Chapter 203 : One persons mess up, another person's goddess

“You dashed pretty's only chance of a compliment
and gave the plain the blues
Turned supermodel into last year's pull
and got her down shining your shoes
And I don't mean to be hod carrier
of the ordinary folks bad news
But tell Miss World to fly to Mars
If she really doesn't like to lose.”

Closer than most

The beautiful south

“I’m so sorry,” I wept pressing my body in closer to Emmet’s, I’m so, so sorry.”

 “That’s OK, it’s OK, you tried, you came and got me, we can sort it out, we always sort it out don’t we.” It was true. He had always sorted it out. He had spent his entire life sorting it out. At nineteen he had sorted me out and fourteen years later he still was. He had changed. His face was different; maybe softer around the edges. His hair was a bit longer and slightly less harsh and was it possible that his eyes had gotten bluer, they were defiantly older now but through it all he had stayed the same as well. He was my Emmet, the one I fell instantly for.

 “Come through to the bathroom. The lights better in there; I can see what I’m dealing with.” Emmet took me by the shoulders and pushed me towards the end of our bedroom and through the open door into the little en suite before turning on the bright light and pushing me down to the toilet seat, grabbing a towel from the pile and falling to his knees in front of me.

 “Are they sore?” He asked dabbing at the blood gently that still leaked from the wounds.

 “Not so much.” I lied. The truth would hurt him

 “You liar. There is no way that these couldn’t be sore. I’m going to have to make it worse though, I’m so sorry,” Emmet moaned before taking the towel and pressing it down hard against the roll of wounds. I yelped before I could stop myself, the pain swelling inside my leg and pushing towards the surface like something was trying to break through the skin that was left and send the wounds wider. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I just have to stop the bleeding. You’re doing well,” Emmet tried to comfort rubbing the side of my arm with his spare hand, making the pain retreat, His touch like anaesthetic.

 “I think we should put you in the bath, run some water so it covers your legs and wash them off that way, I can see what we’re dealing with then, there’s lots of dried blood in the way at the moment so I’m not sure what’s wounds and what’s blood.”

 I did as I was told without talking or even thinking that much. I wasn’t sure if I felt like a naughty school girl or felt sad. In fact I wasn’t sure I felt anything at all, maybe a handful of regret. It was easy to feel that now. Now there wasn’t the chocking feeling somewhere inside of me, now blade monsters had been sedated, it was easy to feel regret for the progress that I had thrown away. If I was still fighting them, if I hadn’t approached the cupboard on the right, things would have been different.  I would have probably been halfway to crazy.

 Once the water was a quarter way up the side of the tub and was cool enough to have lap against the new cuts I lowered myself into the bath and let the water wash over me turning the pure  crisp liquid a dirty brown as it cleansed my legs off the mess and revealed the damage below slowly. Like the fancy words that hid the truth of a hopeless situation.

 Softly and delicately Emmet leaned over the side of the bath with the towel and brushed it over the surface of my leg congealed blood sticking in lumps to his fingers and staining them red, he didn’t even have to think about it. He did it without complaint or prejudice when most would have walked away, when even I would have walked away from myself.

 “OK let’s get you out,” Emmet said a few minutes later putting both his arms under my elbows and steadying me as I got to my feet and stepped out of the bath trying not to shiver as Emmet probed at the wounds. I wasn’t cold and it wasn’t exactly fear that I felt either, numb also didn’t fit the situation and neither did sad. Deflated was closer, defeated followed and completely humiliated chased the tail of defeated. I felt absolutely everything which made me feel nothing apart from slightly nauseated and above all very little and young. The years stripped off of me as I stood in the wet black cotton underwear and pink and white stripped vest top. There were wet tips to my hair and my arms did not feel big enough to stop me from feeling so naked even though I wore my cloths even after being in the bath. Emmet did not notice. I was still the women he loved even if I had become the child I hated inside my head . The tears that had become dry as Emmet tended to me in the bath threated to take me again but I pushed them away.

