I Wait For Just One More Night . . .


She sat alone on the bench in the crowded shopping mall, watching as the mass crowds hurried by, rushing to get their last minute Christmas shopping done.


Noises surrounded her, filling the emptiness inside her head, but she sat quietly, not making a peep.


Waiting.


Just waiting.


He wasn’t going to come, she was sure of that. But so close to a holiday when miracles happened, she wanted that false hope, wanted something to hold on to, something that would get her through the long, cold nights.


And so she would wait.


For just one more night.


She passed a hand over her tummy, glancing up at the bright decorations, and felt a twinge of a memory, a time seemingly long ago, when she was just a child. When her family was together and when family meant something.


An hour passed, than another, and the masses slowed down, though there was still a hearty crowd that made the mall their refuge, their salvation.


Still she waited, though she knew no one was coming, especially not him.


He had abandoned her.


People stared at her but never said anything, and she knew what they were thinking: a young woman, fresh from high school, alone in a mall a few days before Christmas, holding her flat belly as if it contained her heart.


But it wasn’t what they thought. It was never what they thought.


So she sat there, remembering a time when she would sit by the on Christmas morning and tear open presents with the fervor that most children contained. Remembering a time when aunts and uncles and cousins would come and there would be lots of wonderful food and family, and warmth and love.


Above all, love.


Nine-fifty-five came down fast and hard and knocked her into reality. Sighing, she stood and slipped into her jacket, buttoned it tight, then stuffed her hands in the pockets and exited the mall before crossing the parking lot and stepping out onto the highway.


She walked slowly, leisurely, ignoring the cars that zoomed by.


She stopped and waited, waited as she always did, and turned.


A Greyhound bus, large and looming, was racing toward her, and she turned quickly to walk the same way as it was going, praying it wouldn’t stop, keeping watch on it out of the corner of her eye, as it sped closer and closer.


Five feet from where she walked, she stepped into the bus’s path, listening to the squeal of breaks, while she cried and laughed in triumph.


Then . . . Silence, except for the church bells tolling ten o’clock in the distance.


***


“Come on, folks, police. Oh my god, look at this.”


“The poor girl!”


“Why would she do something like this?”


“Hey, doc? You got any clue?”


“Yeah. I recognize the name. My brother worked on her at the hospital. Rae MacGregor. Poor girl. Had a rare cancer in the stomach. I’m kind of sketchy on the details. Anyway, apparently it was so far developed, it was fatal. There wasn’t anything they could do for her . . . I hate to say it, but this was probably the best thing for her. Her family’s all dead or gone.”


“Poor kid . . .”