Chapter Six
Quinn - Present Day
And that, my friends, is how I’ve found myself here.
Walking to my favourite bridge next to the busiest road in our town, with a final choice to make.
So desperate to end the torture inside my mind, I’d rather not live any longer.
If I go to the left, I land in oncoming traffic, potentially causing trauma to other people who happen to see me jump or a car that could hit me—again, and maybe not even finish the job if past experience is anything to go by.
Or, I could go to the right and plummet into below-freezing water, hopefully never to be seen alive again, until I potentially wash up on the side of the bank one day for a lonely old fisherman to find, looking like a puffer fish.
But then I still risk not doing the job properly, potentially paralysing myself and spending my life even more fucking miserable. Decisions, decisions.
We’d make the decision for you, but you’re too dumb to listen.
The bridge I’ve chosen is close enough to home that I don’t have to travel too far, but far enough and abandoned enough that no one would happen to come across me.
It’s not like they’ll miss me anyway. Probably won’t even notice I’m gone until they realise their verbal punching bag isn’t there to take their jabs.
There’s a local cemetery on the other side, but I’ve never seen anyone in there in the time I’ve been doing my recon.
The bridge is blocked off to the public.
A big red sign that says ‘DANGER-UNSTABLE STRUCTURE-RISK OF DEATH’ screams at me to go back, to return home to my family and beg them to listen—but adult me has never been a fan of doing as I’m told.
It’s almost like a big red warning light that tells you to leave a building when it’s on fire or a natural disaster has struck, but instead it’s telling me where I can kill myself.
Ironic that the one thing keeping the public safe is the one signal to a mentally ill person that it could be their way out.
I remember the first time I attempted suicide as an adult with tablets other than paracetamol after seeing a horror story on TV.
I sat there in front of the assessor, who marked me as a low risk because my hair was washed and my pyjamas matched.
God forbid a depressed person has the capacity to be hygienic at the same time.
The funny thing is, my hygiene is the first thing to go, but I live with my mother, who likes to let the entire world know that her daughter is disgusting and doesn’t wash if I go any longer than a day without a shower.
Her actions in turn have led to me being obsessed with cleanliness.
Everything has a place. Everything has to be in that place because if it doesn’t, then bad things will happen.
When the doctor came round to see me later on, they informed me that I was clearly attention-seeking because my specific antidepressants were the kind that I would never be able to successfully overdose on.
Some would say that was a stupid thing to say to a suicidal person.
But they didn’t think I was suicidal. They thought I was faking it.
So the next time, I overdosed on the morphine they prescribed me for the pain since my accident.
When they asked why I had escalated, I told them because a doctor had told me a better way to be successful.
I mean, I wasn’t wrong, was I?
Unfortunately, that then resulted in my mother being in charge of my medication, and me only ever being allowed it if she deemed that I had done enough physical activity for my pain levels to be worthy of my emergency painkiller.
Different when she’s swigging it behind my back and telling the doctors that I dropped the bottle and smashed it because she’d used it all, though, isn’t it?
I snap out of the memory when horns screech at me for walking in front of them.
Clearly didn’t learn a lesson there, did I?
As I’m headed to the bridge, I recap the last few days in my mind. My audiobook plays in my ears if only because I couldn’t possibly die with an unfinished book.
It’s been two days since they told me they had re-booked my ECT appointment after not being able to make the original one due to my accident.
I’ve spent the entirety of those two days communicating with Dr Google and dealing with my monsters trying to convince me to kill myself before I get there. I think it’s obvious who won.
It’s three days until D-day, with tomorrow being the initial consultation, so my only chance to avoid it is this moment.
If I'm honest with myself, the only reason I stopped arguing about it with them is because I was sick of hearing how they had wasted a thousand pounds for me not to turn up. Like I’d decided to walk in front of a car all by myself.
Everything I found online about ECT was, quite honestly, fucking terrifying. The potential risk factors and side effects are ringing like alarm bells in my brain, with the monsters attempting to drown them out by shouting louder.
Don’t let them do it to us.
They just want you to be all alone again.
We’re your friends, Quinn.