 “A couple of these are deep,” Emmet confirmed after he patted down my legs with the towel and he got to his feet. I have suture Kits but there long and deep and there is quite a lot of them. You’re going to need twenty odd stiches I would imagine and I’m not sure I can do it, at least not convincingly. A doctor would be able to...”

 “You’re honestly suggesting that I go to the A&E? You know there are a hundred and one reasons why that is a bad idea.  Just whack a few stitches in, as long as I keep them clean it will be fine. It’s not like scaring is a huge issue here. I am already spectacularly messed up in that department and I’m not entering miss world anytime soon. I haven’t exactly got the body of a goddess... So you fuck it up. It’s just me.” I hurt him. I wasn’t really sure how but I saw the pain register on his face before I had time to back track over my words, before I could remember that he saw me as something a little different, like the lenses of his eyes turned me into something else. Desirable and pretty, sexy even, something that turned him on.

 “I could never live with myself if I whacked a few stitches in there and it healed badly. Your body may mean so little to you but like it or not your my goddess,” Emmet moaned his voice pained as he bent down and kissed the base of my throat, “to me you are the most perfect, the most pretty…” He moved up my neck edging towards my face…”the most stunningly amazing person I have ever set eyes on.” His lips reached mine and we remained locked there for a few seconds’ passion and pain keeping us somehow interlocked before Emmet found a way to break away, my teeth brushing his soft and warm bottom lip as he went.

 “I can’t go A&E Emmet,” I said breathing deeply

 “I wasn’t going to make you honey, I was just going give Leo a call.”

Chapter 202 : The body he loved

I knew the first thing that I needed was someone to do battle with me, an ally. Someone who would take up arms and battle to the end and he lied up stares under cotton covers, lost somewhere to the beauty of his dreams. I needed him but I did not want to wake him. Too many times he had seen me bleed and every time I had seen his torture etched onto his face. He watched self-harmers on the unit he stitched wounds and said the right things and he didn’t blink but the trouble was he loved me. I had no idea why, why out so many millions he would get entwined with mine but it had. When I cut my self he felt the blade across his skin too. He would stand up and fight but in battle people were wounded

 It was cut fifteen that left me with no choice but to call upon him, it was deeper then fourteen and I bled more heavily, by sixteen we entered the black world of internal stitched and possible surgery and that was somewhere I could not go, but alone I had no choice.

 I ran from the kitchen fast feeling the blood from my thighs dribble down my legs in streams while I kept my blade pressed between my thumb and finger. If I was quick I had a chance of getting to the bedroom and raising the alarm before the monster moved the blade into my skin again but there would be no time for a gentle awakening. No time to run my fingers through his hair, I would have to be blunt and to the point if I had half a chance.

 He slept soundly under the pile of covers one leg out the side and one arm stretched out as if trying to touch me. His mouth was slightly slack and his eyelids flickered softly as his deep breathing filled the room. Even in sleep he was in my mind a state of perfection. To wake him was selfish, a violation almost but I needed to.

 I tried to speak his name softly but couldn’t manage it instead it came out as a half sob, half scream. A yelp and with it his groggy eyes opened his arms and legs recoiling then stretching out, his hands looking for my body that should have been next to his before he gave up and turned on his bedside light setting the room aglow with yellow light as his eyes fell upon me.

 “Help me,” I half begged, “I can’t stop, I just can’t stop,” I groaned as I posed the blade in my hand again over another uncut spot on my leg, “Stop me.” I pleaded.

 He was out of bed instantly the sleep banished from his eyes as he regarded my body. It was the body that he said he loved, the body that had been close to his. My skin had been pressed to his millions of times before. Our body’s had intertwined in passion and in grief. He had kissed every square inch of surface area. He had told me it was beautiful. Now it wept red tears for the injured soul it contained. Cracked and broken

 “Ok Esmee. Give me the blade.” Emmet said gently yet firmly holding out his hand palm out so I could give it to him. I would have gladly handed it over, but I couldn’t, my skin cried for me to carry on. The blade begged to be pushed against the skin. I pushed down hard with a shaking had. The skin split. The blood poured. Emmet yelped. I had felt nothing but he had, almost as much as if I had taken the blade to his skin. It was a shame that the numbness that went with cutting didn’t extend far enough to reach your loved ones.

