Ellie’s Albatross

Ron Prasad

Description

A chronically-ill former marathon runner sets out on a life-affirming journey, to discover the secrets to her healing, love, and hope.
ELLIE’S ALBATROSS follows Ellie Price; a chronically-ill former marathon runner, who sets out on a life-affirming journey to uncover the secrets to her healing— after suffering an unexpected and devastating loss. She is faced with two choices: succumb to the grief, or find a way to bring meaning to her life again. Award winning author Ron Prasad delivers an inspiring story about rediscovering love, hope, and inner strength— to ultimately, bring light to the darkness. This novel was written as a fictionalized love letter to the author’s wife who herself, suffers from illness— and invites readers to stand up and cheer on this most resilient of female protagonists; one of whom, perhaps, they can see themselves in.

Sujets

• Women
• Literary fiction
• Healing
• Medicine
• Health
• Hope
• Love
• Novel
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663245601
• Langue: English

Extrait

ELLIE’S ALBATROSS
A NOVEL
 
 
 
RON PRASAD
 
 
 

 
 
ELLIE’S ALBATROSS
A NOVEL
 
Copyright © 2022 Ron Prasad.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4561-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4570-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4560-1 (e)
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 09/23/2022
Contents
Part I Affliction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part II Abyss
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part III Ascent
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Part IV Metamorphosis
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
For my wife
Part I
Affliction
I will love the light for it shows me the way;
yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the s tars.
– Og Mandino
Chapter One
Ellie Price knelt on the kitchen floor, too exhausted to cry anymore. She looked down at her trembling hands. In her left, a tuft of her own crimson hair. In the other, a large serrated chef’s knife— the same one she used to cut fruit for breakfast each morning.
She leaned her head back against the lower kitchen cabinet in utter defeat, glanced at heaven above, and begged for some sense of guidance.
Each cell in her body buzzed at an immeasurable vibrational frequency.
Through her right eye, a miniscule, but nagging blind spot obscured her vision, while deafening tinnitus rang through her head: daily reminders of the burden she carried.
In that moment, Ellie missed her mother; like she always did when the pain was this bad.
The depth of her loss was profound. Her sense of self was long gone, like her mother. Only an infinite chasm remained; and Ellie’s heart ached, more than even her ribs.
Ellie swallowed watery saliva, and grit her teeth, trying to suppress the dizzying nausea from enveloping her brain. But it was unrelenting.
She swallowed again.
She wished things hadn’t changed, and yearned for who she used to be: a loving wife, a successful career woman, a marathon runner— a human being, who desired a future. At thirty-six years old, she’d been robbed of so much already. She ached for a life with some joy; she’d take any little moment. Ellie wanted her job back. Friends. She had wanted children once, and to hear their laughter throughout their home. She wanted to run again, even just a single mile.
These days, Ellie was but an apparition of herself, hovering in a constant realm of pain, dizziness, and insomnia.
That’s who she was now: a ghost in shackles, bound to her home.
The sounds of the rain outside fused together with her vertigo, conjuring a tempest storm inside her every cell. Her muscles buzzed in agony. She gnashed her teeth, until her jaw muscles began to seize.
Ellie pushed up and got to her feet, using the white quartz countertop as a balance. Still feeling light-headed, she made her way down the hall towards the room where her husband and dogs slept, kitchen knife still quivering in her right hand. She held the wall as she walked, to keep the world from collapsing unto itself.
When she walked past the glass French doors to her husband’s office, she stopped to examine her reflection. Standing at five-foot-five, her height was the only thing about her appearance that hadn’t changed in the last few years. Aside from that, she could barely recognize her own face. Her once vibrant and lustrous red hair had diminished into a wispy, dull veil; thinning by the day. Her face was gaunt and colorless, making her green eyes fade into her skull. They had once stood out, gleaming with vitality— but not anymore, and she struggled to remember when they weren’t so pale, and so void of life. The curves and muscle tone she’d developed as a runner, had all but wasted away. Thin limbs were all that remained. She tried to mask her figure in the oversized T-shirt and sweatpants she wore around the house, but it only made it worse. Her heart sunk. Ellie no longer felt like a woman. Like a human being. She wondered if her husband was still attracted to her.
