as good as blood

As good as blood

I could have shrieked. It would have been excusable and I considered it but something in me went down quietly. I couldn’t or didn’t want to fight Esmee or the rest of the staff and I knew better then anyone what they had planned for me. I didn’t even struggle to get Esmee off of my back there was no point somehow even though I was now so much physically bigger she was still stronger than me and I didn’t want to risk damaging her.

It took minutes for me to hear the rumblings on the stairs and the clatter as two more nurses looked for the alarm that was coming from Esmee’s wrist and about two minutes for the door of my room to be pushed violently open. It was Edward and Ava and they knew what to do instantly as they witnessed Esmee’s uncomfortable position on top of me. I braced myself to feel their hands on my body.

“She’s cut herself in front of me. I tried to get the blade off of her but she wouldn’t give it up. Be careful Edward she dropped the blade where you’re kneeling.” Esmee rattled of the facts as I almost chocked under the new pressure I felt on my chest from Edward’s hands. “I think we will transfer to the ECA for the time being just to make sure Mi has got some self-control back.”

It seemed so unfair. I had been the very image of self-control since she restrained me. I didn’t need padded walls or someone looking at me to make sure I was OK. I gave up without the fight I could have put up. I gave up without everything. I had just wanted to cut. There had been a time not so long ago when she had needed that too.

I was in the air before I knew it. They gave me no warning before they lifted me clean off of the ground and was carrying me face down through the corridors of the unit towards there destination. I remembered the first time they had carried me this way I had gone for the yellow sharps box in the clinic room and Crystal had demanded her own way. I had screamed the entire way to the ECA and only Bella had the nerve to ask why. I didn’t scream now and Bella wouldn’t ask why it just didn’t matter anymore.

“I’m going to stay with her.” Esmee announced as they pushed open the door to ECA one and laid me down on the mattress that was in the corner of the room. “Ava can you go down to the clinic room and bring me up some supplies so I can deal with her cuts please. There’s no need to man CCTV at the moment as I’m going to be in here anyway but what with all the new red’s tonight it might be a good idea for you to get on the blower and see if you can get us some more man power Edward just in case we need to man it later.”

Ava and Edward left without talking to me once. I tried not to make a noise as I watched the padded door close in on itself leaving me inside it. I didn’t want to be there. It was a void at the centre of the earth where life itself stood still and I was stuck right in the middle of it lied out on a mattress with no sheet. I always ended up here, even when I promises it was the last time ever I always landed back up on the mattress where time stood still. I wanted out.

“I don’t suppose you are going to want to speak to me right now after this,” Esmee said as she pulled gloves on beside me and went down to her knees beside where I was laying. “It’s all right to feel angry with me Mi I’m sure if I where in your position I would be angry too but is it OK if I have a look at your arm please.”

I wasn’t exactly angry with her. I had known when I chose to cut instead of handing the blade over I was sealing my fate of how it was going to end. It could have been different and I knew it. Instead of locked inside padded walls I could have been sat in the clinic room being stitched up by now without the need for any of this but I just couldn’t make that choice. At the time and somehow even now it seemed an impossible option no matter how much more preferable it was to being locked away it was like I enjoyed punishing myself.

“I’m not angry with you. You did what you had to do. I just hate the ECA,” I moaned sitting up and lifting the cut sleeve on my arm so Esmee could see the cuts underneath. They were fairly deep and still pushing blood towards the surface where it smudged onto my arm but they were better than they could have been in a way so much more better then I wanted them. A part of me wanted to keep on bleeding though the efforts of trying to stop it. No matter how it had ended it had still felt amazing to cut and I couldn’t regret it. I just regretted the situation.

“I’m going to have to stitch a few of these I’m afraid,” Esmee said getting to her feet and going to the toilet in the side of the room and getting some towels. “Do you want to put some pressure on those wounds for me,” she asked handing me one.

“No, not really,” I stuttered the tears somehow working their way through the emptiness. The thought of covering the cuts seemed too much to bare. I wanted the blood too keep flowing through my fingers and over my arms and never stop it was too important to stem with a towel, the wounds meant too much to stitch up. “I don’t want the bleeding to stop,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to stop. You stopped me and I wasn’t done. Don’t you get it? I need this it’s not as simple as just looking me away and pretending.”

“Mi in this setting I have no choice but to stop any self-harming behaviour. I cannot let you harm yourself, it’s absolute, however I do know how you’re feeling and I know how hard it is but it does get better and you’re not alone. I’m right here and I won’t leave you,” Esmee promised gently putting her arm around my shoulder at the same time as pressing the towel down hard over the wounds. She was almost as good as the blood.

the last blade

The last blade

The rest of my breath left me in a rush, my whole body reacting to the loss of my biggest secret. My arms and legs scrambled as what I said registered fully in my brain and they reacted braking out of the peaceful position I had been in lied against Esmee’s chest. I couldn’t breathe or see as I realised what I had done. Everything was falling.