 Emmet had been calm and in control but now he was human again, and in seconds he was on me, his hands locked around my hand with the blade in it prizing my fingers off of the metal until I released it to him and he launched it overarm across the other side of the room before bundling me into him without speaking a word.

Chapter 201 : Blood and monsters

My reward was blood, the blade releasing it from its captivity inside my body. In my younger days I had decided that it was bad blood, it was the bit inside me that was hurting and I was letting it out and with it went the pain, or the fear or the anger. I couldn’t remember why I started. What at the age of 1o made me want to rip my skin on the edge of a sharp object, maybe it had originally been for the attention, maybe for a few seconds it had been about my farther kissing the cut with his warm lips and my mum sitting me on the table, legs swinging while she attached a Winnie the pooh plaster and roughed my hair telling me I was her brave soldier. It could have been that inside my head that made me what to cut myself, or maybe I just wanted someone to see the pain that I was in on the inside worn on my sleeve. Whatever the reason was, attention seeking or not my parents never actually found out about that first cut. There were no kisses or sticky plasters; instead I wore a jumper ashamed of what I had done. I had no agenda for cutting, no trigger as such. It was simple. I was a ten year old and I had a campus to hand.    

 Blood dripped from my wounds faster as I made more slashes into the skin each one ever so slightly wider than the first one. I was in steri-strip land now or skin glue maybe, it would have been fine without them but would leave a nasty scar. A few more cuts and maybe we were in the realms of external stitches. A lot more and maybe we could have been looking at internal and external  and then what was to stop me going the whole way and cutting the light blue lines that hid just under my wrist. I was a bomb, cut the wrong wire and I could explode.  

 Four more cuts. Making ten. I was most defiantly in the world of needle and thread. Yellow bubbles peeked out at me from the edges of my wound, the fat layer, one of the more experienced cutters goal. When scrapes with a campus no longer brought the kind of release that was needed. No longer sedated the craving that crawled around like an intruder under your veins, when he went deeper inside you spinning his webs you had to go deeper too just to find him and cause the evacuation. It worked for a while but He wouldn’t stop and soon he was inside your soul to deep to banish but not sedated enough to stop trying. We ripped veins, we tore flesh but never really found what we were looking for.

 On the eleventh cut the tears came surprising me somewhat they never normally made an appearance, they were a warning things were getting slightly out of hand, my control depleting. For ten marvelous cut I had controlled the blade but on the eleventh the blade took me and I slipped away from the situation. Ten cuts were enough for me, but not for the blade. Not for the monster. It was the monster that took my hands and made number twelve and number thirteen and by number fourteen I was sobbing somewhere underneath the monsters laughing, The relief had gone, there was no hazy lightness over my body I was going to have to fight myself and win somehow if I wanted to survive.

Chapter 200 : The cupboard on the right

Esmee

Mi was sedated to try and help stop her  convulsions and then sent up to the ward. There had been a brief conversation about sending her to intensive care but in the end it was decided that the ward would have been better for her. I had with the help of another female nurse washed the sick and charcoal off of her skin and maneuvered her rag doll sedated like body into a hospital gown before she was wheeled away. Emmet and I left the hospital and headed home. Mia was going to stay with my mother overnight so we had the house to our self but none of us felt like doing anything. We went to bed at eleven and by half past Emmet was sleeping. I on the other hand could not. The day we had all just endured was racing through my mind without any signs of slowing and all my emotions bubbled somewhere uncomfortably just under my skin. What was wrong with me? Why had Mi’s suicide attempt sat so uncomfortably with me? In fairness I was never over the moon when anybody tried to kill them self’s but it had been a while since it affected me quite so much. It was a sad fact but true that most kids who entered Apple gate house had considered suicide. On average one in two had attempted it in some way and more times then I could count I had found myself as an A&E Chaperone for them and It had always been OK. but I had felt it for a while now, had known it since the first day I saw her. There was something different about Mi that made me see myself in her and it had been ages since I was forced to remember my overdosing days. Maybe I was too over involved with MI but a part of me just didn’t care. I wanted to look after her, she deserved it. Some would call me unprofessional and maybe it was all true. Maybe I cause this pain. My head hurt, my body ached and my soul boiled over, however I knew how to make the pain go away.

