On the 21st of December, it was not the bitter chill typical of a New York evening that cut like a knife into the soft underbelly of her soul, but the shrill ring of a cell phone.
Rachel Green startled, muting the mutterings of the TV show she had been halfheartedly watching, before glancing around for her daughter.
"Emma!" she yelled. Silence answered her like the voice of a familiar face. These days, her daughter only seemed interested in conversation if its life began with announcing the weekly allowance and if its death followed shortly after, usually with a brisk "thanks" and slam of the door. Rachel sighed, rubbing tiredly against the slight creases etched across her forehead. "Em, is that your phone ringing?"
The phone rang thrice more, before cutting off sharply. The accompanying peace, however, was short-lived, the clocking ticking by a mere five ticks before the twice cursed noise reared its head back into the room. With a singular grunt, she forced herself up, wincing at the audible pop of joints as she went to search for daughter's phone.
'Where are you where are you where are you?' Annoyance bubbled up within her as she tossed scattered clothes across the room and surveyed the mess currently concealing the location of the one object she needed. 'God, I really need to have a talk with Em about not leaving her stuff just lying around...well, another talk.' The search, which stretched out for an agonizing 33 seconds, ended with Rachel fumbling over a bundled pair of jeans pretzled with her daughter's favorite sweater resting on the floor and collapsing in a clumsy mess in the wake, her feet kicking over the clothes to reveal the small light illuminating from the phone's glass screen.
'Huh,' Rachel thought, picking herself up and grabbing what turned out to be her phone off the floor 'I suppose that talk with Emma can wait for another time.' By now, the ringing had ceased, leaving two missed call notifications in its place. Sighing for what felt like the millionth time in the past hour alone, she swiped at the message with more than a hint of annoyance. Honestly, if it was her job calling her again, they had another thing coming for them if they thought she was going to give up her only day of the week to catch up on her shows- er, spend time with her daughter - just to set out the fires her coworkers kept setting-
"Rachel." The voice, clipped and low and terrifyingly, achingly familiar, cut her thoughts off like a noose. Simultaneously, her heart swelled with a longing for something she had since accepted to be long gone and her stomach seemed to twist itself into tight knots of stapled unease. After eight years, Joey Tribbiani, only a past ago one of her greatest friends and one of her lovers for a prolonged blink of bliss, was calling her.
For whatever reason, she could not bring herself to feel the joy she used to imagine herself feeling when pondering about weepy unions with her old friends. Her breath hitched and she paused for a moment before replying.
"Joey, oh my God, I can't believe it's you. God, it's been such a long time, how are you? What have you been up to?" The pleasantries felt flat and awkward on her tongue, foreign and fundamentally wrong for a person she once could understand with every ounce of her being simply from staring into the sea of his chocolate brown eyes.
"Rachel," he repeated, and his words somehow seemed even more wrong. Gone was the warmth and passion that once flickered like a warm flame against the world's apathy, leaving in its place something cold and terribly sad. "Rach… it-it's Chandler. You need to come down here, the Beth Israel Medical Center. Please. Hurry."
He seemed to be choking, coughing up the words as if they pained him.
Rachel stood frozen, hand clutching the phone that only moments ago seemed to be the root of all her problems. She opened her mouth and then promptly snapped it shut, speech evading her in the pure terror fogging her every thought.
"What happened?" She finally settled on, wincing at how lame, how insignificant such words sounded standing in the shadow of her friend's world-crushing plea.
She didn't have too much time to dwell, however, before Joey replied. "H-h-e… there was an accident, he was driving home, there was an accident, ice on the road and he-he-he… It's bad Rach, really bad. Please get down here, they don't think he's going to make it through the night. I've already called the others. Monica and I are here, Phoebe and Ross are on their way. Please, Rachel, you need to get down here now."
He was hiccuping, voice cracking like a mirror to his heart, and she could hear his little gasps for air. She clapped her hand over her mouth, quivering and frantic before her body seemed to spring into action like a wound up toy running out of batteries as she grabbed her keys and beelined for the door. "Okay," she croaked, breathy and mute, "okay, I'm on my way. I'll be there as quickly as possible."
With that, she hung up, barely a foot from the door before a sudden thought struck her through the haze.
"Emma," she screamed, praying to the stars and skies that the sheer urgency of the matter would knock loud enough be heard over her daughter's hardened exterior. "Emma, please come out of your room. I'm leaving."
She nearly sobbed with relief when she saw the door creak open and Emma step out. Her teen stared at her with those wide amber eyes she had fallen in love with a thousand times over, strands of tanish golden hair flowing gently over her shoulders like a settled river in the throes of Autumn. Under any other circumstance, Rachel would have smiled. Her daughter truly was a beauty, a perfect blend of intelligence and grace and passion, and Rachel yearned for the times when her precious Em used to tell her about anything and everything with uncontained squeals of excitement. Now, staring at her mother's tear stricken face and blotchy red eyes, she just looked scared.
