Last Words

A short story about pain, loss, and how much weight last words can have on a person

        “Get away from me.”
         Frustrated, confused, upset, and furious, with my mind on getting to the door, I tried to kick aside the remnants of the vase I had smashed ten minutes earlier.  It would have worked too…if the bowl I had tried to smash instead of the vase (before remembering it was plastic) hadn’t gotten in the way.  A string of incomprehensible words tumbled from my mouth as I scrambled to keep my footing on the slick floor.  A confident hand shot out to end what otherwise surely would have been nothing short of an embarrassing disaster.
         “Get away from me” I repeated, pulling my arm away roughly, refusing to look at that hand’s owner. 
         “Can’t we just talk about this?  Come on, Meg…”
         I finally managed to successfully navigate the after-math clutter of our fight.  “There’s nothing I want to hear and there’s nothing I have to say.”  I saluted him dryly, taking the brass doorknob in my other hand.  “Nice talk.”
         And I left. 

~***~

         You have four new messages:

1.  Friday, 10:50pm -- Meg, hi, it’s me…listen, I know you’re mad and believe me, the last thing I ever want to do is hurt you, but I really think we should talk about it now that you know how I feel.  Please call me.
2.  Sunday, 1:00pm -- Meg, please talk to me.  Things aren’t easy for me either, you know, and I would love to hear your voice…even if it’s just to yell at me again.  So I’m begging you…please call me.
3.  Tuesday, 7:00pm -- Meg, you’re really starting to worry me.  If you still don’t want to talk this thing out with me, at least call my parents so that I know you’re alright.  I…I miss you.  And I…oh hell, Meg; you know I didn’t have a choice.  I had to do it.  It may not have been the right time or way but we had to break up.  You know that.  Look, just please call me.  I still care about you.  That’s not why I broke things off.  You know that too…at least, I thought you did…anyway, that’s not the point.  Please.  Call.
4.  Wednesday, 5:00am -- Hello?  Megan?  This is Leighann Hunter…Charlie wanted me to call you…he isn’t…well, he’s…he’s not doing so well…the cancer spread much faster than we…anyway, he’s been admitted to the hospital and he would…he would really like to see you.

