Chapter 23
AMELIE
PLAYLIST: HOLD ON – CHORD OVERSTREET
When I open my eyes, I stare into bright light.
Please let this be the afterlife.
A face appears in my view. Green eyes and dark auburn-copper hair.
No.
Please, no.
“Hi,” she says.
Tears flood my eyes.
I don’t want to be here.
After everything I did—
I can’t be here.
I need to be gone.
I need to be dead.
My vision blurs.
Everything is distorted.
I see my father leaning over me.
Shouting at me.
My head falls to the side.
My dead brother on the floor.
Me kneeling next to him as he wouldn’t wake up.
I can’t watch it.
I turn my head to the other side.
I see El lying next to me.
Just like we always lie in bed.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
She just smiles at me.
My chest compresses.
I can’t feel all this.
I need to not feel.
I need to kill every emotion I have.
I need to get away.
Run away.
I need to—
“I’m here,” she says. Jane. Squeezing my hand. “You will live, and we’ll get through this together.”
I don’t want to live.
I don’t want to feel.
I don’t.
I open my mouth. I want to scream at her to leave.
“Shhhhh,” she says and brushes over my hair. “You are not alone.”
And with that, everything goes black.
When I wake again, it is with a throbbing pain in my head.
“Welcome back, Miss Degard,” says someone. “You gave us all quite the scare, but luckily, you had a guardian angel.”
Let me die, I tell them in my mind while staying silent.
I am handed something to drink.
I move my head away.
I don’t want to feel better.
I deserve to feel the most horrific I can feel after everything I have done in my life. The mess of a life.
Grief and guilt surge through me as I think of El, the image of her and me standing cuddled up watching the Empire State Building, her laugh, her eyes, her smile.
I want to scratch my eyes out so I don’t have to see her in my mind.
I dig my face into my hands and scream.
My hands are being pulled away.
“Please be careful with the arm, it would jeopardize the healing.”
I don’t want to heal.
I need to run.
I sit up.
I am dizzy.
“Please, Miss Degard, lie down.”
“No,” I say and swing my legs out of the bed.
I am grabbed.
It makes me so angry.
Anger.
I want to destroy everything. Including myself.
“Someone help!” I hear the person shout.
And then there is her.
Jane.
Grasping my face.
“Look at me,” she says.
I don’t want to look at her.
The visual reminder of all my failures.
I need to get away from her.
But she won’t let me.
“HPA Axis,” she says. “Recite what you know.”
I stare at her with wide eyes.
“HPA Axis,” she says again.
“Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Yes,” she says. “What do you know?”
I don’t want to–
“Recite!” she says, louder.
“It is responsible for a chain reaction that can lead to the release of cortisol,” I almost scream at her.
“The autonomic nervous system triggers the hypothalamus to release corticotropin-releasing hormone, which triggers your anterior pituitary to release adrenocorticotropic hormone, which then triggers the adrenal cortex to release cortisol. It can lead to dysfunction through traumatic experiences, depression, metabolic diseases, and dysfunction of the immune system.”
With every word, every sentence, the storm in me calms.
“Exactly,” she says. “And what are the effects of an extreme spike in cortisol on your brain, experience, and body in case of a traumatic experience?”
“Shrinking hippocampus, reduced prefrontal cortex activity, enlarged amygdala—“
Enlarged amygdala.
Reduced prefrontal cortex activity.
“And how would that affect a person’s experience?”
“Maximized emotional experience, reduced to no rational thinking.”
“Yes,” she says, still holding my face. “Breathe with me.”
“In through your nose,” she says, and breathes in through her nose. I follow her guidance. “Out through your mouth.”
I do, as she says.
“In through your nose.”
“Out through your mouth.”
Some of the tension falls from my body.
I want to close my eyes.
But I can’t.
Because when I close my eyes, I see El.
El, who is—
“Stay with me,” she interrupts my thoughts. “In through your nose.”
“Out through your mouth.”
“In through your nose.”
“Out through your mouth.”
I don’t know how long we’ve been breathing, but it feels like hours.
At some point, she stops saying the words, and we just breathe together.
I look at her with unfocused eyes.
I can’t see her.
I don’t want to see her.
I want to hide.
She should have run after everything I have done.
How can I ever look her in the eyes?
I can’t.
Because I have failed everyone.
Everyone I ever met.
I failed my brother.
I failed my father.
I failed Sophie.
I failed El.
I failed Jane.
I failed myself.
It is what I do.
I fail everyone.
Leaving them with nothing but the mess I created.
“I’m such a mess,” I whisper out, and tears stream down my cheeks.
“No,” she says, straightens up, and pulls me into her. “You are just a girl trying her best to survive in circumstances she couldn’t do anything about.”
“It’s all my fault,” I say as I listen to her heartbeat with my ear on her chest.
“No,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, anger resurfacing as a tingling in my chest, and I push myself away from her touch. “It is all my fault. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Enlighten me then.”
I shake my head.
I can’t talk about it.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because talking would make it real!” I shout at her.
She smiles faintly and sits next to me.
“The Hamilton and Alvaro-Pascual study you mentioned in the first lesson.”
I stare at her hands.
“Just because something is happening inside your head doesn’t make it less real,” she says. “Your brain might experience it as real solely because of the emotional reaction you have to it. It is real, because it happened.”
“Don’t,” I plead with her, and my eyes wander up into hers. I don’t want to. But they do.
“El died. She killed herself. And it wasn’t your fault.”
My hands begin to shake.
“It is!” I shout as the edges of my vision become black, and I see Jane like through a tunnel. Panic sears through me.
“No,” she says. “El made a decision for herself. She decided. She decided to make her father pay. And she was successful with it. She decided to break free and not be his toy.”
“How do you even know?” I say under my breath.
“Took a guess from the charges he was arrested with.”
He got arrested.
But that means she could have lived—
She could’ve—
“I told her to do something for herself—I—I—she—that night, she pushed me to you, because she knew what I feel—“
More tears stream down my face as a hollow void consumes my chest.
“She told me she was always alone, and she protected herself from being heartbroken. It’s all my fault, because I love two women. It is all my fault. I killed her. Just like I killed my brother.”
My entire body trembles.
I killed my brother.
I lied to the only friend I ever had.
I lied to everyone I knew.
I pushed the woman I love into killing herself.
I didn’t take care of her, like I should have, because I was distracted with myself and Jane.
I killed El.
It is all my fault.
All of it.