Silently I crept out of bed and wondered down the stairs into the kitchen flicking the light switch before squinting away from the intense bright light. Most would have made a cup of tea and on most night I would have too, it was rare these days that I headed for the top right cupboard that hung above the sink but I had been considering it for days now. The need to once again venture there building somewhere under my skin, carried around by my heart and on my pulse making me sting all over.

 Trying to make my breathing stay calmed and in tune I reached up as far as I could on tiptoes and curled my fingers around the cold metal edge of the same trinket box I had owned since I was a teenager. I had always loved this box, the sight of its delicate paintings of butterfly’s had always made me smile. The box in fact I had often thought was too pretty for what it was used for but it’s importance stood out to me through many things. I had once used this box daily, maybe a few times a day, now it was much less than. Months passed in its absence and I barely noticed it was missing but slowly it singed for me across the distance and I followed it back to its dark cupboard on the right, the one no one ever really mentioned or saw but new it was there. Like a void.

 I opened the box slowly and took out what I was searching for placing it on the table in front of me. The silver edge glinting up. These had always been my favorite from my teenage years, but back then I had never been fussy what I used. Now I was.  I bought what I needed myself when I visited the supermarket. I threw them in the trolley and paid for them without thinking too much what they were for and hid them in the box, kidding myself that  this time I wouldn’t use them but I was never that strong I would always run backwards towards them and I would always end up buying more.

 I shifted in my seat and pulled my PJ trousers down and kicked them off of my feet.  I took up the double edged blade and posed it in my fingers. I had promised that the last time was going to be my last and the time before that and the time before that and for a while when I was strong I thought it was going to be. I had lasted a long time now, a new record for me, over two years. I hadn’t cut since Mia had been in our lives. I had planned to never again, but the addiction to the blade and the blood was like poison and it flowed in my very being, pulsed somewhere under the skin and I fell into it. I wanted to sob for my years I would waste but I could not get the tears to come and without any choice at all I pushed the steal edge into my skin and hissed as I opened up my thighs.

Chapter 199 : No rest for the wicked

At that moment I wanted to tell Esmee Everything that had happened to me before when I was in the town Centre and even a small part of me wished I had made the other choice; taken the other path and called them up from the place where he had raped me and told them everything. then if they hadn’t believed me took the overdose, but still I knew the rejection I would of felt as she turned away from me would have caused me more pain then any number of tablets could have. A pain that would have made even a few more seconds of life unbearable and just as I had opened my mouth to tell her the real reason for my cuts I closed it again defeated by his forever shouting voice in my head telling me that no one would believe me any way, and if I told anyone they would call me a lire and put me away in the loony bin.

 “But I am already there,” I said quietly to the voice in my head. “You put me there in the end you did this to me and I never told a soul about your games and just when I thought I was safe…” I hadn’t realized until then but I had been talking aloud to the monster inside my head like I sometimes did when they seemed so real; like he was sitting there next to me controlling me, whispering his poison into my ear.

 “Are you all right Mi? Esmee asked looking at Emmet suspiciously; both of them working out individually but simultaneously that I was hearing something that they could not. “Who are you talking to honey? Can you tell me what they’re saying to you?” Esmee asked gently arranging her face into a cool nonchalant smile that seemed so unnatural on her in a way; in reality she was never nonchalant about anything especially if it was hurting someone.

 “I’m talking to myself,” I yelped as another shot of pain hit me and the nausea clenched at my stomach before rolling up my throat in the space of seconds a cruel and nasty reminder that there was no rest for the wicked like my mother always said to me when I grumbled about burning my hands on the iron because I was too little to hold it properly, however mercifully I had been given a few minutes respite from the sickness and pain; that was more than my mother had ever given me from the housework. 

