Short Story,,,, "Our Team"

 Location: Poplar Point Campground (North Carolina state park on Jordan Lake), about 30 minutes west of Raleigh, North Carolina

Warning: this is a short story and NOT a travel post. I'll make a travel post next week since I have explorations planned for being on the Atlantic coast on Monday. 

These stories start swirling in my head and the only way to stop them is by writing them down. They come out quickly, usually taking a few hours and maybe two cups of coffee. Hope you like it. 

Our Team

 

She had the prettiest blonde hair and the deepest blue eyes. As soon as she looked at him, he knew he had to meet her. He made up a flimsy excuse, asking her about the importance of orange juice or something like that. She saw right through his act and told him, “If you want to meet me, just ask. Honesty is always the best way to do anything. Honesty builds trust, trust builds respect and respect builds love”. Little did he know how those words would play a role in their lives.

Using honesty, he won her heart, and they married just a short six months after their first date. They called themselves a “team”. Their dates were “team meetings”. It was a summer wedding, and the invitations billed it as a “team building exercise”. The bright blue sky was the perfect background to her stunning white wedding gown. All her friends and family knew she deserved and earned the right to be wearing white. Her sparkling blue eyes seemed to be competing with the sky as to which was bluer. They were both head over heels in love with each other and it showed. To everyone attending the wedding, they knew their marriage would know no limits and their unbreakable love would guide them into the future.

As the years rolled by, they became a little more financially secure. Eventually, after one of their “team meetings” consisting of wine, dinner and dancing, a vote was taken concerning a subject that had been postponed for a while. It was decided unanimously to increase the size of the “team”. The pregnancy was a difficult one. It was filled with gestational diabetes, fluctuating blood pressure spikes and weeks of endless bed rest. But through it all, they faced it together as a team. Two people, one team. As a team, they discussed options and decided that natural childbirth would be the way to go. The childbirth was long and arduous with heavy labor pains. He never left her side, saying “,,,they were teammates, and they would be together through it all.” During the more difficult pains, they would hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes until it passed. The hospital staff spoke, almost reverently, about their obvious love for each other. It would certainly become legendary as doctors and nurses spoke about what they saw. After sixteen hours of labor and no helping drugs, they finally saw what their love had produced. The “home team” had not only increased in size, but it had doubled. Twin girls!

Things didn’t go well after they got home from the hospital. She was not as attentive to the babies as most new mothers. He chalked it up to the intensive labor and proudly took care of the babies on his own as well as her. Weeks stretched into months with very little change. Doctors were talking about post-partum this and post-partum that but all he wanted was the magic words that would fix his wife. He tried everything, but nothing worked. She began to complain about some of the smallest things he did or didn’t do. He was walking around on eggshells and stress filled the house. She began talking about not being seen as a woman anymore but only as a wife and mother. It was as though she had lost her identity and was no longer a part of the “team”. She referred to herself as being invisible.  

One Friday night, she was invited to a girl’s night out party at the home of one of her friends. It was thought a party with her girl-friends would pull her out of her funk. He encouraged her to go, have fun and if she drank too much, to spend the night at her friend’s house. Neither she nor he knew that some of her girlfriends had other ideas about what was needed to help cure her. When she got to the party, six of her girlfriends were there. Most were single but not all. When a few drinks didn’t loosen her up, one of her friends offered her something that would ‘take the edge” off. She refused and said she had never taken drugs, not even in labor, and wouldn’t start now. The friends, thinking they knew better, put the drug into her next drink. It was then that the boyfriends of the single girls showed up. She knew nothing good was going to happen with mixed company, so she stood up to go home but fell back onto the couch. Whatever they spiked her drink with was beginning to take effect.

She woke up the next morning with her head hurting and was shocked to find a naked man lying next to her. She remembered everything and was crushed. She knew that she had let the entire “team” down. But what was she going to do? She couldn’t go home, not now, not after what she had done. The man woke up and said, “Good morning, hot stuff”, not realizing that she was crying because her entire world had just crashed around her. She asked who he was. He introduced himself as the friend of her girlfriend and said he was just passing through town on his way to the west coast. Her girlfriend entered the room and said, “I’m glad ya’ll have met. He is the one that had the drug that cured you. Then seeing them still in bed together, she laughingly added, I can see he gave you something else too”.

