Some Find Solace in Shared Suffering, But I Despise It

Five years ago, my best friend Rosemary Pruitt and I had a fight, and she locked methree months pregnantin a hotel walk-in freezer.

She told me to calm down for ten minutes.

When the door opened again, the baby was gone. And I could never be alone in any enclosed space again.

Five years later, Rosemary became the captain of the rescue team.

She knelt in front of me and cried, saying she wanted to atone and help me get past my trauma.

She lured me back to that hotel, and then pushed me into the walk-in freezer again.

I screamed for all I was worth, but she told my husband, "Don't open it. We're saving her."

My mother cried and tried to pull the door open, but Rosemary stopped her too.

"Just hold on ten more minutes. It's all for her own good."

Then I passed out.

But Rosemary smiled.

"See? She's finally better."

When the door of the walk-in freezer opened, I was sitting on the floor, barely alive.

From everyone's point of view, I really was "fine."

But the moment that door shut, I went right back to five years ago.

I remember how long I pounded on it, and I remember that in the end my voice was gone. I kept telling them I couldn't take it, kept begging them to open the door, but every time, someone outside answered me.

Rosemary said, "I'm right here."

Herbert said, "Sandra, hold on a little longer."

My mom cried and said, "Mom's here with you, don't be afraid."

Every one of them heard me. Not one of them opened the door.

My husband, Herbert, gripped my icy hand, his face lit with an excitement he couldn't hide. "Sandra, look at me. Do you know how long you were in there?"

"Eighteen minutes." Rosemary came in from behind him, her eyes already red. "For the first time in five years, you stayed in a completely closed room for eighteen minutes, and you didn't keep losing control afterward."

I looked up at her.

She crouched down and lowered her voice. "When you first went in, your heart rate was fast and your breathing was ragged, but in the end you calmed down on your own. Sandra, that's not a bad thing."

My mom immediately asked, "So she really is getting better?"

Rosemary took my other hand. "Five years ago, you didn't know when someone would open the door, or whether anyone was even out there. Today is different. We were here the whole time."

I finally spoke, my voice badly hoarse. "But I told you to open the door."

Rosemary paused.

Herbert explained for her, "If we open the door every time you call for a stop, then the training means nothing."

I looked at him.

Five years ago, after I woke up in the hospital, I didn't even dare go into the bathroom in my hospital room.

Herbert took the lock off our bathroom door at home. The bedroom door hadn't been fully closed in five years. Even every time we stayed at a hotel, he'd check first that the door could be opened easily from the inside.

Back then he said, "Whenever you feel like you can close it, we'll close it."

My mom must have seen something wrong in my face, because she knelt down at once and hugged me.

"Mom was scared to death just now too. But you really got through it. And after you came out, you didn't shake or gasp for breath like before. Doesn't that mean Rosemary's method really works?"

As she spoke, she started to cry.

"For five years, you couldn't even bear to shut the door at night. Herbert and I were afraid every day that we'd say the wrong thing and make you remember it all over again. Today, for the first time, Mom feels like you really might get better."

They mistook my exhaustion for improvement.

Rosemary wiped away her tears and suddenly stood up. "Since we've gotten through this today, come with us tonightto the awards ceremony."

My head snapped up.

It was as if she'd known all along I'd refuse, and she explained right away.

"It's in the banquet hall upstairs. Not in the refrigerated area, and there won't be any forced training. Tonight the Rescue Association is giving out its annual awards to a few of the team members. I just hope you can sit there and see that this hotel isn't only that one memory from five years ago anymore."

Before I could say anything, Herbert was already murmuring to me, "We're already here. Just sit for a while. If you don't feel well, we can leave anytime."

I looked at him.

"Leave anytime?"

He froze.

He probably heard, too, just how ridiculous those two words sounded now.

In the end, I went anyway.

Not because I trusted Rosemary, but because my mother held my hand the whole time after she came out of the training room.

Five years ago, she wasn't like this.

Back then, when the hospital told us the baby couldn't be saved, she slapped Rosemary twice in the corridor, in front of everyone.

Rosemary knelt and cried, saying she'd only wanted me to calm down for ten minutes. My mother pointed at her and shouted, "You are never to appear in front of my daughter again for the rest of your life."

Herbert was even harsher.

