100 Days of Sunlight Read online

  100 Days Of Sunlight

  Abbie Emmons

  Text copyright © 2019 Abbie Emmons

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Jacket art: watercolor illustrations by Apple Vert; Eastern Bluebird by The Birds of America: New York: J.B. Chevalier; Butterfly by American entomology. v.1. Boston: Estes & Lauriat; Pink Flower by The Floral magazine v.6 London,L. Reeve & Co.; all public domain illustrations supplied by Creative Commons through Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org)

  Interior illustrations by Pranjal Kumari

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.100daysofsunlight.com

  www.abbieemmonsauthor.com

  ISBN: 978-1-7339733-0-4

  Contents

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Weston

  Tessa

  Poem

  Weston

  Tessa

  I. Smell

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Poem

  Weston

  Weston

  II. Taste

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Poem

  III. Hearing

  Weston

  Tessa

  Tessa

  Weston

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  IV. Touch

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  V. Sight

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Weston

  Tessa

  Acknowledgments

  (Not) The End

  About the Author

  In loving memory of Becca,

  who brought sunlight wherever she went.

  Tessa

  Day 21

  The black pickup truck flies through the red light, heading straight for us. My blood freezes in my veins. I want to scream, to warn Grandma, who sits next to me, in the driver’s seat—but my voice doesn’t work.

  He’ll hit us. He’ll kill us.

  Those words repeat in my mind like a chant, getting louder and louder as the black blur gets closer and closer. I cringe, turning my back to the door and covering my face.

  I hear the

  l o u d e s t c r a s h

  It sounds like a bomb.

  My head whiplashes and slams into something hard behind me, and pain explodes through my body.

  The world goes dark.

  I wake up, gasping for air. I open my eyes, but I see nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Darkness.

  I’m cold, but sweating. My ears ring; sounds are muffled and distant, like a swarm of mosquitoes in my brain. I feel sheets underneath me, on top of me, curled inside my damp fists.

  I’m in bed.

  I’m home.

  It’s okay.

  I’m home.

  It’s just the dream again. Just my subconscious torturing me again.

  Again, again, again.

  They call it PTSD, the again, again, again. But I can think of a better name. Like hell.

  I feel around in the blankets, looking for my phone. (Looking is a funny word to use when you’re blind.) I’m still getting used to the concept of feeling for things. You have to pat gently and carefully, not slide or sweep your hands around. You knock things over when you do that. You accidentally throw your phone off your bed when you do that.

  After a few minutes, I find it, a glossy little rectangle with one button. The only thing I can use on this device anymore. I press and hold the button until a familiar tone chimes through the speaker.

  “What time is it?” I ask, so soft I’m surprised it picks up my voice at all.

  Siri replies a moment later, “It is seven twenty-three a.m. Good morning!”

  My breath rushes back out, shaken and ragged. I drop the phone in my blankets.

  I still can’t decide which is worse: the dream of the crash, where I can see everything in haunting detail… or the waking hours, when all I can see is darkness. Each has its own horrors. At least in my dreams, I know I’m dreaming. The worst part is that I can’t change any of it. I can’t stop myself from hitting my head.

  I can’t stop myself from losing my sight.

  The doctors said the dizziness would last only two weeks. I can’t remember who they were—but they were wrong. As I slowly sit upright, it feels like the world is spinning around me.

  I push aside the sweaty bedsheets and swing my legs over the side of the mattress. My toes come in contact with the carpet. My right hand finds the edge of the nightstand.

  It’s okay. I’m home.

  I know what home looks like. I can navigate my bedroom. I can locate all my drawers. I can dress myself. I don’t need any help.

  What do you do when something bad happens, and you know that you could have done something to stop it? Who do you blame?

  It wasn’t just the drunk driver’s fault. It was my fault, too. Not because of something I did, but because of something I could have done.

  What if we had arrived at that intersection a moment earlier, or a moment later?

  What if it was my fault that we were at that exact spot in the road, at that exact moment?

  What if I hadn’t taken so long to curl my hair? Or wing my eyeliner? Or choose my earrings?

  Grandma was taking me to the mall that day. The closest one is fifty miles away, so it’s never a frequent outing. I’m not one for frequent outings to begin with. But Grandma had managed to coax me away from my half-finished blog post with a promise that we could run into the bookstore. (Two things have enough influence to separate me from my laptop: books and waffles.) So I left my draft where it was and headed for the mall with Grandma.

