I make my way through her living room, and then I find her. On her bed. Lifeless.
“No!” I scream as I run over to her. Climbing on top of the bed, I pick up her head between my hands. “Zara, wake up!” I gently slap her face and her eyes open briefly. “What did you do?”
I look around the room, and that’s when I see them, the pills spilled out on the ground.
“No, no, no. Zara, don’t do this!” I cry out.
“What the hell…? Zara?” Mr McKinley stops at the foot of the bed.
I stand and pick her up, ignoring her father and looking directly at mine. “We need to get her to the hospital now,” I tell him.
“Let’s go.”
“Wait. What’s going on? What did you do to her?” Dominic tries to stop me.
“She’s fucking overdosing on whatever those pills on the ground are. Move. I need to get her to a hospital!” I yell at him.
Zara’s body is limp, but I can see her chest rising and falling. She’s still breathing.
“What? Why would she do that?” Dominic looks at his daughter. “I’ll take her.” When he tries to pull her from my arms, I pull back. No one is taking her from me.
“Let’s go.” I step around Dominic and my dad and run down the stairs, outside the house and towards my parents’ car. By the time I get there, my Uncle Marcel is holding the back door open for me.
I slide in, followed by Dominic. He glares at me. “I’m not going to tell you again to hand my daughter over to me, Ares.”
I glare right back at him. And then look down at Zara. “Please wake up. You can’t do this. Please, P, wake up,” I whisper as I hold her head close to my chest. I’m not letting her go. She’s mine.
Uncle Marcel is in the front passenger seat and my dad is driving, breaking every traffic rule to get us to the hospital as fast as possible.
“Ares, is she breathing?” my uncle asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. That’s good,” he tells me.
“It’s not good. How many fucking pills did she take?” I ask aloud, knowing no one here has the answer.
“I don’t know, but she’s going to be okay. We’re almost there.”
“What were they?” I look at her father.
“What?”
“The pills. What were they and why the fuck did she have them?”
“They’re sleeping pills. They were prescribed a few months back when she couldn’t sleep.”
“And you left her with a full bottle of pills?” I scream.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he fires back.
“Because she’s fucking depressed. If you’d open your eyes and actually look at her every once in a while, you’d see that.”
“No, she’s not. If Zara were having problems, she’d tell me,” Mr McKinley insists.
“Really?” I raise a brow. I’m so fucking angry. At everyone in her life who didn’t notice how bad her depression was.
When the car pulls up to the emergency room door, I run in, right up to the triage nurse.
