Chapter Five
Quinn - Present Day
Fractured Echoes – Decayed Souls
I woke up seven years ago in a hospital bed, alone, my body shattered into pieces, pain pulsating around it like I was tied down and turned into bullseye practice.
My left side was pinned together with bars they called external fixations, drilled into my bones and attached with a piece of metal on the other ends to encourage them to heal.
Nine were in my arm, and ten were in my leg.
My humerus had been snapped in half—not very fucking funny, I can tell you—and my tibia and fibula were obliterated.
A total of twelve breaks. My memory was gone.
The previous year had been wiped from existence, and no matter what I do, it feels like the memories slip even further away every time I try to remember them.
I was locked in a room on a psych ward with everyone convinced I’d tried to take my life one more time. Can I remember it? No. But one thing I know for certain: I didn’t do that. Something in my gut is telling me they’re wrong.
Your scars are ugly. No one will want you.
According to the nurses, my mother and brother had only called to make sure I was alive.
How nice of them. My dad had visited a few times, slept by my bed in the early days, but from the day I woke up, he vanished into thin air, a figment of my imagination.
There was the odd text from him here and there, but other than that, the only visitors I had had were Millie and her parents.
Although she only came once, things have been weird since my accident.
According to her parents, it’s because she struggles to see me in pain, which I suppose makes sense.
Still a bit selfish though, in my opinion. Not that anyone cares to ask.
My last memory is of a very awkward family dinner where my parents brought up my apparent need for ECT—or electroconvulsive therapy.
For the people who are fortunate enough to have never entered the mental health space and have never heard of it, it’s a medical procedure that uses controlled electrical currents to induce small, quick seizures in the brain, in the hope of treating severe mental health disorders.
Introduced around eighty years ago by a doctor in Rome, things like severe depression, mania (bipolar), catatonia—those types of fun things.
It’s the neurological equivalent to hysterectomies being performed to treat hysteria in women, in my opinion.
It’s extreme, cruel, and not needed. While many believe that it’s been effective—they’ve even trialled it on patients with dementia, as if those poor souls weren’t going through enough—most ‘normal’ professionals frown upon it.
My parents have decided that this is the cure for my issues and ailments, both psychological and physical—the delusional fucking idiots.
Pot, kettle.
You’re the definition of delusional.
Sometime in the year before the ‘accident’.
So, Quinn,” my mum, Andrea, starts, pausing mid-meal and laying her fork down on the table.
Oh, this should be fucking good.
“Your dad and I have been talking about ways in which we can help you.”
I half chuckle, half choke on the remainder of my mouthful, frustrated at the fact that she’s interrupted my dinner. I’m a foodie after all; that much would be obvious just to look at me.
“Respect our fucking mother, you fat little bitch.” As always, my brother Eric is the delight of my life.
My dad just sits there in silence. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. He says sweet f-fucking-a. It shouldn’t surprise me, yet each time I want to jump from my seat and slam his head against the dining table.
Yes, my inner rage is a problem.
OOOOOOO, sounds like fun to us!
If my voices could clap hands and jump up and down on the spot, that’s exactly what they would be doing right now based on the tone inside my brain.
The voices inside of me I call monsters.
I should probably give the main one a name; she’s stalked me my entire life, so why not?
Herpes. That’s what I’ll call her, because once you’ve got her, you can never get fucking rid of her.
She goes dormant for a while, and then when you least expect it, boom, she pops back up again.
“You’ve spent the last decade of my life telling me it’s in my head and to get a grip on reality, so what’s changed?”
“Well, it’s not like you seem to be able to stick to anything, so we’ve been doing some research on alternative therapies.”
“We? Holistic therapies don’t help me. We know this; I’ve tried them all.” I look over to my dad. “And you’re in agreement with all of this?”
“Whatever your mother decides, I will support.”
“And what about what I want?”
“I don’t think you know what you want, Pumpkin.”
“Don’t call me that. You lost the right to call me that a long time ago.”
If a person could shatter into pieces, he would have in that moment, but my empathy for my father has long since run out. “So what holistic shit are you forcing on me this time?”
“Not holistic—alternative—shall we say. They’re a little bit more…extreme. Still legal, but frowned upon by society, and we believe that it’s worth a go. You’ve wasted the first 21 years of your life feigning illness and fighting for attention—”
“So, being just like you, then?” I quip, which earns a frown from my dad, before the edges of his lips tip as if he’s trying not to smirk.
He spends so much time hiding his real, true self.