  But we never made it there.

  All because of a drunk driver in a black pickup truck.

  It was so loud. That’s what I remember most about the accident. It was so loud.

  My head slammed into something hard.

  Darkness came.

  And it stayed.

  What a strange feeling that was, to awaken in the hospital and not see a thing—just hear. Beeps and clicks and footsteps and voices. I thought I was dreaming. But then I heard Grandma; I felt her holding my hand. I realized I wasn’t dreaming. And I started to cry.

  It could have been worse. The only injury I suffered was something the doctors called a cerebral contusion, which meant there was a bruise on my brain, and it was swollen enough to affect my visual cortex. Swollen enough to cause blindness. Post-traumatic transient cortical blindness. They said both sides of my brain were damaged and that, with time, I would most likely regain my sight, but they didn’t say for sure. And they didn’t say when.

  The driver of the pickup truck was unharmed. They arrested him, but the damage was done.

  Grandma wasn’t hurt except for a few minor bruises. She stayed with me in the hospital. Always by my side, always apologizing to me. I’m so sorry, Tessa. I’m so sorry. But I felt like I was the one to blame. I was the reason we went out. I could have said, “Another day, Grandma.” I could have done something differently, something that could have prevented it all.

  After I came home from the hospital, we went to see another neurologist. Her name was Dr. Carle and I imagined she had blond hair and blue eyes and a narrow face. She said the same thing all the other doctors had said. Blunt trauma to the head, cerebral contusion, and cortical blindness. Then she said, “I don’t believe this condition is permanent. I expect we’ll see improvement within twelve to fourteen weeks.”

  “Really?” Grandma said, hope shining through her voice.

  “I’m realistically optimistic,” Dr. Carle replied.

  There’s no such thing.

  Fourteen weeks is ninety-eight days. I asked Siri when I got home that afternoon. That was when I started counting down in my head.

  Today is the twenty-first day.

  I navigate my bedroom and dress myself. I put on the softest pair of sweatpants I can find—no idea what color they are—and slip a bra underneath my pajama top.

  Mornings are the worst for me. I’m dizzy; I’m tired of sleeping; I’m haunted by those three little words over and over again.

  All my fault.

  All my fault.

  All my fault.

  What am I now? Who am I? A prisoner, or at least that’s what it feels
like. Stuck in my bedroom, my place of refuge. It feels like a cage now. I used to love looking at my room. It’s so white and pretty and organized. My shelf of books, all arranged by color. The sunlight as it pours through the window and sketches patterns on the floor. But now sunlight is a ghost—felt, not seen. Warm and patchy and inconsistent. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever was.

  My laptop sits on my desk. I haven’t opened it since the accident. I haven’t checked my blog. I haven’t answered the comments. I haven’t spoken to any of my internet friends. I haven’t written one verse, one line, one word of poetry.

  I have no desire to.

  I have no inspiration, no joy. It’s all gone.

  Grandma and Grandpa think I should carry on like normal—I heard them talking about it. It was evening, and I had pretended to fall asleep on the couch. They were in the kitchen, speaking in low voices.

  “Tessa needs to get back into writing,” Grandma said. “She’s always the happiest when she’s writing.”

  Grandpa agreed. “There has to be a way.”

  A way to do what? To write? To blog? To go back to normal?

  There is no way to do anything normal.

  All the “normal” has been knocked out of my life—just as the life has been knocked out of me.

  I’m blind.

  I’m blind.

  I’m blind.

  Fine, let them think there’s a way to help me. Let them try and fail to find a solution to this mess. Let them come to terms with how bad things really are. I’ve accepted it—but I seem to be the only one.

  That’s easy for everyone else to say.

  Everyone else can see.

  They say, “I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you.” But they don’t know. Not even the doctors—what have they done? Read about cerebral contusions in their medical books. They don’t know what it feels like.

  The first two weeks, I cried.

  The week after that, I felt nothing.

  But now, I’m angry.

  It’s been twenty-one days since Dr. Carle examined me. And there’s still no change.

  That’s why I make myself get dressed and go downstairs. It’s dangerous for me to be alone with my thoughts and my world of darkness.