He blocked Rosemary outside the hospital room and said only one thing: "If you want to atone, staying away from her is how you atone."

After that, Rosemary really did disappear.

At least, I always thought she had.

The banquet hall was already full of people, and a large photo of Rosemary stood at the entrance.

In the photo, she's wearing a rescue uniform, her face streaked with mud, the people she'd just pulled out standing behind her.

A line was printed beneath it.

"From one unforgivable mistake to a lifetime of making amends."

Our seats were in the front row.

After the host took the stage, he began by introducing several major rescues from the past year.

Rosemary's name came up the most.

Thirty-some straight hours working through a flash flood, going into the mountains in winter to find missing elderly people, and last year pulling two trapped workers out of a warehouse fire.

Every time the audience applauded, my mother's eyes grew a little redder.

She even whispered to me, "These past few years she's really been risking her life for this."

I didn't respond.

The big screen soon cut to Rosemary's personal short film.

It opened with a photo from five years ago.

The narration said that five years ago, Rosemary made a serious mistake that caused irreversible harm to her best friend.

In the interview, she said through tears, "I keep thinkingif I'd known a little about emergency response, if I'd known what could happen to a person in a sealed space, if I'd opened that door one minute sooner, maybe things would have turned out differently."

The whole room went quiet.

Someone in the back row sniffled.

The narration went on: after that, Rosemary quit her job, went through rescue training, started as a volunteer, and over five years took part in more than a hundred rescues.

"Turning irreparable regret into the strength to protect more people."

When the applause rose, I suddenly couldn't quite make out the sounds around me.

Five years ago, I lost my child.

Rosemary lost a job.

Five years later, I still can't move past it.

And she stood on that stage, with people already starting to call her a "rescue hero."

The host invited Rosemary up to the stage.

She came over to me, her eyes red, and asked, "Sandra, can I ask you to come up there with me?"

I looked at her. "Why?"

"Because without you, there wouldn't be the me standing here today."

People around us had already noticed.

My mother gently nudged my arm. "Go on up. This award today really does have something to do with you."

Herbert added quietly, "It's just standing there for a moment. You don't have to say anything."

I didn't move.

The host on stage seemed to have gotten some kind of cue, and picked up smoothly with a smile.

"Actually, we have a very special guest with us today. Captain Pruitt has always said that the person she's most grateful to over these past five years isn't just her rescue team partners, but also someone who has always supported her in carrying on."

Rosemary's expression suddenly shifted.

The host was already looking toward the front row.

"Mr. Delgado, please come to the stage."

When the host announced Herbert Delgado's name, I thought I had misheard.

He didn't get up right away; he glanced at me first.

His look was no different from every time he had comforted me over the past five years, as if telling me not to be afraid. But a few seconds later, he still walked up onto the stage.

Smiling, the host explained that Herbert had been one of the rescue team's most important charity advisors for the past three years. He had helped them line up training venues and medical resources, and for three years running he had anonymously covered part of the equipment costs.

Several photos flashed up on the big screen. One of them had been taken after the flash flood rescue ended, showing Herbert standing beside Rosemary and handing her water. The rescue team's flag hung behind them.

The date in the bottom right corner of the photo was three years ago.

That summer three years ago, I was just starting to try riding an elevator again for the first time.

Herbert went with me every day, from the first floor to the second, and then we'd take the stairs back down.

The first time I managed it, I stood at the elevator doors crying so hard I couldn't breathe, and he held me and said, "Take your time. However long it takes doesn't matter."

So it turned out that was also when he had already started seeing Rosemary again.

The host handed him the microphone. "Captain Pruitt has always said that without your help back then, she might not have made it this far. Mr. Delgado, is there anything you'd like to say?"

Herbert was quiet for a moment. "I just think that a person making one mistake doesn't mean they have to stay stuck in that one thing forever."

Applause broke out from the audience.

My mom was clapping too.

I turned to look at her, and her hand froze in place.

"Mom, you knew?"

Her face went pale, and she only whispered, "Sandra, there are too many people here. Let's talk about it when we get home."

Suddenly it all struck me as absurd.

Five years ago, it was her, in the corridor of this very hotel, pointing at Rosemary and swearing she would never let her appear in front of me again as long as she lived.

Now she sat in the front row, watching Rosemary accept the award, and there was even a kind of relief in her eyes.

