Leaving that room Ino had not expected to see any of those faces who had been present, in that circle, never again. As soon as she had gotten out of that chair, the support group was an ended chapter of her life. They lived their lives and she lived hers. They lived in two completely different worlds, two different realties, two sets of living at the same time.
They were healing and she was existing.
She wasn't ready she thought. It had become a mantra in her head. Something to halter and push, not dealing with the fact that her son was dead. She knew, she was very aware, but she didn't want to deal with the factors, the impacts. Her child was gone, she wasn't ready to realize that she would never experience her new born grandchild in her arms for the first time. She didn't want to deal with the fact that she would never help her child decide on colleges and directions in his life. She would never find out what sport or after school activity he would have gotten involved with. She couldn't cope with the fact that she would never know what kind of man her boy would turn into.
She was living, she wasn't ready to heal. She would never heal. There is reason why you have a name for those who have lost a spouse, you're a widow or widower. There is a reason why you have a name for those who have lost both parents, you're an orphan. There is a reason why you don't have a name for those who have lost a child. If you've lost one of your children you're nothing. There's no name that can sum up the change, the feelings, the loss of outliving your child. How you failed the one thing you were put on earth to protect. The feeling of helplessness as you have to accept that there's nothing you can do with the faith of your child. You have to carry the empty numbness on your own. No words, no name for it. Nothing can cover it.
She wasn't one of those who could open up about her pain. She was keeping it all locked up as it was threatening to explode. Internally, not outward. Ino hadn't been an outward person since the results of her child's blood was handed to her. She wasn't told, she was handed the paper. Easily scanning the results she didn't need to be told that her child was sick, very sick. She hadn't viewed it as a death sentence at the time. Medicine and cancer treatment was always pushing boundaries. Cancer that would kill you ten years ago they are curing now. They had made progress.
She had failed to notice at an early point the disease her child was carrying. She treated this sickness for a living, but she had allowed it to grow strong inside her child. Inside her walls it was growing without resistance. It was just a routine check-up. She hadn't noticed it, she had been blind to the changes in her son. She spent her life curing what he was carrying, treating the children and killing the illness. The very thing that gave him life also contained the disease that would take him away from her.
She had let it take him away. She had let it happen.
So, she had fallen back into her routines after the first support group meeting. She went to work, she bought dinner from the cafeteria and she had her weekly lunch with her friend. Every day she knew what was happening, where she would be, what she would be doing.
It had become something safe with the whole routine, the whole familiar routine. It was no outside source there to shake her up. She felt safe having an agenda, having every day mapped out. Her son had been the same. He had been allowed to start school before they had to pull him out of class. He eventually became too sick, to exhausted and nauseous to get out of bed.
He knew his schedule by heart, he helped plan his lunch and he decided what he wanted to spend his evenings doing a week in advance. It had been the two of them. His father had not shared this view on time management. Time was ever present so there was no reason to try and tame it with a schedule.
Time wasn't possible to tame. His father had been right. They couldn't schedule for their son to recover, they couldn't schedule for him to live one more week, day, hour. Time wasn't to be bargained with. It ended when it decided. It ended when the cancer decided. Time was scheduled and decided over by the cancer.
Ino pulled the key out of her office door. She knew where she was going next. Today she had to buy a double lunch in the cafeteria. Spinning around on her heels she realised there was a surprise waiting for her when she found a familiar figure outside her office door.
He was crunched over, hair falling over his hand as he rested his head on them. It could have been any father in her wing. Someone begging her to do something, something more when she had already done all in her power. Powers she had learned was very limited. Or he was taking a break from what had become his reality: Checkups, white covers and the smell of sterile environment but it wasn't sterile. Children still got sick in the hospital, treatment having eaten up their immune systems.
She too had sought out refuge in the hospital garden. It had been left to itself for decades, it wasn't impressive, but it was there. It was green, it was life. It was something else than what she was used to. To her, white had become the colour of death. It was what they used to cover dead white faces with. A white cloth. A white face.
Green was vibrant, flowers reminded her that beauty wasn't everlasting.
She had yet to realize that her second bloom was nonetheless to come. Her summer would come once more.
He, the man, sat there motionless. His jeans tired, she was surprised the fabric on the knees hadn't given up and fallen down to the ground. She didn't know when he had showed up, she didn't know why. It had been so many years since he had showed up at the hospital. She hadn't seen him since that day, when she went to the support group.
His visit came out of the blue. It had been weeks since she went to the support group. They must have gone on without her. She had been an intrusion to their set ways. A stranger. Something alien that didn't fit in. That was how she had felt. They were all so close in their mourning and she could never heal as much as them. She could never be as them.
Instinct told her to sit down beside him. She had already locked up her office. Last half of Thursdays she worked from home. She had already packed all the necessary papers in her bag. She had all she needed to lock herself inside her haunted home for another day. She had everything she needed for another day in solitude. Paperwork always took more than a half day. The government was always breathing down their necks to do more paperwork and she was thorough. She took her time, her time was worthless now. She had no one waiting for her on the other side of her pile of papers.
