Hold On To This

         She gently placed her fingers onto his temples.

“Isn’t she beautiful? She looks just like you,” Jessica spoke as she eased herself on her hospital bed while Stephen held their child in his arms. She had the creases under her lower eyelids, just like his. The grin on his face gave Jessica his answer.

“So what’s it gonna be? Angela, after Angela Basset? Or Francesca, after Fran Drescher?” Stephen asked as he shifted his proud smile to Jessica.

“You know what, honey? Forget about those. We should give something more, you know, meaningful. Something special to you.” She eyed Stephen’s copper pendant which was poking out of his collar. “How about Lucy?”

“Lucy?”

“Yes, Lucy.”

Stephen brought the little one’s hand against the pendant on his collarbone, surprised to see her tiny hand held a tight grip on it. “Lucy. Lucy Davidson. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

In that moment, Jessica foresaw a beautiful life ahead of her.

“Yes, my husband! I need an ambulance, he’s not breathing! 171, Washington Boulevard. I already tried CPR but he’s not – Please, just please hurry, I’m scared he’s –“. The frantic voice breaks into a muffle, spitting onto the telephone words Lucy feared to hear. The gentle, comforting voice envied by angels and therapists, now defeated by uncertainty of the certain. “Jessica. Jessica Davidson. His name is Stephen. Yes, our daughter is here. Lucy.”

 Looking across Lucy towards Stephen who was lying just below the staircase, Jessica’s face flushed as - she grinned in excitement behind her Nikon Coolpix E100. “Now, blow the candle you two!”  Both Stephen and Lucy, who was wearing a white baby sweater with ‘SAGITTARIUS’ printed on it, blew the single candle on the cake. Except, Stephen was simply pouting without blowing out any air.

“Good job, Lucy! Who’s one year old now? Yes, you are! Oh, yes you are!” Jessica said in a high-pitched voice while tickling little Lucy. “And who’s thirty-eight years old now, birthday boy?”

“Thirty-eight years and a day old.” Stephen replied while holding giggling Lucy on his lap.

“Of course, Stephen.” Her curved lips seemed to flatten a bit. “I know your birthday was yesterday and not today, but isn’t it just adorable and so much more special if you two-“

“Honey, Honey,” Stephen said as he cut her off. “I love this. I love sharing my birthday with Lucy. And sharing it again and again in the years to come. And also, I love us together. Us three.” Her lips curled back up in relief. “Stephen, this is why I lo – Oh, Lucy! You’ve already dug in, haven’t you?”

Lucy’s palm was already plastered in buttercream, leaving an imprint on the cake much like a snow angel, only in the shape of a tiny baby hand. “Let me get a cloth – and some water,” acted Jessica instinctively. “Lucy, stay with your father,” instructed Jessica in between deep breaths and glassed eyes. Lucy nodded.

Lucy heard a faint buzz and realized that the telephone was not properly placed back in the receiver. Jessica, who ran back with a cloth and bowl of water didn’t notice this as she kneeled beside her beloved husband. 

“Lucy… dad’s gonna be fine it’s just…” Jessica interlocked her fingers on Stephen’s chest. “Fatigue. When he’s got too little sugar in his blood, remember?” She pressed hard on his chest with all her vertical weight. “When he sometimes asks you to get him some Skittles? Well…” She pressed and relaxed and pressed and relaxed. “Too much insulin and…” A sob. Inhale. Then a breath into his mouth. Nothing. “It’s just..”

“Fatigue,” finished Lucy, unsure.

“Yes. Fatigue,” asserted Jessica, unconvinced.

She continued compressing. ”Sweetie, help me clean that up,” Jessica asked as she handed Lucy a wet cloth before desperately continuing her efforts. Gently, Lucy wiped away the blood oozing from the cut on his forehead, never taking her gaze away from his face.

Her father looked so young, she thought as the tip of her fingers touched his hair endings. Almost like when he used to – pick her up at her elementary school five days a week at 2 o’clock, after a tough morning’s work teaching at the local junior high school. They’d set off to Jim’s Eatery each of those days for lunch. 

“I’ll have a Turkey Bacon Ranch Panini with a short espresso, no sugar.” exclaimed Stephen.