"Mom, are you okay?" Emma asked her, hesitantly and not without concern.
Rachel tried to smile at her, wanted so badly to reassure her that everything would be alright, but such a lie in the face of such a terrible thing felt hollow and cruel. "Em, I'm going to need you to stay here by yourself for a couple of hours. There's leftover takeout in the fridge and some spare cash in the sock drawer if you want to order a pizza. I… I'm going to be gone for the night, I need to go be with an old friend, it's urgent."
Emma started as if she was about the object or further her line of questioning, but something in those hard eyes seemed to liquify for a moment, and she simply nodded. "Okay, that's fine, I'll be alright on my own." She smiled at her mother, the first one Rachel had seen from her in what felt like a lifetime.
"I know you'll be fine, thank you, honey, I'll see you soon." With that, she spun on her heel and rushed out the door, long coat flowing behind her like a speedometer of her rush.
She had never felt so frightened in her 49 years of life, and her legs wobbled as she closed the door and began her trek down the hall. Oh God, Oh God, she couldn't breathe, how could she possibly make it all the way to the hospital. 'This isn't happening, I can't do this I can't I can't I…'
"Mom!"
The distant voice of her daughter accompanied by the unmistakable pitter-patter of her run caused Rachel to freeze, pulling in a thready strand of air only to spit it out a second later when she felt a warm body pummel into her and warm hands wrap their way around her shivering frame.
Emma squeezed her mother as tightly as her body would allow. "I love you, Mom," she whispered tenderly, softly.
Rachel sobbed into her child, petting her silky hair. "I love you, too."
And with that, somehow, against the pain and the ache and the need to curl up and block her eyes from the horrors she knew she'd meet once she stepped out into the snowy greyness of the city, Rachel mustered up every ounce of strength she had left and took a step forward.
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Flurries of snow, fluttering every which way like a nest of angry hornets, slapped her in the face as soon as she stepped foot outside. She took in a shuddery breath, glancing around at the herd of people stumbling along the crowded streets of New York City completely oblivious to the nerve splintering agony consuming Rachel alive.
How can they be so happy, how can they just walk by as if everything is fine when nothing will ever be fine again-
She felt like screaming, or running, anything to escape the unfairness of it all. Instead, she clenched her fists, balling them up tight enough to hurt, and called for a taxi. "Beth Israel Medical Center, hurry, I need to be there now. Hurry." It fell out in a jumbled mess of incoherency, and she could see the driver opening his mouth to ask her something but she merely shook her head frantically. "Beth Israel Medical Center. I'll pay, I have money, as much as you need, just get me there in less than 20 minutes, please. Please."
With an affirming nod and the turn of the engine, the drive towards the end of life as she knew it began.
The trip was hazy. She feared to move, yearned to not look forward, so she simply kept staring back. This is it, she thought with a dulled horror, these are my last few moments of normalcy. When the car would drop her off and drive away, it would be taking the memory of her old life with it. The realization hit her like a brick to the stomach and suddenly, she felt panic bubbling up in the deepest depths of her soul. The need to reach out and cling to something, anything to stop time and to grab on to of what used to be life and now never would be again, was overwhelming.
Time seemed to crawl along lazily, almost as a mockery to the rabbit hearted beating of her heart, and to speed along in fragmented flashes all at once. She rested her head against the cool glass, catching glimpses of the city that had given her life and love pass by and holding on to the lights of outside, truly feeling its warmth for what it was and for would it would no longer be in just a short tomorrow.
And then, just like that, the taxi pulled to a slow stop. She found herself reaching into her wallet and handing cash to the driver unconsciously before stepping out of the car, into the frigid musk of the streets. In front of her, the hospital loomed over her like a wolf standing over its prey, waiting to devour her the moment she walked into its greedy jaws.
Her heart pounded. With a last glance back, she walked forwards.
The journey to her friend's room was agonizing, treacherous, and over all too soon.
She saw Joey first, leaning against the wall just outside the room with his face buried in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes were swimming with a deep and lonely sadness, accented by the lines of old etched on his face, scars that life's brutal beatdown had left him. Still, warmth flooded his features and he managed a small smile when he caught her staring- and oh god had she missed that smile, so full of love and kindness that she used to melt every time he gave her one.
Now it just served as another tally mark of a past she longed to return to and feared to think about.
"Rach, you- you look beautiful," he told her earnestly, his voice deeper than she remembered it being but still rich with the undercurrent of compassion, before closing the distance between them and wrapping his arms around her.
"You don't look so bad yourself," she squeezed back tightly and breathed in his scent.
Neither spoke for a few short minutes, both simply reveling in the other's company and clinging on to each other as if their lives depended on it. Too long Rachel lamented bitterly, It's been way too long, I should've never let us lose contact.