~***~          

         Everyone was in black.  The curtains and rugs were black too.  Good lord, even the flowers lining every kitchen window – overflowing with cards about how sorry they all were for the Hunter’s loss – were black too.  I wasn’t even sure that was possible.  Maybe someone had spray-painted them that way?  I was just leaning in to sniff the air for any left-over paint fumes when I became aware that I was no longer the kitchen’s only occupant.
         “How are you doing, Meg?”
         I backed away from the flowers and held a shaking hand in front of my eyes for a moment.  Once composed, I smiled as brightly as possible and turned around.  “I’m fine.”  My sister’s expression spoke two words very clearly without her mouth uttering a sound.  Not Convinced.  Sucking in a deep breath, I widened my phony smile.  “Really.  I’m fine.  He broke up with me, remember, Molly?  It wasn’t like we were even dating when he…you know…”
         Molly closed the kitchen door behind her and crossed to give me a hug.  “I know you better than that.  Besides, if you really were fine and didn’t care about him anymore once he broke up with you then why did you go visit him in the hospital?”
         Her knowledge of something I thought I had pulled off without anyone else noticing cracked my stony façade.  I felt my legs losing the ability to hold me up and grabbed onto the back of a chair for extra support.  “I…I didn’t…”
         Molly reached out to hug me for a second time, continuing to speak as though I hadn’t denied her theory but confessed to it instead.  “Things didn’t go so well, did they?”
         It was this second hug that broke me down completely.  All day tears had been threatening, but now I let them fall.  I let them fall harder and faster than ever before, nearly blinding me with sadness, anger, frustration, and guilt.  But mostly guilt.  “We had another fight.”…
~***~
         “You came.”
         Charlie’s expression of overwhelming joy coupled with his extremely pale skin and the dark circles under his eyes was enough to make me wish I hadn’t.  “I shouldn’t be here, Charlie” I finally whispered.  “You broke up with me.  You broke my heart.  You should have just told me the truth.”
         “I couldn’t.  I didn’t want you to be scared for me.  I thought if you hated me, then…well, seeing me die wouldn’t be so hard on you.”
         I shook my head vigorously.  “You’re not going to die, Charlie.  The doctors will figure something out…you’re one of the healthiest people I know.”
         “I was one of the healthiest people you knew” he corrected quietly before a fit of coughing raked through his body.
         I waited until the coughs and shaking had subsided and he had taken a tiny sip of water from the glass on his bedside table before starting up my side of the argument again.  “You should have told me the truth and let me decide what to do.  And just so you know, my decision is to stay and help you.  I’m not running away, like you seem to want me to do for some reason.”
         Charlie wiped his mouth with a cloth, his expression distant.  “You don’t understand, Meg.  You don’t get a decision in this.”
         My patience with Charlie’s stubborn selfishness had been treading on a fine line of very thin rope up until that point.  That was the point in which it snapped.  And so did I.  “Fine!  Then just tell me, Charlie, if your plan was to break up with me and have me hate you forever instead of mourning, then what am I doing here?!  Why did your Mom call and practically beg me to come see you, huh?  WHY?!”
         “Because I’m not as strong as I thought I was.  I didn’t want you to see me like this, but I needed to see your face again.  I needed to know that you forgive me for lying to you-”
         “I thought I made it fairly clear that I don’t,” I interrupted with an acidic tone.  How could he think that I could just write off this huge lie?  God, it was like he didn’t know me at all.  “Not only did you lie to me Charlie, but we were dating for three years and then you just dump me out of the blue because you’re sick??  People get sick all the time.  I had a cold last month but you didn’t see me breaking things off and running.  I-”
         “This is different, Meg.” 
         “How?”  I leveled him with an accusing stare, crossing my arms defiantly.
         “This isn’t just a cold, Meg.  Why aren’t you listening to me?  God, this is so you.”  Charlie struggled to sit up a little straighter on his hospital bed, finally beginning to look a little less he wanted to hug me and more like he wanted to strangle me.
         An internal alarm warned me to back off but I ignored it.  “What do you mean, ‘this is so me’?”
         “You push and push and push until people do or say what you want.  You never listen to their side.”
         That internal alarm persisted but again I ignored it.  “That is so not true.  Name one time I did that to you.”
         “Right now.”
         “Name another ti”-
         “Last summer.  You wanted to go to that new, cheap budgeted amusement park instead of the movies.  I kept telling you that the amusement park wasn’t a good idea.  I kept suggesting that any amusement park titled ‘Let’s Ride the Wheel’ was probably only going to have Ferris Wheels, and yet you insisted on going.  And guess what?  Three Ferris Wheels.  That was the extent of the park, if you’ll recall.”
         “Fine.  So you can name one ti”-
         “I can name at least three more.”
         “Fine!”  I threw up my hands, exasperated.  “So why didn’t you break up with me?”
         “I DID!”
         I kept my eyes averted from Charlie’s emaciated frame, refusing to believe that he wasn’t lying anymore.  Refusing to believe that there was actually a strong possibility he might not be around to fight with anymore after this.  Perhaps this was what was fueling my sudden desire to keep pushing him.  “Not until you were sick!  If I was such a bad girlfriend, why didn’t you try and leave before??”  During this portion of our fight, I had steadily moved forward until Charlie and I were practically nose to nose, both breathing heavily, our expressions mirror images of absolute frustration.  My thighs were digging into the metal bar surrounding his cot, but I barely noticed this.   
         “Maybe I should have” he shot back finally, his tone flat.  “Maybe I just felt bad for you because I knew no one else would be able to stand dating you.”
          There was a tense silence, my throat tightening and my vision blurring. 
         I reached for my bag blindly while backing up several paces.  “I’m sorry you feel that way.  I won’t bother you anymore.”
         Charlie’s furious exterior melted in an instant.  By his expression, it seemed as though he had only just realized what he said.  He looked exhausted…years older than his actual age.  “Meg, that’s not…I didn’t mean…I was just-”
         “Forget it.”  It took everything I had not to sound crushed.  I was reaping the benefits of pushing.  I felt my lips moving, forming words that weren’t connected to my brain anymore.  “You wanted me to hate you when you broke up with me.  Congratulations, you got your wish.”  I turned to leave but couldn’t make my legs move quite yet.  To fill the lingering awkward silence, I heard myself continuing to speak.  “You know, I’m actually glad we broke up.  On hindsight, I can’t think of two people who should be together less than we should.  So thank you.  You did me a favor.  It’s a good thing you got sick, I guess.” 
         Charlie’s defensive anger flared back up immediately, but his energy seemed to be draining as he continued.  “You’re impossible, you know that?  Just get out of here.  I never want to see you again.”  His voice was now so soft that I was barely able to hear what came next.  “I’m sorry that I ever saw you in the first place.”
         “The feeling is mutual,” I spat, urging my legs into motion at last.  I delivered my final line to Charlie without breaking stride, fearful that if I did, I might not be able to start up again.  I was also afraid of what I might see.  “Have a nice life.”
         And I left.