Don’t let them separate us!
SHUT UP! Throw yourself off the bridge, Quinn! Don’t be so selfish!
Herpes, as always, is the fucking loudest of them all, telling me to stop being a coward and throw myself off the bridge—hence me being here.
At this point, a lobotomy sounds more pleasant.
From my extensive research—and I know not everything online is true, but I made sure to only take my information from reputable websites and actual trained doctors—there are a lot of things to consider.
Before my procedure, I have to fast from midnight, no food or drink except for small sips of water for essential medication, like the morphine I take for my pain—when I’m lucky, and she thinks I’m deserving.
They have to do an exam to check my heart and lung function, and considering I’m my mother's daughter, it may be hard to find a functioning heart; if they do, it’s probably black and dead.
Then they have to put in an IV line for anaesthesia and muscle relaxants because, oh joy, I have to be put to sleep.
They’ll monitor my heart through an ECG (echocardiogram) and my brain through an EEG (electroencephalogram) as they prepare to induce seizures and trigger the brain waves.
I thought my way out would be to not give consent.
To ask them to tell my parents, because of the monitoring, that they saw something that needed extra investigation.
It turns out, while I was unconscious after being hit by the car, they obtained a legal document that gives them medical power of attorney.
They’re in charge of all decisions regarding my health because they have my best interests at heart, unless it can be proven otherwise.
How fun?! Imagine you’re the sole reason your mother has spent her entire life depressed and angry, and now she’s in charge of you having electrical currents slammed through your brain. Sounds like an adventure, right?
Once all of that is out of the way, the procedure will commence.
The muscle relaxant is given to prevent injury, and they’ll place the electrodes on my scalp.
According to what I’ve read, the common places to attach them are on both of my temples, which could cause me cognitive side effects, or one on the right temple and one on the vertex—the posh definition for the crown of your head—which has less risk, or risk of fewer cognitive impairments.
And let’s be honest, it’s not like I can afford any more, is it?
Once they’ve placed the probes, they will deliver a brief electrical current that typically lasts less than a minute while providing oxygen through a mask and protecting my teeth and tongue with a mouth guard.
Being in the ring with Tyson Fury sounds more entertaining than this, I won’t lie.
After the procedure, patients usually wake up within ten minutes.
And don’t get me started on the potential side effects: temporary memory loss, confusion, headaches, muscle soreness, nausea and jaw pain are common ones.
The memory loss could potentially go as far as weeks or months after the procedure, which, in case you’d forgotten, I already have.
A whole fucking year of my life is gone.
The less common, but more serious ones are seizures—the irony—impaired balance, difficulty recognising faces, and it turns out it isn’t a one-off procedure.
Women are also at more risk of experiencing the rare side effects if exposed to the treatment for a prolonged period.
The world just likes to fuck women up without their consent, doesn’t it?
Who needs misogynistic prime ministers and presidents when you have medical treatments like this that your parents can force you into as an adult?
I found out it wasn't a one-off procedure thanks to Dr Google, not my parents. Typically, two to three times per week for a total of six to twelve treatments. And knowing my mother, she’s gonna fight for the most treatments possible to try and avoid any chances of me recovering my memory.
It’s become clear that that is not something she wants.
Any conversation where I try to uncover blocked or missing memories is diverted into something I’ve done wrong, accusations of me being dramatic or faking for attention because I couldn’t possibly have forgotten a whole year of my life.
I’ve caught her and Eric whispering in corners a few times, but the moment they see me, they stop short and go off in different directions.
I haven’t seen Millie, either. When I was in the hospital, she brought me flowers, a card and her Kindle to borrow, but over the last few years the closeness between us has dissipated, and the distance and length of time between visits has just gotten bigger.
Gone are the sleepovers and movie nights.
I’m lucky if I even get a reply on WhatsApp nowadays.
Her parents have come by, they say she’s busy with a new job.
I make a mental note to go and visit her myself after the ECT therapy—if I can remember.
I could never be too busy to check on her if the roles were reversed, but I’m realising as time goes on that I give more to my relationships than I tend to get, and I think it’s about time I rectify that.