 “Oh not again,” I yelped as the pain once again intensified and I vomited two mouthfuls of sticky black bile half into the bowl and half onto the protector beside my face. “I want it to stop,” I yelped the tears taking over me,  my resolve at coping with the pain depleting every second , I may have deserved it but it didn’t make it any easier.

 “It’s all right sweet heart it will go away soon.” Esmee soothed but my body had different ideas as I felt every one of my muscles start to contract and convulse again like they had done back at the park before the ambulance had come.

 “She’s fitting again! Esmee shouted as Emmet hit a button which sent my bed crashing to a lying position and two of the A&E nurses rushed over in my direction just before one more heave of sickness splashed violently onto the protector and onto the floor. Unthinkably the pain became worse but there was not time to shriek out before my head spun out and I once again fell under the blackness that was always lurking in the back of my head.

Chapter 198 : look at me and see hope

 I could have screamed again, howled out in pain but it wasn’t from the overdose.  The information Esmee had just given the doctor pushed into me hard making the hideous pain of before feel like nothing more than an annoying niggle in the pit of my stomach somewhere. Twenty three times she had tried to end her beautiful life, twenty three overdoses destroying her from the inside out. She had felt the pain that twisted inside of my stomach, she had thrown up the bile, ingested the charcoal. She had wanted to leave life, make it like she had never existed.

 “Esmee,” I winced another bout of twisting almost knocking me off of my train of thought but nothing mattered as much as knowing why,  what horror made her choice this agonizing death over life, what monster had stolen her heart?

 “it’s OK my love, the doctor is going to get you some pain killers now and some anti-sickness so it will become easier for you to rest OK, it will just be a little bit longer, you just have to hold on and be brave. “I promise It will go away soon.”

 “Twenty three times.” I moaned, my body still shivering violently under the mountain of blankets, “You did this twenty three times and you are here comforting me. The pain you must have felt.” I groaned clutching at my stomach as I tried once again not to cry out at the pain, it still didn’t matter as much as she did.

 “Mi my love that was my old life; a life when I felt a lot like you do now, A life where I hid all the things that hurt me and took them out on myself, but I learnt over time that that was no way to live and I fought hard and I got better so I don’t want you to be scared  I want you to look at me and see what I have become, not what I was, you need to look at me and see hope because what I am now is something that I am proud of.”

Chapter 197 : Twenty three

Emmet got to his feet so quickly it hurt the back of my eyes to follow him and I swore I actually saw Esmee shoot fire out of her smoldering black eyes at the same time as she made a deep almost feral growl in the back of her throat her lips curled up in frustration past her teeth like she was actually fighting with the urge to bite the woman in front of her. Whatever had happened the Esmee standing next to my bed now was not the tender loving Esmee that I knew but a worrier of long standing battles she refused to lose.

 “Oh I’m sorry; I was under the impression that you were a doctor!” Esmee hissed through her teeth as she tried to pull her body up to its full height. It was almost impressive, she must have reached five foot one however the doctor standing next to her could have rivaled Emmet’s height so she still looked ridicules anyway. “People with mental health illness need help, not criticism and not someone who wants to deal out some sort of punishment. Its people like you that make people like us not get the help that we so desperately need.”

 Us, something about the simple word sat uneasy with me. Us was a plural word that included herself where she did not belong, us suggested that the help she was on about; the help for an overdose had been needed for herself as well. Us suggested the unthinkable; us suggested that Esmee had once tried to take her life too.

 “Do you think she wasn’t hurting enough? Can you really begin to imagine the shit going on inside of her head to make her want to actually kill herself; to not go on existing! Do you really think she needs to be punished more?” Esmee asked her voice trembling somewhere close to anger even though she tried to remain calm.

 “Easy kitty cat,” Emmet soothed unclenching Esmee’s balled up hands with his own

 “No, I won’t take it easy! It has to be said,” Esmee protested, “she has no idea of how much it hurts and she needs to know before she thinks she is above any of us. I mean would you treat me like you have treated her?” Esmee asked Dr. Webb staring directly into her shell shocked eyes; forcing her to answer. Apparently height didn’t always matter in battle; if it did Esmee would have shot up to ten foot.

