The Box That Made Her Cry
A Valentine’s Day Story - Short Fiction
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NOTE: This story is over 3,000 words. You might have to read it on the web, as your email may cut off a portion of this story.
She knelt on the carpet in her new living room, a big cardboard box in front of her. This was the box that she didn’t go through when she left her old house. Her friends had packed the box. The memories were too painful. She hated to leave the old house but she wanted a fresh start. She had great memories but it was hard to disassociate with the bad memories. It was time for a change.
New house, new town. This was a big move for her. She moved away from her hometown, a town where she had lived most of her life. The only time she had left was to go off to college. She returned after getting her degree. She studied psychology in the effort to help people. Now she needed help. She didn’t know what to do to get over the pain. It was raw. She had saved money over the years and now she was in a strange place that she didn’t even know.
She threw a dart at a map and this is the place that came up. She wanted a totally different state to live in. She knew it couldn’t get any more worse for her. At least she hoped it wouldn’t.
She figured she could find a job and flourish here. She just didn’t want to be a psychologist anymore. How could she help people if she couldn’t even help herself? To hear their stories would plunge her into even more despair. It hurt so bad.
Now here she was on the floor with the box. She contemplated whether to open it or not. She didn’t need to open it. She could leave it for some other time. She sat on the floor trying to figure out what to do. It was heavy. She should probably remove everything and put it somewhere. But she wasn’t sure what to do.
“Hey!”
She didn’t move or turn around.
“Hey, Monica are you okay?”
“What?” she said as she turned around having been in a daze.
“I said are you okay?”
“No, I’m not.”
Her friend Jennifer was one of the friends who came with her to help her. Even though she now lived six-hundred miles away, her friends wanted to help her as much as they could. Three of her friends flew in with her on the plane. The moving truck had gone ahead of them. Monica was pretty much out of it on the plane. How could she get along without her friends? Did she make the right choice?
Just then, her friend Patricia came into the house.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she said.
“Could you stay with her?” Jennifer said.
“Sure,” a puzzled Patricia said.
“Monica. I’m going to take this box and put it in your spare room.”
She grabbed the box and moved it away from her.
“No!”
“It’s okay honey. I’ll put something over it, if it makes you feel better.”
She started crying.
Two hours later, Monica’s three friends were at the local hospital. She had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized.
The pain of moving and that box had finally caught up to her.
Sitting in the emergency room, they waited for about twenty minutes until a nurse approached them. Monica asked the nurse if Jennifer could come with her. She told her yes. Patricia and Laura remained in the waiting room as Jennifer was with Monica.
She was guided into a small room. She took a seat, while Jennifer stood nearby. The nurse asked her various questions. Her blood pressure was checked. It was off the charts. She placed a printed bracelet onto her wrist. It had her name and birthday on it. Jennifer asked if she could speak to the nurse in private. She led her through another door. She told the nurse about why she was undergoing this stress. She told her not to say anything to her because it would just make it worse. And she was worried what would happen if it was brought up over and over.
They stepped back into the small room and the nurse motioned for Monica and Jennifer to follow her. As they moved down the halls of the hospital, Jennifer grabbed Monica’s hand to try to comfort her. The nurse opened the door of a room and they walked in. It was a small room with only a bed and a sink. She told Monica to hop onto the bed. The bed was in an upright position. Jennifer took a seat next to the bed. The nurse indicated that a doctor would be coming in soon to evaluate her.
After a few minutes, Monica spoke.
“I’m sorry Jennifer.”
“It’s okay Monica. Things happen.”
“But you need to get back home.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not leaving you here in the hospital.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let’s not talk about it now. I’m not leaving you until I know everything is okay. You don’t even know if you’ll be admitted.”
They remained quiet for a few minutes. They wondered what was taking the doctor so long when they had been there for thirty minutes with no one coming by.
Next thing they knew a woman dressed in a white lab coat came.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Caruso. What’s happening today?”
“Well, I got…”
“Doctor, I can explain everything, if we can step outside a minute,” Jennifer interjected.
