You Can Let Go Now

You Can Let Go Now

Bebe is only five years old. She is perched on her Pretty in Pink bicycle with her matching helmet, kneepads, and elbowpads. Her long black curls shoe underneath her helmet and her pale skin is flushed red with anticipation. Her flashing green are filled with determination. Her father stands behind her, carefully removing the training wheels as he holds the bike steady. Her mother stands on their lawn, holding a camera and looking at the two expectantly. She leans on her hip and waves encouragingly at Bebe as her father finishes the removal of the wheels.

"Are you ready, Bebe?" her father asks dramatically, making Bebe giggle as she nods her head. "Well then, let's go!"

Bebe starts pedaling as her father runs behind her, holding on to the back of the bike with an iron grip. Her mother snaps a picture as they race by her, and Bebe's grin spreads from ear to ear until she realizes that her father is still holding on to her seat.

"Daddy, you can let go now!" she yells as the wind rushes through their ears. He does, and she is riding easily down the sidewalk, laughing delightedly.

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Bebe and her family arrive at the luxurious college campus, and Bebe can not stop smiling. She is finally going to be a famous psychiatrist. She practically leaps out of the cramped car, her luggage in tow as a handsome junior boy offers to take her bags inside. She considers it, but one look at her father's face and she declines with a polite smile. The boy looks between Bebe and her father, then winks knowingly. Bebe's father turns to her as the junior walks off.

"We're so happy for you Bebe," he says gruffly, "but if that sort of thing is going to happen everyday, I'll just pull you out of college right now." Bebe laughs as her mother elbows her father in the stomach. He mumbles a half-hearted apology, and Bebe picks up a few of her bags as her parents walk her to the dorm.

It's quiet on the way there, and it isn't until she reaches the building and turns around that Bebe realizes her parents have been crying. She can't help but smile at them; they're both a mess.

"You guys can't come into the dorm," she says softly. "It's girl students only in there. We'll have to say our goodbyes out-"

Before Bebe can finish her sentence, her father crushes her small figure with a fierce hug. "I'm gonna miss you, kiddo," he whispers. Bebe tries to laugh, but she can't breathe. She makes desperate signs to her mother as her lungs nearly collapse, but her mother seems to feel the same way as her father.

"Daddy, you can let go now!" she wheezes breathlessly, caught between laughter and tears.

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Bebe sits at her father's side, holding his hand as the nurse in charge of the night shift walks in. Her husband sits in the corner with her three-year- old son, a splitting image of Bebe, and her mother sits on the other side the hospital bed, clenching the other hand available as tears flow down her face. The nurse politely informs them that the doctor will be in shortly as she looks over the charts at the end of the bed. The expression on her face does not imply improvement. Bebe's husband nods slowly; he's the only one in the room who can bring himself to move.

A few minutes pass silently, and Bebe sends a prayer to every god she can remember reading about that this time there is some good news. The doctor eventually walks in, and he wears a look on his face that Bebe recognizes from her psychiatry classes. He has bad news.

"Doctor, please," Bebe whispers hoarsely, looking down at her father wearily as the aging doctor opens his mouth. "Don't sugar coat things. What's gone wrong?"

The doctor closes his mouth, then opens it again. Closes. Opens. He sighs deeply, and Bebe looks him straight in the eyes. He blinks in surprise. The dark circles under her eyes are extremely pronounced, but the fierceness behind her eyes dares him to tell anything but the truth.

"At this point," he says slowly, "There's not much else we can do unless you want him on life support forever. He's fallen into a coma he's not likely to wake up from. We caught the disease too late, and the only decision left to make is how long you want him to suffer."

Bebe flinches away from the sound of the last word. She falls back in her chair, suddenly looked very exhausted as she strokes her father's hand. Her mother takes over from there, but Bebe hears nothing she says.

The next few hours pass by in a blur, and Bebe can only remember three things: her mother finally agreeing to sign the papers, the slowing beep-beep of the heart monitor as the nurse turned off the life support, and her whispering into her father's ear, "Daddy, you can let go now."