Comfort & Joy

“I know. ” I grab my purse and the crutches from the backseat, and I’m off, hobbling into the terminal. At the counter, I find a beautiful dark-haired woman in a blue and white uniform. Her nametag identifies her as Donna Farnham.

“May I help you?”

“I want a ticket to Seattle on the next flight. ”

The ticket agent looks to her computer screen, types quickly on the keys, then looks up at me. “There’s a flight leaving in forty minutes. The next one is tomorrow afternoon. Same time. ”

I reach into my purse for my wallet. What’s a credit card for if not unnecessary expenditures? “I’ll take a ticket for today. ”

“All we have left is first class. ”

I don’t even ask how much. “Great. I’ll take it. ”

By the time I’ve made it through the security line and find my way to the gate, my hands are sweating and my heart is hammering.

I try to think of Daniel and Bobby, try to believe I can make the magic strike again. I’m Dorothy. There’s no place like home, I tell myself, but my confidence is draining fast, being pummeled by the bright fluorescent lights overhead. In this light, I can’t help seeing clearly.

When they call my flight, I take a step forward.

Then I see the plane.

Images charge me; hit me so hard I almost fall down. I close my eyes and try to breathe, but that’s no help. In the darkness, I’m on the plane again, going down. Flames are all around me . . . I smell the stink of fuel . . . and hear the screams. I’m falling, tumbling, and hitting . . . being carried out of the wreckage. I can see it all: my face covered with blood; my arm hanging down from the gurney; the bone poking up through my torn, bloody jeans. The plane exploding behind me.

The shaking starts in my fingers and radiates outward until I can hardly hold onto my crutches. My palms are slick with sweat; I can’t swallow. Tears stream down my cheeks and blur my vision. Several people ask if I’m okay. I nod and push them away. If I could run, I would, but I’m as broken outside right now as I feel within, so I leave slowly, limping away from Hope. I’d crawl if I had to.

When I finally emerge from the terminal and step out into the bright, sunlit day, I see my sister.

She’s standing in front of her minivan, by the passenger door.

I go to her, clutching my ticket. “I remember. ”

She puts her arms around me, holds me, and lets me cry.

F or the next three nights, every time I go to sleep, I relive the crash. Over and over again, I wake up screaming and drenched in sweat, lying in the blackness of my own guest bedroom. There are no memories of the clearing left, of my mom telling me to wake up, or of Bobby showing me to my room.

By the fourth night, I get it. I may not be the brightest bulb on the porch, but I can figure out what message my subconscious is sending: You were on the plane, stupid.

You never walked away.

I have been like an anthropologist, looking in darkness for evidence of a lost civilization. Maps, photographs, drawings, they all decorate the walls of my house.

But now, finally, I see the light.

I am the one who has been lost, and it’s time to let go.

This is the message of my nightmares: Let go and move on or cling to fantasy and fall. My own mind has taught me the lesson that a battalion of shrinks could not. Too long has my heart been living outside my body—outside the state of California and all semblance of reality.

The next morning, I waken feeling bruised by nightmares, and I know what I must do. I totter out of bed; make a big pot of coffee and a resolution.

Inch by inch, I clear my walls. I start with the photographs of the Comfort Lodge and the map of the Olympic Peninsula. I am halfway done when my doorbell rings. I stand back, looking at my so-called progress. The entire east wall of my living room is littered with pin holes.

Tiny empty spaces where something used to be.

This is precisely the kind of thought I’ve been trying to avoid. When my doorbell rings again, I lunge for my crutches and head for the entry.

There, I open the door and find Stacey frowning at me.

“You look like crap. ”