Blank Pages: Rediscovering Love

At twenty-seven years old, Sara made many mistakes, most of them for love. She crawled and dug so deep for love that it became impossible to see an exit, a way to undo the impulsive and wicked deeds she had committed. Did she regret them? Normally, the answer would be a cheerful and confident "No," but on that day, the "Yes" tore her heart apart, much like Rodrigo Montenegro, her beloved and idolized husband, had just done.

Clutching her black purse close to her slender body covered by a red dress, she stepped out of the elevator with brisk strides, the thin heels echoing through her husband's company parking lot. Near her Red Corvette, parked in a privileged spot close to the elevators, she pressed the button to unlock the vehicle and disarm the alarm. They were among the few perks gained from marrying the insensitive Montenegro, something she would exchange without a second thought for a place in his heart.

She got into the car, slamming the door with excessive force, and after tossing her purse onto the seat beside her, fastened her seatbelt and slumped against the seat. She took a deep breath and rubbed her fingers against her eyes, trying to calm herself and dry the tears that wouldn't stop flowing. It was in vain, the only result was smudging her always perfect makeup, staining her face and hands.

She couldn't bear her empty life anymore, her frigid marriage, loving without being loved in return. She didn't want to live like this anymore.

Giving up on controlling the tears and needing to escape from what caused her suffering-the beloved man-she started the car. She sped out onto the rain-soaked streets, rain that had been falling since morning. With her vision blurred by crying, she saw the road as a smeared canvas, the lights and cars all hazy.

"Creep... How could you...?" she mumbled, fiercely pounding her right hand on the steering wheel, feeling her throat sore and her heart shattered.

She felt lost, her emotions out of control. Above all, she felt betrayed and abandoned.

Her phone rang from inside her purse. She knew who it was, and she wouldn't answer under any circumstances.

"Bastard... Who does he think he is...?"

She didn't deserve such disrespect, especially not from the person who made her give up her dreams, to whom she had dedicated every second of her life since meeting him. Rodrigo, the love of her life, had taken possession of her heart, manipulated it, and now-when he was all she had in the world-he had taken him out of her chest and trampled him mercilessly.

The cell phone's ring persisted, infuriating her. The bastard knew how to be persistent when he wanted to be.

Nervously, she gripped the steering wheel with her left hand and used her right hand to open her purse, rummaging through its contents in search of the device. She grabbed the rectangular object and looked at the screen, searching for the name confirming the caller. Tears blurred her vision, leaving her with no choice but to answer. Upon doing so, she immediately recognized the deep voice.

"Sara, the doorman said you left at high speed. What are you planning? To kill yourself?"

"Oh, you'd love that... Then you'd be rid of me..." she mocked furiously, her voice pained and her soul shattered.

With her sight clouded by tears and her senses unsteady, she pressed hard on the accelerator. It hurt so much to love him, to envision a lifetime of happiness by his side in her mind, and realize it would never come true. He would never love and desire her the way he loved and desired the other.

"Don't speak nonsense and don't be reckless. Come back so we can talk."

They always followed the same script. He hurt her with his lack of love and then claimed she was irrational. This time she wouldn't obey him, wouldn't swallow her pride and self-respect to appease him. She would never kneel again, begging for forgiveness and a chance to prove she could be enough.

"Reckless... Nonsense...?" She laughed bitterly, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel, her foot pressing even harder on the accelerator. "I did everything to please you... I abandoned my dreams for the sake of loving you... And look how you thanked me... And I'm the reckless one...?" She screamed with all the strength she had left, her voice piercing through her tears. "You're no good... Loving you is the biggest mistake of my life..."

"Screaming won't solve our problems, it just annoys me, Sara."

She laughed hysterically, taking her other hand off the wheel to rub her eyes and wipe away the tears clouding her vision.

"Everything annoys you," she retorted, tired of being blamed as the problem in their relationship, tired of fighting for that marriage. "Nothing makes you happy... I'm tired of trying... I wish I'd never fallen in love with a self-centered, heartless person..." Feeling the car veer to the side and hearing the loud honk of the vehicle behind hers, she returned her free hand to the wheel, still unable to see anything ahead of her. She had given everything to Rodrigo, and in return, received nothing. "If I could, I'd erase the past few years and wipe you from my heart forever..."

She hadn't even finished unloading all her anger and frustration when, as she drove over a puddle of water, the car skidded. Letting go of the cellphone, Sara tightly gripped the steering wheel and slammed hard on the brakes, which turned out to be a mistake. The car pitched forward, flipped several times, and at high speed, violently collided with a wall, the terrifying crash rising above the noise of the rain and the other cars braking to avoid colliding with the out-of-control vehicle.

Upon impact, she instantly lost consciousness, her head falling forward, blood streaming down her face, her body trapped in the wreckage. She didn't see the cars slowing down and stopping around the accident, she didn't hear the people screaming as they tried to wake her up, nor the sirens. She also didn't hear the voice, always cold and composed, on the other side of the phone, thrown out of the vehicle during the crash, raising its volume and showing, for the first time in ten years, concern for her.

