Chapter 275 : how dose the world go on?

How does the world go on?

We sat for a while after that and didn’t say a thing Emmet calmed quickly. He was not healed in any way he did not feel better however he had always been in more control then I was. I had no real tears. I had no energy to really shout or scream. I just wanted it to be over. To wake up from this bad dream.

Mia had grown annoyed of being annoyed and had settled with drawing in Weetabix remains with her fingers on the tray of her high chair. She was a good girl really. She was perfect at least she was too young to remember Mi. At least we wouldn’t have to explain to her if… if it happened.

I don’t know what prompted Emmet to get up when he did or if he even wanted to but he did get to his feet so he was one more step ahead of me. I was still content with sitting on the floor. The world didn’t feel the same.

“Well who’s a mucky ducky then? You know that is meant to go in your mouth right?” Emmet smiled approaching Mia’s high chair. She smiled back before dropping her spoon into her plate sending Weetabix to splash up onto her already covered face. She giggled.

“Well this is not what we had planned but a think a bath is in order missy, and you…” Emmet continued turning to me “must be shattered why don’t you head up to bed and try to get some sleep?”

Sleep? How could I sleep? I was so tired I could sleep for a week but I knew that was going to be impossible. I could not rest until I at least knew, and if it was the worse, if it would stand to be that the only thing that was left was a photo and a memory I would probably never be able to sleep again.

“Sleep?” I almost laughed. “That would be a fine thing. I doubt I will ever be able to sleep again.” I didn’t want to but I got to my feet anyway. “I think I will live of coffee instead.” I approached the kettle in a sluggish movement. The gaps between where I was and where I was meant to be had somehow seemed to have grown. How could a few steps feel like I had to complete a marathon?

“You need to look after you too honey and pumping yourself so high on caffeine isn’t doing that. No matter what happens now not matter how sad life has to continue for the rest of us. Mia is here and Apple gate house is still standing and still has people inside that need you now. They always have. Everyone knows you are the best nurse that has ever graced that building.”

I was about to argue with him. I was capable. I wasn’t brilliant. Maybe if I was. I would have spotted something. Was there something? Something in the way that she moved, or in the tone of her voice? The expression on her face?

“You could drive yourself insane overthinking this Esmee. There were no signs or warnings. She was not wearing a flashing light. Mi mad a decision and she hid it from all of us and she hid it damn well. She had practice. Her world was just too hard for her. I hope she lives. Hell I hope she lives and if she dose we will try again and again. We will never give up however you need to be well an in control for when she wakes up.”

“Hello… guys, it’s only us. Can we come in?” I jumped as our front door opened and Leo and Lenny’s voice shouted up the hallway. It wasn’t uncommon for them to drop in and maybe right now it was a good thing. Mia needed attention and I was not really up to giving it. Emmet could Emmet was brilliant but I needed him too. How selfish was that?

“Well what a night,” Leo moaned plonking himself down on one of the kitchen chairs while Lenny reached over and took Mia out of Emmet’s arms. Emmet then sat down too next to him. I followed suit. “I had one your kids in ressus last night guys, not in a good way. I know it’s not really my place but I guessed you guys wouldn’t mind an update so you’re up to date on what’s happening.”    

Chapter 274 : Responsible

I felt Emmets grip tighten around me as I told the news. His heart picked up speed in his chest until it sounded like a freight train going through my ears. It sounded like he was about to have a panic attack but I know he wouldn’t that was a lot closer reality to me as realisation crept more and more into the for front. I knew that reality was she would probably die that I had in fact in essence found her dead. But the Panic and sadness came when I understood what dead meant. That she wouldn’t be there. That I would never see her again. That she would never reach a stable weight or fight cutting. Get married Have children. Grow old.

“I just let her out the ECA,” Emmet said stiffly. “I put her on green observations. I fought  for that. I told Doctor Jordan that even though she was unpredictable it was all progress. That she could be safely managed. I did that. I went against him. He wanted amber at least and I pushed for green. I did that.” Emmet’s voice was pained and distant. He blamed himself. His grip went week around me and he sank to the floor. His head in his hands. He made no sound I’m not even sure he produced any tears but he felt so, so far away from me.   

“Emmet…Emmet I demanded, crouching beside him. Without him I would panic. I would disintegrate. Slip, slide, tumble and Break. “Emmet I pleaded.” His body quivered but he made no movement. He did not speak to ease my fear he did not smile or reach for me. He did not kiss the base of my throat or touch my hands. There was nothing else to do apart from be with him so I sat defeated on the floor my eyes drifting over the kitchen.

