One night in July, she sent me a photo. Two lines on a pregnancy test.
We were scared, and just as thrilled. She sent three names, and I sent a fourth. A name made of one syllable from each of ours. That night her reply was a single emoji. A smiling face.
A week later, her messages changed. The sentences got shorter, the words unfamiliar. She said she had to have surgery. She said her depression was bad and we couldn’t see each other for a while.
Once, in a car, while she was talking about the surgery, she opened her bag and tilted an envelope of pills toward me for a moment. She said nothing. At the time I didn’t know what that meant.
The decision reached me in her name. To me, it didn’t sound like her voice. I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t learn the name of the hospital, or the date. It ended somewhere I didn’t know, among people I didn’t know.
When I confided in my older friend, he took me to a bar I’d never been to. The owner of the bar, his regular place, shook her head before I had even finished. “It’s obvious. That girl’s unstable. Why would you jump into a pit of fire?”
The next day I went back to the bar alone. The owner choked up, almost angrily. “I had a boyfriend like that too. He couldn’t let go, and he died.” I couldn’t tell whether it was a warning or a confession. But I knew one thing. She wasn’t a pit of fire. She was a person in the fire.
We broke up. To be exact, a message came saying we had broken up.
👺 Anger detected · 😨 Fear detected · 90 seconds remaining
I waited 90 seconds. Nothing passed. That day I learned something. Some guests stay longer than 90 seconds. That’s all right. Grief is not a malfunction.