 “You haven’t tried to kill you self.” the doctor mumbled

 “Oh but I have, in the past. I have taken no less than twenty three overdoses in my time and thank and never have been treated as appallingly as Mi has been now! I am mental nurse, I work in a hospital full of adolescence with complex issues and I have to speak up for and protect them so that is what I’m doing, Now you’re a doctor so may I quietly suggest that you do your job and give Mi the right medication before I don’t just complain I call the police for abusing the venerable in your care.”

Chapter 196 : Crime and punishment

Doctor Webb this is cruel!” Esmee snapped as she pounced across the room like a big cat and dragged the doctor over to my bed side where I still half screamed when the waves of pain come to grab at me from the insides out, “Her pain is clearly unmanageable, there has to be something you can give her to ease it.”

 “Pain killers are what got her into this situation I don’t see how prescribing more are going to help? The pain will decrees as will the vomiting when the ibuprofen is removed from her system, until then there is nothing I can do about it.” Doctor Webb said sternly grimacing as I heaved more bile over the plastic protector just before Emmet could move the bowl under my chin.

“Yes I am sure that it will but anti sickness medication and pain killers will also help and save her going throw more agonizing hours. I know I’m only a nurse and respect that you’re in a position of authority here but you’re her doctor and she is in a lot of pain and has uncontrollable vomiting. You could end that.” Esmee’s voice was silky smooth, an unnatural honey like quality about it. She was normally soft and caring but anyone who knew Esmee could tell she was being unnatural. She was just masking her irritability well.

 “Look Mrs. Bear you are a nurse so you probably have some idea of what I can give her, and your right there are pain killers and anti-sickness medications that could help, but I am for a very pacific reason I am not prescribing them. I have a hundred and one genuine patients in here that need pain killers and anti-sickness medications. People who haven’t asked for their illness. Death is painful, if she wants to die, she should feel the pain. I am not wasting time and money given out medications when she did this to herself. I will try and save her life because I am a doctor and that is what I do but because I am a doctor. I will not reward a suicide attempt.”

Chapter 195 : Going nuclear

The need to vomit and the intense twisting agony in my tummy is what made me wake up and scream out loud, far from getting better the pain had intensified and now no matter how hard I tried I could not stop myself from making the agony I was in vocal.

 “Ok sweet heart, all right, is it the pain?” Emmet asked concerned moving out the way just in time so the projectile bile didn’t hit him smack in the middle of his shirt.

 “It hurts!” I panted unable to catch my breath against the twisting inside of me, “It hurts!” I wailed dry heaving more against the pain then the fact I was going to be sick again. I had bargained for the pain, had deliberately made my last stand on earth chew me up completely because I deserved it and maybe if I hurt my self now there was a chance I wouldn’t be sent right to Hell, maybe there was a chance they would send me to live with Arabella. However a human could only silently bare so much agony, could only endure so much of their own body’s protest before they had to protest about it. I knew it was going to hurt for a little while but I wanted it to go away, I had had enough.  

 “This is bloody ridicules,” Esmee snapped shortly more to herself than anyone else. I wasn’t sure how long she had been back in the room but her eyes were red rimmed and blood shot like she had been crying and her hair was messier then usual accompanied by the fact that even though she had obviously tried to clean herself up she still had some of my dried blood on her cheek; she looked more like a patient then a nurse.

 “There are a million and one pain killers they can give her not to mention anti sickness meds they are doing this for another reason, I know what it is and I am not impressed,” Esmee snapped, directed her last bit to Emmet as she slapped one of her hands down on her chest while pulling the other one through her hair.  

 “Take cover A&E Esmee’s about to go nuclear.” Emmet said under his breath though he smiled lovingly at his wife like every little thing she said and did made him fall in love wither her all over again.

 “She sure is; you just watch her.”

