Chapter Six

When Breanna's step father came home, he seemed disheveled. He seemed sad and broken and while she knew what was happening, she hoped that everything would be okay. She didn't want to push for answers, but she asked what had happened. When he didn't answer, she stopped asking. The next day he told her that the doctors said "She has a good chance of surviving". The next three days were forever burned into her mind, constantly driving her to the verge of giving up. When day two came, the word was "She has a 50/50 chance of surviving". Breanna tried her best to not show the pain that she was in. She didn't want anyone to know that this was destroying her and that she didn't know what to do. On day three, her father looked at her with tear filled eyes. She loathed this moment even though she still hoped that her mother would make it through this. "The lights are on, but no one is home." Everything in her screamed when her father told her that they had to say goodbye that night. She could feel her body tremble, her mind become fuzzy, her heart shatter. Her mind told her that her mother would want her to be strong, so Breanna stood straighter, trying to muster as much strength as she could. Her grandmother, Vanessa, flew down and met them at the airport so they all could go to the hospital.

Inside the hospital, Breanna could hear machines. She could smell what seemed like death and she felt as if she were floating. They were given a room so that they could all get their bearings. One at a time, they said their goodbyes. Breanna went after her grandmother and she sat in the chair next to the bed. Her father's words replayed in her mind over and over. "The lights are on, but no one is home". "She is unresponsive to light, pain, and touch". She had cut her hair, which had grown just past her shoulders, for her mother. She placed the hair into her mother's hand before taking her mother's hand into hers. Breanna was an empath and had been for years. She didn't know how it worked, but she knew that she could feel what someone else felt especially if she touched them. She looked to her mother's face and could see that there were tears falling from her closed eyes. Her mother was shaking and Breanna wanted to scream that they couldn't let her go. She burst into tears, sobbing like a child. All she could say was "I love you". A hand rested on her shoulder, but she didn't care enough to turn and look at who it was. She just knew that it was heavy.

Something that was more painful than seeing her mother for the last time was watching her father kneel next to her little brother and whisper in his ear. The screams that came from that small child sent shivers through her body. She can still remember the screams as if she heard them yesterday. She always tried her best to protect Keegan, afraid of him experiencing intense pain. Breanna doesn't remember when she left the room, but she wasn't there when her mother was taken off life support. She was in the other room looking at her father's jacket on the chair across from her. His wallet had fallen out and onto the chair, startling her. His wallet was metal with a clasp to hold it shut. She got up to check the pocket. It was against the back side of the chair and there was a lip that would keep it from falling out. She couldn't figure out how it fell out and went around the chair. Believing it was her mother, she placed everything back into the wallet and placed the wallet back into the jacket pocket before sitting back down.

Tangela Brianne (Harris) Parten died on April 16, 2014 at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was during a blood moon. When they were leaving the hospital, her grandma Vanessa told her that nothing seemed real. That it seemed like a joke and that she heard Tangela yell "MOM!!" Breanna didn't know it then, but her grandmother had started the first stage of grief mixed with disassociation. Breanna walked outside and looked up at the sky. She wasn't sure why she did, but she stood and stared for a long moment. This moment could never be changed or made better and she knew life would be hard from here on out.