“ Hay, it’s OK, It’s OK. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.” I tried to focus on her face even though my eyes refused to. I knew if there was one thing in the world that had a chance of calming the storm before it happened it would be her. If I could get myself to really look into her ebony eyes I could see what I had done for what it was rather then what it felt like but the monsters wanted me to lash out. My bones wanted to crumble against the walls.

I reacted on instinct rather than the knowledge of what would happen if I allowed emotions to let go and I got to my feet. It was stupid what I was going to do, my head screamed that I had to stop but I reacted on the drive that instantly wanted to see the blood that meant I was so brutally alive and dived into my cupboard. It was my last secret, my last plan, my last escape, the last blade.

I cut my arm five times with force through the sleeves of my top before Esmee had any idea what I was doing and I had no idea how I was going to stop again. It had been weeks. I had no many how many exactly but the elation was instant. I remembered it, all of it. The glorious rush of pure untainted relief that it offered flowed like molten gold through my veins and my chest expanded with air that I was convinced would never come.

I cut again with a chirp as I watched the blood rise from the jagged cuts and spill down my arms and over my fingers onto the floor before Esmee moved in a flash and came to a stop just in my field of vision the look of horror on her face. I wanted to stop for her but I never wanted to stop again. The blade pulsed so demanding in my hand but her face haunted my vision.

“Mi stop, that’s enough. You have done enough.” Esmee stated firmly her voice trying not to quiver as she stood in front of me and held out her hand. “Give it to me. Give me the blade.” To refuse her was impossible but to give up the last blade I was ever going to get my hands on was as insane to my messed up head. I wanted to hand it over to her. I wanted nothing more than to ease the look of horror that was etched onto her face. I growled in my frustration as I felt the warm sticky blood fall in little streams from my fingertips and onto the dark blue carpet that was underneath but the blade pulsed so angrily in my hands because I wasn’t using it. It was my last chance to cut. It was my last chance to ever feel the kind of strange clam it gave to me. It was my last chance to be able to breath like I had when the blade sliced through the flesh and whatever her face said, not matter how much her voice silently pleaded with me to give her the weapon and no matter how much I didn’t want to let her down I wanted to cut more. I couldn’t stand a life where I couldn’t feel the sharpness of steal under my skin.

“I’m so sorry,” I moaned as I lifted the blade up in my hand and pressed the edge with force through one of the rips in my sleeve so I could take delight in the skin pulling apart.

“So am I,” Esmee moaned before I knew what she was doing and she set off her RRA before stepping forward to me and swiping my feet out for underneath myself at the same time as twisting my hand back so the precious metal fell from my hand and landed on the floor. Everything ended.

My hardest secret.

 

My hardest secret.

“You do?” Esmee asked her eyebrows raising slightly in suspicion. Her lips curling in at the ends as she looked deep into my face. It’s where everything ended in the look between us, she was expecting me to tell. To let her know where everyone’s get out of jail card was kept then she could take it away like it didn’t matter.  It mattered though more than anything in the world. It was like that first blade that I had hidden in my bra when I entered the unit. I had pinned everything on it.  The canter of my universe had been placed in its cold sharp edge and it was the same now. It wouldn’t have even been something I would have considered telling Esmee if I hadn’t none what I knew now but when other people where hurting themselves when the blades called to them like it did to me it felt like I had to tell Esmee. They were cruel and vile but oh so necessary and I was oh so stuck.

“I can’t tell you.” I sighed letting out a breath at the same time things where always so complicated and I had just made it ten times worse.

“You realise that puts me in a bit of a hard situation.”

“Then you are in exactly the same situation as me then,” I snapped before softening before I managed to get the words out. It wasn’t her fault that things where so impossible. She just wanted the best for me and the rest of the unit and I could give that to her if the words didn’t keep getting stuck in my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“I never said that it was easy Mi but once again we are in one of those situations where I can’t relly help you. You have a choice to make and it is yours alone. You can do the right thing or the wrong one.” She made it seem so simple. Like there wasn’t a million monsters stopping the words that eroded somewhere inside my belly. If it wasn’t Esmee I would have been annoyed at how simple she seemed to make it. If I didn’t know that her arms where stitched up because her emotion had 0verflowed to a knife I would have shut up in defiance. I needed the promise of those blades more then I needed the air that was in the room.

“How dare you try and make it so simple. Mix it up in your head and put yourself in my shoes. What’s it like to be able to have whatever you may need so easy to get at. I have to fight a bit harder then you to get the tools that I need to breathe.”  Esmee winced as my words hit her somewhere just under her ribs leaving her breathless. I had touched something inside her I almost wished I had left untouched. Esmee felt better when she was trying to be superman and I had little or no pleasure in being her kryptonite. Mentioning her stitches had left her more vulnerable then she should have been.

