Then a crushing emptiness fills the burn.
My bladder empties, saturating my gown with a spreading heat. The raw eggs bursts from my esophagus, spewing from my lips with a faint mixture of bile. I gasp and release a surge of fresh tears.
All that’s left is confusion.
As they take us away, I can hear Niklaus whisper, “Tell me your name.”
Sapphire S Valdawell.
But there isn’t much else. I’m surrounded by locked doors, checkerboard floors, and screams that erupt violently across this vicinity. Drool hangs from my lips and chin. How did I get here? Why am I in so much pain?
Tell me your name.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
Someone…please help me.
38. Mother May I
Sapphire
There are so many gaps.Too many to keep track of. But there are two things I’m certain of.
I have lost a significant amount of weight in the last two weeks. Between the laxatives and eggs yolks, I’m merely a husk of the woman I was. It can’t be healthy to lose weight this quickly. In fact, I can tell a difference in the weight of my bones, the thickness of my hair, and the glow to my skin. Everything is dull. Cloudy. Grim and gray.
We’ve endured the electroconvulsive therapy two more times. I can’t recall anything. If it’s morning or night, if I’ve had my raw eggs or not. It’s all a terrifying blur of information.
The wall next to my head bangs once. I knock back.
Niklaus started doing this after his first escape attempt, I think. They had to start sedating him. Not me though. The malnutrition, seizures, and frequent fainting spells keep me from having any energy at all to be a problem for them. In fact, and I don’t know this for sure, the combination of these symptoms has left me feeling detached from the Nightlung. Not that I necessarily felt connected to it before this, but there’s a loss there. It used to feel like I was able to run my fingers along the windowsill, the glass panes, I just couldn’t figure out how to undo the latch.
Now, there’s no window. No exit. No seeping darkness that lingers, dragging behind me like a long cloak.
I bet my father would laugh in my face. Oh, how disappointed he would be in my inability to be like him at all. To escape whenever he pleased.
“Up you go,” Meridei instructs, lifting her eyes from the clipboard to study the scale I’m stepping onto. “Oh. Look at you.”
I look down at the number. A visceral sickness purges from my stomach into my throat.My god, I’d have to be missing actual organs to lose this much weight.
“I amveryimpressed,” Meridei says, though she jots on her clipboard with a flat, bored expression. “Are you famished? I have seen women perish from losing this much weight… Maybe an extra bowl of oats this morning?”
I am obscenely hungry. But the thought of shoveling food in my mouth makes me want to gag. The bland oats with their lumpy texture, the runny yolks, the sour aftertaste of vomit that has singed the back of my throat.I never want to eat anything again.
I step off the scale with shaky knees. Each movement feels like I’m dragging chains. Like I’m wading through tubs of oil.
Meridei examines my wilted stance with clinical eyes. “We’ll skip the enema today as well.”
Thank goodness.
I’ve been violated, cleansed until I’m raw and empty. The enemas now have the ability tosend me spiraling into panic attacks before they’re inserted. It’s the anticipation—the burn, the humiliating position of being on all fours with my gown lifted and my panties at my ankles. And, of course, after it’s removed—I’m drained of the fluids that kept me moving at all.
“Would you like to rest today?” Meridei asks, a rare sensitivity to her voice.
I nod. “Yes.”