She turned away.
Shuffling, Ellie finally reached the doorway of the master bedroom. She steadied herself against the frame. From behind her, weak ambient light poured into the dark room. Ellie looked down at her left fist. Then, to the knife clutched in her right hand.
She stared, using the dim light to make out a faint pulse in her wrist; beating blood to her veins, pumping life to her vital organs. Ellie looked into the bedroom, and gazed at her little family in sorrow, listening to their steady breathing.
Was it like this for mom? she thought to herself.
In a pass between the waves of vertigo, she was instantly overwhelmed with guilt and remorse. Anxiety flared like a strobe light in her chest.
There’s no way.
No way I could do this to them.
Ellie hung her head down, and backed away.
She slunk back into the kitchen and opened the dishwasher, slipping the blade on the top rack. She discarded the loose hair from her hand into the garbage can, and covered it with some crumpled paper towels. She stuffed it lower and added more paper towels; hoping her husband wouldn’t see the mass of ruby strands, as he made his breakfast in the morning. He would know exactly what had gone on the night before.
Ellie glanced at the microwave clock.
4:3 4 am .
She turned off the lights, and stumbled into the bedroom— this time with no knife. On her way, Ellie stopped to steady herself against the vertigo.
There was utter stillness in the house; too early for even the morning birds outside. She wished she still had the resolve to pray, but any shred of faith had left her long ago. She had never felt so alone. So angry.
Ellie looked past the dark hallway, towards the front entry. She gazed at the stars through the transom window above the entry door. She adjusted her footing so that she could make out the moon beaming in the night sky. Her lips pursed. Through that window, and still steadied against the wall, she whispered to God directly. “I wished You did exist, just so I could hate You.”
Instantly, her heart panged. She unfurled her balled fists, and hung her head low, trying to regulate her breathing. Remorsefully, Ellie took the thought back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the darkness.
Ellie crawled silently into bed next to her sleeping husband, laid her head on the pillow, and stared up at the ceiling.
Please take this pain away, Ellie begged.
She listened in silence for the voice of God, hoping for a response.
But nothing came.
Chapter Two
A loud gust of screeching wind awakened Bishop Price before his alarm did. He snapped up in bed, confused. He could feel the mid-February cold penetrating through the windows, even behind the blackout drapes. He shuddered.
Hesitantly, Bishop arose and peered through the blinds. Frigid darkness consumed any sign of early light that the universe could muster. During an average West Coast winter, the world wasn’t lit until after eight in the morning, and darkness could set in as early as three-o-clock in the afternoon. This year, the city seemed to have skipped the fall season entirely, and leapt from the warmth of late summer, to the bleakness of winter without a moment’s hesitation.
“Fuck you,” Bishop whispered to the rain outside. His words created a mini-explosion of condensation on the cold window.
He got back into bed, and pondered taking a sick day; although he knew he was kidding himself. Bishop never took sick days.
He squinted in the darkness, rubbed his dry eyes, and made sure his wife Ellie was still sleeping to the right of him. Although not entirely certain it was her, the form of her body shaped underneath the white duvet cover. He wondered if she was awake.
“Ellie?” he whispered.
No response.
Bishop hadn’t experienced a restful sleep in months, but not like her. He wouldn’t dare complain about not sleeping. She was a bona fide insomniac.
When he did sleep, it was fragmented, and it never took much to heave him back into the waking world.
When he woke, it was always as if he was suddenly plummeting from the sky.
Bishop massaged his temples with firm pressure, and moved onto the base of his skull. As he did so, he regretfully glanced down at the shape of his sleep apnea machine near the foot of the be