Joey was the first to break the silence, with a deep sigh that pierced the still artificial air like a bullet against flesh. He pulled away and she could see his eyes flitting uneasily towards the door. His mouth opened, and she merely nodded, saving him the pain of having to ask her permission if they could go join their friends in letting go of one of their own.
They couldn't put it off any longer. With every fiber of her being, she longed to stay in the hall forever in the arms of a man she had loved and lost and now had again but had to once more let go. "I'm ready," she murmured against his chest, "let's go."
His fingers intertwined with hers, and she could feel them tremoring underneath the tight squeeze he tried to reassure her with. They remained rooted at the spot for only a moment longer, fiercely aware that a twist of the doorknob was all that separated them from the life they were to never have again and the new one, built on tears and loss and sadness, that they were about to adopt. Finally, though, her friend seemed to muster more courage than she could ever dream of having and took that harrowing step forward, taking her with him.
"Hey Monica, Rachel's here," Joey announced gently as they entered the room, closing the door behind them. The soft click it made as it clutched shut made Rachel feel claustrophobic, like the final rock had just been sealed in the tomb she was being buried in.
Her thoughts were cut short, however, when she looked up. Tears flooded her vision as she took in the sight of all of her friends standing before her.
Phoebe wasn't crying. Her blonde hair flowed freely and her face was full of dismay, jaw clenched like she was biting onto to this bitter reality, afraid to swallow it but unsure of how to spit it out. Her hands were balled into fists and her eyes were hardened with an anger that sent chills down Rachel's spine. Phoebe was used to pain, Rachel knew, she was used to having her world crumble down around her and having to claw her way out of the rubble, but in that moment, as she stood at the bedside of her dying friend with fists clenched in a dripping need to hurt something, she looked unsure.
On the left side of their friend's bed stood Ross, her ex-husband from a time ago. Their divorce had been ugly, had hurt so bad that the positive thought she used as a security blanket in those dark and lonely nights was that all future pain would surely pale in comparison to this. Oh how wrong, how foolish and naive and stupid she had been to let herself believe that when he was still here for her to hold and hate and forgive.
It could've been worse, she mourned, still refusing to let herself look at the person whose limp hand her ex was cradling to his body. It could've been so much freaking worse.
Ross most definitely had been crying. She had watched The Land Before Time with him enough to know what that looked like from a mile away. His eyes were bleary and red and despite his efforts to hold back the unshed tears, stubbled face still held the ghost of watery tracks. He held himself stiffly, his body a rod drawing in the pain of the sight that stood before him. His face seemed strained with the effort to bite back the words of comforting nothings that he probably felt he should say, but Rachel knew he never quite understood how to handle emotions- he was pragmatic, the one who never shied away from saying what needed to be said- and so he stood silently, unblinking eyes drinking in the still form of his dying friend.
Monica stood on the right side of the bed, next to the machines that breathed a cruel mockery of life into her husband. Her back was hunched and her small frame was quivering as she stroked her lover's hair. She held his hand in her own and placed it against his heartbeat, a sense of serenity seeming to wash over her as she felt the thready thumping murmurs. Rachel could hear her own break as she watched Monica speak slow and soft words to the one she had given her trust, body, and soul to, knowing she would have to let go of what he gave to her. Unlike Ross and Phoebe, the tears flowed freely, lazily, steadily down her pale face.
And then, at the center of all the love and the adoration and the mourning, lied Chandler, his body bound to tubes the way his life was bound to this cold grey room and the souls who inhabited it. Rachel had been terrified to look at him, afraid that seeing him lie there motionless would make this whole nightmare only seem that much more real and permanent, but the moment she caught a glimpse, she found she couldn't tear her eyes away.
Chandler, who was funny and full of life and so very kind, who had loved each and every one of them unconditionally, who had risen up all of his insecurities to become the husband he never knew he was capable of being, who made them laugh their it hurt, lied still and silent. His wit and his ways, now shackled to the memory of the man he was, the man he would be no more.
Staring at his closed lids and gauntly pale face, Rachel became acutely aware that she'd never see those beautiful blue eyes of his again, and somehow that hurt more than anything else.
Behind her, Joey inched closer to the bed. She followed, taking her place beside Ross and feeling his arm slink around her shoulder, pulling her in tight, all animosity melting away as leaned against his warmth.
The five of them stood like that for a while, holding on to one another and occasionally sharing a story about Chandler, the laughter and the ache blending together until the air was so heavy Rachel feared she might suffocate. In that moment, the years that they had let slip on past each other, the conversations that they hadn't had and the moments they forgot to share seemed so meaningless, a mere speck floating in the shadow of the love that bound them all together in the grey little hospital room that would witness Chandler's final breaths.
"You know," Joey managed to choke out, "he was always afraid of dying alone."
No one knew what to say to that, so they said nothing at all, and held on to their friend.
That night, on the 21st of December, as darkness fell over the grey skies and the snow continued to dance across the streets of a sleepless city, the five of them watched as Chandler, who was not alone and never would be again, took his final breath.