“He made sure that didn’t happen, didn’t he?”
“He tried to.”
“What do you mean? This is me… dead, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” He hooks his hand around his ear. “If you listen closely enough, you can hear hospital machines bleeping. That sounds good to me.”
Of course, now that he’s said that, I can hear the bleeping. But I don’t want to get my hopes up in case it isn’t right. I can’t start hoping about life again.
“So, if there are machines bleeping that means Jeremy hasn’t won. It’s time for you to win.”
“How do I do that?”
I need some fatherly advice. I’ve never had that before and now it’s all I want. I wish he was here to take control for me, but I’ll take what I can get.
“You need to wake up, that’s the first thing. Wake up and then fight him again. Make sure you not only get divorced from him but also that he goes to jail. You can’t let him do to someone else what he did to you.”
I nod, a bit more determined now, he’s right. I shouldn’t let some other woman feel the fear that I have, struggle like me, be threatened and shot.
“Yeah, I agree. So, I just need to wake up then.” I glance up towards the sky as if the answer is there. “How do I do that? How do I wake up?”
“I guess that’s something that you need to work out for yourself.”
Great. So much for the fatherly advice. I know he’s given me some, but I can’t put it into action, can I? Not while I’m still here in some hospital bed. If that’s where I am.
As I look back down, Dad stands next to Mom, but now they are out of reach for me. I keep trying to take another step closer to them but they fall backward. I guess I’m not allowed to touch them anymore.
“Don’t go yet,” I cry out, but my voice fades into the distance. “I’m not ready for you to leave. Please, there are still so many things I want to ask you.”
Even knowing that they are just figments of my imagination isn’t enough, I guess I’ll never be ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to lose them the first time around and I never will be. My heart breaks. It almost shatters into a million pieces.
“Well, well, well.”
I hear him before I see him. His sneering, nasty voice. I don’t know why he’s here in my mind, I want an escape from him after everything that he’s done to me.
“It’s good to see you here, Nova. I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you again.”
“Fuck off, Jeremy. You tried to kill me.”
“I know I did. And now you’re planning to take me down. I heard you.”
I still don’t turn. I don’t want to see him. Even here. This is my new safe space, my new space under the stairs. I can’t have him affecting it as well.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Jeremy, I’m done.”
I hear footsteps as if he’s pacing behind me. “I just want to know what your plan is. Because I’m smarter than you, richer than you, and I have a network. You have no one. Absolutely no one. You’re a nobody who cannot take me down.”
“I have truth on my side, Jeremy. That’s all I need.”
He bolts out that horrible, nasty laugh. “Oh, you naive fool!”
“People take down powerful people when they have the truth.”
“No, Nova, they don’t. You’ve let that man affect your mind.”
I huff and toss my head backward, trying to calm myself down before I really lose my mind. “That man has nothing to do with you. Don’t even talk about him.”
“So, you can fuck him, but I can’t talk about him, is that so?”