She saw the seriousness on her face and said, “Sure. We’ll be right back sweetie.”
Once in the hallway, Jennifer explained everything.
As they came back into the room, the doctor advised Monica that she was going to order some tests for her. She told her to sit tight.
After the doctor left, Monica started talking again.
“What did you tell her?”
“The same thing I told the nurse.”
“Which was?”
“I told them why you got upset and not to bring it up again.”
“Okay. But I don’t want the whole world knowing what happened.”
“They have to know Monica why you’re here.”
“I guess so.”
Over the next few hours, they did various tests on her. Her blood pressure was still pretty high and they decided to admit her. They wanted to give her some medications to hopefully reduce it.
And Dr. Caruso had another thing up her sleeve.
Six hours after they got to the hospital, they moved Monica to a room on the fourth floor of the hospital. Jennifer accompanied her. She had texted Patricia and Laura to tell them what was going on. They moved over to the waiting area in the section where Monica was now.
They wheeled her into the room in a wheelchair. The nurse got her a gown and told her to change out of her clothes and into the gown. There was a bathroom in the room. Jennifer asked her if she needed help. She said no. While she was waiting for her to change, she looked out the window to see what was happening. It was dark now. All the lights of the buildings lit up the night sky.
“What am I supposed to do with my stuff?” she said as she exited the bathroom.
“I’ll take them for you,” Jennifer said as she put her clothes on the padded couch near the window.
In a few minutes, the nurse came back and told Jennifer that visiting hours were over. She told her she could come back tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.
“Can you make sure the place is okay?” she asked Jennifer.
“I’ll do that before I go find a hotel for us.”
“Maybe you all could stay at the house,” a worried Monica said.
“If you want us to.”
“Yes. It would make me feel good if you did.”
Jennifer made her way down to the waiting area and the friends agreed they would stay at Monica’s house. They hoped this would make her feel good to know that they were looking out for her stuff.
After Jennifer left, the nurse came in and kept checking on Monica. Every fifteen minutes someone came in. They wanted to make sure she was still okay. Shortly after ten o’clock, she finally fell asleep.
Monica woke up early the next morning around six a.m. She saw a figure near her bed.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your nurse.”
“What happened to the other nurse?”
“It was the end of her shift. I’m taking over for her.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mandy.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Breakfast should be arriving soon.”
“How am I doing?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Mandy opined.
“I feel okay right now. I’m a little tired.”
“Your blood pressure is still a little high.”
“I’m probably worrying too much.”
“I’ll be back in a bit. If you need any assistance before then, you can hit this button on your bed to call one of us at the nurse’s station,” she said pointing to the green button on the bed.
Monica wanted to get out of there immediately. She didn’t want to stay any longer. But she was dreading going back to the house. She knew seeing the box would trigger her again.
Shortly after breakfast, there was a knock on the door.
“Yes, come in,” she said.
“Hi,” a man said as he approached her bed.
“Hello.”
“How are you doing today?”
“I’m a little better today but still not up-to-par.”
“Well, hopefully I can get you back to normal.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Ian. I’m a volunteer here. I go around to patient’s rooms and talk with them.”
“Oh. I’m Monica.”
“It’s nice to meet you Monica.”
“You too Ian.”
“A lot of time, the patients don’t have anyone to talk to but their nurses throughout the day. We have a program here where they employ volunteers to give the patients an added person who they can discuss things with.”
“That seems like a nice program. My friend was here yesterday. She should be back later today. Do you know why I’m here?”
“No.”
“The nurses didn’t tell you.”
“No. I don’t know the status of what people are going through.”
“Maybe I could talk to you about it.”
“Sure, whatever makes you comfortable.”
“I’m afraid if I don’t discuss it with someone, I’ll just be re-living the moment over and over and I won’t get better.”
“I’m all ears.”
“How much time do you have?”
“I’ll stay as long as the patient needs me.”
“It’s a sad story.”
“I’ve heard a lot of those over the years.”
