Chapter 268 : I left the room smiling

 “Right, I don’t want to keep digging at this because I can see that it making you really distressed and that isn’t something that will help right now. What I would like to do is go through your care plan your care  team and I have come up with for you it includes new medications some therapy groups and a small operation to have a new tube that goes right into your stomach.

My body froze solid everything under my skin turning to ice as the words where mentioned. I did not care about the pills. They meant nothing to me. I slipped them over my tongue and down into my tummy without thinking about it and in turn they did nothing apart from make me fairly nauseated. The groups I could manage if I had too, I sat in silence as other people played games with the OT’s that promised to make them better but the PEG tube was something different.  I had seen what that meant. One of my only friends had the tubes snaked into her belly where they chose what they fed her. They wouldn’t even have to try.

“I don’t want it.” I said sternly shaking my head.” You have already got a tube into me I don’t want one that goes into tummy. I am not your pin cushion even if you think I am.” I shook my head trying desperately not to cry in front of him. Any closeness I had felt with him at that moment when he had put his hand on me had left. It was all an uphill struggle and it felt like he was putting road blocks on the hills. He was making my world crash around my ankles my future ring inside my ears “I don’t want the tube.” I said my breath catching in my throat the sound of tears betraying me.

I understand that but this treatment has been set up for you and it will be in your best interests because of your section we can and we will force this for you. NG tubes have a short life and it has come to the end of yours however your anorexia is sever still weather you have your periods back or not and we need a way to feed you.  

His words meant nothing. They were white noise and intense feelings pushing in under the surface of my over inflated belly they were ice acid in my veins and… that was when my eyes caught it the familiar colours and shapes of the moulded plastic concealing a perfect and tiny silver blade. It was my way out. They could not tube me if I was dead.

“Do you have any questions you want to ask me?” Doctor Jorden asked as he left his chair and turned his back on me giving me a chance to swipe two of the pencil sharpeners from the dish that was next to the picture of a toothy seven year old.

“I don’t think so.” I said forcing a smile “I’m sure things will get better soon.” I flipped the pencil sharpeners inside my pocket just before he turned to me and smiled.

“You can be treated Mi. Sophie and everything can be treated. No one is giving up here.”

“I know there is always a solution to every problem, even me.”

I left the room smiling 

Chapter 267 : Dead before your thin enough

Mi

Emmet didn’t come back until it was time to escort me down the see Doctor Jordan.  I had wanted him to, I had wanted to apologize or say something because I hated causing his tears. The next time I saw him I almost expected him to seem different with me but after some time to calm down and I had some moments to make my screaming head settle he seemed that same as he smiled at me and said that Doctor Jordan thought it would be OK for me to go and have the assessment that was needed for my discharge from the ECA in his office. It was not really the result I was looking for. I hated Doctor Jordan’s office and the way it tried to radiate its importance. I hated the books and the filling cabinets and the framed pictures of family on the massive desk that wasn’t needed. I hated the fact that every certificate he had ever got was displayed in frames that towered over the person that sat opposite him at his desk or on one of the more “informal” blue chairs that formed a semi-circle and the fish tank that was meant to be calming was the worse. The fish in there came in and out faster than we did and there was no thought for them weather we liked it or not. I had always none we were his pet fish.

I was told to sit on the chair opposite the desk by Emmet and Doctor Jordan before Emmet retreated to the door to leave me in there alone with him. I wanted him to say. It felt like he had my voice somewhere in his pocket and he took it with him when he left the room leaving me with nothing to put into the conversation. The trouble was things changed from over the days. The emotions of pain and fear and dread remained the same but Sophie had become almost quite after her first flare up that had landed me in the ECA so there wasn’t much to say about her. After the fight I had almost learnt to deal with having a period like every other girl in the unit. I felt broken I hated myself but it was impossible to fight all the time against the big things so I felt crippling pain while I worked with them.

“Right Mi, I know that it is nearly lunch time but I think it is important that we get you out of the ECA as soon as possible. To many days in there is not very empowering to you but we also have to manage the risk that comes with your discharge from there. We are going to have to think of your observations.” Doctor Jordan announced as he finished typing on his laptop and he looked over the top of it at me his eyes boring into my soul so I had to look down at the floor trying to work out exactly how many colours where in the speckles of the carpet. I wanted to run away from there. I wanted to feel the breeze on my face that moved the trees just outside his window but even that was weird after two days in the Prison that was the ECA there was no time inside those walls. It was a constant night inside and outside my head.

“So Mi can you go into some details to tell me why Emmet and Esmee thought that you needed to spend the extended time in the ECA.” My heart froze slightly. It was there idea that I spent so long in hell? They had blamed him and I had accepted that. After all he had done the assessment that sentenced me to liquid meals and pyjamas.

“It’s over now isn’t it? How does it matter?” I moaned moving my eyes from the floor to the fish tank then up to glance at Doctor Jordan. In a way I wanted to tell him but words where useless they failed me.

“The thing is Mi unless you tell me exactly what is happening and how you feel I do not know the best way to help you. I will just have to go with the risk that you are presenting and the way you reacted and move you to red observations but that isn’t helping you is it? Now what I got from Emmet and Esmee was that you put you a huge fight while they were trying to feel you after you refused breakfast before you started screaming talking to yourself and then eventually presenting as catatonic. Can you remember that?”

I remembered, I remembered the way that Sophie exploded and soaked her badness into my blood stream. I Remembered Esmee protecting me bringing me back. I wanted to say something, I had to. For her 

“I sort of remember, but I don’t want to. It sounds crazy if I tell you will bang me up again and I was hoping to leave here eventually.”

“If you don’t tell me Mi, I can’t help you and you will land up staying longer all and all. Your section will not be reseeded while we think that you are a danger to yourself or others now you can either talk to us and use us for your recovery or fight us and remain here.”

“I sometimes hear things.” I sighed defeated dragging my feet across the luxury carpet destroying the pattern of the tiny pink speckles. It was against my better judgment to open my mouth and say anything but what he said made sense and Esmee had fort for me I wanted to be better for her and my way wasn’t working.

“Can other people here these things?” Doctor Jordan asked sipping from a mug on his desk as he typed ferociously onto his laptops, the keys sounding angry as the had to write in my darkest secrets that made Sophie more than angry as she snapped out of her hibernation.

“ What the hell do you think that you are doing Mia? You can’t tell them about me! I am your only friend, they will try and get rid of me ant then they will make you even less then you are. They will make you fat Mia, that’s all they want. Do you want to  get fat?”

“If they could it wouldn’t sound crazy would it.” I snapped trying to shake off the voice of Sophie.

“So you here sounds? Voices?”

“Just one voice,” I stuttered as my legs started bouncing under the table my who body protesting the fact that I was speaking about something that I had told my head that should remain silent about. Voices in your head where taboo, you went from someone who could be normal to a freak as soon as you said anything. Things didn’t make any sense.

“Someone pacific.”

“She calls herself Sophie and she says she is my only friend she says she will make me thin and perfect, she says with her I will survive.”  I almost shouted in a rush trying to get the words out before a shrieking Sophie could freeze them in my mouth.

“It’s OK Mi, we are really getting to places here ok. I just need you to try and stay with me and keep answering my questions the best you can. Is she talking to you now Mi?”

I nodded swallowing hard against the nausea as I pulled on a lose thread from my top and bounced my legs harder. I kept my head bowed to my legs and my eyes closed trying to block her out trying to listen to doctor Jordan but she didn’t like him and in a way neither did I. This was the man who locked me behind a padded door and shoved a tube up my nose for what he said was my own good, but Sophie scared me so much more than she ever used too and Doctor Jordan was willing to listen.

 “What is she saying Mi?”

“She doesn’t want me to say anything or to talk to you, and she screams at me when she is unhappy, she gets so loud in my head?”

“So how do you feel about Sophie then. Do you like hearing her? Is she a comforting thing to you?”

