Love, Like Water, Will Find A Way In
By: Annelise Lords
Tags: Love, Living, Life, Literary Impulse, Hope

Literary Impulse

Image by Annelise Lords

Tony Grant raced across the street on his bike as the light changed to green. He didn’t see the cab coming from the opposite direction breaking the stoplight, but he felt himself flying, then darkness. He felt cold, shivering. He removed the thing that covered his face, sitting up, glancing around. He saw trolleys. A funky odor burned his nostrils. He saw handles on small doors in the wall. There was a sink and two scales. As he stood up a door open and someone in a white lab coat looked at him, screamed, and fainted. Three more people in lab coats rushed in calling, “Dr. Simpson!” They stopped when they saw him, one of them said, “We pronounced you dead six hours ago!”

“Do I look dead to you?” Tony asked, realizing where he was.

The female easing towards him, looking at his lower body said, “You were a few hours ago. Don’t you think you should cover that,” pointing with her eyes. Looking down at himself, Tony realizes that he was naked. Instinctively, he rushed behind a line of trolleys. She walked to a closet, open it, and threw a white lab coat on one of the trolleys in front of him, then said, “Put that on. Your clothes are in the trash, but we can find something you can wear after we examine you again.”

Looking at the clock over her head, grabbing the white lab coat, Tony said, “I am sorry Doc, but I am late.”

“Look, you died six hours ago, we are here to do your autopsy, which we can’t do because you are alive, but we must run tests to make sure you are ok.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not long,” she assured him.

Four hours later Tony found her.

Angellina Delic was in pain, and only one thing could stop it. She sat sipping hot coffee, fighting her impulse. Five sips later she got up and walked out. Heading to the East River, she stood on the bridge as she did yesterday staring down, then turned and walked away. She repeated this process five times and on the sixth day as she sat inside the café sipping hot coffee, he came in. She got up and headed out. Turned on E 14th Street, stopped at the corner waiting.

As he turned the corner, he bumped into her.

“Why are you following me?” she screamed pushing him away, grabbing the attention of everyone within earshot.

He stopped, stared at her as if he was trying to remember where he had seen her.

She screamed, “Help! He has been stalking me!”

A squad car appeared as the crowd gathered. “Why are you following me? I notice you for the last five days. Why?”

He just stared at her. She grabbed his shirt and started to speak in a foreign language stuttering as she cursed. A police officer pulled her away, and another officer took him aside. Ten minutes later he was handcuffed and pushed into the back of the squad car. She smiled as the car drove away with him. Then she headed back to the bridge.

Half an hour later she positioned herself in the center glancing around. Today the park was scanty and the bridge was empty. She attempts to climb over to end all of her pain, a voice said, “Your father is trying to reach you and he can’t without this,” holding up a gold chain.

The jewels in the bear’s eyes on the pendant glistened as the sun’s rays touched it. She stopped, turned to him trembling, then said, “but I throw it in the river last week.”

“Your father is trying to reach you. He knows what you were planning to do.”

“That’s why you were stalking me?” she asks, easing towards him.

“Yes,” he replies, handing the chain to her. “Please, put it on, killing yourself isn’t the best solution.”

She took the chain from him, kissed the pendant of a bear hugging her cubs, and said in tears, “who gave it to you?”

“Your father?”

“That’s not possible, my father is dead. He has been for six years.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, as the memories of the past few days send pain through his body, he sighs then releases, “He said he is your father.”

“Where did you meet him?” she inquired.

He retraced his steps and discloses, “I thought it was a dream. I remember riding my bike through the green light on 3rd Avenue a week ago. Suddenly I started flying. I woke up in darkness tied up in chains. Then someone freed me. He gave me that chain, asked me to deliver it, and told me why. I woke up on a stretcher in the morgue and was told that I had been dead for 6 hours.”

“What did the man look like?”

He went back to his dream, then said, “He looked a lot like you, with brown eyes and he has a scar under his neck.”

She gasped, then said, “How did you know it was me?”

“Well,” he said scratching his head, “He told me where to find you.”

“He is watching over me,” she said aloud

“He also said if I get you angry enough you will curse in a different language and stutter. Sorry I had to be sure I was delivering the package to the right person. Plus you have a mole on your . . . . . .”

The look she gave him, he bit on to his tongue for a second, then said, “Can we go somewhere else to talk. Please?”

They found a cool spot in the park and sat down.

“My mother died of cancer when I was five years old. My father, my only parent, was killed by a hit and run driver when I was seventeen years old,” she said tears steaming down holding on to the pendant of the chain around her neck. “Today would be the sixth anniversary of his death.” She went on to talk about him and how much she loved him. She was glowing when she talked about him.

He listened, smiling, then said, “Why did you want to kill yourself?”

She sighed deeply, wipe her eyes, raises her brows, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “It’s not easy to live in a world where the only two people you know that loves you is dead.”

“You mean your parents?”

“Yes,” she answered with pain and regret.

“But what about your life? It’s the only thing we own that we don’t have to show proof of.”

She sighs, then said, “your parents are alive, so you wouldn’t understand.”

He nodded.

“Your parents are dead too?”

He nodded again.

Eying him in confusion, before she could speak he said, “I don’t know, I never met them.”

She stared at him in understanding saying, “you mean. . . . “

“I never met them,” he repeated. “I was raised in an orphanage, and then in a boy’s home. I have no memories of my parents or who they are. I wished I had memories like you. Memories are the gift our loved ones left behind that keeps us going and give us happiness too. Keep those memories alive, it will give you more reason to live. I felt your happiness when you spoke about your parents.”

“That’s why he sent you,” she said out loud.

“Ah,” he said.



“He chose you, so I could understand and recognized the value of my memories.” She sighed, then released, “thank you for stopping me this time. I get really sad every year on this day.”

He smiled and asked, “are you hungry?”

She smiled too, “You saved my life.”

He swayed his head left to right and said, “Your father save mine, so we are even. Come on, tell me more about your parents.”

Life has its own, but good ways of healing and helping us in crisis, with a little help from above and beyond.