~***~

         Molly blinked at me silently like a mute owl for what seemed like an eternity.  I was on the verge of starting to worry that maybe she was sleeping with her eyes open and ignoring me completely when she opened her mouth.  “You actually went to ‘Let’s Ride the Wheel’?!”
         “MOLLY!!  That was so not the part of the story you were supposed to focus on!”
         “Sorry, sorry…”  She gave me yet another hug.  “I was trying to lighten the mood…I admit it wasn’t the best of ways to go about doing that.  Listen, Meg,” she went on seriously.  “Charlie knew how you truly felt about him.  You both said a lot of things that neither of you meant; that happens in high tension situations.”
         “The last thing I said to him was to have a nice life, Moll.  I told him to have a nice life less than six hours before he died.”  My shoulders shook with the effort to keep my tears to a minimum, afraid that the other mourners in the adjacent room might hear me.
         Molly pried my fingers from the back of the chair that I was still clutching and helped me take a seat in it instead.  “I know that I probably can’t say anything that will help right now, but I’m going to give it one last whirl.  Think really hard about this.  His last words to you weren’t so great either…but do you honestly believe he meant them?”  She took a bottle of water from the nearby cooler and passed it over.
         I closed my eyes and tried -- for the first time since Charlie’s death -- to dredge up the last image I had of him stored in my memory.  His jaw had been set and his shoulders squared.  His brows had been furrowed and his arms crossed.  Everything about that image screamed 100% certainty.  I was about to open my eyes and cast doubt on Molly’s own certainty that Charlie hadn’t meant what he said anymore than I did, but it was then that I remembered his eyes.  Charlie’s eyes were the steamy light-brown color of a freshly made batch of hot chocolate and they were almost always an open book to read.  That night, Charlie’s eyes had been desperate, confused, hurt, and sad.  Despite his venomous sentences and posture, despite the fact that his voice had been lying since he found out he was sick, despite all that…his eyes never lied.  Charlie hadn’t meant what he said.
         I took a calming breath and opened my eyes.  Molly was sitting opposite me patiently, fiddling with her own unopened water bottle.  “No.  I honestly don’t think he meant what he said.”  I took another deep breath, feeling the elastic panic that had been squeezing my lungs tighter and tighter since Charlie’s death loosen its grip.  “Thanks, Molly.”
         Molly got to her feet.  “Any time, Meg.  That’s what sisters are for.”
         No sooner had she gotten these words out of her mouth than the kitchen door opened and a girl about Molly’s age stumbled in, looking thoroughly miserable.  I recognized her immediately as Charlie’s younger sister.  Molly took charge, much like she had with me, rushing over to help Claire into another seat at the table.  “Are you ok, Claire?  Can I get you anything?”
         Claire drew in a shuddering breath and spoke without looking at either of us.  “A bunch of Charlie’s friends are out there talking about their last moments and words with Charlie…”  My eyes widened a fraction and I felt a desperate urge to bolt but instead I just gulped down some water and focused on breathing while Claire continued explaining.  “They’re all saying really nice things, but the thing is…Charlie’s diagnosis was so sudden and he didn’t really tell anyone so their last moments with Charlie weren’t special or deep or emotional.  I know that I shouldn’t want to know so badly, but I just wonder about my brother’s very last moments here…what he was thinking, what were the last things he wanted people close to him to hear…things like that, you know?  When we got there that night…he was unconscious…we didn’t really…”  Her voice caught.  My desire to flee was now so strong that my legs were shaking under the table.  And when Claire finally looked at me, I knew what her question was going to be.  But that didn’t mean I was ready to answer it.  “You were very close to my brother, Meg…and my Mom told me you went to go see him right before…you know…what did you guys say to each other?”
         Molly jumped in to help me when it appeared that my voice had done what my body couldn’t and escaped.  “Uh…well…here’s the thing, Claire.  When Meg went to see him-”