“I used to, now I have seen the real her and it was the most terrifying thing.” I squeaked shaking my head from side to side to try and drive the misty images of the monster Sophie changed into out of my head before the screaming inside could become vocal.

“You’re doing brilliantly Mi.” Doctor Jordan encouraged. “For what it is worth I don’t think you’re crazy.  I have a few more questions and it will be really good if you can answer them. Have you ever seen Sophie?

“She used to live in the mirror and I could steal quick glances but she was a shadow not really real. But I have seen her once. That morning in the Clinic when I wouldn’t let them tube me. She was so persistent and I was so confused and scared because of getting my period again and then she was just there so real. It seemed impossible that she wasn’t and she was so angry and she changed from beautiful to terrifying and then I don’t remember and now you know as much as me.” I could feel tears poring out of my eyes as I pushed against her.

“Do you want Sophie to go away?”

“I am not sure. I have never lived without her.” I confessed trying to rub the tears out of my eyes as quick as they kept coming.

“Mi it’s OK just try and listen to me over her,” Doctor Jordan said gently getting himself up from his side of the desk and coming closer to me,  placing his arm over my shoulders. “Sophie is a form of psychosis. She is something the sick part of you has made up she fuels the bit of you that is sick without her you have a better chance of getting better.” Doctor Jordan said softly getting up from behind his desk and coming over to sit on a chair close to me. “I bet she had never really said anything nice to you.”

“She was trying to help. If I could of just stuck to her plan. If I was stronger.” I spluttered shaking my head again as my breath caught in my throat making me squeak. I want to be thin. I just want to be thin and pretty. I want to be thin!” I said desperately looking into Dr Jordan’s eyes the tears building in mine and falling over the edges as the dark blue depression paralyzed me.

“Mi honey.” Doctor Jordan said holding onto my hand. “ I can guarantee you, you will be dead before you are thin enough for Sophie.”  

Chapter 266 : After all these years she haunts me

Leo exhaled loudly as he walked away from me running his fingers through his styled hair like I had told him something life altering. Anyone would have thought that I was dying from the look on his face. I felt hurt. I understood his reaction but it was the last thing that I wanted. He was meant to help me. He was meant to calm me down and tell me that it was all going to be OK, I had almost been relying on it.

“It’s not that bad. You must be fucking awful in the A&E if you react like that every time you come across someone who is struggling. I am fine; I’m just a bit shaky. I need some distraction.” My head screamed. I wasn't OK. I didn't just want distraction I wanted comfort. My head was a mess. I had lied to my amazing husband, I had been left feeling raw with the memories I never wanted to remember and I knew that something was happening at work with Mi and Emmet. I tried to take some deep breaths around the elastic bands that stopped my chest expanding in the right ways. I wasn’t going to get any respite from  the feelings with Leo

“I told you, I don’t deal with metal health well. I just call the people I need to if it wonders into my work place.”

“Then you should learn how to do it!” they are not freaks Leo! They are real people with real emotions and you can take it from me it feels horrible. Really fucking horrible !” I rubbed the side of my arms roughly trying to discharge the electricity that fluttered on the top of my skin before skulking past him back to the table where my blade lingered on the floor. Even with him there something inside me itched to just do what was needed. It mattered but hardly enough that my friend was in the same room and my daughter was upstairs being put down for her nap in a way it almost helped. They were things to fall back on when it all eventually fell apart at the end of the cutting.

I moved my legs up and down under the table as I clutched my hands onto the edge of the table as Leo went about continuing to make the tee that I had half completed.

“I don’t understand why you need to do this?” Leo confirmed as a placed a bright pink mug with the words world’s best mummy written in black outlined yellow bubble writing. “I want to be better at this. I really do and believe it or not I am not heartless at work I do try but it is really hard when you have no personal idea.” 

chapter 265 : Blood is relatively easy, compared to some things

Esmee

My head screamed in protest. And then it screamed back at itself. I wanted the blade open up my skin then watch as blood burst out from the veins by force and emptied over the kitchen floor, but I couldn’t allow that to happen at the same time. I spent my life telling teenagers to fight and throwing them to the floor when they said that they couldn’t. I had to fight and I had to win alone. There was no one that was going to throw me to the floor if in the end I decided that emptying my vines would be the best idea, and the person to find me… my bouncing baby two year old daughter. She by herself should have been enough for me but she almost wasn’t. I loved her more than anything in the world, the trouble was, even though I hated myself for it, a part of me loved cutting as well.

I studied the blade between my fingers as I bounced the balls of my feet up and down against the floor. It was a very unimpressive object to have so much power over me. It was tiny and unimportant compared to some things in the world but it towered over me with its presence and left me breathless and on the edge of vomiting. I wanted it so much. One cut would save me. It promised it would change the past the present and move mountains inside my head. It was impossible to describe what wonders it promised me if I just let myself press the tip into my skin.

“mummy!” My head snapped up at the word said in the sweetest innocent voice and I jumped up from my seat as Mia ran into the room with green painted fingers at the ready. She roared playfully at me on the spot before hopping forward to my feet and grabbing hold of my leg.

“Hello missy! Did you miss me?” I asked placing my hands in under her arms and lifting her into the air above my head as she squealed and kicked her feet. Her hands grasping out towards my face so I kissed the palms of them and pretended to nibble her fingers before I placed her back on the floor. She ran back out of the kitchen towards Leo  who scoped her up and held her against his hip walking into the kitchen wither her.

“Was she good?” I asked at the same time as turning away from him discreetly trying to hide the box that was still on the side from view. I knew that the blade was still on the floor where I had dropped it when Mia had called out to me but it was hidden on the black tiles from peoples view. I could retrieve it later.

“She was a little angel as always weren’t you,” Leo smiled turning to Mia and kissing the side of her face. “I am sorry she is a little green, we got the worst of it off. I am sure the rest of it will come off in the bath.”

“That’s fine, I’m just glad that she had fun. How about you Lenny? Are you OK?” I asked as Lenny came and stood beside Leo and ruffled up Mia’s ginger hair. His fingers were also stained green with paints.

“Yeah I’m fine thanks. I have a twilight shift on the RRV tonight that I am not looking forward to but I can’t moan too much, not with you working nights and still having to get up this early.” I rolled my eyes with a forced smile on my face before reaching up and pushing the offending cupboard closed.

“You have time for a cuppa or have you got to rush off?” I prayed that they would have time; being left alone would leave me venerable. Mia would not have been enough to keep me OK. She was already rubbing her eyes on Leos shoulder and would be going down for her nap. To cut myself when I was the only one looking after her was almost unthinkable, and as a mother I wanted to scoff at the idea, however, I was week.

“Yeah I think we have a bit of time. Why don’t you go and put miss sleepy here down for her nap Lenny and I will give Esmee a hand with the Tea?” Leo handed over Mia to Lenny and they moved back out of the corridor and up the stairs, while I span around and grabbed the kettle dragging it over to the sink.

I jumped as Leo placed his hand on my shoulder and almost dropped the kettle. I could feel my hands shaking and my breath short and stuttering inside my lungs. It had taken a while but the adrenalin had finally kicked in flooding my system. It made me feel physically sick to think of what my own daughter might have walked into see. It made me sick that I could cut myself when she was under the same roof as me. It made me angry that all I could really still think about was the blade under the table or how the kettle would feel pressed into the side of one of my thighs.

“Do you need me to have a look at them?” Leo asked wrapping his arm over my shoulders. “It’s OK, I just want to know if they need some stitches or something.”

“I haven’t done anything.” I turned around where I stood so I could look at him. “Look at my arms, clear.” I pushed them towards his face like somehow that would prove my point even though I know it didn’t. I could already see his eyes wondering down to my thighs. “I didn’t Leo, trust me, it’s much worse than that, blood it relatively easy to deal with compared to this.”

