Never Let Go - Page 1
sienna
There was this boy.
He wasn’t a typical boy. The first time I saw him, I knew he was different. Very different. I was eight, and me and my family had just come home from The Big Store when we noticed him and his family moving in. The minute we turned the corner into our zone, my eyes found him. It was more like our eyes found each other’s because when I looked at him, he looked at me. And then… that’s when I knew something was different about him. Then, I didn’t know anything about him, except for the way he felt.
How he made me feel.
He pulled me. Honestly. Except, he didn’t touch me. I was… we… my family and I… we were still in the car. But… when my eyes met his, I felt a tug. The longer I stared at him, the harder he pulled. The harder he pulled, the quieter the car got. I’d never forget it. The music… it faded. The sound of momma’s laughter, and daddy’s flirtatious jokes faded too. My sisters arguing over who would get their hair braided by Auntie Char first… yeah, you guessed it. faded right along with everything else. That, coupled with the way he felt, scared me. So much that I cried. I didn’t boohoo. I wasn’t hysterical. I didn’t know there were tears until my sister Hazel touched my face and asked me what was wrong.
That went on for years. The pulling. The emotions. Sound and the people around us just… drifting away… it went on for years. Every day since the first time. I tried to stay away from him because of it. But, staying away from him proved to be impossible. If he wasn’t in a room I was in when I entered it, shortly after, he’d walk right in. Goosebumps and the racing of my heart welcomed him any time he showed up. It was like… a hello. That hello we’d never spoken to one another. I didn’t know him, but I knew him. Not in the way that everyone else in the neighborhood knew him. Not because he was treacherous and sold gruds. I knew him because since I first laid eyes on him, I felt him. When I slept. When I was thousands of miles away from home. I felt him. Not all of the time. But… mostly. When he was hurt. When he was in danger. When he was sad. Just… the bad stuff. Those were the nights that scared me most. Some nights, I’d awake in a cold sweat. Some nights, I’d awake, gasping for air, frantic, with tears pouring from my eyes. Some nights I’d jump out of bed and dress, in a frenzy, to head out of the door to go to him. My dad… he called them night terrors. But I knew what it was. It was him. By daylight, people would be talking about something happening with the Baptiste Brothers the night before. That’s who he was. A Baptiste. Jahad Baptiste. He was more than just Jahad Baptiste to me though. He was a feeling. He was a tug. He was a lot of things. An enigma, really. And now, at thirty-one, he was more than just a feeling for me. He was my husband, too.
I closed my eyes as I rested my head on his chest, listening to the subtle pitter patter of his heart. A heart that used to race whenever we were close. I missed that. Listening to his heart race. These days… his heart… it didn’t beat nearly as fast as it used to. In fact, for three hundred and seventy-two days, his heart rate had done nothing but decline. At one point, our hearts would beat in sync… these days, not so much. Not at all, really. However, I clung on to the hope that one day they would again. I liked to believe that the racing of my own heart kept his beating. As long as I stayed on him… connected like we’ve always connected… his would keep going. But my God… I was afraid. Afraid of moving. Afraid of looking at the heart monitor. Afraid that this little connection of ours was just a figment of my imagination, birthed by hope. Hope for more time when I knew that time was something we didn’t have.
The door creaked open and ripped me out of my thoughts, forcing me to open my eyes. Tears I kept concealed behind my closed lids immediately soiled the thin white hospital gown he wore.
“Hey Si,” greeted my sister, Hazel.
I sucked in air and looked over at her, walking into the room wearing a familiar, desolate smile filled with both pity and sorrow. My eyes stayed on her for a moment. Long enough to notice the sympathy. Long enough to have seen enough. Every time someone walked into the room, they greeted me the same way. With sorrow. For me… and for him too.
People said Jahad had been holding on for me. The doctors… they called this a miracle. How? How was this a miracle when every day that passed, he slipped further away from me. They saw it. But me? I felt it. To me, that was worse than seeing numbers on some monitor decline. To literally feel the light being sucked out of him… that… it hurt. Because that light… it was being sucked out of me too. The pull? That touchless tug he’d given me since I was eight? It was fading.. I couldn’t feel him. Not like I did before. Not like I always had. I laid on his chest, connected to him, searching for it. Wanting to feel more of him. The thing that used to scare me? God, I wanted it so bad now.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Haz asked, as she walked over to the windows to draw the shades.
I didn’t say anything. I closed my eyes and grabbed his lifeless hand. Gripped it. Waited for what would never come. Electricity. All I needed was a spark. A little one. Anything. Something. But… I got nothing.
Through trembling lips, that were in dire need of water, I whispered a soft ‘please’ that only I could hear. I didn’t know who I was pleading to, exactly… but… something. Him? Whoever… whatever put him in my life. Whatever created us. Whoever made him for me… us for each other. I just… I needed something. A little bit of anything. A sign that this wasn’t the end of us. It couldn’t be.
“You should eat.”
There were a lot of things I should’ve done. Eating was on the top of that list, drinking, bathing and working were right underneath. However, I rarely ever left his side. I mean, unless it was absolutely necessary. To use the restroom, reposition him or clean him. Because I was a physician myself, I took care of him. He didn’t have an aide. I was that. When his family visited, I gave them privacy. Allowed them time to spend with him, but it was never too long –their choice of course—and I was never too far; just right outside of the door. I never left the hospital. I wasn’t practicing at the moment. Refused to care for anyone that wasn’t Jahad Baptiste. If he was lucid… if he was here… he would fuss at me about it but at the same time, he’d understand because if the roles were reversed, he would be the same way. We were like that about one another. Serious. Connected. One. Not just by last name. Not just by marriage. Our souls.. they were tied. Interlinked.
That’s what we came to realize. After years of trying to figure out what ‘it’ was… that electricity. That pull… that… magic. We figured it out. We couldn’t part ways. We had to come together. The running I used to do—it didn’t matter. I could have run as far as humanly possible, we would have come together still because we were meant to be.
We were destined.
“You know what tomorrow is?” Hazel asked, cutting into that rambling that constantly went on in my mind.
“Three hundred and seventy-three,” I mumbled, as a tear trickled down my cheek.
She was behind me. I could feel her eyes on me. Sad ass eyes… pitiful eyes.
“No, the day, Sisi.”
I didn’t know what tomorrow was.
I just knew what number it would be.
Three hundred and seventy-three.
Day three hundred and seventy-three
Tomorrow would make it three hundred and seventy-three days since I last heard his deep, baritone, drenched in Caribbean drawl. It had been three hundred and seventy-two days since I’ve gazed into deep, dark brown eyes that could hold me captive for days if I let ‘em. Three hundred and?—
“Tomorrow is your bloomday… Cosmo Day,” Hazel said with a smile in her voice, snapping me back into reality. Again. Good. I could get lost in numbers for hours.
I softly peeled my lids open and shifted my clouded eyes up at him. I didn’t care too much about my bloomday. But Cosmo Day? Wow. A soft smile crept upon my face, and I wondered, could he come to me then? Cosmo Day was… magic. It was beautiful. Thirteen years ago, on Cosmo Day, I stopped running. Thirteen years ago, I couldn’t run away from him if I wanted to. The pull… my God. The pull on Cosmo day was… always too much to ignore. The electricity. The magnetism… it was.. at its highest. Always at its highest on Cosmo Day. Electricity was what got us here. He and I. Electricity is what told me to stop running. Running didn’t cross my mind though. Not then. I didn’t want to run because thirteen years ago, on Cosmo Day, the ‘boy’ I was afraid of… I fell in love with him.
T h i r t e e n