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.