“You want to,” Leon said his voice now worried. We had suddenly stepped out of his comfort zone. He could give stitches and administer pain killers but he admitted that this side lost him. He openly admired us for our jobs and claimed he had no desire to ever be in our shoes. It wasn’t fair what I had just asked of him but I nodded anyway gripping onto his shoulders. I wouldn’t win the fight alone.

Chapter 264 : The good and the brave... made him cry.

Mi

Emmet hesitated at the door as he watched my broken body lied on the floor being pelted with the jets of water. His expression was pained as he fought with himself for the best way to react. He wanted to help me but he didn’t know how which left us all at a loss. I needed him to take over, to stop things, to put on the bandages that would heal much more than the physical wounds.

“Can I come In?” He asked his voice as strained as his face, he sounded almost angry as he watched me unravel.  I sobbed harder against the floor and brought my head up and banged them against the tiles. It was a basic instinct to make the images go away. If I damaged the part of my brain that remembered them and felt them with such intensity… then I would feel… well hopefully I would be dead.

“No, no Mi, I’m sorry I can’t let you do that,” Emmet said reacting to the head banging as he kicked off his shoes and came over to where I laid on the floor and turned off the water before sitting down next to me. He remained silent for a few more second before he growled “fuck it” under his breath and easily scoped my body up from a lying position and into his arms. I coiled myself in as close as I could get to him not even able to care how the blood from my nose would ruin his cloths or how the whole bathroom smelt funny after the smell of my vomit mixed with the steam of the shower. Nothing perturbed him when it came to the feelings and the heath of others. Everyone would have understood if he allowed the hopeless situation’s to knock him on his ass. Everyone would look the other way if he left the ECA and didn’t come back but he wouldn’t. He cared more than that.

“My nose is bleeding,” I cried scared at every little thing that was happening to me. “I feel really sick .. and … and… I can’t stop shaking.”

“Your body’s stressed and it reacting to that in any way it knows how. I know it feels horrible but it might be helpful to think about it from a physical point of view. Your flight or fight instinct was triggered and your body reacted by getting you ready to do either by sending in adrenalin which makes your heart beat faster and your breathing to get quicker, this also increases your blood pressure and that is why you have a nose bleed; there are a lot of very tiny blood vessels there that are easy to rupture. Adrenalin also explains the shaking and the feeling sick and anything else that happened you feel worried or embarrassed about.” I guess he was talking about the fact that I had wet myself before throwing my guts up.

I nodded before wiping the blood from my nose. In my hands and watching as it dripped of the end of my fingers and onto the showers floor. I was thankful for his patience and understanding. It would have been so easy for him to laugh at me or to walk away and not come back. He didn’t need to be here. In the ECA I would have been considered safe anyway. I loved him for his effort but his words were not enough to ease the embarrassment… but he was something to hold onto even though everything was falling apart. I snuggled in close to him further letting his heat sooth the rapid beating of my heart.

“The steam won’t be helping your nose to stop bleeding. It stoops the blood from clotting. So could we get you back out into the other room and sort that out. You can come and have a shower after the bleeding has stooped if you want, then at 12 you have an appointment with Doctor Jordan in his office. I think the aim is to try and get you out of the ECA today and possibly off one to one observations, of course that is his choice though but I will be meeting him a few minutes early to discuss my thoughts with him. I think Jacob will be there too and Esmee has written her thoughts down.”

I cringed at the thought of Jacob knowing as much as Emmet did. Jacob was the opposite of what Emmet was, A human being first and a nurse second. Crystal was exactly the right choice for Jacob as was Esmee for Emmet. There coldness and solid heart made anyone feel inferior and that was what they enjoyed. It wasn’t the caring that made them love their job, it was the power that came with it. They chose what happened to people and enforced it with plastic card keys, verbal demands and physical force. Jacob would ask for the opposite of Emmet and Esmee wishes because he could, my safety meant little to him.

“Come on Mi, let’s get you sorted,” Emmet announced giving me no time to tell him that I didn’t want to move from the shower, or support my own weight, or to let go of my monster grip on his t shirt that was now covered in my blood before he got to his feet. I instantly went after him like my body was pulled on a string. I wasn’t sure right then how to survive without him, I would have followed him anywhere. He seemed to be making the demons a bit more bearable then my head trying to cope alone.

“Sit down on the mattress for me Mi and just hold this tissue to your nose for a bit. It should stop on its own, if not I will go and get an ice pack in a bit to help it along its way.”  

 “I am sorry about all of this you know,” I said gently after Emmet sat down on the mattress next to me, spreading his colossally long legs out in front of him. “There are no words to describe how sorry I am to be doing this to you.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong. I would ask you not to use me as a weapon to hurt yourself again because I hate to think of me hurting anyone but other that I don’t think I need an apology from you. I think you have been very distressed and said some distressing things but that isn’t bad. I think it’s a result from being human and having some things happen to you that are just awful. We are creatures of emotion we can feel intensely. I believe that sometime such intensity is a bad thing, but that dose not mean you have done something bad. Do you what I mean?”

I nodded slowly. I know what he meant but I didn’t really feel that way. I remembered what I said to him. I knew how it would have made him feel. “I was testing you,” I said gently, “in a way. I wanted to know if you would, hurt me, if you would still be able to touch me or even look at me if you knew about some of those things inside my head. I know you would never rape me or play games like that, but… it would make sense to me if you did. I could understand that. I could probably even forgive you. Does that make me terrible?”

Emmet shook his head and gripped his hand tightly into the mattress while wiping his face roughly with the other. He then turned to look at me with a smile on his face even though his eye where sparkling and there was a ring of moisture around them.  

“You’re not terrible honey, Emmet said in a gulp before he stopped and looked away again. “You’re good and brave… I’ve got to go for a bit OK.” His voice broke on the last words before he slapped both his hands on the mattress and got to his feet making a beeline for the door. I just heard a faint sob and saw his shaking shoulders as it clicked closed behind him. 

Chapter 263 : These little Persuasions

Esmee

I couldn’t think straight after I ended the phone call with a shaking hand. I didn’t know what to do. The truth was I didn’t think about what happened to me when I was a child that much anymore. I Had done the opposite of what I told others to do and put my abuse in a million boxes and tied it up with chains and bolts but for me it had worked up until that point … Hadn’t it? I noticed that scars up my bear arms and shuddered at the thought that I might have been wrong. I could never erase the marks. They were permanent as the ones left inside of me but with my voice I could give them some meaning, with my speech I could heal  the ones that still mattered. The ones that hurt still after all the time.

I had forgiven Julie though. Made peace with the fact that she had did things to me what were not right and surly she had already paid the price that she could offer for her sins. I was still alive and she was the one dead and I had a daughter and a family… and an unnatural fear of locked toilets or wetting myself to the point of panic attacks… I was 30 years old and living in her shadow. It was years on and I was lying to my husband to keep her safe, ruining everything that I had and loved.

I roughly moved my hands over my face and tied my bed tousled hair up into a pony tail at the back of my head trying to get the itchy hair off of me face, trying to create some room in my now uncomfortably filled head for the things that I wanted to feel, to do the things I wanted to do. Emmet and I had recently decided that we wanted to start fostering again soon and I wanted to get the rooms ready as I knew as soon as our names hit the books are phone would ring off the hook with disgruntled social workers looking for emergency care but things wouldn’t budge. They needed… persuasion.

My eyes routed over to the cupboard above the sink before I could shove my body out of the room and away from the danger that I knew it had over me. My thighs still had newer scars then the rest of my body and I still remembered clearly Leo patching me up with thread. It was too soon to bow to its need again. Just slightly over two weeks, some of the marks still had partial scabs over them. If I hurt myself again I could throw the recovering title out the window and welcome myself back to the life of a current cutter. I would need to buy more dressings… and try to re-master the art of stitching myself up. I would have to lie to my daughter and to my husband. Any intimacy between Emmet and me would begin to hurt like hell. There were a hundred reasons to run for my life away from the cupboard, a hundred good reasons and only one bad one to cut… but it felt so good when the metal broke my skin… when blood found the surface and trickled warm down my arms.