”How about Ms. Lucy, the usual?” Jim Bob asked “Yup!” Lucy replied. “Grilled Cheese and-“

“Lychee juice!” said the father and daughter in unison. This took place almost every time they went there.

“Your orders will be right up!” announced Jim Bob before walking away from his two most loyal customers towards the kitchen. Out of the decorum of school, Stephen rolled up his sleeves for the first time that day. He was always like that, maintaining professionalism within school grounds even if he’s no big shot Manhattan loft-dwelling mega-corporation officer under strict grooming etiquette. He was just an English teacher. A respected and admired one, amongst students and teachers.

“We’re gonna have the annual camping trip next month, with the sixth graders. You wanna join me again, Luce?

“At Snoqualmie Falls? Yes please! I miss the waterfall!”

“But you’re going to have to stay in a tent with the sixth graders okay?”

“Sure, Dad. I know. I stay with them every year. It’s no big deal as long as you’re around. Do I have to join the march practices?”

“No, you can just sit and watch from the teacher’s hut. And if the kids cook up some nasty food, you can just come up to the hut. We always always have something on the grill and pizza delivered.”

“Gee, so much for camping when there’s pizza!” laughed Lucy.

“It’s the students’ camp, not the teachers’,” snickered Stephen. “But, do you want to join the practices?”

“Well, I don’t mind it really.”

“You don’t have to. It can get nasty hot. I don’t want you to get a heatstroke. Just let the sixth graders get roughed up a bit.”

“And I be the teacher’s daughter?”

“Well, of course. Don’t you like it?”

“I love it! It makes them scared to mess with me. And I get to stay with you while they go searching for firewood!” chuckled Lucy, just as their orders arrived.

On their way home, Lucy looked out of the car and recalled the previous camps she joined with her father. To the sixth graders, it was a painful four days of leadership boot camp. To her, it was a sweet yearly father-daughter vacation. Her afternoon daze was disturbed by the beaming siren of – an ambulance, gradually getting louder by the second, probably almost reaching the front gates. She gripped Stephen’s hand. Tight.

No, not yet, she thought.

“Mrs. Davidson, please calm down. Where is your husband?” a stranger’s voice bellowed in a distance.

“Right below the stairs. Please do something!!”

 “It’s a slow pulse! There’s still a chance.” Yelled a man clad in a navy blue uniform, kneeling right opposite Lucy before he started compressing Stephen’s chest and carrying out mouth-to-mouth respiration.

“Then why did it stop?” muttered Lucy to herself, barely a whisper. She held harder.

Jessica bent on the floor to speak into Stephen’s ear.

“Stephen, please hear my voice. Wake up, honey. I know you’re still there. I-“

“There’s something I want you to have, Lucy”

“-you to be here. We need you to be here. We all love you so-“

“Your pendant? I thought it’s really important to you, Dad.”

”Yes. It’s the only piece of memory I have from my biological parents. It has ‘Jai guru deva om’ engraved on it. So I knew that they must’ve been really big fans of The Beatles.”

“-times we spent together during those summer nights. When we got married in-“

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“So that whatever happens, I’ll always be with you just like how my parents had always been with me all this time.”

“-Lucy came along. We were happy. A small but happy family. Nothing better I could ask for in this life. So please, hear me out, Steph-”

“But Dad, you’re still here.”

“Yes, and I’m grateful for each second I get to watch you grow up, for you and for your Mom. But life, Lucy, is a fragile thing. And mine is comparable to a thin-glass ornament on the edge of a shelf, just waiting for that tiny wisp of a blow.”

“-up Stephen. Wake up. Just wake up…”

“The thing is, I want to tell you that nothing can really separate us and our loved ones. The things we shared, the memories. They stay forever. And as long as you hold on to this pendant, by God’s grace you won’t forget.  As for me, well, even in my last breath, it’s you and your mother that I’ll be thinking of fondly. ”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Davidson. He’s gone.”

Lucy’s grip loosened. There are no fragments of memories left for her to see once the physical life of her father was no longer present within his body.

Instead, she reached into her shirt collar and took out a copper pendant. She didn’t want to forget. Just like her father who kept his promise. To remember Lucy and Jessica even in his last breath.