"Sara, what was that noise? What happened? Sara, please respond!"

The corridor in front of her was long, the floor, walls, and ceiling were white with small golden inscriptions covering them. Sara tried to read what they said, but she couldn't, they seemed to fade with every effort she made to understand them.

The place was well-lit, and there were huge books on each side, all with enormous numbers in the middle and her name, Sara Almeida, in shining golden letters. Feeling tiny next to the large bound volumes, Sara walked slowly.

As she stopped in front of a book, it opened. Pages turned slowly, letters formed words, sentences, and merged until, as if by magic, Sara was transported into a scene related to the book's number.

In volume seven, she saw herself as a child, looking at her mother talking on the phone. Her miniature version admired the immaculately white uniform - a work uniform from the general hospital of Cezário - as well as the light brown hair tied in a bun.

Minerva Almeida's face was red, her eyes furious, and her voice was growing irritable with each second of the call. Worried, young Sara walked up to her mother, who repelled her without even looking, failing to notice that the rejection filled her daughter's green eyes with tears.

Young Sara ran, passing by the observing Sara, entering the room, throwing herself on the bed, and giving in to tears. Minerva ended the call minutes later and called for her daughter. Her younger version swallowed her tears and went to her mother, hoping for a hug, a show of affection. However, in her usual hurry, Minerva took her to the neighbor, asking her to watch over the daughter while she worked.

Bearing the memory of her mother's consistent lack of affection, the observing Sara continued walking, seeing other sad, happy, idle, and silent moments of her life in each volume.

In number twelve, she watched her teenage version walk hand in hand with her first boyfriend. They smiled, the sun illuminating their faces, their bodies drawing closer. She could feel, as if overshadowing the memory's reactions, the ache in her face from smiling so much.

In fifteen, she was in the bedroom of her second boyfriend. Eager hands, clothes being thrown aside, an afternoon of discoveries at his house after, recklessly, skipping class.

In sixteen, she cried copiously. Her mother reproved her, saying she was weak, emotional, that she should value herself.

The next one, number seventeen, didn't open, didn't flip, nor did it show any scenes to the observing Sara. Curious, she walked over to it and opened it with her own hands, having to exert all her strength due to the enormous size of the cover and the pages. On the first page, instead of being golden, the letters were gray, fixed, but even so, Sara couldn't read them. She turned more and more pages, but they were all the same. There were no memories, she couldn't read what was written, and when she strained her eyes and mind to comprehend something, the letters vanished, leaving only blank pages.

She moved on to the other volumes, feeling a crushing sensation in her chest, a feeling of mistake, of lack, and, just like sixteen, the ones after it were the same. Gray letters that disappeared when she tried to read them. She noticed that the numbers and the name on the cover also had a different color from the previous ones, they were gray, almost faded.

Distressed, turning more and more pages of volume twenty, where the words vanished as she looked at them, she was startled when the lights flickered, and a terrifying echo reverberated through the corridor.

"Within these pages, there are only words that hurt and bleed."

That's when she saw her, standing in front of the last volume in the corridor, her hand resting on the middle of the large number twenty-seven. Unlike the other volumes, this one had red numbering, and the surname was erased. She couldn't see the woman's face, both due to the distance and because she was facing the number. But she could tell she wore a knee-length red dress, bare feet, her hair a mass of unruly copper strands.

"The book of love is like a cruel game. You win it only to lose. I waste my time watching the days go by, feeling insignificant, hoping that you'll think of me, that you'll say you love me."

The woman fell to her knees on the ground, her hands on her face, tears dropping onto her dress.

The sobbing intensified, disturbing Sara. She wanted to approach, but felt her legs heavy and her feet rooted to the ground. She opened her mouth, wanting to console, to ask what weighed on the woman in red, but no words came out of her throat.

The woman lifted her eyes, two bright green circles, focused on Sara, her face twisted with pain and fiery hatred.

"If I could, I'd erase the past few years and wipe you from my heart forever."

Those words struck Sara like punches all over her body, pushing her backward with tremendous force, violently pounding her head. Her vision darkened, and everything around her disappeared, yet she could still hear the painful sobbing of the woman in red mixed with a high-pitched noise.

~*~

An annoying and persistent noise infiltrated her ears, spreading throbbing and painfully from the roots of her hair to her eyebrows. She forced her eyelids to open. A crack was enough to make her groan, the light intensifying the pain in every inch of her head, causing her to close her eyes with a trembling moan.

Confused, with a pasty sensation on her tongue, and her arms and legs weighing heavily like lead, Sara persisted and, blinking to adapt to the brightness, managed to see her surroundings. And she didn't recognize anything.

She tried to move, but not only were her arms heavy, they were connected to wires, needles, gauze, and so much apparatus that she feared what would happen if she disconnected them without help.

"Where am I...?" she asked, her voice coming out shrill, her throat dry and scratchy.