I reached for the cupboard telling myself that seeing the blade would make me wake up, that I would decide not to cut but it was all a lie to try and protect myself. I had already made my choice. I only got the blades out the packet if I was going to break skin. 

Going onto my tip toes I found the familiar metal butterflies of the box with the tips of my fingers and nudged it to the front of the cupboard so I could wrap my hands around it and pull it out. I had managed to ignore the bright yellow box that was next to it or the box of dressing and tape. I defiantly tried to ignore the two suture kits. I wouldn’t need them anyway, I was a lot stronger then to get carried away…yeah right 

Chapter 262 : Circling the drain

Mi

*Very distressing, read with care

Things had changed when Emmet walked back into the ECA again. I felt no immediate rush of relief that I was no longer lost to grey foam I felt no need for him to be sat next to me or for him to hold my hand. I had wanted all of those things before because I had wanted him to make the pain go away and now it had. I knew what had happened I knew where I was and how things were going to go but I was numb to the world and its attacks. I did not feel pain or sadness… or love or hope or joy. Emmet was just a generic man to me. Six foot six. Muscular with tattoos. He had jade eyes. He wore old blue jeans that where scuffed at the knees and feet and on top he wore a short sleeved grey t-shirt that pulled at the stitching on the sleeves that stuck  to his biceps. Alice – who had followed him in - was the same just a bunch of features with no centre , no soul. Everyone had died without me knowing. I had watched the end of the world from the corners of a padded room and had nothing to feel about it. 

“I’m sorry that I left you Mi. That wasn’t Particularly nice thing to do but I wasn’t quite sure how to react to what you were saying  and I feared that I might have been putting you in danger,” Emmet said as he walked past me and over to the concealed door in the side of the room before sliding his card through the reader and letting the room open with a pop the groaning of the extractor fan filling the ECA. I felt my heart thud strangely in my chest as I comprehended what the gesture meant and some sort of diluted feeling temporarily infiltrated my blood stream before it died down again. I was sure he was doing to try and be nice to hand the power over to me that had once been taken away. He was trying to ease a pain that I couldn’t feel anymore. “I have also asked Alice to come and sit in with me because of some of the things that you were asking me to do. I think it is important that we have a female with us while we talk to protect us both.” He meant to protect him. To make sure that I didn’t spill dirty little lies about him having sex with me that could compromise his position. He didn’t feel sorry for me he thought I was a freak that would push for sympathy and attention at any cost and it … hurt?

“Has someone done all those horrible things to you before Mi?”  Emmet asked

A thousand different times flashed though my head in less than a second. Most where of them where fragmented, just brief glimpses into the situation before my brain close the curtains to the horror show so not even I could remember it. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe I watched too much TV or read too many books. Maybe my whole life was just a nightmare and I would wake up soon somewhere else.

“It’s OK to tell me.  I won’t get mad or make you explain anything to me that you don’t want to. I know that you must feel very scared.”

“I don’t feel scared,” I muttered quietly as I gazed directly forward not bothering to make eye contact with Emmet as I spoke. I wasn’t sure how I even found the words to tell him about my lack of feeling but somehow he needed to know. It was like I was proud of it, though it all I still had the means to become uncomfortably numb.

“OK, maybe you could tell me how you do feel. Before I left you described feeling very intense pain which was actually quite clear to see by the way you were reacting. You don’t seem to be experiencing those fillings with such intensity now.”

“I don’t feel anything now. There’s nothing left. It’s hard to explain, there’s just …”

“You’re feeling a bit numb? Is that better or worse or are they about the same?” Emmet asked as he sat down next to me on the floor and offered out his hand for me. Less than half an hour ago I would have squeezed them as tight as my hands would have let me but I could only stare at them now, like I was confused what he wanted from me. He removed the offer with a small sigh and placed them down by his side and remained silent waiting for the time to tick away. He had no answers and neither did I. We were lost.  

“They all happened, repeatedly. I was three years old the first time. Fifteen when it stopped.”

“Was it someone you knew, did they live in the house with you?” It was just his way of asking for a name. Someone he could point at and blame and a name he could drag through the courts while I appeared on a video link in a pretty pink dress and told them about all the times he touched me or kissed me or fucked me. I would have to convince twelve strangers in suites that I wasn’t making up lies. That I didn’t want attention, that I didn’t lay down in lace panties and bra and beg him to fuck me.

The idea made the feelings come back. Another series of images flashing in front of my mind of the times he had not made me numb, the times when he had woken me up and made me feel everything. The thing is they weren’t all bad, sometimes with the ripping came the wired pleasure too. The feeling that would make my body rive is something other than pain. It was his excuse. He said I enjoyed it too that when he was gone I would one day wish that someone else could fuck me like he did.

I felt joy, I felt pain, I felt fear, I felt sadness, I felt anger, I felt dirty and disgusting… everything.

I got to my feet without speaking anymore as I tried to gasp air into my lungs that was no longer in the room and stumbled around disorientated wondering what part of me to hold together first as my arms legs chest stomach and head pulled in different directions. I could feel vomit rise in my mouth at the same time as urine ran down the side of my legs and into my PJ bottoms while my head kept snapping through a hundred snap shots a second that tried to take me to the floor. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I wanted to run but I was trapped.

“Mi, it’s all right, you’re safe here, it’s OK try and take some breaths,” Emmet tried to say calmly as he watched my out of control body fall apart. He fort with himself too as he watched on. A part of him was desperate to reach out and conceal the avalanche of emotion inside of his arms.  It was like if he could take the impact of the snow drift of feelings he might not survive but I would, however he was now more than ever very aware of what he was. A man.

“Step in,” he barked at Alice who was still standing by the door even if she now looked horrified at what she was seeing. It was a cruel demand of her, she had no better idea of what to do then he did. Her only advantage she really had when it came down to it was the fact she had boobs and a vagina.

Finally after what felt hours of no air and no sound my lungs worked out hot to take a gasp of air and my tears broke through with the screaming. My legs stumbled towards the bathroom as there point of call. I wasn’t sure why they felt that was where they should go. Maybe it was because it was the only open door and there was a bright light on behind it. It could have signified escape. It could have meant that I was a dirty diseased infested fly that was attracted to the light.

I heaved hard over the toilet allowing the vomit to splash into the bottom of the below at the same time as blood began to pour from the end of my nose to mix in the toilet which for some reason made me cry harder. My body was disintegrating and I had lost all control over its actions. It was terrifying and it felt like I was going to die from the pressure and pain that pressed on every atom of me.

After I was sick again I fell to my knees and crawled with my last energy to the corner of the bathroom doubled as wet room and smashed the button making the hot jets of water burst into life and soak my cloths before I lied down on the floor in a tight ball and watched as the water turned red before circling the drain  

Chapter 261 : Broken promises mixed with lies, but he can’t know the secrets I hide

“Esmee…. Emsee are you there?”