  I slowly make my way down the stairs, feeling for the edge of each step with my toes. Grandpa’s voice floats from the kitchen, along with the smell of roasted coffee.

  The house is familiar—every wall, every chair, every obstacle in my path. I can see everything in my mind’s eye. I used to think it would be easy to do everyday tasks without vision. I even tried it a few times when I was little. I would close my eyes and outstretch my hands and try to get around without falling or knocking things over. It was fun, back then, because I could open my eyes and laugh about it.

  Now there is nothing to laugh about.

  “Good morning, Tessa,” Grandma says when I enter the kitchen. She’s smiling; I can tell by the sound of her voice. I want to smile back and say good morning. But I can’t. I hover in the doorway, with one hand touching the wall.

  Grandpa greets me with a cheery good morning, too. I hear coffee being poured into a cup.

  “Do you need help, sweetheart?” Grandma asks.

  I shake my head no, which makes a sudden wave of dizziness wash over me. Grandpa comes and offers me his arm and guides me over to the table.

  “Chair,” he says.

  I feel the wood rails under my fingertips and carefully sit down.

  “Thanks.”

  “How are you feeling this morning, Tessa?” Grandma’s voice is still smiling, and now I’m beginning to wonder why. It can’t merely be this realistic optimism, which has suddenly become such a trend.

  “I don’t know,” I reply.

  “Are you tired?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dizzy?”

  “Yes.”

  Grandma sighs. She’s sitting in the chair to the left of me. She gives my hand a quick squeeze. Whenever someone touches me—even to help guide me to a chair or through a doorway—it startles me just a little. There’s no way for me to predict it. But I know Grandma and Grandpa so well, I can almost sense when they are going to touch me.

  “What about your sleep?” Grandma continues the daily inquisition.

  I shrug one shoulder. “It’s the same.”

  “Do you still have the dream?”

  “Yeah.”

  What I don’t tell her is that I dream about nothing but the accident. Everyone tells me to get more rest—but how can I, when sleep is more exhausting than being awake? At least when I’m awake, I can distract myself; I can force myself to think about other things. In my dreams, I have no control. In my dreams, I have to live the crash over and over again.

  So loud.

  All my fault.

  A cup is set on the table and slid closer to me.

  “Coffee,” Grandpa says. “If you’d like some.”

  “Yes, I would. Thanks.”

  I can hear it in Grandpa’s voice, too—the hidden note of optimism. They know something that I don’t know. It’s a surprise of some sort—a good one.

  For a few moments, I say nothing. I sip my coffee and wait for one of them to reveal the news.

  “Well?” I finally break the silence, setting my cup on the table. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Grandma laughs a little, the nervous kind. “Well,” she says, a strain of hesitation in her voice, “your grandpa was going to tell you.”

  “Tell me what? If this is about church, I’m sorry, but I’m not ready—”

  “No,” Grandpa says. He’s sitting across from me, I can tell. “This isn’t about church. I know you’ll come back when you’re ready… although I do miss the most valued member of my congregation.”

  I smile a little, for his sake. The kind of smile you have to pull from its sickbed.

  Grandpa takes a measured breath. “Your grandmother and I were talking about different ways we could help you. We both think it would be good for you to get back into writing poetry.”

  “Well, I can’t—”

  Grandma lays her hand on mine, this time as a gentle reminder for me to be quiet. “Just listen for a minute, sweetheart.”

  My jaw tightens. I sip my coffee. I listen for a minute.

  Grandpa continues. “So I had an idea. All you need is someone to transcribe your poetry—to type it up and post it on your blog. Right?”

  “Yeah, but…” I shake my head. “You and Grandma are too busy. And not at all tech-savvy.”

  “You’re right about that,” Grandpa says, and chuckles.

  “So who would do it, then?”

  “That’s what we were discussing,” Grandpa says. “And we decided that the best way to find someone would be to place an ad in the newspaper—asking for particular qualifications, of course. The person would have to be a girl, around your age, and we would interview her first—”

  “What?” I can’t help but cut him off. “That’s… that’s ridiculous.”

  Grandma sighs. “Tessa.”

  “I’m serious,” I counter, unable to see the inevitable disappointment on my grandfather’s face. “It won’t work. I’m not good with new people, and who says I’ll even be able to dictate poetry like that? Look, I appreciate you both caring so much, but… there’s no way to help me.”