Rosemary came down holding the trophy, her eyes red.

"Sandra, I never meant for you to only find out today. Herbert really has helped me so much. When I went through my first formal rescue training, he was the one who found the instructor for me."

"When?"

"Three years ago."

Herbert had already come over. "Let's talk outside."

My legs were still a little weak when I stood up. He reached out to steady me, but I pulled away.

Once we were out in the hallway, the first thing I asked him was, "How much more is there?"

"What?"

"Besides lining up training and giving money, how much else is there that I don't know about?"

He was silent for a moment. "Now and then I'd tell her how you were doing."

I looked at him.

Rosemary explained from the side, "When you started being able to ride an elevator, whether you could close the door at night, which situations set off the worst reactions. Herbert just wanted to be more careful when he prepared me for training."

Those were the things that left me at my most wretched, the things I least wanted anyone to know.

For five years, every time I jolted awake in the middle of the night and curled up against the edge of the bed, how long I threw up after stepping into an elevator for the first time, which kind of door-lock sound would keep me up the whole nightI had only ever told Herbert.

Only now did I realize he had long since passed all of it, bit by bit, to the very person who had closed that first door with her own hands.

I asked Herbert, "Five years ago you said the best way for her to atone was to stay away from me."

His eyes slowly reddened. "Back then I hated her."

"And now?"

"Now I just feel that maybe people really do change."

I nodded.

"So it turns out I'm the only one still stuck five years ago."

I didn't go back into the banquet hall.

It was raining outside.

I stood under the eaves of the hotel and asked my mother when she'd found out that Herbert and Rosemary had reconnected.

"Two years ago."

She didn't hide it anymore.

Rosemary had been injured once during a mountain rescue. Herbert went to the hospital to see her, and my mother only learned about it later.

She'd originally said she was going there to tear into her, but when she got to the room and saw more than a dozen stitches in Rosemary's shoulderand saw that the next day she was still worrying about a missing elderly man the team hadn't foundher heart softened, little by little.

"Sandra, she has paid a price."

"So all of you forgave her."

"It's not about forgiveness," Herbert said at once. "I just don't want everyone stuck forever in what happened five years ago."

He said my condition had gone back and forth over the years, and it was only after he happened to learn that Rosemary had started doing emergency rescue work that it occurred to himmaybe I could learn some real self-rescue skills for enclosed spaces.

The first few training sessions really had helped, so he'd become more and more convinced that if I could just take one more step forward, I could truly recover.

I asked, "So today, tricking me back to this hotelyou agreed to that too?"

Herbert paused. "If I'd told you ahead of time, you wouldn't have come."

"So you decided for me."

My mother grabbed my hand, crying. "But you really did it today. Eighteen minutes! I heard you go quiet afterward, and for the first time I felt like all these years were finally almost behind us."

They were so happy.

Too happy for anyone to admit that the reason I went quiet later was simply that I no longer had the strength to scream.

Rosemary said through tears, "Sandra, I never thought I could cure you. I only wanted to pay back a little of what I owe you. If there's ever a day you're no longer afraid of that door, then everything I've done these years will have been worth it."

"But I said to open the door."

Her face went pale. "That was the hardest part of the training."

"Rosemary, I said to open the door."

Herbert said quietly, "At the time she judged that your body wasn't in real danger."

I turned to look at him. "And you?"

He didn't answer.

Five years ago, after I lost the baby, Herbert held me and said that as long as I didn't want to, I'd never have to see Rosemary again for the rest of my life.

After that, every time I shut a door, he never once pushed me.

So a promise doesn't suddenly change on some single day.

It's just that over the years, they'd started to need me to get better, more and more.

My mother suddenly said, in a low voice, that before my father passed away, she had once brought up Rosemary's rescue-team work over the years.

He was silent for a long time, then said only one thing: "Don't tell Sandra. She can't take it right now."

My grip on the umbrella handle slowly tightened.

Even he had known.

Not forgivenessmaybe he even still hated Rosemary. But in the end everyone made the same choice: keep it from me, decide for me what I should and shouldn't know.

I asked Herbert, "If I asked you to cut off all contact with her from now on, would you agree?"

The rain was loud.

And still he didn't answer right away.

In that moment, I already knew the answer.