“Yes, yes or course I am sorry,” I had no idea how long I had gone away for inside my head but it was long enough for me to have been ignoring Emmet and now I had no idea what he was saying. My flash backs where rare now and had got increasingly less over the years of my adult life and normally I could keep them at bay with the help of an elastic band and a strong will, but some memories still hurt too much; still lurked under bolts and chains at the back of my head waiting to be discovered. It had been years of my life since I had felt such pain, since I had been… abused. The trouble was I could still not see it properly, could not quite use the word abuse and link it to myself. My mother and father had warned me of the dangers of strangers and told me men were not allowed to touch me in places that where meant to be private. I was prepared and I was warned. They had read the books on how to keep me safe from paedophiles but they had not considered - and why would they - that there best friends teenage daughter would be the one to steal my innocence. They dropped me off into her hands more times than I could count and I let her play her “games.” After all strange men were not allowed to touch my private area but nothing was ever mentioned about woman and least of all “auntie” Julie.   I just thought that it was OK and once I learned that it wasn’t I could never find the words to say. No one new about Julies times with me. She was considered a loving helpful girl that would do anything for anyone. She was paid little for looking after me and my parent’s loved her like there second daughter. We all cried at her funeral after she had taken the overdose of her mother’s sleeping Pills and not came out of her comer; even I had. What was worse I still couldn’t really say with any confidence or conviction that I hated her for what she did and what was even more stupid, was even after 16 years  not being baby sat by her I could still not tell a living soul on planet earth about what she did… not even my husband. That didn’t mean I couldn’t remember every horrific detail.

“What do I do with her Esmee? How can I help? She thinks I am going to abuse her, rape her even. She asked me to do it. I mean can I even work with her at all now from a professional point of view or am I a threat now?”

“She knows who you are Emmet. Her asking you to do that is her way of asking for comfort. When most kids get a cuddle when they are little to make the pain go away she got abuse. Children can’t process that in their heads so they just become numb to it. She associates the abuse with not feeling anything and when you are feeling everything so intently, what could be better?

“I should walk away. I should sign off her case cover my back and make sure only females deal with her,” Emmet said in a matter of fact way, his logical mind coming in to try and protect him from the absolute devastation of the circumstance. It was not him. He wanted to do something different. To leave Mi now, to not try and make it OK would kill him inside.

“So that’s what you should do. Now what do you want to do Emmet? What makes you human?”

“I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her that it’s going to be OK now. That no one will hurt her like that again,” I could hear the solidness in his voice forming again as I allowed him to chase away logic with what he felt. He was so much more sensitive then he looked and he liked to admit, another reason why I could never tell him what happened. I might have been the one that was … abused… but it would be him it destroyed and what would that achieve? Would he even look at me again, or touch me? What would happen if I was no longer pure in his eyes? Would he/could he even love me if he found out I was soiled goods?

“Hold your head up. Stop destroying the foliage, go back inside and get a female NA to come with you but go back and see her.  I know this sounds crazy but open the bathroom door for her as well. It’s strange but I guess if you have suffered that sort of abuse looked bathrooms would be terrifying. They were utterly sickening. There was a reason none of the bathrooms in our house had a lock. After that give her that cuddle, let her know she’s safe. It’s what she wants and needs. To know that it isn’t her fault, that she is still worthy and whole.”

“You terrify me with your knowledge. Promise me… promise me that no one’s ever hurt you like that darling.”  I had to hold the phone away from me and press my hand over my mouth to stop the sob that stretched up from my chest with my tears and out of my mouth before running over to the sink and urging twice trying to budge the agony of what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to lie to him. Not just avoid the question like so many times before but actually deceive the man who picked my broken body off of the streets and made a home with me, a life, made a person out of a wreck.

“I just read the books and got what they meant Emmet. Woman’s intuition or something like that I guess. No one has ever done that to me. Now, go and see Mi, she needs you.”

“I love you Honey.”

“I love you too Emmet. Whatever happenens always remember that.” 

Chapter 260 : Another shrub bites the dust

Esmee

I scowled at the phone on the kitchen wall as it burst into life just as I had sat down to sip at my coffee. I was still tired from my night shift before and if I had my way would probably still be in bed but Leo and Lenny had to drop Mia off before they both started there late shifts in the A&E and on the ambulance’s. There was no one that would have possibly been phoning me apart from a cold caller asking about double glazing or loft insulation as all family and friends new when either myself or Emmet where working nights and didn’t phone. I glanced menacingly at our eco double glazed windows as I slipped off my seat and made my way to the phone ready to tell whoever it was that some people worked nights and I wanted to be sleeping.

“Hello,” I groaned answering the phone before smashing the loud speaker button and dragging it back over to the table where my coffee called to me.

“Hi my love how are you doing? I didn’t wake you did I?”

“Emmet, no, no of course not it’s fine. I am up waiting for the return of our darling daughter anyway. Apparently she has spent the morning finger painting with Lenny so I expect to be greeted by some sort of green goblin at any moment but other than that it’s fine,” I laughed as I fingered through a magazine that I had left on the table until I came to a countdown of what was considered to be the sexiest woman. I smiled as I noticed Emmet had crossed out number one and wrote my name instead. The beautiful thing was- even though it was mad – in his head he meant it.

“That’s great,” Emmet gulped his voice sounding funny as he spoke, like somehow he was trying to fit the words around something that was stuck in his throat. He was tearful. He was trying not to be. He was trying to be the big brave six foot six man that we all saw but he was struggling.

“Where are you too Emmet? What’s happened?”

“I’m just outside the unit, getting some air. I think I might have killed a few of these shrubs as well. I’m OK I just wanted to hear you voice and Amelia’s if she was home, make sure they you were both OK and that you knew that I love you.”  I could hear him beginning to weep properly as he struggled to end his sentence on the same tone as he had started it. He didn’t want me or anyone else to know of his distress and anyone else might have ignored the subtle changes in his voice but I knew him inside out. I had studied every movement of his body and scrutinized the sound of his voice and every emotion. I knew him better then I knew myself.

“Honey talk to me properly,” I said turning off the loud speaker and pressing the phone to my ear. It was stupid but in some way it made me feel closer to him which was where I wanted to be. “you can’t hide away from me. I know you’re upset. Why are you outside the unit?”

“I had to find somewhere I could vomit without having to fill in an infection control form. As I said I think I might have killed the shrubs though.”

“Well bugger the shrubs Emmet, what’s made you sick? Has someone hurt you? Have you got a tummy bug? If so get your arse home here and I will look after you but I doubt it’s that because that doesn’t explain the weeping. Talk to me, “ I demanded.

“Mi’s just asked me to kick her around the floor till I break her ribs, or to load her on water then Jack off in the corner while she was desperate to Pee. She also said if I preferred it violent I could hold her by the throat and fuck her until she bleeds, or I could shove a knife up her Vagina.” Emmet said the words in a rush and then went quiet as I heard gagging noises in the background. It seemed more than one shrub was going to die today as he tried to comprehend what had been explained to him.

“If I ever… ever meet the man that did this too her… I swear to god I’ll…I’ll”

“Rip their fucking head’s off, I know, I know. You would have to wait your turn Emmet.”

“She just a child,” He moaned his anger turning back to the tearful lump that he tried to speak around. The anger didn’t have as much power as the revolution in his head. He like me could now see the abuse playing out in his head, hear the predator’s laughter and moans as he watched the child he found so, seducing preform for him. 

  I pinged the elastic band that was around my wrist to try and centre myself back in my kitchen as my mind threated to retreat back to another time…

“Come on Esmee don’t be a baby, we are just playing a game,” Julie laughed as she watched me with wide eyes as I began to cry.

“But I really need the bathroom and it hurts,” I whined twisting me legs against the pain in my tummy. “I’m four now, I am a big girl. Mummy will be really cross if I wet myself Julie. I really need to go.”

“Well you will just have to hold it then won’t you.”

“But I can’t, I really can’t,” I whined the pain throbbing inside me as I pulled at every muscle. I didn’t understand what she was doing to me or why. There was a toilet just under the stairs and there was no one in there.