The drugs seemed to have pushed her completely over the edge. She felt totally lost and unsure what to do. Finally, she made her decision. She had proven she wasn’t worthy of being part of the team or raising two beautiful little girls. She turned to the man and asked him to take her with him to the west coast. He immediately agreed. She said they would have to leave quickly but she had to make one stop first. She knew her husband was at work and the babies were with the babysitter, so she drove to her house with the man following in his van. She gathered only a few of her personal belongings but nothing from the team. After placing her bag in the van, she turned and ran back into the house. She removed every picture of herself from the walls, gathered every photo album that contained her picture and placed them in the fireplace. With a flick of the match, they were completely set ablaze. She then turned her attention to the home laptop and scrubbed it clean of all pictures and erased those stored in the cloud. It was as if she was erasing herself from the team. She had felt invisible before and now she was determined to make herself truly invisible. As she reached the door to begin her new future, she turned and looked once again on what she knew was going to be her past, and a single tear fell.

As he turned into their driveway, he saw her car and knew she must be home. The twins were laughing as he carried them from the car. He was eager to have the team together once again so she could tell him how her night went. They passed through the door, and he immediately smelled the hint of smoke. He glanced at the fireplace and saw a few tendrils of smoke rising from a pile of ashes with small pieces of pictures around the edge. He was puzzled as he set the babies in their playpen. It was then he noticed the open laptop on the kitchen table. Alongside it was her cell phone, wedding ring, car keys and a single note, with two words, “Forgive me”.

Over the years he searched for answers everywhere, but none was to be found. He knew her girlfriends knew more than they were saying but he got no answers from them either. She was an only child, and her folks had passed away a few years back so there wasn’t any family to ask about her whereabouts. He and the twins had been the only family she had left. With few clues to go on, he admitted defeat and focused on being the best single father to the twins that he could be. After all, they were a team, right?

The call came on the first birthday of the twins. It was from an unknown number, but he answered it anyway. At first there was silence, then he heard her. Although low and sad, he recognized her voice immediately. The only words spoken were the question, “Forgive me?”. He didn’t respond, he was incapable of saying anything. After several seconds, he heard a muffled sigh, then the call ended. This event repeated itself every year on the twin’s birthday with her two words and his silence. One year he became worried because the call didn’t come. The following week he found a note taped on the front door. It had mysteriously been placed there during the night. It was a simple note that seemed to have been scribbled by a shaky hand. It read, “Team Meeting (original members only): 9^th Street Diner at 10:00 am.”

He arrived early and found a booth in the back where he could keep an eye on the door. She entered the diner with her head down and shoulders slumped. At first, he barely recognized her. Her hair was thinner and stringy. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, and the blueness of her eyes had been replaced with a dull luster. With a long sleeve shirt, she tried to cover them, but he could see her piercing and tattoos peeking out. Both were things she said she would never do. When she finally got to the booth, she plopped down as if she had just run in a marathon. She looked exhausted and worn out.

At first neither knew what to say so they just sat in silence. Finally, she spoke. She said, “There isn’t anything I can say to make it right. I did something that night, 5 years ago, and I just couldn’t forgive myself. I knew that you and the twins could never look at me the same anymore, so I thought it would be best just to disappear. After disappearing, I did things that I’m not proud of and some things I was told I did but don’t remember. I’ve taken some drugs that took a hold of me and won’t let me go. I’ve also been given something by somebody, and the doctors say I can’t get rid of it. That’s one of the reasons for meeting in person. I don’t expect anything from you and I’m not asking for anything. I don’t deserve it. I just wanted to let you know in person that there won’t be any more calls in the future. I thought you at least deserved that. When I leave here, I’m going back to Oregon where there is a facility that will help me face the end.”

He started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips and whispered, “no, it will be easier if you don’t say anything”. “There is one final request I hope you can do for me.” She slid a worn picture, face down, across the table. She told him that it is the only one she didn’t burn that day and she’s carried it with her ever since.

She finished speaking by saying, “There will come a day when the twins ask you what I looked like. Give them this picture”. With that, she got up to leave. When she had taken a few steps towards the door, he said, “Hey Team-mate, I forgive you”. Hearing those words, she didn’t turn around but did straighten up a little more and raised her head as a little pride was restored. After she left, he turned the picture over and it was one from their wedding. They were standing together, smiling with love while her eyes were competing with the blue sky. At the bottom were the words, “Our Team”.   

 

 

Darrell Goza

May 24, 2025