Chapter 194 : Shadowing fear

Shadowing fear

Mi

The tablets took me. I had fought there effects but now I had a belly full of charcoal and a drip pumping in as much poison into my veins as I had and I felt pretty unwell; like I was dying. It was hot outside and I had a pile of blankets on top of me but my whole body trembled with a cold that I felt deep within me.  And the sickness had turned from bad to downright violent bringing up projectile green and black bile with little or no notice not to mention the crushing and twisting abdominal pain that ripped through my trembling body at any given moment taking all my effort not scream out in agony. Emmet had begged them to give me something for the pain but weather he agreed or not the doctor had protested that any pain killer would make it worse for me even though he had given them a list of at least four that contained neither Paracetamol nor Ibuprofen.

 I vomited again trying to aim as best as I could at the dish that Emmet kept permanently propped up under my chin now that I couldn’t sit up to vomit, but missed and once again threw most of the black and green substance onto the plastic protector that Emmet kept changing for a new one every time that I missed my target.

 “It’s all right darling, it’s OK.” Emmet soothed folding up the protector and bowl and taking it away before replacing it with another one.

 “Am I going to die?” I whispered opening my eyes into the slightest slits so I could look into Emmet’s  so I could tell whether he was lying to me but there had been no need for me to anyway, he had no words of any comfort to give, instead he forced one small smile from his grim looking face,  tears  glistening somewhere on his eyelashes  as he put his hand under the pile of covers searching until he found mine and squeezed it tightly in his, more emphasis in it then there ever had been before.

 “I don’t know baby. “ He said the words gently, his voice braking over the words he didn’t want to say.

 “Emmet; I’m scared.” I admitted the truth softly, two of my tears matching his as they rolled down over my cheeks and onto the sheet underneath. I wanted to die but regardless of what people said it was scary when face to face with it.  You could be surrounded by friends but the truth was we all died alone, entering a world that no one was sure of.

 “I know honey,” Emmet said softly before he got to his feet and as gently as silk brushed my sticky hair off of my fore head and kissed it tenderly like he was tucking his daughter into bed for a good night’s sleep, “I’m a little bit scared too.”

Chapter 193 : Years to remember

Esmee

I hadn’t wanted to leave  Mi but I was glad that I had when I span my body sharply into the nearest toilet in the emergency department waiting room just in time to throw myself down on my knees to puke heavily into the toilet bowl scolding myself on the inside for doing so. I had got the little white bottles out of the supply room hundreds of times when I had worked very briefly in A&E, I had even held patients hands and watched them drink it but I had never forced there hand like that. I had never been violent like that and I had never heard her scream like that. I had thought she was going to have been OK when I left her in the town center. She was so happy but suddenly on her sixteenth birthday we were in the A&E trying to save her life while she tried to leave and it affected me somewhere deep inside. I knew she felt and felt it in me, the years reoccurring inside my head.

 “For goodness sake pull yourself together Esmee.” I said bitterly before getting back to my feet pulling the flush and turning to the mirror.  My face and Neck were smudged black and grey along with the rest of my body and speckles of Mi’s blood splattered my skin as well but my mouth was the only thing that was clear and my teeth were still white when I pulled my face into a reluctant smile but I almost expected them to have a thick covering of it. I could almost taste it in the back of my throat, feel the cold and bitter grittiness against my teeth.

 It  had been years since It had been me half sat up on that bed covered in blood, sick and the intolerably disgusting poison control substance they had called activated charcoal. So many long years but I could still remember the taste of it clearly in my mouth and the smell of the Paracetamol that was usually odorless unless taken in huge quantities. I could still feel all the feelings just bubbling somewhere underneath my skin, the hurting, the dizziness and the fear. The devastating stomach churning fear at knowing that even though it was what you had asked for, those hours you were living there and then could be your last ones alive.

 “But you survived Esmee,” I said trying to comfort my reflection as my bottom lip began to quiver.  “You tried to kill yourself but you are still alive and now you have to be there for this scared little girl because there was no one there for you; this is the reason you became a nurse.” I muttered trying to be brave but I hurt, everything hurt inside of me, so in the end nothing could stop the wave of tears that swept over my body and I slipped down the bathroom wall with my head in my hands allowing very briefly for the sobbing to take over me.