck that was her name. My vision was still blurry at best. Hell, her name could have been Skip for all I knew. I ambled to the bathroom and found Sky curled up on the cold floor with her head in the toilet bowl, whining.
“Hey, are you Sky?” I still had her ID in my hand. I glanced at it again after blinking several dozen times and balked at the birthdate printed on the license. “You were born in two thousand two? Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Hey, Knight. Good morning…” Whatever else she was about to say after good morning got tossed in the toilet.
I didn’t even remember bringing her home. She was a fucking baby. A baby. She wasn’t even breathing when 9-11 happened for crying out loud. What the hell was I thinking last night?
My drinking had been bad…okay horrible. It was horrible and I was a functioning alcoholic by anyone’s logical definition but bringing home and fucking an eighteen-year-old was the lowest I’d gone so far.
“Listen, sweetheart, we gotta get you out of here.” I was barely functioning myself and here I was trying to help a hungover teenager out of my house. Why don’t you get in the shower? I’ll make you some food while I get you an Uber.”
Sky looked up at me with thick black streaks of last night’s eye make up smudged down her rosy cheeks. The tip of her slender nose was bright red and her lips were flushed and swollen. She was probably dehydrated too. Drinking too much sucked all the moisture from your body.
“Why are you talking to me like I’m a kid, Knight? Last night you fucked me like I was an adult.”
I cringed inwardly at her words and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Last night I was…”
“You were turned all the way up,” she giggled, biting her bottom lip.
“Yeah, I was drunk as fuck. I clearly made some bad decisions and now I’m going to try like hell to forget them. So, let me apologize to you…it is Sky right?” I looked into her eyes trying to ignore the fact that her perky tits were out.