Monica started to tell her story.
“Last night I moved into a new house in this new city. It was a fresh start for me. I used to live six hundred miles away. The old house contained a bad memory for me. Three years ago, I had returned home from running errands. I parked the car in the garage and lowered the garage door. Once I got into the house, one of my girlfriends called and asked if I wanted to go out with them for the evening. I asked my husband and he told me it was fine. So I left my husband and six-year old son to have fun while I was gone. We went to a few clubs and then I returned home at around nine p.m. The house was dark and this was weird. My friend Jennifer came to the door with me. We went into the house. I yelled Tom and Brian’s names and no one answered. We made our way into the living room and we found them lying motionless on the floor,” she paused as she was getting upset.
She continued, “We ran up to them and Jennifer pulled me away from them. She told us we needed to call 911 and get out of the house. Once the fire department got there, they pronounced them dead. They told me there was a deadly concoction of carbon monoxide. They opened the garage door and the car was still running,” she was now in tears and frantic.
Ian came over to her and grabbed her hands to comfort her. She was bent over in her bed and he rubbed her back.
“How could I forget to turn the car off? It’s all my fault that they’re gone. I live with this daily.”
She continued to cry with Ian trying to support her as much as he could. After a few minutes she looked up and said, “The last box that was delivered to my house from the moving van was the box that had all of my husband’s and son’s stuff in it. I tried to open it but I just couldn’t. That’s why I’m here. I had a nervous breakdown.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss Monica,” Ian remarked.
“Jennifer had to take the box and put it in another room with something over it. I couldn’t bear to open it and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.”
“I know how you feel.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both have something in common. We lost our partners and kid.”
“You lost your wife and kid?” a shocked Monica asked.
“Yes.”
“How did you get through it?”
“I talked to someone.”
“Were you in the hospital too?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“It was five years ago.”
“Will you tell me your story?”
“If you think you will be okay. It’s sad too.”
“I need to hear it.”
“Well, like I said it was five years ago. My daughter had a function with her friends and team in a location about two hours away. She was heavily involved in spelling competitions. I offered to drive my wife, daughter, and a few of her friends to the competition. Then at the last minute, I had a work commitment come up. I hated it. Then one of her friend’s father arranged through a friend to fly them to the competition. So my wife, daughter, and her friends boarded a small plane for the short flight to the location. I so wanted to be with them. But work came first. I thought about them when the competition was about to begin, except they never made it. I got a phone call that the plane had crashed and there were no survivors. I was devastated.”
Ian was now crying, as was Monica.
Once she regained her composure, Monica said, “I’m so sorry Ian.”
“Thank you. I blame myself for putting work before family.”
“But Ian it’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Just like you shouldn’t blame yourself Monica. Things happen. We can’t control them. We don’t know why they happen.”
She thought about the words for a long time. He was right.
“Hey, am I interrupting something?” Jennifer said as she walked into the room.
“Jennifer, this is Ian. We were just chatting.”
“I can give you some time with your friend. I’ll check back with you later.”
“That’s fine Ian. It was nice talking with you.”
“You too.”
After he left, Jennifer looked at Monica and said, “He’s handsome.”
“Jennifer!”
“I’m serious. That is one cute guy. Who is he?”
“He’s a volunteer. He talks to patients.”
“Talks about what?”
“Whatever they want to talk about.”
“So what’d you talk about?”
“Guess.”
“You told him.”
“Yes and he told me about losing his family too.”
“So it was fate that you met each other.”
“I’m thinking yes. I don’t know how we stumbled across each other like that.”
“Maybe you have a guardian angel.”
Monica smiled.
Jennifer stayed for a few hours and they talked about the future. When she left, Monica told her she would have the hospital contact her when she was going to be released. She hoped it would be today.
The rest of the day she waited for Ian. She hoped he would return soon. She wanted to talk with him more. As the day waned on, it was looking less likely that he would be back today.
