Maybe he is the grim reaper, after all.
“God, I've really lost my mind,” I whisper, the words heavy on my tongue.
He stands motionless, and I close my eyes and wait for him to come to me, to carry me away from this life to wherever I’m destined to go next.
The sound of the front door slamming cuts through my fading consciousness like a thunderclap. Heavy, familiar footsteps echo down the hallway.
“Hey, I forgot my?—”
Joel's sentence cuts off when he reaches the doorway and finds me bleeding out on the bathroom floor. His shouting shatters whatever resigned peace I'd found, dragging me back toward a reality I was escaping.
“What the fuck have you done?! Brielle?!”
He’s not gentle as he wraps towels around my forearms and applies pressure. Red rivulets stream down my arms, dripping from my fingertips onto the tile floor. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder offhandedly how difficult it’ll be to get blood out of the grout, which would make me laugh if my energy wasn’t fading by the second.
Joel is shouting into his phone, but I pay no attention to the words he says, though my heart lurches with fear at the sheer volume and brusqueness of his voice.
I try to look past him, searching for the man I’d seen in the corner of my bedroom only moments ago, but the edges of my vision are contracting, darkness creeping in like a vignette.
Joel's voice grows distant in my ears, as if I’m underwater. His mouth moves, forming words I can hear no longer make sense of. The last thing I see before consciousness slips away is not my husband's face, but a glimpse of the figure standing just behind him, watching with eyes that are heavywith concern—or maybe regret. If hewasmeant to take me away, Joel probably just ruined his plan.
Our eyes stay locked on each other for seconds that feel like hours, and he stares at me as if he’s trying to solve a puzzle. He turns away, seeming to disappear in a fraction of a second.
He’s gone without a trace, and my vision goes dark.
CHAPTER 6
“Life begins on the other side of despair.”
—Jean-Paul Sartre
The antiseptic smell reaches me before consciousness fully does. My eyelids are heavy, but I force them open to a blurred white ceiling. The steady beep of machines confirms what I already know: I've failed, even at this.
I couldn’t even kill myself without fucking it up.
The hospital room swims into focus.
Even as a tiny sense of relief blooms in my chest, the weight of reality comes crashing back down. I’m still here, but worse off than I was before.
I lift my hand to wipe the crust from my eyes, and an ache radiates from my hand and arm. Medical tape holds an IV in place at the top of my hand, the plastic tubesnaking down the side of the bed and up to the bag of fluid hanging above me, and my forearms are bandaged in thick, white gauze.
A nurse notices I'm awake a few minutes later and approaches with a polite smile. “There you are. How are you feeling?”
The question is so absurd I almost laugh. How am I feeling? Betrayed by my own body's will to survive. Furious at whatever cosmic joke kept me tethered to this life. Terrified of what comes next.
“Fine,” I whisper.
She nods as if this makes perfect sense, checks my vitals, and tells me the doctor will be in shortly. As she leaves, I notice Joel sitting in the corner chair, his posture rigid, eyes fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.
I jump. I hadn’t even noticed him there.
He stands when she's gone and approaches the bed. I hold my breath.
“Hey, baby,” he says. The gentleness in his voice startles me even more than his anger would until I realize how frequently his eyes dart toward the door then back to me. He knows someone might overhear. He takes my hand, brushing his thumb over the edge of the bandage. “You scared me.”
The tenderness in his touch makes my stomach churn. I know this performance. I’ve seen it countless times when we're in public, at parties, or around his family. The doting husband, so concerned for his fragile wife.
He’s still wearing his uniform, only adding to his credibility as a protector rather than someone to fear.