The lack of a response filled her with despair, as did the pains all over her body. She couldn't comprehend how she ended up in that situation.

To Sara's relief, a woman all in white appeared in her still-blurred field of vision. Just like her sight, her hearing was impaired, as she moved her lips, but nothing seemed comprehensible to Sara's confused mind.

"Where am I?" she repeated the question with effort, her dry and sore throat making speech difficult.

Instead of making Sara understand what she was saying, the woman stepped away.

The sound of the closing door reverberated painfully in Sara's eardrums, causing her to curl up on the bed, her face a mask of pain.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm her heart and not panic. She raised her hand slowly, bringing it to her face when she noticed something on her nose. More tubes. She continued to explore, her fingers finding a cloth around her head. Bandages, she assumed, concluding that the sharp pains in her head were due to some injury there.

She blinked to clear her vision and mind, forcing herself to grasp the objects. Gradually, she focused on the things around her. She was in a spacious room with white walls, floor, and furniture. To her right, there was a machine emitting an annoying noise, several wires emerging from it and connecting to her body. To the left, there was a dresser, crowded with vases of various types of flowers, cards, and teddy bears, a closed window, and an armchair. In front of her, mounted on the ceiling, a television was on, broadcasting a conversation among a group of people. It was evident that she was in a hospital room.

"What happened to me?" No coherent information came to her mind, nothing explained how she ended up in that situation, no matter how hard she tried.

She groaned, closing her eyes tightly as an intense pain made everything around her spin.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she heard footsteps approaching. She opened her eyes and saw two women passing through the open door. One was short, with brown hair tied in a high bun, wearing a white dress. The other, wearing pants and a white lab coat, was tall and had long blonde hair pinned at the nape of her neck. She didn't recognize the first one, but quickly identified the second.

"Godmother...? What... happened...?" she asked with difficulty, her dry throat and sticky tongue hindering her speech.

Tatiana Santana, her mother's best friend, her godmother, and a renowned doctor in São Paulo, approached with a relieved smile.

"We're at the hospital, dear." She held Sara's hand affectionately. "You were in a coma for two weeks after the accident. You terrified everyone." Her voice conveyed concern and reproach as she questioned, "What were you thinking, Sara? You know what happens when you drive at high speeds. You could have hurt other people or died. Don't do that again, I forbid you."

As a doctor, Tatiana knew she should comfort patients, but this young woman was her protege, goddaughter, and the daughter of her best friend who died in a similar accident to Sara's. She had to put some sense into her head.

"What accident...?" she asked, feeling her head spin as she tried to grasp what she was hearing. It was as if she had lead all over her body, pressing on her brain, pushing it into the void of incomprehension, crushing her body, and keeping her pinned to the bed. "I don't even know how to drive," she whispered, confused by the accusation. It didn't make sense.

"Don't worry. It's normal to forget some facts after being in a coma for so long." Tatiana gestured to the other woman. "This is your private nurse, Silvia Vasques," she introduced, before declaring with a smile, "Rodrigo insisted on hiring her to be by your side all the time. He did everything to ensure your comfort," she said, hoping the information would brighten her goddaughter's mood, as her world revolved around her husband.

"Who is Rodrigo?" Sara asked confused, not recognizing the name or understanding its importance in her life.

The doctor's eyes narrowed, analyzing Sara with even more attention and concern.

"Sara, what is the last significant memory you have?"

When pondering the question, Sara felt her mind scrambled, her head heavy, and once again, an immense pain almost made her faint.

"What do you mean? What kind?" she asked with her eyelids closed, massaging her forehead with her hand, relief not coming as desired. On the contrary, even her touch felt like needles pricking her skin.

"Birthday, graduation, funeral, baptism, or wedding." The doctor pointed, attentive to any change in her goddaughter's expression with the mentioned words. She saw nothing, not even a glimmer that any of them impacted her in any way.

Sara didn't quite understand why, but she had a slight impression that her godmother emphasized the last word.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, a method her mother said aligned thoughts, and tried to remember something. Her mind was slow, but eventually, she approached an answer.

"We had a slumber party at Isabel's house." She looked upwards thoughtfully before continuing. "She managed to pass in math or physics... I don't remember exactly which subject... Isabel, Laura, and I celebrated by listening to music, dancing, and eating popcorn."

Her response didn't seem to please her godmother, as she pursed her lips with clear distaste.

"Do you know what year it is, Sara?"

This question was easy.

"2008."

Again, a look of distaste. Apparently, this answer didn't please her either, but she didn't ask further.

With the help of Nurse Silvia, Tatiana examined her, and in the end, the nurse left and returned with a small bottle for Tatiana.

"Take this medicine and rest a bit," her godmother instructed, handing her a pill and a glass of water. "Later, I'll run some more tests."

She obeyed, both because of Tatiana's tone, who never accepted "no" as an answer, and because she felt heavy and sore. She took the medication, adjusted herself in bed, and closed her eyes. Resting seemed like a great idea.