Even with everything planned and sorted out her day had taken and unexpected path. She found herself sitting on the bench outside her office as she held the hand of a sobbing man. A man she had only meet twice and seen a couple more times. She had no comfort to give. She was living outside the situation. She didn't feel like she was in the situation. While her body was right there, her mind was experiencing the situation from afar.
Again she felt like they were living in different worlds on the same planet. For him it was fine to seek out a stranger and grab her hand while he was crying. To her it was so distant. They were in two different worlds, coming to a meeting point on a tired white bench. The paint was peeling off the wood. She had wanted it repainted for ages. She hadn't cared much lately. She wasn't caring much about anything lately.
She didn't care about being honest with one's feelings.
She was holding them back. Forever it seemed. She had forced herself to live in numbness. She was willing to sacrifice all the potential good moments to smother all the bad ones. She'd rather be indifferent than having for a week of pure bliss if the last hour of that week was dedicated to grieving her child. She didn't want any of that. The knowledge that she would never approve his bride might come creeping. The knowledge that he would never invite his friends over for his birthday. The knowledge that he would never fail a test. The knowledge that she would never once more embrace him.
So she sat there as he almost scratched on her thigh as he held her hand letting his feelings run rampant. What he was going through she didn't know. She assumed it was some sort of internal battle between feelings and reason. This was where he had lost everything. This was where everything had changed.
She could understand his reasons for this behaviour. She could understand why he was acting like this. She herself didn't have a place like this. She didn't have a place she connected with his passing. It was irrelevant to her where he had passed. It didn't hold a specific meaning. She knew what was going on. She knew he was dying, so his place of passing gave her some sort of bitter sweet relief. She had lost her son, but he wasn't suffering anymore.
It was all set and done. He was dust now. Something new, he wasn't a boy anymore. He was ashes in a jar.
The crying settled next to her. She had learned to recognise all the signs. How they gather their breath. Try to control it as the last few tears and sobs emit. The moment when their upper body drops as if they're turning themselves off. Then comes the sigh, the one that signals that they're approachable again. You can talk to them, they will hear you and respond. You're human once again and not a pile of sorrow.
"I always want her to come back."
His voice wasn't as painted by the emotional outburst as she would have guessed. He sounded almost collected. There was something sombre in his voice, it was like ice was running down Ino's spine hijacking every nerve in her body screaming that something was wrong. Something was wrong with him.
"I've never been back to the hospital since it happened."
She could only imagine what the emotional impact was on him, just being there was. She didn't even think what she imagined was close to what it actually felt like. It was something only he knew, it was something exclusively for him. So she wouldn't make a fool of herself and offend him by claiming she had any understanding of what was going on in his mind at all.
"I've been lucky enough never to have a reason to.
That was until you showed up and ran."
He retracted his arm again and suddenly she felt cold. So much colder than the ice running down her spine. He had come back for her. She was the reason of his pain. She told herself she had never asked for him to make that sacrifice. She hadn't asked for him to come.
He looked over at her and produced a crocked smile. His eyes were red and still wet with tears. It was amazing how quickly his mood had changed. He was smiling with tears still desperately clinging to his short eyelashes. Now he seemed almost playful, but it didn't change the fact that his face looked tired and drained at the same time. There was something fragile in his face. He was out of balance. He was so much clinging to something, to being something, someone after his great loss.
"I've made a commitment to help everyone that enters the door to my meetings."
She would never have opened the door that day had she known the guy running the sessions was so passionate about it. That he would actually care on a deep and personal level. That he'd take time out of his own day to seek her out even if she had made the shortest visit she believed, in the history of the support group.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have."
He shook his head. He was glad she had. It was easy to tell that she was carrying something heavy. There was only so much a person could carry without the help of others. He could see that she had been given too much. She needed to open up. She needed support.
He had several people he followed personally, through his grief program. There were many that for several different reasons didn't work in a group setting. He was hired full time as a grief councillor, but people didn't understand. They didn't understand the need, the impact the group had on its members and people certainly didn't understand why they needed a man working in a full time position when they only had three groups.
People were blind to the work he put down. They didn't see or understand how much work those three groups were, and they didn't see the private meetings like these. Itachi often felt like he clocked in more volunteer hours than work hours. He didn't mind. He was lucky enough to come to a point in life where he was comfortable with the past. He wanted the people in his groups to be at the same point in theirs.
"Sometimes life makes you feel like your drowning, and it's giving you so many reasons to not swim up, up for air. I'm here to guide you up. I'll be by your side in this process. I don't care how much help you need, I don't care how long it'll take. I'll grow old with you if that's what it takes."
She had a feeling that this was a man she couldn't turn down. He had the passion and drive she had graduated with. He was acting as passionate as her the day she received her research grant. He was her, before it all happened.
It gave Ino just a tiny spark of hope. He had been in her place, he had gone through the same loss. Arguably even more, and he had become like her, before it happened. He had blood pulsating though his veins, he had power, he had passion, he had a goal. He had faith that his existence had value, importance. She wanted to feel like that once more.