We sat for ages not saying anything just listening to the thickness of the air around us watching Mia get impatient as she finished eating and bashed the spoon in her bowl. I looked for the answers but I didn’t even really know the right questions.

“I am responsible for this,” Emmet eventually said taking his head out of his hands. His skin was white and grey his lips devoid of colour.

“No you’re not. Of course you’re not.” I reached for him past the silence past the haze of resistance he gave out and touched his cheek brushing my finger up over his lips and down his chin and that’s when he broke, when his numbness retreated and the pain slipped him. His face cracked, his head low and huge heaves of tears engulfed him washing over his shoulders and down his spine in waves braking over the surface.

“Emmet. I love you,” I whispered scooting over to him and pulling his as close to me as my small stature would allow him to be, I wanted to tell him that it was all right but that wouldn’t be true. So what else was there to say? 

Chapter 273 : At home

Somehow I worked the rest of the night shift without falling apart. I did my job well but just that my Job. I mostly occupied the office perched behind my desk and worked through the mountain of incident reports, risk assessments and other paper worked that came with an attempted suicide of such magnitude. Time I did adventure out some of the Clients where asleep others stirred with worry over there missing comrade. Bella… Bella sobbed and sobbed and didn’t stop. I put her on amber observations maybe it was cruel but so much sobbing could take dark form in anyone’s head and Bella did not protest. She didn’t care she wanted her friend safe something that I could not give her.

I could not remember the drive home from the unit when it finely came all I knew was I cried the entire time not heavily not heartbroken beaten down sobs from the chest like Bella just a trickle of tears that I had to occasionally rub away with the side of my hand so I could see the road. I probably shouldn’t have been driving but I could not face being next to the people on the bus.

“Hi honey good shift?” Emmet shouted as I twisted the key in the lock and stepped into my hall way at about eight fifteen. I hadn’t told him yet. I had tried on a good few occasions from work to pick up the phone to tell him the news but how? He loved Mi too. It had to be face to face.

“No…” I sniffed more tears surfacing and falling over my cheeks as I stood in the hall way of the kitchen looking over  him directing Mi’s spoon full of cereal towards her mouth so he couldn’t get wheat a bix down over herself.” No not really I squeaked.”

“Hay, hay, what’s happened honey?” Emmet asked placing the spoon back into Mia’s bowl and walking over to me embracing me into his arms.

“It’s so awful Emmet.” I moaned pressing myself into his chest still not allowing myself to properly cry. “It’s Mi at work she said she somehow found a blade. Looked like it was from a pencil sharpener. She took a bath and cut her wrist. Manged to het the Ulnar arteries. Did a pretty good job on her leg to might of hit the femoral artery too. She bled out and went under. When I found her she wasn’t breathing. I took her out the bath did CPR but it doesn’t look good.”             

Chapter 272 : What she left behind.

The ambulance arrived in minutes but it felt like hours and with every second that passed one of the other nurse or myself worked over Mi’s body but she showed no signs of life not from the second I pulled her out of the bath to the moment she was delivered lifeless into the back of the ambulance and they speed away blue lights reflecting on the rain kissed pavements.

I had never felt so numb. So lost. So unable to get my head around something that could have been prevented. Had I missed something in her that I should have been able to see? Was there something I could have done to prevent such tragedy? Was I ever going to see her smile again? Feel her tears on my shoulder?

“Esmee… Esmee… That alarm. That alarm is bad alarm right. Doesn’t that mean someone has stopped breathing? Ae they Ok I saw the ambulance… Esmee, are you Ok?” 

“I’m Ok Bella,” I said forcing a smile onto my face. I had not thought how I was going to tell the rest of the clients that one of their own was seriously unwell or dead. Each and every one would have their questions about the Alarm. Though it was in code none of them where stupid they all knew what that alarm meant, but this was worse this was Bella. How could I tell Bella? In the unit she was Mi’s best friend she had took her under her wing and even though Mi still demanded a lot of nursing attention and intervention. An awful lot more then Bella Bella was always there for Mi they hung out they talked and played games when Mi showed some stability. Bella cared for her. She was going to be devastated. It would probably even knock her recovery. Apart from her precious twilight books that she gained her strength from Mi was next in her line she was one friend that truly understood her. Who know what it was like to not be able to eat.

“So who is poorly are they Ok?”

“Bella.., Mi isn’t very well… There paramedics have taken her to hospital and they are looking after her Ok. She is very poorly right now but they are trying to help her…”

“Mi…” Bella stammered looking at me. Her eyes big and filled with liquid. She didn’t really understand why would she. Neither did I. We should have spotted the signs had her on red so we could have been watching her. There were too many questions. I wanted to cry too.

