One Last Christmas(Christmas Special 2014)

One Last Christmas(Christmas Special 2014) Part 2: Grief

Jessie’s POV:

I rode crying in the back of the van, for the ambulance had been too full. Dad was driving us, and he was making no emotion at all, as if he was driving us to a restaurant instead of the emergency room.

My heart was beating faster than my brother would run to get a touchdown. I guess I had been expecting this, but of all days, today had to be her…I can’t say it. The last I had seen her before she was whisked from under my feet like a rug was before my dad called an ambulance. She said one thing to me, and it was enough to make my tears grow ten times in size.

She had been twitching violently, her eyes expressionless, the tiny kitten Whiskers in her hand. I can’t believe that I was so foolish to start reading Sisters Once, Sisters Forever at that time instead of having the time of my life with my sister. Now she could very well be gone...and my last memory with her would be seeing her fall;watching her life leave.

Suddenly, the car gave a jerk and Daddy slammed into the horn, turning us into the side of the road, where the engine stopped. “Get out, we’re out of gas.” I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt, wiping tears from my eyes. Daddy ripped the door open, helping me out before slamming it shut and going to the other side. The sign said hospital this way, so I began to run in the direction it pointed.

The rest of the family trailed after me, and we trudged up the steep hill we like to call ‘hospital hill’. I was still crying, and every time I thought of Chris, my tears flowed harder. I began to sprint up the hill to the road that entered the emergency room.

The sun was still barely peeking over the hilltop and the sky was a brilliant shade of orange and purple, but the only thing that kept me from wanting to break down and quit life right then and there was my family.

I opened the glass door with denial. She would live, she would live. I let the phrase repeat in my mind with determination. I ran to the front desk. “I...I’m looking for a Christophori James?” The woman at the desk looked up with pity in her eyes. “She’s in room 13.” She answered simply, and by now my family was entering the doors to see me dashing down through the hallway and into room 13.

I choked a sob.

Her skin was pale as a snowstorm, her eyes shut. She could be sleeping...I thought to myself. But I knew that she wasn’t, for the machine that was to measure heartbeats was straight lining, and a nurse was already unhooking Chris’ face mask.

She was gone. Forever.

~~~

I was still standing there, staring at the lifeless body of my sister. My mom and dad were still hugging, my dad patting her back as she sobbed on his shoulder. Noah was putting his hands in his hair, Jake tugging on Mommy’s shirt. “Why is Chrissie sleeping?” He said, using her nickname that he had given her.

Anger welled up from nowhere inside of me. “SHE’S GONE, OKAY?! SHE IS NOT ASLEEP, AND SHE IS NEVER COMING BACK!” I left the room, darting into the womens bathroom and into a stall, sitting down on the icy floor and sobbing.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to die, right then and there, I wanted to be with my sister. That is all I wanted. “Why did it have to be her?!” I whispered to myself. “Why couldn’t it be me who died, her who lived?!” I cried out, louder this time.

My whole life I had been with her, cried with her, laughed with her...yelled at her...This is all my fault. I think. If only I had paid more attention to what was happening I could have saved her…

I screamed and sobbed in the tiny corner beside the toilet. Nobody came to get me and nobody entered the room. My thoughts were racing through my head like an endless cloud, each thought a raindrop to my mind.