I'm fine, until I'm not.

Too Far To Fall

The hair on the back of my neck rose as I heard no response, only running water from another part of the house. I slowly walked around, past the kitchen and down the hall, briefly noticing the dishes had been done, before going to the source of the water running: the bathroom.

I stood at the end of the hallway from the bathroom, noticing the light was left on but I didn't anybody moving. "Mitch... are you in there?" I asked in a rather small voice, waiting, praying, to hear a response. I took another step forward after a lack of response, stopping for half a second before my body went cold as ice seeing a small trail of red at the edge of the bathroom floor. "Mitch!" I shouted in panic, now rushing down the last stretch of the hallway and coming into the doorway of the bathroom, my entire body going cold at the sight that awaited me.

Mitch was laying down on the floor, wet tears on his cheeks and a tormented expression on his face. I looked around his body and there was a massive pool of blood, enough there alone for a dead body. His shirt, a light blue, was covered in spots of blood and jeans absolutely soaked from where his wrists were cut and simply laying there limply. I gagged as I saw his wrists, my heart breaking and eyes tearing up. His left arm had perfect lines, cutting deep enough to separate veins and reveal the muscle underneath, which resembled stitches. His right hand was afflicted with more jagged cuts that went much deeper than the ones on his left, probably due to it not being his dominant hand. Scattered around him were several broken razors that were all soaked in blood, my eyes then returning to his hands and seeing the fingertips were stained red from his still wet blood.

Wait- still wet. My eyes went wide, my brain finally pushing past the shock as I realized that he might still be alive.

I can still save him.

I jumped into action, overcoming my shock, disgust and sadness that rolled through me in waves, but I pushed the both away to focus on saving him. I ran into the hallway faster than seemed possible, grabbing any towels we had before returning to the bathroom, pausing for only a second as I saw him again, before falling on my knees by him, taking his cut wrists and pressing the towels in my hand to them, desperately trying to stop him from losing any more blood and trying to encourage blood clotting. I worked on his right hand, the one that had the deepest looking cuts, using my other hand to pull out and dial 911.

"Hello, 911 what's your emergency." A calm voice said.

"H-hello. I-I" I stuttered, pausing to recover but only showing just how rattled I was.

"Sir, please calm down and try again." The person on the line said patiently.

"S-sorry. I need paramedics. I j-just came home a-and my best friend t-tried to commit suicide. He's barely breathing." I said, stuttering less, noticing a very faint rise and fall to his chest. The woman on the phone gave a noise of worry, hearing her click a few buttons on her side.

"Alright, I'm going to need you to take a few deep breaths and calm down if you want to save your friend." She said sternly, but not unkindly. "I need your address first so I can send the paramedics." I quickly rattled off my- our- address, hearing her click a few more keys to send the paramedics. "Alright, next I need to know, what has he done?"

I swallowed roughly, still trembling as I put the phone on speaker and dropped on the blood soaked floor so I would be able to use both hands to stop the bleeding on both arms, my eyes watering and body shaking as I threatened to fall apart. "H-he cut himself real bad." I said just loud enough for her to hear.

"Alright, can you tell me how he cut himself?" she asked, her calm voice helping to keep me from being completely frantic.

"He cut horizontally along his wrists and then vertically along the inside of both arms." I said, pressing harder on the cuts as they started to bleed through the towel. I heard her mutter softly to herself before speaking again.