“What? I mean how? I don’t understand. Wasn’t she in the ECA? How did it happen? Did she you know… do it too herself?”

“You know I can’t tell you what happened Bella, I’m sorry.” I moaned taking one of Bella hand into mine.

“She is Ok right though.” Bella smiled though her eyes already knew the answer. Tears started Spilling down over her face as she studied mine. What I would have given to have been able to give her good news to tell her that one again Mi needed “extra care” but would be back soon, but it would have been wrong to lie too. There was such a fine balance of what I could and couldn’t tell her, she was Mi’s beast friend yet I could not tell her the truth. It was sad but somewhere there was a written law that I could not brake if I wanted to remain a nurse. i wasn’t sure I even wanted that at that moment though. I couldn’t imagine not coming into work and seeing Mi in her room any more. Did I really want to?

“Bella… She is very, very ill.” With my words she crumbled her knees hitting the floor before I could reach out to catch her, and she sobbed long and hard and loud. The noise infiltrating the corridor almost much more loudly then any alarm could. This was Mi’s real alarm. The heart break, the pure devastation the she may not come back. It was cold and haunting.  Mi didn’t know it but this is what she was leaving behind. People who loved her, who cared and who could not physically stand up without her.

Chapter 271 : She had to be dead

Esmee

 “Mi, I’m doing checks.” I shouted into the bathroom door about quarter of an hour after Mi told me she was going to have a bath. It was nice to see her looking better after her hell of a time in the ECA and I was glad she was getting back into the swing of things, in short she seemed for the first time that she was doing ok. “Mi I have to come in and check if you are OK sweat pea. If you want to shove a towel over yourself or something that would be good,” I shouted back through the door before twisting my fingers in the release lock and opening the door a jar so I could see in around the corner.

“Mi honey, Mi… … Mia!” I yelled as I took in what was in front of me. Mi was laid under the now bright red bath water with her eyes closed. I recoiled at the sight as my eyes went fuzzy with tears and I almost vomited over myself. She had to be dead, there was no way she could survive this. I couldn’t get the facts to get right inside my head or work out what I should be doing. Mi was dead. Mi was dead. She had been smiling at me fifteen minutes ago and now she was under bright red water. It wasn’t fair we had all tried so hard for her and she had come so far. I had held her in my arms and told her that I was going to protect her and now she was dead.

As quick as they went away they came back again and my nursing instincts took over she had to be dead but I had to try there was still a chance if she had only stooped breathing. It was remote and unlikely but I had to try and bring her back. Scrambling to make my legs work I smashed the button on my RRA and then darted over the door and smashed the little blue alarm under the fire alarm. Every room and corridor in the unit automatically filled with sound and a posh woman announced the words “code blue.”

“Come on Mi fight this baby,” I moaned after going back to the bath and plunging my hands into the scolding hot water so I could get her out of the bath. I knew the image of her would be set there forever inside my head but I had to work through it I had to get her heart beating. Getting her out of the bath I laid her down on her back on the floor. She had to be dead… she looked barely human as I looked over her with blue lips and purple sunken eyelids. Her skin was pasty white with no hint of colour in her cheeks and she was bleeding arterially from both wrists and possibly from her legs… she had to be dead. It was impossible.

Clearing my head as best as I could I whipped off of Mi’s lips and tilted her head back pinched her nose and breathed twice into her lungs before I turned my attention to her chest. I hated giving CPR. It was brutal and it was violent and it often broke ribs but it was the only way it would work so without thinking I pressed my hands deep into her chest wincing as the rest of her body flopped about under the pressure. I felt like I was beaten up the broken but it had to be done if there was any chance, if there was any small hope that I could save her.

“What’s going on Esmee?” Jean shouted puffing and panting as she reached the bathroom door at a run talking to a person on the end of the phone.

“It’s Mi,” I moaned watching as water spilled out the edges of Mi’s lips at the same time as I pumped hard upon her chest “I found her underwater in the bath after she cut herself. She’s got an arterial bled from each wrist and there is a really nasty gash on her leg. She’s not breathing and she hasn’t got a pulse.”  I heard Jean rattle off the information to ambulance control on the phone but my head became distant. It wasn’t fair. She had tried so hard to fight.

“Come on baby, live, please just live, it gets better I promise, just breath for me,” but there was nothing she was fading and I couldn’t bring her back… she had to be dead.

