The hardbound book creaks at the spine as it’s opened. The thin film of dust covering the outside dissipates into the air. The yellow tinged pages with its smudged words and worn edges show the book’s age. The once white spaces are filled with scribbles of well wishes, good lucks, and hopes of keeping in touch.
Flipping further along the pages, specific photos of specific classmates conjure up thoughts and generate memories within her. The glossy photographs held timeless expressions of the innocent and the lost. The images captured a moment when life was once considered carefree. When the only problems that occurred back then had to do with which party to attend on Friday night, what to wear, and how to sneak back in the house in the wee hours of the morning without getting caught.
She continues to finger through the pages until she comes across the R’s. Scanning down the list of fellow classmates, she lingers at the last name. The photograph that coincides with the name could have been any Plain Jane or Jane Doe, and with a name like hers you would think otherwise. She would never have been noticed had she not been honored with the task of being McKinley High’s Valedictorian. Wren Riley was nothing more, nor anything less than a face among hundreds when it came to her senior class.
Seated on the very edge of the bed, picking at a piece of torn skin near the cuticle of her middle finger on her left hand, she was anxious. Shaking her right leg in anticipation. The four walls she looked at everyday for the past year no longer seemed as suffocating as they had once felt when she first arrived. The room housing two twin beds, a desk, and a small table with a lamp; was still drab and gray.
“Wren. Wren Riley.” the nurse utters hesitantly, standing in the doorway. Wren looks up.
“Your release papers are ready and you’re officially free to go home now.”
Home. Wren had been counting down until this very moment arrived. Twelve months of ice cold showers, three hundred and sixty-five days of seven different medications, fifty-two weeks of screams heard in the middle of the night, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours of group therapy sessions, five hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes of single player solitaire games, and thirty-one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds later she was finally deemed fit enough to walk among the sane again.
Finally free to go home and she couldn’t will herself to move. The color in her hand drained from the tight grip she had on the handle of her suitcase.
“Ms. Riley,” the nurse said with a warm smile.
With closed eyes, Wren deeply inhales the scent of antiseptics and sterility that will forever be embedded in her nasal cavity for years to come. Her eyes flutter open as she exhales.
Suitcase in hand, she utters to herself quietly, “I can do this. I hold the power. I am strong…” Wren repeated this mantra to herself all the way outside the wrought-iron gates of Stoneridge.
She found a spot on a concrete bench shrouded by Escallonia bushes. She sat there in peace with her eyes closed. The sun was warm upon her face. The light breeze swirled a honey fragrance around her emanating from the bushes. The low whoosh of the wind surrounding her, the chirping of the birds off in the distance, and the occasional vehicle cruising down the street in front of her were the background music to her daydream.
Wren is bent over a clawfoot bathtub, cradling a little baby girl slightly above water in her arms. She bends down, tenderly kissing the little girl’s forehead before placing her down in the lukewarm water. The baby girl begins to fidget about as her tiny body makes contact with the water.
Her lips practically touching the outer rim of the baby’s ear, “hush, baby girl,” Wren says to her in a whispery tone. The little girl instantaneously recognizes the sound of her mother’s voice as it lightly massages her eardrum, ringing through it with familiarity. At that moment her tiny body starts to relax, becoming one with the water surrounding her.
Wren dunks a washcloth in the bath water, being careful not to stir up any splashes that would startle her baby girl. She starts to hum a tune that was once hummed to her by her own mother when she was a little girl.
Tears languorously streamed down her face.
“Wren?” John, a Stoneridge orderly, says.
Her watery eyes flashed open, as she is suddenly jolted back to reality by the bass in his voice. Her time on the bench had flown by right before her clenched eyes. The setting of the sun had taken over leaving a deep orange and golden yellow hue in the horizon.
© Patrice Washington
Incredible story there. What happened after?
Thanks!