“Why don’t you let me help?” Julie asked as she crawled across the room on all fours and put her hand up my skirt…

Chapter 259: Emmets a weapon

* Very distressing bits read with care 

I took two tablets of Lorazapam. I wasn’t sure why. I had protested that I didn’t like Bezo’s but Emmet was persistent and I didn’t like the look of the needle Elizabeth brandished if I didn’t swallow the blue pills with a paper cup of water. I was told that they wouldn’t make me sleep just relax me slightly but I knew that was a lie. It seemed like good idea really though. If you wake up and find that you can’t deal with anything you might as well go back to sleep again. The trouble was I never wanted to wake up so when I felt the outlines of consciousness inside my head I tried desperately to stay under. After all Emmet would be gone too now, he would have crept out when I was lost somewhere to unconsciousness. I could feel the tears coming back before I even opened my eyes and my bottom lip quivered no matter how much I tried to stop it. I rolled my body up tighter on the mattress and tried to float away again before I could remember anything else. Like how the walls of the ECA looked or how I didn’t even have control over the lights. How I weighed over nighty pounds and now had something alien shoved up inside of me… I could feel the tears escape under my closed eyes.

“Please don’t wake up,” I whispered to myself begging my senses to become numb again, for the Lorazapam to have a last minute sedating effect, for my lungs to stop forcing the air in and out of me or for my heart to wither and die. It wasn’t so likely anymore now though, I was bigger and things where working, death seemed farther away - unless I did something about it.

After another five minutes I stopped fighting and I let my body open my eyes to the world.  After I had taken the tablets I had started to fall asleep propped up in the corner of the room but Emmet had led me over to the mattress that I now took up a corner of. I had moved in my sleep from one end of the mattress to the other witch scared me. The movement had been out of my control and I didn’t like it, what else had I done.

“Are you feeling a bit better now honey?” I jumped startled by the sound of his voice in what I assumed would be a deserted room and twisted around on the mattress so I could see him. It made no sense for him to still be there. I was glad that he was but he should have gone like Esmee had and almost strangely I wanted that at the same time. I didn’t deserve him, or her, or anything.

“I’m doing paperwork,” Emmet explained obviously noticing something in my face as I watched him, “Esmee said that it was a good place to get things done. She caught up on all of hers last night when you were sleeping.  I have done quite a bit too.”

“Can I sit next to you?” I asked stupidly the words spilling from my mouth before I engaged my brain. There was something about him that made me feel safe. He should have gone, he shouldn’t have been wasting his time on me, but I was selfishly happy. He eased my pain but it wasn’t something that I could understand not even after all the time I had been there and that made it hurt. If he had turned around and pushed me around or kicked me to the floor, or even fucked me against the wall I could have understood it. It might have even helped. I could then become numb. There was only one thing that was worse than not feeling a thing, and that was feeling everything.

“Of course you can. I even have another one of those hands to hold if you want it,” I moved from the mattress slowly and took my position next to him taking hold of his hand in mine. I tried to breathe steadily to stop more tears from taking me. I wasn’t even completely sure why I wanted to cry just that I did. I always did but no matter what he said tears caused trouble. It scared people into sedating each other. I could still feel the heavy stiffness in my muscles and the sedation to my brain like it was trying to work in grey smog.

I sniffed involuntary as the great waves of repressed tears made me shudder. Everything was too much – I had to stop it at any cost, even his. I took a deep breath and squeezed by bad hand hard around Emmets, the pain swelled inside me as every nerve ending sent a message to my brain that I was being hurt by someone and my eyes told me that Emmet was doing it. It was what I needed for him to hurt me, for him to hate me. I understood the barriers of abuse, of rape and of hate. I knew so easily how that relationship worked and how it felt beside my body. Kind words and gentle hands never had made sense, however I selfishly and confusingly liked the kind words and the hugs and the cuddles but that didn’t always feel OK.

Emmets face twisted from confused to horrified then angry and as he wrenched his hand from me and held it against his chest like somehow I had hurt him, I breathed hard with a smile on my face the pain causing black dots to explode against my vision. The only thing I felt was physical throbbing, nothing hurt anymore and I didn’t want to cry. Emmet also made sense for the first time. He had hurt me – I saw it.

“That’s enough of that! Don’t you dare use me as a weapon to hurt yourself with!” Emmet shouted regarding me with shock as he got to his feet and walked to the ECA door with his key card ready so he could leave. The emotional pain won again but not enough to completely get rid of the physical and it left me in pure agony giving me no choice but to scream which caught his attention just before he left so he turned around letting the ECA door click closed again.

“Mi, I don’t know what to do to help, I want to but if you’re going to use me as a weapon to hurt yourself with I am what is making the ECA un-safe and I have to leave. It’s either that or I restrain you and I inject you with another dose of Lorazapam. Talk to me, tell me how it feels. What you need from me.”

“It feels like I’m on fucking fire. It feels like my brain is pulling itself in ten different ways and its ripping apart along the fault lines. It feels like someone has got in there car and is running me over repeatedly. Someone has put there had through my chest pulled out my heart and squeezed it while another person is using my intestines for a skipping rope and my bladder for a trampoline and I don’t know what to do to stop it!” I yelled before breaking into sobbing and clutching at my tummy where the pain seemed to intensify the most. 

“Well that’s really horrible and I am really sorry that you feel like that but unfortunately I haven’t got a pain killer that will make it all go away. Mental health doesn’t really work like that honey. Still that is not an excuse for you to use me as something to hurt yourself with. Now if there is something I can do. Something to distract you…”

“How about you kick me around the floor until you break my ribs, or hold me by the hair and bash my head against the wall, or if that isn’t to your taste, how about we get a little more perverted. How about you force feed me water or coffee then not let me use the loo so you can jack off in the corner while I squirm and cry until I pee all over myself, or how about we forget the games and you just hold me against the wall by my throat and fuck me till I bleed. Of course you may like it violent, how about shoving a knife up me” I remembered every time it happened before so clearly inside my head and I remembered not liking it but there was no feeling, only a numbness which was what I needed. Emmet made me feel too much, even if it was a good expense, even if he was good.

 I had been three the first time Joe had loaded me up on juice then locked the bathroom door and told me to hold it or I would be a very bad girl. He had got such a thrill he then did it every week till I was ten; sometimes twice. He came back for a brief encore when I was fourteen after he had got all he could from my mother. He had watched for six painful hours as I begged him in agony; he then rubbed my face in it when my body’s instincts won over. It was brain who liked to watch me chock at his hands while moved violently inside me. He would finish off when I was passed out on the floor then I would wake up disorientated and sore minutes later. He only every used a knife once, I bleed too much and it scared him. He liked the thrill but he didn’t want to be imprisoned for my murder. I prayed for death. 

“So come on Emmet pick your poison because frankly right now it would hurt less than this. I wouldn’t feel it at all and I want the pain to go away, I want it to go away,” I sobbed harder as I watched Emmets face which only served to break my heart further. He was now pale and shaking as he swallowed hard trying to move the tears in his eyes. I had not thought before I had spoken. I had been to hurt to consider his Feelings to. Emmet was nothing like them. He was good and the thought of hurting me the thought if anyone going that to a child made his soul bleed.

“Mi, I have to go for a few minutes OK,” He finally said, his voice sounding strained somewhere in the back of his throat as he talked with his hand in front of his mouth. “I’m not angry at you and I am not abandoning you and I promise I will come back in less than then minutes but I have to step out for a bit.”

With that he was gone. I had finally got exactly what I always wanted. I was alone in the world and I didn’t feel a thing. There was only one thing worse than feeling too much and that was not feeling a thing. I couldn’t win.

Chapter 258 : All roads lead to Lorazapam

 My body betrayed me. I wanted to hold y breath as soon as the plastic moluded to my cheeks but the physical me had other ideas and sucked in huge lung-fulls the oxygen that swirled around the mask but still I could not stop the tears like I had hoped it would. I wasn’t sobbing no more, my body couldn’t produce the sobs without my head feeling like it was going to rip apart so it simply stopped but the silent tears that stung my eyes and then dripped off of my nose where worse. They were tears of defeat. I wanted to scream and sob, at least then it felt like I was rebelling against the depression that was swallowing me whole. At least I was telling it to go away not waiting till it finished playing with me.