Dr. Caruso came by for a visit just before five p.m. She listened to her heart and had her do some breathing where she listened through her stethoscope. She told her that it looked like she was improving rapidly and that they would release her the next day.
“I can’t be released tonight?”
“We’ll keep you one more night to make sure your progress continues.”
The next morning, she awoke to find a bouquet of red roses sitting on her table. She wondered where they had come from. She thought someone had made a mistake and sent them to the wrong room. Nurse Mandy came up to the bed.
“Oh, you’re awake. You slept a long time. It’s already ten o’clock.”
“Really? I haven’t slept that long in forever.”
“Well, it looks like that talk you had helped.”
“Who are the flowers for?”
“You.”
“From who?”
“Ian brought those for you. You were still sleeping though.”
“What time did he come by?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Is he coming back?” a frantic Monica asked.
“He’ll be back. Good news. You’re being released today.”
She sat there hoping he would be back before she was released. Then she thought what if he doesn’t come back, then what?
“Do you want me to hand you the card?”
“The card?”
“Yeah, the one stuck to the placard on the flowers.”
“Yes, please.”
She hadn’t seen it.
She handed her the card and she read it. It was actually a large card, not one of those small little things with a few words.
She kept reading the card’s contents over and over again.
The card read:
Hi Monica. I’m glad we got to speak about our similar situations. I think we have to thank one person and only one person for us talking. Dr. Caruso told me I should talk to you. I’m sure she’ll deny it if you ask her but you owe a debt of gratitude to her. I do talk to patients but I was not scheduled to be on your floor this week. I know this is kind of weird but I would like to talk with you more. I usually don’t ask patients out on dates but I think we have made a connection. I hope you thought the same thing. If not, I apologize. If yes, you’ll find my number on the bottom of this card.
She couldn’t believe it. Jennifer was right. He was handsome and cute. And he writes very well too. Ian was meant to come into her life.
A few minutes later, Dr. Caruso came into her room. She had some paperwork with her.
“Good news. We are releasing you this morning.”
“Great!”
“Your vitals all indicate that you are back to normal. I can safely say that you are cured.”
“Thank you.”
“Have fun with the rest of your life Monica.”
“Dr. Caruso, are you my guardian angel?”
She gave a wink.
The nurse told her she could change back into her clothes. She laid them on the bed for her. Once she changed clothes the nurse came back with a wheelchair to take her down to the ground floor. She helped her gather her flowers, card, paperwork, and other belongings.
“Oh, I forgot to call my friend to pick me up.”
“That’s taken care of already,” nurse Mandy said.
She wheeled her to the elevator for the ride down. It was quiet going down. She wondered how they had gotten Jennifer’s cell number. She guess they had looked at her phone but how did they know her password.
As the elevator doors opened, the hospital was bustling with people standing in line and roaming toward the elevators.
Nurse Mandy wheeled her through the double doors and out onto the sidewalk. There was a car waiting there but it wasn’t Jennifer’s rental car.
Someone got out of the car and came toward her.
“Hi,” Ian said.
“Ian!”
“I thought I’d take you home and we could talk, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, that’s more than okay.”
THE END
Conclusion
As we approach this Valentine’s Day, it looks like Monica found her Valentine. Some of us are still waiting for our Valentine (me, your author).
I hope you liked this piece of fiction. Some of the hospital information comes from real-world knowledge. My Mother has been in the hospital multiple times and I have learned so many things while there. I was lucky enough to take that knowledge and put it to great use through this fiction story. I only started this story a few days ago and it ballooned into this 3,000 word story.
Every day we come across things that we can mold into fiction. You might not think it’s possible, but I’ve just proved it is.
I’m looking for any and all feedback.
Please hit the like button if you like this story. Please share this story. Please Re-Stack it on Substack Notes. I want as many people as I can to read this story.
I’m so happy to be back creating fiction.
Until next time, happy reading!
-Matt
Goosepimpling, Matt! Thank you for another delightful read. Happy Valentine's Day!
A lovely story. Thanks so much Matt. Happy Valentine’s Day. 🤗💕💕