My head and the bruised side of my face throb with increasing intensity. My fingers hurt and still feel strangely numb. My stomach aches and growls. And my ankle hurts so badly the sensation of it almost goes beyond pain, like if you put your hand into a flame and watch the skin burn but feel a wild heat rather than pain. It must be late in the evening by now, but it’s hard to tell because the moon is hidden behind thick clouds and I can see from where I’m lying on the sofa that the snow is falling heavily again. I close the computer to preserve the battery; it’s just gone into power-saving mode and I doubt I have more than another half hour of power. I haven’t seen the charger anywhere, and it’s not like I can easily move about to search for it. I need the bathroom and it takes me at least ten minutes to get there. I find that the easiest way to move around is to sit on the floor and very gently push my way backward. Still, I cry with the intensity of the pain and by the time I return to the sofa, I’m trembling with exhaustion. How will I ever make it back down to the car? And how will I get through the night, with nothing but Leah’s insane account for company?

52

Supernova

Many days have passed since I wrote this account up until this point. In the meantime, terrible things have happened. When I first started this, it felt powerful and exhilarating, like all the pieces just magically slotted into place. It just flowed, at long last. Night after starry night, the words came rushing out, just how I intended them, like a piece of music masterfully coaxed from an ancient instrument. For every day that passed I lost hope that you might come, that we might sit across from each other here in this room, like I’d envisioned, finally united in truth. But for every day that passed, it mattered less, and a slight hope began to grow, that writing this account of the truth might come to matter just the same. But then the baby left me, Kristina. I can’t bear it. It made me realize the outcome will be different now. There will be no happy ending. I can’t, won’t, can’t, stay. But I decided to finish this, first. Why? Because I wanted someone to know the whole truth. My truth. We’re arriving at a crucial point here, something I’ve been staving off and also building up in my head. Perhaps what’s happened to me in the meantime can bring the right rawness to what happened to you.