“Deep breaths,” Ava encouraged gently, as she watched my chest rise and fall still to rapidly an effect of the left over crying. “Try and stay controlled,” she added going to an almost wired hypnotic softness, like somehow she was trying to lure me in before she attacked ripping at my flesh with her fingers and tarring me apart. I winced away scratching the mask off of my face so I could curl up with my head tucked in to my chest and my arms over my head. My lungs protested making me try and hack them up. Eventually my stomach protested at my lugs protest and I had to give up my barrier reluctantly so I could scramble to a seating position and expel a frothy clear substance into the bottom of one of the cardboard dishes. All three of the nurses acted immediately grabbing for more bowls apart from Ava who pulled my hair off my face. In the end Emmet was the one who, got the task of holding the bowl stable so I didn’t throw the condense of my stomach over the floor and as always he didn’t mind even if I did.

As soon as I was done with vomiting I curled up again to Emmet’s protest and hid my face with my hands so my greedy body wouldn’t get’ its own way as it tried to root towards the mask that Emmet tried to shove over my mouth again. I could almost hear his silent groan frustration – it was as loud as mine, there was no logical reason why I shouldn’t have had the aid of the oxygen to make me feel better. I was just unable to accept it. Ava and Edward just looked lost.

“I am meant to be doing morning meds,” Emmet said with a groan turning his attention away from me towards Ava. My heart did a summersault and shuddered before the defeated crying turned back into a sob. He was going to leave me too he said he would always come back but it wasn’t the point. I couldn’t stand him leaving at all right then and I didn’t care who missed there “happy pills”

“I can cover the meds. She knows you batter then me and she might talk to you about what has happened. Maybe Edward should vacate for a while as well it must be overwhelming to have us all here while she is so distressed.” I could have hugged her. It didn’t matter how stupid it was or how much she was unaware of it. She had just saved me from being internally ripped apart again.

 

“I am meant to be taking over in the camera room anyway,” Edward confirmed with a nod agreeing with Ava as they both moved off of the floor and got to their feet.  “All you have to do is yell if you need anything.”

“Will do but I think we will be fine.”

“Well I hope you start to feel better soon Mi,” Ava said patting me once on the arm before both Edward and herself took five steps across the floor and let themselves out with ease using the simple key. The simple key that I did not have but Emmet did. He could leave whenever he felt like it and leave me behind like them and… her. My body ached sending another spasm of pain up my body as I tried to repress the frantic tears.

“It’s just me now honey, Edward will turn the sound off on the cameras and pay us no attention unless things get out of control and I need some help getting it back for you. You’re perfectly safe so there is really no need for this barricade of arms and legs you’re hiding behind and I promise I won’t force you to have this mask over your face unless the numbers on the monitor goes under 95. I would really like to see you properly.”

I looked up slowly and uncurled my legs. It was harder then it seemed, every instinct was telling me to be small to not show the shameful tears that dripped from my eyes and down my neck before soaking into my old PJ top. I was meant to be strong still. Staff had learnt that I wasn’t but that didn’t stop the thought in my head that demanded that I was always in control of the entire world. I yelped trying to keep the tears silent. I didn’t understand my reaction or why the thought of Esmee made me want to scratch my brain out of my head. Every time I saw her face in my head it was like being run over by a car repeatedly my ribs never getting time to heal inside my chest.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I know sometimes you can just feel a bit crap but if there is something that has done this and you need someone just to listen or to vent at I am your guy, also if there is anything that I can do to help this situation just let me know.

I wanted to ask him to hug, to press his arms around mine and hold me safe and secure away from everything that could happen. I wanted him to wash away the ECA the foam, the entire unit and I wanted him to remove the crazy bit inside my head or at the very least make me safe from her, but… I couldn’t ask for a hug it was so stupid, juvenile… healing. I cried harder, pressing my hands over my eyes as my shoulders shook.

“Can…can I hold your hand?” I sniffed trying to control myself with gulping breaths. It wasn’t want I wanted but it was easier to ask for then asking for him told me like his two year old daughter again

“Yes of course you can, that’s an easy one.” Emmet lent out both his hands in my directions and spread his fingers out offering them to me. “You can have either one, or both.”

I took his right hand in my good hand and rested my bad wrist into his left letting him wrap his fingers around the splint and my fingers while I squeezed his right hand hard. It left me unprotected to hide but he meant more in some ways. I could tell my tears affected him though he tried to hide it in his face He didn’t mind them, they didn’t make him uncomfortable but he hated the fact he couldn’t dry them.

“It’s going to be OK honey. You are going to have one hell of a head ach at the end of all of this but you are going to be fine, try not to be scared of this, it won’t last forever”

I sobbed harder. I would have thought I would have been impossible but it wasn’t, my whole body rocked backwards and forwards with the motion. My head screamed and so did my lungs the alarm on the monitor also agreed after a few seconds as the numbers reached 94 and I became very aware of the mask that was still laying at Emmets side. I stole my hands back from him and scrambled away off of the mattress and into a padded corner, detaching the monitor from my finger. 

“Ok, Mi I’m going to take control of this situation if you can’t give me a yes to one of these options, I’m going to step in and force some treatment Ok, because you are under a section 3 here and you are not considered to have capacity I am allowed to do that Ok. So you can allow me to put this oxygen on and see how it goes and if it comes up we can wait until this runs its natural course, or I can get some lorazapam and you can take that for me. If you are unable to do that for me I will inject you with the Lorazapam, even if we have to use physical restraint. I understand that this makes me look like the bad guy and you may hate me for a little while but I have to do my job… even with you.”

“It hurts Emmet,” I moaned not knowing the answer he wanted from me. I think the truth was I wanted him to step in because I couldn’t or wouldn’t make the choice.

“OK I’m going to make the pain go away Mi. I’m going to make the choice and I’m going to give you some tablets to take OK.” I nodded once through my tears letting him know that I would take whatever he wanted and do anything he had planned and Emmet turned around preforming a strange dance for the camera and making motions to turn up the volume.

“I’ve got Elizabeth on the case Emmet. She’s going to bring oral and intravenous. Also got C&R on stand bye.” The voice of Edward announced “We’ll get it sorted out.” 

Chapter 257 : Oxygenated battle

Edward came back as he promised along with a tall thin nurse called Ava. She was in her early twenties, had Ash blond hair that went down to the middle of her back in tight ringlets framing an oval shaped face. Her eyes where no distinctive colour but resembled a grayish blue and she wore golden eye shadow and a shiny clear lip gloss the made her plump lips stand out. I had seen her around the unit before but had never really had much to say to her even the times she had hovered around me in my times of observation she didn’t offer any conversation just a body to make sure I didn’t hurt myself.

“Edward told me you weren’t doing so well.” She said sweetly in her high pitched voice that would have suited a child as she bent down beside me and placed a mixture of different things on the floor the included my morning tablets and an oxygen cylinder with mask already attached to it just in case. I shivered hoping that it was intended for another patient or being used as a strange form of decoration.

“I just want to put this on one of your fingers.” Ava half smiled at me battering her mascaraed eyelashes twice as she unravelled the lead of a hand held oxygen monitor and clipped it onto my finger. It took a little while but soon the beeping of my fast pulse filled up of the room with life, my life. Without this pulse the pain wouldn’t exist. The void wouldn’t matter. I tried to convince them that there was no reason for me to stay around. What real life was I living when I had to literally be kept in cotton wool?

 “You seemed to have got yourself in quite the pickle here,” Ava said as she took the opposite wrist into her hand and looped her fingers around my skin finding the spot in my wrist that I had searched for many times before just with a different intention. I had craved the spot to end my life. She craved to find it to preserve it. Ava smiled at me again as she finished her counting and I tried to return it. I normally hated people that acted like Ava, she had all the features of a paediatric care bare. She would have fitted well in the bright colours of the skylight ward; even her tee shirt had a sketchy drawing of Bambi on it from the Disney film. If she hadn’t worked here in the middle off all this madness and desperation I would of swore that she never knew mental illness existed let alone chose to get her hands dirty with it but because she did, was the reason I actually liked her.

