December 15th, 2015.
Today marks the day Ashley committed a rash act of suicide. Nobody knew how she did it so quickly, but when Tyler entered the shared room to find a limp, ghastly body swinging and rotating ever so slowly from the rafters, he released a scream so shrill it caused a crowd to congregate just outside. All they could see was a pair of feet floating above the floor. And it all made sense.
Her slack jaw, her hunched shoulders, her blue hair, almost too bright of a contrast against her stark white skin, all were too painful to look at. Her blue eyes, speckled with emerald that used to shimmer and crinkle at the edges when she smiled or laughed were empty and sickly gray; her hollowed cheeks were streaked with tear tracks, and we all knew what that meant. She hadn't done it too long ago. If one of us had been there just a few minutes early, Ashley might still be alive. She might be sharing a laugh with us, or, or helping us smuggled those irresistible chocolate chip cookies out of the kitchen, or reminding us how important we were to her and that she would've gone mad if she'd never met us.
The irony was the worst part. How pathetic, to leave without reason or warning, no note, nothing, and leave us to pick the dead skin from our fingers and our hands cold as we sat in the therapy office and endured a twenty minute "heart-felt" speech on how "God saved her" or "she's not gone, she's in heaven". I'd had enough of that bullshit and grabbed Tyler by the wrist and pulled him out of there.
One more minute of hearing that blasphemous women speak as if she knew the thoughts that were bouncing around my head and I would have lunged across her desk and trapped her in a head lock.
I didn't want to go back in that room. Even though her body had long been removed, the noose that she had fashioned out of twisted sheets still hung there as if beckoning to its next victim. It aggravated me that they hadn't removed it, like they were just waiting for someone to give themself up. One less patient to worry about, right?
Because they had Ashley as their main priority, they let me walk around and stay in my room. Tyler practically had to beg them from his knees to allow this. He promised he would never let me falter from his vision, and thankfully they allowed it, since they didn't seem to care about anything anyway.
Nothing was going to be the same after this. For hours I sat in bed with my knees drawn up to my chest, my eyes fixed on the bed adjacent from me, the sheets wrinkled and messy from the last time she slept in them. I wondered if it would stay that way, with just Tyler and I; or perhaps someone new would move in. Either way, I wouldn't feel any different. And the staff just went on with their "business" like nothing ever happened. It made me angry- the way doctor Camryn would walk in with a smile plastered on her face and try to make me feel better with pathetic small talk.
She'd say she was "sorry for our loss." I wanted to punch her in the face so badly; I had to bite down on my knuckles to keep from screaming. "Sorry" meant shit to me. "Sorry" is what you say to a person when you don't know how to comfort someone. "Sorry" wasn't going to bring Ashley back.
I wondered how Tyler felt. He always seemed so busy trying to take care of me that I never noticed how sad he was. His smiles had significantly shrunk in size but he was still far more lively than me. He was too focused on me to feel the immense sadness that I was feeling right now, but I was fearful for when it would hit him too."
•••
"I brought you some cookies if you're hungry," Tyler told me, sitting on the edge of my bed, the paper plate resting in his lap. "If you don't have the appetite then it's okay."
I swallowed hard and stiffened the muscles in my face until the outcome was something like a smile. "Sure. Thanks." I took one and bit off a chunk of it, tossing it back and forth in my mouth. It didn't taste the same. The sweet pang of flavor had shrank significantly. Or maybe it was just me. "Y'know, Tyler, it's okay to be upset. I know you've been really focused on me, but you shouldn't bottle everything up."
He shook his head. "I know it seems that way. But I'm just grieving in a different way. Only when I'm asleep."
"What's that like?"
"Well," he began slowly, his voice cracking, "I just see visions of her and all the times we spent together even before you came around. It's the memories that sting the most. I can't stop seeing her, Melanie. Everytime I close my eyes, she's there."
I wasn't sure what to say. I had never heard of anything quite like that. "Tyler, I understand. This is gonna be real tough to get through. But as long as I'm here and you're here then I know we'll be okay."
sorry dONT KILL ME PLS
-liesl