WfW ~ Sage

I am writing with Words for Wednesday, the words for which can be found here on Mother Owl's blog for the month of July.

The goal of WfW is to take given prompts, be they words, phrases, photos, colors, or music and create a story from them.

This week's words and color of the month are in bold italics.

If you visit her blog you can also read and cheer on the other writers participating in this weekly fun.

This is a continuing WfW story that started here on April 5th.

I left off on June 29th with the news of a new addictive drug danger and the mystery of Simon's broken heart. 

  "Sage?"

  I sighed deeply.  I hadn't spoken about Sage in more than a decade and hadn't spoken to Cori Ann in the same amount of time.  I'd buried those memories deep because it was the most painful thing I'd ever experienced, and I never thought I'd have to relive them again.  Even to tell my best friend, Jack.  So painful was that time in my life I'd even thrown most of the pictures from those years into the flames of a bonfire.  It was a stupid, drunken thing to do that I'd regretted the next morning, but it had helped to seal the memories away.

  "We did more than just date for a few years.  She moved in with me.  Then one day she told me she was pregnant.  I was giddy with excitement, and so was she.  I'd never loved anyone more.  We took a quiet trip to the courthouse and got married.  Started looking at houses in the country to buy, she wanted to have a brood of kids, just like you'd have a brood of chickens.

  "We were happy.  Over the moon.  She went into labor right on her due date, in the middle of making us pancakes for breakfast.  I don't know how women have that kind of strength, Jack.  Men want to act all brave and strong, but I tell you what, after the better part of fourteen hours of labor, I would have given up and demanded a cesarean.  But she seemed to grow stronger.  She said that we might have to rethink having a brood of kids, but that it was the most incredible thing she'd ever experienced.

  "Our little boy was born.  Ten fingers, ten toes, and just perfect.  We named him Sage, and I was even more in love with Cori Ann than I thought was possible.  I loved our boy, our life, everything.  I'd never known such happiness."

  "So what happened, Simon?  Why aren't you still with them?"

  "It was Sage's first birthday.  We were on vacation in Florida visiting my big sister and her family.  We had planned a picnic in [link>] Rainbow Springs State Park.  Sage had a diaper blowout at the last minute before we left the hotel, and Cori Ann wanted to give him a quick bath.  I was watching the news and probably more than a little distracted on my cellphone.  I didn't hear her calling to me to bring a clean diaper, and she came out to get it herself."

  "And?  What happened?"

  "She left him alone for only a couple of minutes.  And even though the water wasn't more than two inches deep, he had somehow rolled over on his stomach.  When she came back into the bathroom, he was face down in the water."

  "Drowned?  Oh my gosh, man, I'm so sorry."

  "No, he hadn't drowned, but he had inhaled a lot of water.  We had him checked out at the emergency room, and they said he was alright.  But by the time we got home from Florida, he had developed pneumonia.  That's what killed him, and Cori Ann too."

  "She got pneumonia too?"

  "No, but she blamed herself.  She thought I blamed her too, but I didn't.  It was an accident that could have happened to anyone.  We were new, inexperienced parents.  Neither one of us had younger siblings to see how our parents had dealt with babies.  She became depressed.  All she did was sleep and cry.  I know she was grieving, and I didn't know how to help her.  Hell, I was grieving and didn't know how to help myself at the time."

  "What did you do?"

  "All the wrong things.  I tried to get us into counseling, but she wouldn't talk when she finally agreed to go.  I thought maybe it would help if we planted a memorial garden for him where we could sit and visit his grave, but once I had it planted, she refused to leave it.  I would have to drag her away and then would wake up and find her gone.  She would have walked miles in the middle of the night to the cemetery, in her bare feet and nightgown at times, just to sit at his grave.  It was like she just checked out of life and I had no idea how to help her, how to cope with it.  I finally checked her into a behavioral health hospital because I was just so overwhelmed."

  "You left her in a hospital?  Simon, what were you thinking?"

  "I wasn't.  That's just it.  I was so caught up in my own grief over losing Sage and watching Cori Ann just waste away right in front of me, that I couldn't think straight at all.  Like I said, I was doing all the wrong things and just spiraling down some rabbit hole.

  "I got counseling, got help.  Heard from Cori Ann's doctors every week that she was improving, kept asking if I could visit her, but she kept telling them she didn't want to see me yet.  They told me she was working in the bakery, learning how to make bread, and every day she was taking small steps toward healing."

  "So she came home?  Where is she?  How come I haven't met her, and why the hell am I just hearing about all of this now?  I'm your best friend, Simon.  We're more than just business partners.  We're brothers.  I wish you had reached out to me.  I could have helped you through this."

  I felt the tears begin to fall now.  All those years of feeling lost and alone.  Why hadn't I reached out to Jack?  Or anyone?  I hadn't even told my sister what we were, what I was, struggling with.  It wasn't that I was ashamed, I just felt so overwhelmed and I didn't want to be a burden to any of them.

  "Cori Ann was doing good.  Until she wasn't.  The doctors said that they hadn't seen it coming.  She was supposed to be in the kitchen helping to make some bread pudding, but no one had seen her all morning.  One of the nurses went to check her room and found her there.  She had apparently died in her sleep of natural causes."

  "Natural causes?  How old was she?  I mean, she could only have been in her late 20s, right?"

  "Twenty-eight.  The autopsy showed that her heart stopped for unknown reasons.  The toxicology came back clean.  No congenital defects in the heart.  Just stopped.  They found her journal, and while it didn't indicate any extreme depression like she'd had when she first got there, it did indicate that she wasn't nearly as recovered as she wanted the doctors to think.  I never would have believed someone could die of a broken heart, but I think that is exactly what happened to Cori Ann.  She didn't want to live without Sage, and her feelings of guilt were too much for her heart."

  "I'm so sorry, Simon."