“Esmee said that you had a rough night too but she finally managed to get you off to sleep at around 4am” My stomach lurched as I heard her name and I wasn’t sure why but I couldn’t stop the retching noise rippling up my throat. Why didn’t she just wake me up and tell me she was going? It would have all been OK if she told me. The world would have been fixed of all its issues if she had stayed. Stupid idiot even you know that that is a lie.

“Do you think you are you going to be sick?” Ava asked sweetly as she finished getting the information from the monitor and turned to the oxygen tank twisting the knob on the top of it and placed the mask subtly by my chin. At least that grated me the answer to her question. I could feel the vomit push against my throat and I gagged moaning that I was going to throw up.

Edward sprang to his feet in one fluid motion and rushed off to the side of the room opening the bathroom with his card key. He reached inside and grabbed a pile of cardboard dishes off of the only shelf then returned to me placing one into my lap. I chocked hard twice as I curled my hands around the cardboard lip but I brought nothing up.

“This will make you feel a lot better at least physically if you let me hold this properly to your face Mi, All tis crying are really giving your body a work out and your lungs are struggling to keep up.” Ava smiled, showing her teeth this time, allowing me to see that they were neatly concealed behind a layer of train track braces; it made her look very young. “Maybe you could hold this mask to your face or let me, or Edward if you would prefer, I know you know him a little better than me.”

I grimaced at the thought of the supple plastic sucking itself to my cheek bones, at the slight anti septic taste the air had as it swirled in my mouth and made tracks down into my greedy lungs. I needed it and I wanted it but a barrier that contained no logic blocked the only path to it.  I wailed harder in the desperate confusion before reaching out to take the mask then backing away before I reached it. I bashed my head hard against the mattress trying to knock the thoughts out.  

“Mi you need this and that it OK,” Said another voice entering into the room before scooting his giant body in between Ava and Edward his jade eyes looking directly into mine. “You need some help right now and that is OK. There is no price to pay and I can promise there will be no repercussions. Trust me. I did there was no way I couldn’t and  immediately I removed my hands away from my face and let him press the mask up against my mouth.

Chapter 256 : Abandonment issues

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Without really realising I had gone to sleep. I woke up curled up in a tight ball at the top of the mattress with my fingers curled underneath it. I wasn't sure how I had allowed myself to go to sleep I had wanted to remain alert in the ECA so I knew exactly what the cameras would see but with Esmee lulling me to dreamland with her sweet and perfect voice There hadn’t been a chance.  I looked around the room for Esmee but as I had feared from not feeling her beside me she was not there. I was alone again in the windowless prison of egg box foam with nothing more than a dim night light aglow in the center casting an eerie shadow over the room. It made me fear the corners that where cast in complete darkens. It made me miss windows, freedom.

Loneliness and a sense of abandonment throbbed like a hollow void in my stomach making my muscles tighten in agony until I felt like I would throw up over the floor. I would have done anything to have her just sat in the corner of the room again so she could sooth my scared mind. I couldn’t understand it she was there when I went to sleep and gone before I had woken up. I tried to tell myself that it was just because the night shift had ended and the morning nurses where now patrolling the corridors and eating breakfast with people. That was the logic answer. I knew that but my emotions where set haywire. They were convinced that she had been eaten by lions or blown away by a tornado. It was convinced that she hated me.

Unable to stop myself I felt the sobbing rise in my chest and brake out of me in a moan of watery pain. Not sure what else to do I curled myself up into the same ball and rocked backwards and forwards my whole body shaking in the rhythm to what had quickly become uncontrolled sobbing. My soul drowned in the deepest blackness and the nausea clenched at my stomach. There was no way of knowing what time it was or who was on shift but I knew no one would come no matter who hard I cried. The person in the CCTV could simply turn off the sound if he couldn’t stand the echo of my tears.

There was no let up at the internal torture that ripped up savaging my body and I cried unstoppably even though my throat was sore and my head felt like it would explode from the tension that pulled across my fore head. If anything the more my head hurt the more I sobbed because I couldn’t take the pain. I tore at the skin under my pajamas with my finger nails but because I was known to use them as a weapon weekly they whey where clipped down so they could do no damage. Even if they could have ripped open the skin it wouldn’t have made any difference. This pain was beyond the healing powers of cutting. Only everlasting sleep could calm me now or maybe her face at the door.

There was a beep of a card key opening the door and the main lights blinked into life illuminating the room around me causing the grey textured foam to become more prominent as it burned itself more firmly into the corners of my memories. I already knew that the ECA would be in the flashbacks from my future if I was doomed to have to live through it.

“Mi.” Edward said gently placing his hand on the small of my back which only caused my sobbing to intensify. “It’s breakfast OK.I have brought up some Ensure juice for you to have if you feel like it.” I shook my head as an answer as I tried to work out where I could fit the breaths in between the jerky waves of tears that made my back arch and my body shake with the pain. Edward went down to his knees beside the mattress. “Is there something I can do to help Mi?” He asked gently like he was addressing a frightened abandoned puppy.

I shook my head feebly against the plastic of the water resistant mattress that my hot sticky body clung to like a suction cup to a window. How could I tell him I was scared that Esmee wasn’t there anymore when I knew in reality she had just gone home and was by now probably snuggled up in bed with the duvet over her head? How could I tell him I hurt because she didn’t say goodbye when that wasn’t even in her job description? How could I logically tell him I was scared that she would never come back and see me again? That I felt truly abandoned by her.

“I could stay here for a little while if you want Mi. You don’t have to talk to me but I think that it is important that you know you don’t have to be alone with your pain. You choice I can go away, or I could sit in the Corner, or stay here with you by your bed.

 “Stay Here.” I stuttered loudly in between the waves of tears that consumed me still. I didn’t know if my body would have been able to cope with another person swiping a piece of plastic in the door and escaping while I was forced to live with the demons. I prayed for the end of my tears but they seemed to not stop. Like there was a never ending supply of them backed up somewhere, like I would cry forever.

Edward sat down on the floor close to my curled up body and looked over me not speaking just watching me closely with concerned eyes. I pulled my hands up over my face and hid behind them.  I really didn’t want to be left, yet crying like this in front of someone was too embarrassing 

“So, did something trigger this?” Edward asked eventually, finding some words to say. They had not been the words that he was looking for but he used them when there was the lack of something better to use.

 I shook my head my breath shuddering in my chest. It was a lie but the truth was horrendous and wrong. I didn’t want to feel that way about being left in the ECA, I knew how a hospital was run in shifts and that Esmee was going to go home when the morning broke. I just did feel it, and it was wrong.

 “Well you are obviously very upset Mi,” Edward commented leaning forward and taking hold of one of my hand while resting his other hand over my fore head. “You’re also boiling hot.” He continued gently, removing his hand and getting up and walking over to the door to the bathroom In the ECA, swiping his card key making the door swung open to reveal the shining white behind it. He grabbed some bathroom towels from the dispenser he ran them under the water before returning to me and pressing the cool wet towels to my fore head. His face was soft and warm when I subconsciously smiled; the cold towels felt glorious on my scolding skin.

“I am going to go and get a qualified nurse OK Mi so they can check you over properly, make sure that your temperature is just due to all of you complicated emotions. I won’t me long.” Edward rose to his feet.

 “Don’t leave me.” I begged the panic rising in me at the thought of his back leaving into the sunlight and the padded door swinging shut behind him with a menacing click. The ECA was driving me mad like I expected before it would have never been a problem.

“I won’t leave you for long, I am literally going to get a nurse and come back with them OK.” Edward soothed as he reached the padded door and swiped his card slipping out of the door the click resounding behind him encaging me securely in my prison. I was alone again, and it hurt.