If only he were brave enough to stand up to her, his life could be everything he could have ever dreamed of—well, if he picked a different woman, maybe.
But I know better. I mean, look at me, still living with my parents, unable to function because my brain hates me.
And the longer this goes on, the more it’s starting to affect me physically.
My brother’s face is an epic shade of beetroot right now. His hands are balled into fists, and I could swear I can see them vibrating. If looks could kill, I’d combust into dust, with no evidence I ever existed.
“There’s no need to be rude to me, Quinn. I know my health issues have been hard on our family, but I’ve done everything I possibly could to get better over the years. I just haven’t been as lucky as you are to have a family who cares so much for me, and is willing to pay for me to get help.”
I scoff. “What are we? Chopped liver?” There’s a clatter of cutlery as my brother's fist pounds the table.
“Stop. Talking. To. Her. Like. That.” Every word is exaggerated to within an inch of its life, Eric’s tone getting louder, more eerie, as he talks.
There have been moments throughout my life where I could never understand why my brother was allowed to lord over us the way he does.
Why he was awarded some kind of power that none of us ever seemed to want to talk about out loud.
But the look on my dad’s face so far tells me everything I need to know—terror.
I’d never considered the fact that he could be afraid of his own son, but now it all makes sense.
The control. The anger. The fear that he exudes from everyone he deems unworthy of his time and attention.
I had never thought that stretched to his father.
Maybe we do have more in common than I first thought.
“It’s ok, my darling. No need to get so het up; I have you.
” She pats him on the shoulder. If they weren’t related, there are moments you would think they were having a sexual relationship.
It’s fucking icky. “I know you would never speak to me this way. I no longer let her affect me. Don’t give her the satisfaction of your reaction, it’s what she wants. ”
My mouth drops. I can’t believe she just fucking said that. She’s a right one to talk.
I sigh. “I give up. What do you want me to do next?”
“There is a form of therapy called ECT—”
“You want me to fry my brain?!”
“Can I fucking finish?” my mother scolds me like the inconvenience I am to her, and she looks me dead in the face.
I need to shut the fuck up before this escalates, that much is clear.
Having been on the wrong side of her and Eric, both at the same time, more than once, I can safely say that is not something I wish to participate in right now.
I nod, taking my trembling hands off the table and folding them in my lap, so as not to make my palpitating fear so obvious, and reduce myself to the demure, invisible girl they desire me to be.
Despite what they say about me, they’re the ones who thrive off of reactions.
When they know I’m scared, it’s like a moth to a flame, and it never ends well.
A hand brushes against mine under the table, and I look to my right to see my dad with a sorrowful look on his face as he tries to secretly comfort me.
Unfortunately for my dad, it’s too late for his bullshit efforts, and I rip my hand away from his.
He’s doing it more for his benefit than mine.
On my left is Eric, and you know in those superhero shows where they burn shit with their eyes?
Yeah, that’s what he looks like right now.
His eyes are molten lava, like he could annihilate my fucking soul in a second, and I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of annihilation this girl wants.
Eric’s hands are also under the table, and for a second, I think he may be about to comfort me.
Joke's on me, though, when I feel his fork stab into my thigh.
Not enough to cause injury, but enough to hurt.
Suppressing the urge to hiss out loud and endure his wrath even more, I swallow, adjust my position, and listen like the good little girl they wanted but never got. Sucks to be them.
“Your father and I have made an appointment for you next week. It’s not a request. If you want to continue to be part of this family, then you will go.”
“And if I don’t go?”
“Then I will not be responsible for my actions…”
The next thing I remember is waking up in a pain I’ve never felt before, unable to walk.
They said it was temporary. That within a year I’d be back to my normal self—whatever that was—but the fixations that were supposed to be out after twelve weeks were still in after nine months, and a year down the line I could still barely stand up unaided, let alone walk.
Now, seven years later—here I am. Can I walk?
Yes? Am I better? Hell-the-fuck-no. The monsters that haunted my mind beforehand are bigger and scarier now.
They’re louder. Every day, all I hear is ‘kill yourself’, and ‘no one wants you’, or ‘no one loves you, your scars are ugly’.
But my favourite has to be, ‘you should do the world a favour and die’.
But there was one thing my mum said that resonated with me from that day: ‘I’ve done everything I possibly could do to get better; I just haven’t been as lucky as you’.
Was it all me? Was I the sole reason for the friction within our family and the fact that I couldn’t heal?
I used to think it was her, but the more time goes on, the more unsure I become.