Chapter 270 : Home at last

The bath water felt like it burned me as I stepped in and sat down in the water the heat making me gasp slightly as it turned the skin on my legs pink, but I knew the water needed to be hot to stop the blood clotting too soon. There was only going to be one chance to get it right. I needed to be quick, precise. I could not fail this time. 

 I would cut my one good arm first with the limited use of my first wrist trying this time to miss the tendons and then I would cut my bad arm. I had no idea how to start with my legs but I would head for the femoral artery they bleed a lot apparently and that was what I wanted. I needed to be gone before Esmee had the chance to bring me back.

Slowly and carefully I pressed the side of the blade down against my arms and dragged them back across the delicate blue veins under the water. The blood pumped out fast turning the water a deep red before going on to the other wrist and doing the same thing again making the blood pump quicker. My head span with the weight of what I had just done, was this going to work now? Was this the last seconds of my life? Would the jade green textured walls be the last colours that flashed before my eyes was the disgusting smell of  anti-septic toilet cleaner going to be the last strong smell to burn in my nose and the back of my throat. The picture of suicide in my head had always been romantic. Even though every attempt on my life had confirmed to me that it wouldn’t be in a way I still expected it. I wanted ruby spilled blood and lush ebony hair draped over the side of the bath full of rose petals not anti-septic spell and searing pain in my wrists. There was nothing romantic about the way the vision in my eyes swirled uncomfortably or the fact that my teeth chattered so violently even though my body felt like it was on fire. Death just hurt but one person pushed me on and made me smile. I would be with her again soon.

“Arabella I’m coming now.” I whispered trying to block out the part that told me to use the last of my energy to scream for help, that this wasn’t actually the way to die drowning in a tub full of your own blood, but at least it was a way. It was the get out of jail free card I had been looking for in a whole deck of chance cards. I was going to die. I would become the number on a page for so many but it didn’t matter because I was going with the people who really cared. I was going to be able to hold my son for the first time, to rest in Arabella’s arms and I knew there I would never feel any pain. Suicide was painful and humiliating but it would be over soon if only I could endure it so with the last of my little strength I slashed the blade down across the side of my leg roughly where the femoral artery was and sank under the bloody water the world around me going black as Arabella focused in the front of my mind. I was home at last. 

Chapter 269 : She will remember me

For the rest of the day my head worked overtime as i behaved as I was meant to. It was no point in just reacting. There was no point in cutting my arms and getting stitched up it had to be perfect and planed and not impulse that made me react to my new found sharp objects because there purpose wasn’t self-harm. They weren’t meant to give me a temporary oblivion – they had to knock me into oblivion. Doctor Jordan in a way had been right, He was looking for a solution and I had found one. The truth was his dark side had probably considered it briefly as well when he wasn’t thinking. If I wasn’t there, there wasn’t a problem. I had to put an end to everything and I was going to. By three that afternoon I had had my plan made and it was going to be my last day on earth. I just had to wait until the right time and the right place which had been set for nine forty five that evening.

I watched the sun set that evening and I almost cried as I watched the sun turn the whole sky orange. It was pretty and it was the last time I was going to see it there in the sky and what was almost even sadder was I was the only one that new it was going to be my last time so everyone else reacted normal there was a tomorrow for them but for me there was nothing.    

“You look deep thought.” Esmee smiled as she stood at my door after the forth check of the night since she had been on shift. It was quarter to ten and time that I was going to react on what I had been planning. Every part of me hurt with the way that she smiled at me from my door way and a part of me small and not able to push at the darkness wanted to scream at her not to leave for the next time she would see me I would be dead but it was nothing compared to the force of the plan that I had and it was only her that made it difficult without her there was no spark. If someone else happened to be doing my checks there would have been no doubts that my plan was right.  

“not really,” I replied forcing myself to smile at Esmee even though I wanted to cry. “I was thinking about going and having a bath. I used to find it quite relaxing it might help me sleep too.” I said trying to look at the way she stood in my door way. There was something about her perfect black eyes and strawberry scented red locks that made my heart feel like it was going to bleed from the pressure when I saw it. She was perfect and adorable and she was going to be the one to find me lying still under the red water when my plan worked. She would be the one to pull my body out and it would be her mouth that was pressed against mine and her hands that would pound through my ribs to my lungs as she tried to save my life and what was worse was I was sure she would remember this day for the rest of her life. She would replay this conversation and look for clues to my plan and how she could have prevented it and there was nothing I could do to stop her or reassure her that I would have fooled all of them. That it wasn’t her fault and I really wanted to die. In short the worst thing was she would remember me and that would haunt her forever