4. Silver linings
4
Silver linings
Electra
I sense him in the room in the dead of the night.
Despite the sedatives, I’m not asleep. Or at least they didn’t last, and I’ve been lying in this bed for hours, staring into the darkness that’s now my reality.
I’m not sure why he’s here. Why he bothered to come.
Hasn’t he done enough?
How much more can I take before I bleed out.
Erik must not notice that I’m awake. Or he doesn’t care. Why would he?
I’m no one. Just someone he used to know…
He walks up to the side of my bed and stands there. Just stands there for long, silent minutes until I watch his hand rise as if he’s about to touch my legs. It’s hovering right above my knee, but he never makes contact, retreating his hand as if touching me will infect him as well.
“Why are you here?” My voice catching him off guard, and I hear as he sucks in a sharp breath.
“Elle…” he trails off, looking up to me but I’m not bothering lifting my eyes up to him and he casts his gaze back down to my legs. “You understand, don’t you?”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to slap him, but just as fast, I realize I don’t care. He killed that part of me too.
“Leave. There’s nothing more for you to break here.”
With morning light comes a new sense of emptiness I try to drown out with fitful sleep, but that fitful sleep brings nightmares.
I haven’t had those in a long while. But now they’re back. And they are cruel. So cruel.
There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium. I’m up, I hate my existence. I’m out, I fight my existence.
Sometime during the day Filip comes by, thrusting papers and a pen into my hand, repeating the same stupid, pointless words Erik had last night. “You understand, don’t you?”
I wanted to scream that no, no I don’t understand . I don’t understand anything. But that would mean I had to talk. And talking takes effort. And effort I don’t have.
The nurses and doctor come by a few times, and I catch their looks when all of their questions go unanswered but those are not any worse than how my boyfriend—ex boyfriend—looked at me.
And there we go again. A single thought of him, gets those heart monitors yapping away and the whole flurry of “saviors” come by to pull me out of the panic attack. Because that’s apparently what it is, I heard them say it. And I think they also said I need to try and stay calm because my heart is weak right now.
Maybe I should pull the cord out so the next time it gets going, no one will know. No one will be there to stop it. Maybe that would be my way out.
But again, that would take an effort. And I don’t have it.
I’m not sure how many days pass as I stare out that window, watching the snowfall, day in and day out. God, to be that free.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Monroe.” A cheery nurse floats into my room.
Christmas? It’s Christmas already?
“Look at this beautiful arrangement you got! Where shall I put it for you?” she asks but I just turn my head back to the window.
I hear her sigh when I don’t bother with an answer. She puts whatever crap they sent me to make themselves feel better on the far side of the room and leaves as an uninvited tear streaks down my face and a familiar hand is there to wipe it.
I suck in a sharp breath when I turn my head and find Stella standing over me. She must’ve slipped in when the nurse left, or I was simply too out of it to hear the door open.
What is she doing here? I didn’t call her and by the look of it she’s pissed about it. Her lips in a thin line and her eyes sad yet determined.
“I will kick your ass for not calling me right away later,” she says and wipes another tear. “For now, Merry Christmas, my little star.”
“Electra, dinner is ready,” Stella hollers from the kitchen while I’m stuck on the couch, looking at my sparkly legs.
At least these leggings aren’t scratchy anymore. I hadn’t worn them before because the sparkly thread those designer idiots decided to put into stretchy material made me lose my shit, always scratching any time I moved, and the thread scuffed along my skin. Look at that, now I don’t feel like I wasted three hundred dollars for nothing.
Silver linings, huh?
Stella brought me home two days after Christmas and hasn’t left my side since. Well, she did once and when she came back a few hours later and saw I still hadn’t touched the breakfast she made me or that I hadn’t moved from my spot at the window, she hasn’t left me alone again.
I don’t want to eat. And I don’t want to be anywhere else in this house except by the window. Everywhere else just makes my skin crawl. Everywhere else just reminds me of the last morning I spent here believing my life was about to change.
Hell, it sure has. But instead of the ring on my finger and celebrating New Years with my fiancé, I am in a wheelchair with no wishes to make when the clock hits midnight.
At least he hasn’t shown his face here—or at least hasn’t since I’ve been here. I’ll chuck that into the silver linings too. As well as the satisfaction I felt from taking the knife to those atrocious blown-up pictures of us in the hallway.
Stella was so pleased that I mustered the energy for at least something that she didn’t even complain all that much that all I ate that day was an apple.
“Come on.” She comes over, wheeling me away from the window.
She starts talking about all the procedures and appointments I have scheduled but I tune her out. It’s no offense to her, I simply don’t want to talk. About anything.
They say it gets better with time.
But what if I don’t want it to get better.
What if I’m simply done…