And then, just like before, my mind drifts into a blackness that doesn’t feel bad but also doesn’t feel good.
I’m…numb.
And I can’t see a damn thing.
Except for navy waves, only instead of them slowly killing me, they wrap around me, hugging me tight to their chests in a way that offers me this twisted sense of comfort.
2
DR. DAWSON COLE
My steps falter as I take in the woman in the corner of the room as she turns her head in my direction. I don’t need to know her to understand that she’s a broken, deteriorated mess of the person she used to be. At least, that’s what I suspect as I make a mental note of the tiredness in her eyes and dark hues tracing the skin under them.
She’s worn, weathered in a way that doesn’t come with age but agony.
A pain I plan to get to know a little in this hospital room. Even more once she's receiving outpatient care under my supervision.
“Good morning,” I say, my voice a rumbly deepness. I’ve been told in the past that it startles people, that it doesn’t always necessarily match my appearance. I cross the short room and lower into the chair across from where Emory Prescott sits in a pair of worn sweatpants and a loose-fitting top that has brushstrokes of paint splashed over the fabric.
“I apologize for my poor punctuality,” I tell her, sinking back and getting comfortable. I push my glasses up my nose, the black rims the same ones I’ve worn since my days in college.
A barely-there smile graces her pink lips, and I look at them as they tip upward at the corners. She fiddles with her fingers on her lap, her gaze cast on her hands. Even in all of her doom and gloom, she’s beautiful. I’m too much of a man to not see that, though it’ll never be something I’ll comment on outright.
“It’s fine. It’s not like I have anything else to do.” Her voice has this soft quietness to it that I’m used to. I see people on a daily basis who suffer from depression and anxiety, some with more extensive mental health issues than that. My hope is that after more time together, she’ll sound a little more like herself.
“How does that make you feel?” It’s such a cliché question—and a stigma that health professionals such as myself carry around as a tattoo on our skin—but that doesn’t make the question any less valid.
She lifts her chin and takes me in for the first time. I keep my face neutral, knowing that if she sees any sort of emotion flickering, she’ll take that as judgement. Anyone in her position would.
“You, along with others, think I need this. To be here receiving mental care because it’s suspected that I tried to take my own life. That I tried to…” her voice cracks, trailing off for a moment of pause before she finishes, “drown myself. If I wanted to do that, do you really think I would have done it in the Atlantic Ocean?”
I bring my ankle up to my knee and rest it there. Her gaze ticks down to the movement before landing back on my eyes. I think about her question and offer the same thing I give all my patients—pure and utter honesty.
“Would you like me to answer that?”
A flare of something flashes in her eyes, and her chin juts out, like she’s rolling her tongue in her mouth in irritation. My spine tingles from that flare, from the knowledge that as low as life is right now, there’s emotion that she’s feeling.
A good sign, if anything.
It’s the people who feel nothing at all that I worry about.
“I don’t know,” she mutters. “Either way, I don’t deserve this.” She shakes her head back and forth, her gaze snapping away from me again. I don’t necessarily like it, but I can’t force her to keep her attention on me. “I don’t deserve to be on suicide watch after enduring what I’ve been through.”
The beating organ in my chest tugs the same way it always does when someone is sitting across from me, broken to pieces. “You’re not on suicide watch.”
She gives me a look. “I might as well be.”
Her hair hangs limply against her shoulders and down her chest, long strands that glimmer an auburn-orange under the fluorescent lighting. It reminds me of the changing leaves in autumn.
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“That’s what I keep being told, but somehow… I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know, Emory?”
Her tongue peeks out and swishes across her bottom lip, giving it a sheen as she picks at her fingernail. “I’m not sure if this, what I’m currently living, would be better than what could’ve been.” Her throat ripples with a swallow, and she sighs. “I’m not saying that because I want to be dead either—that’s not something that’s ever come up for me before—but I can’t help but recognize how that was almost a possibility for me.”
“I think it’s pretty normal for a person in your shoes to be considering, or at least, think about, all the ways that day could have played out.”
