The drive home had been an interesting one, especially since you didn't remember a thing from the moment the door closed at the hospital until the moment you pulled into your driveway. How the hell you managed to get onto a main trunk road, then the interstate, driving over 20 miles, and then through suburbia, without killing anyone (including yourself)...well, maybe your decision had earned you a point of Karma.
You looked down at your phone. There was two missed calls, both having come from the hospital line that Saunders had given you and each message was basically the same: please contact them at your earliest convenience. One had been about Sarah waking up, the happiness and elation in the voice obvious from the moment you pressed "speaker". The other, a more subdued one, had come just a few moments ago. The nurse must've passed on the message to the doctor and the good doctor, already playing god with Sarah's brain and Jessica's body, decided he could add therapist onto his resume and try to resolve all these things floating in your head. The irony of it all...
After deleting both without bothering to call, you checked it again but noticed no further messages from Deborah. 'Not that it matters, really...she has what she wants...' you sighed, no longer angry or bitter but a sense of depressed acceptance of what you had come to fear most about it. Leaning back in the driver's seat, you pulled up the contact list and selected Sarah's parents. That phone call ended up being one of the hardest you had to make, hearing the utter devastation in her mother's voice, her father barely being able to command enough restraint to ask you for the details of the hospital and what the current arrangements were going to be. Each moment, each question, you had to grit your teeth as you played the part that Saunders and his team shoved onto you and, with each sob, you felt the knife going deeper and deeper. You loved Sarah's mother and you thought the world of her father, both of whom had expressed great happiness and relief that the two of you had gotten together and were working out. Now the fact you were lying to cover up something this monumental...
After another hour of you making calls to her sister (and hearing that cratering on that end) and to your folks, you again felt an empty bitterness and being completely and utterly drained of any energy left. You didn't know how you should feel...angry at the doctors and their quack procedures? Upset and jealous at Deborah for having her child back when you had lost Sarah? Being resentful at Sarah for putting you through all of this? If the world could just stop shitting on your head for a moment, it would've been a major relief for you.
Instead, you picked up your phone again and punched in a few numbers and waited for the line to connect. It was a few moments, a few rings, but when the voice on the other side came on, you felt a moment of clarity, a bitterly cold clarity. "It's me. That position posting for the Directorship...is it still open?"
"Y-Yes...but I heard what happened...you can take all the ti--"
"Thank you, sir, but this is what I need." You looked at the house, what had been the dream house now seemed like a structure openly mocking you, taunting you, and you so wanted to toss a match and watch that f#$ker burn to the ground. "Is it still open?"
A few moments, then a pause, before the voice came back on. "Yes. It's yours if you are sure you want it."
You looked back at the house one last time. "More than anything."
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