         “It’s alright, Molly.  I can tell her.”  I had been all set to let Molly explain things to Claire so that I wouldn’t have to go through those awful last words again, but the look on Claire’s face was too raw and familiar for me to let her hear any of the things I had just told my sister.  She deserved better and I wasn’t going to let the last memories of her brother be tarnished by a few mistaken things said in the heat of a horrible moment.  I wasn’t going to let my anger that evening with her brother turn into something that might make her look at him differently forever.  “It’s a little gushy…are you sure you want to hear it?”
         The pain and sorrow evaporated from Claire’s expression at once.  “Absolutely.  I knew you’d have a good story for me, Meg.”
         Molly shook her head at me from behind Claire with a small, approving smile.  I nodded faintly.  “I spent most of the day sitting across from him on the hospital bed.  We played card games and told jokes and had his favorite diner deliver food for lunch.  When night rolled around, we took turns saying the things that we loved most about each other.  He told me that he loved my smile and taste in clothes.  I told him that I loved his big heart and sense of humor.  I told him that I loved how he always put ketchup on the plate and dipped his burgers into it like French fries instead of just putting the ketchup straight on the meat like everyone else.  I told him I loved that he didn’t…”  I swallowed hard, blinking back the threat of a new onslaught of tears.  “…care what other people thought…and I told him that I would love him forever and he told me that that made him the luckiest person on the planet…and so I told him that he was wrong because the fact that he thought my love was enough to make him the luckiest person on the planet made me even luckier with a boyfriend who thought that much of me.”  I cleared my throat and looked back up - having told this tale to the floor - to see Claire’s eyes sparkling with tears of gratitude.  “And that was that” I concluded quietly. 
         “You don’t know how happy that makes me, Meg.  Thank you.  Thank you for sharing something so personal.”  She bounced to her feet, not bothering to wipe away any of the tears that had started falling.
         I got to my feet as well.  “Your brother was one of the best people I ever knew, Claire.  I miss him already and I’ll never forget him.  Ever.”
         Molly and I watched in synchronized silence as Claire exited the kitchen.  Molly wrapped a supportive arm around my shoulders gently.  “That was a really nice thing that you just did for her, Meg.  I’m sure she would have understood if you told her the truth though.”
         “That was the truth, Molly…well, parts of it anyway.  They were the last things we said to each other before the break up…before he got sick…before all this bad stuff started happening.  And years from now when I think of Charlie, that’s going to be the last memory I have of him.  Those will be his last words to me, even if they aren’t the ‘real’ ones.”
         Molly looked impressed.  “Not everyone could make a decision to just choose the last words they got from someone.  I’m proud of you.”
         I went to the window and looked out solemnly, slowly coming to the realization that I had just done to Claire exactly what Charlie had done to me.  I had chosen not to tell her the entire truth in an effort to keep her last memories of Charlie the way they always had been.  He hadn’t told me he was sick and tried to get me to stay away from him in order to keep my own memories of him the way they always had been.  Everything about the end of Charlie’s life was a lie…and yet, that was the way he had wanted it or he wouldn’t have started the lying himself.  I rested my forehead against the window’s glass pane.  “Last words are overrated, Molly.  Everyone spends so much time thinking about them, but we’re all just people.  We make mistakes.  We say things we don’t mean.”  I let my eyes scan the Hunter’s backyard, looking fondly at the fort that Charlie and his dad had built out of wood planks when he was little.  The fort was where Charlie and I would always go to lie down in the grass and look up at the stars through the hole in the roof.  It was where we had held most of our serious talks and debates. 
         I felt the tears starting to fall again, but this time they weren’t sad.  They were accepting.  “If we weren’t so afraid of last words, we’d all say a lot more to each other.” 

THE
END