“I won’t”
She tried again later. And again. Still that same soft scolding voice. Like she knew best. By the third time, I was shaking so hard the bed rattled beneath me. My teeth chattered even though I wasn’t cold. My skin buzzed, every nerve lit up and screaming.
They brought medication anyway. Stated I was unstable and unable to think for myself. They ordered a psych evaluation.
I screamed when they tried to push it. The sound ripped out of me before I could stop it. Raw, animal, desperate. I thrashed, hands clawing at the sheets, chest heaving like I was drowning on dry land.
“Get away from me,” I sobbed. “Please. Just leave me alone.”
I yanked at the IVs with hands that barely felt like mine, pain flaring bright and sharp. A clean, cutting sensation that made my vision white out for a second.
Good. I wanted that. I wanted something that hurt in a way I could feel. They froze. Voices hushed. Someone cursed softly under their breath.
They pinned me to the bed until the last of my energy left me. Eventually, they bargained. A new nurse came in, older than the others. She looked at me with sympathetic eyes. Sat with me as I whimpered and cried uncontrollably. She offered fresh IVs. No sedatives. No pain relief. Just enough to keep me hydrated and lucid.
I nodded immediately, tears still sliding down my face. My body ached everywhere—deep, bone-heavy pain that sat in my muscles and joints like lead but it was mine. It reminded me I was still here.
They left me alone after that. Alone with my pain. Alone with the memory of the one person I couldn’t forget.
Morning came without my permission.
Gray light leaked through the narrow window, thin and anemic, like it didn’t belong to the day outside. I stared at it until my eyes burned, until the pounding in my skull synced with the steady beep of machines that didn’t care whether I stayed or broke apart. My body felt wrong—too heavy, too distant—like it wasn’t fully mine anymore.
They said they wanted to keep me for observation.
I said no and demanded to be discharged. Said I was fine. Said I would walk out if they tried to stop me. The words came out sharp and brittle, like glass under pressure. An old nurse came back with practiced calm and worry etched deep into her face. She spoke gently, like I might shatter if she didn’t.
I ignored her.
They slid the papers toward me eventually. Forms dressed up as concern, legal language wrapped around the threat of a psych hold if I didn’t cooperate. I signed where they told me to, agreeing to outpatient care I already knew I wouldn’t follow through on. My hands shook so badly she had to steady the clipboard for me.
She asked if I was sure.
I didn’t answer.
My voice didn’t work anymore. I didn’t trust it not to betray me. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in that room another second. Not after everything it had taken from me. Not after him.
I had lost my mother in a hospital room just like this one. And sometime during the night—quietly, cleanly—I had lost the only person I knew I would ever love.
Never again would I open myself up to this kind of torment again. Never again would I be whole.
Someone hurried out of a taxi as I practically crawled out of the hospital. I jumped in before the door shut behind them.Promised the driver I’d pay them when I got home. Dark eyes looked at me in the rearview mirror. He inhaled like he was going to speak but wisely shook his head and stayed silent.
The ride home felt unreal. The car moved. The world slid past the windows. I watched it like I was already gone, like I’d been left behind somewhere back in that hospital bed with my ribs wrapped around an absence. Or the bottom of the ocean under the crushing weight of the world.
When I got home, the house hit me like a vacuum. Too quiet. Too empty. Too filled with memories that cut like knives. Each one more brutal than the other.
Layers of pain lived in these walls, broken up by small pinpricks of light. And right now, every one of them centered around Anthony.
Bile surged up my throat, my body pushed beyond its limits barely functioning. Saltwater and stomach acid flowed out of me. Like my body was trying to purge poison. I made it to my bedroom, didn’t remember if I flushed the toilet and collapsed fully clothed onto the bed, my limbs refusing to hold me up anymore. My body sank into the mattress like it was giving up the fight entirely.
I didn’t change.
I didn’t shower.
I didn’t eat.
I lay there staring at the wall while tears kept coming, even when I felt like there was nothing left inside me to cry out.