“Look I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“No…. It’s OK Mi, I want to understand and you have put it into a situation where I can. You are very brave to be talking to me about this at all, I’m not sure that I would be that strong.” I shook my head from the praise. I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t brave in the slightest. I wasn’t giving up the blades to the staff. If it was just me I would have been keeping them safe. If it was just me I would have kept the secret so close to my chest but someone else had so cruelly been brought into my situation.

I felt tears bite at my eyes as I tried to think about how unfair it was. Esmee didn’t miss them and reacted by putting her arm around my shoulders

“Take it slowly, I have time for you and there is no need to rush with what you are trying to tell me. It is the right thing that you are doing even if it is excruciatingly hard. It’s so positive.”

“It’s not for me Esmee. I want to keep it to myself and I would if it was my secret not to share but I’m not sure if I am going to be able to get the sight of her cut legs out of me head. To know where she got her weapon. To know that I might have been able to stop it. To know I might be able to stop it happening again and what if someone else works it out. I could stop it but at the same time it’s like cutting off my own air supply. I. Need. To. Cut.”

I know that feeling and you know and I know that if you tell me where Hev found her blade and where you can find blades I’m going to move them. It’s my job. I wouldn’t take it lightly though. You are one of the bravest people that I know honey no matter what your motives are for trying to tell me this.”

“I wish I didn’t know. I wish that I could just stay here forever,” I whispered resting my head onto her chest trying to find some comfort from her touch. “He keeps them on his desk…” I mumbled not sure how the words found a way to be spoken. “Doctor Jordan has a pot of pencil sharpeners on his desk…”  

sharp secrets (Mi's side)

Sharp secrets

Mi

I felt numb inside as I wondered back into my room and closed the door on the rest of the world. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to pretend that I had never gone looking behind other peoples doors and let someone else find her. The staff would have got to her eventually and then it could have been there mess. The trouble was, I was lying to myself as well. For as much as I wanted to be sleeping I wanted to be back in Hev’s room doing something useful. Esmee though kind and most certainly capable of dealing with self-harm lacked the ability to talk to her and there was so much in my head that should have been said. Hev was meant to be fine. We had all come to expect that of her over time. She was scared when she first came but after that she just fitted in with no problems. She didn’t cut herself or run the staff in circles even Crystal found it hard to hate her because she never demanded any attention from her. It wasn’t right that it changed and I wanted to put it right somehow. I wanted to swap my legs with hers and make her feel better. It seemed wrong that she would be the one going to bed with sore legs wrapped in bandages but she would be and I felt her pain.

“Hello sweet heart. How are you doing?” Esmee asked coming into my room after I stared at the ceiling from my bed for what must have been over an hour. Everyone else had been sent to bed by staff ten minutes ago and the corridors where cast in the thick forced quietness that come with the evenings with just the very distant sound of the night stations TV floating up the stairs. It was impossible to tell what was on.  “Are you going to put you pyjamas on and get ready for bed? Do you want a sleeping pill?”

I shook my head and sat up on the bed though my body didn’t want to. It felt like I could have stayed there not moving and not feeling for days if I had had the choice. Things where unfair. Good people got hurt and I was done with it.

“Is she ok?”

“Someone’s watching her. She’s going to be fine Mi.”

“You really think its fine. You think its fine that someone like Hev has somehow managed to land up on red observations. It’s not fine Esmee,” I stopped the feelings burning at my voice. “It’s not fine”

“I know that things don’t feel ok and this is a really hard one to get around but what I was trying to say Is Hev is being looked after now so this won’t happen again,” Esmee said coming over to the bed and sitting next to me placing her hand on my back

“I mean how the hell did it happen. It isn’t like you hand blades out or make it easy. What did she use?”

“Come on Mi you of all people know that where there’s a will there’s a way. There’s no need to play dumb with me. I don’t know how she managed to get hold of a pencil sharpener blade.

My insides froze and my body shivered as Esmee’s words dug somewhere uncomfortable into my soul. They may not have known where the blade come from but I did. I thought that it was only me that had found the little pot of treasures that shone at me from Doctor Jordan’s desk. I thought that I was the only one that new there was a chance to get out when things got to tough, but other people had seen it too and it was hurting them and people like Hev where to beautiful to hurt.

“I know,” I stuttered not knowing what had come over me or why my mouth was betraying the bit of me that demanded I kept the whereabouts of the blades top secret “I know where she got the blade from.”  

Has it helped. (Esmee side)

Has it helped

Esmee

“OK, Ok. I’m coming let’s see what’s happening. Is she awake and breathing?” I asked pulling the office door closed behind me with a snick.

“Yes, she seemed OK when I left her to come and get you. The cuts aren’t bad exactly. Just … Well just there and that seems bad enough.”

“Ok honey I can take it from here. Why don’t you go and spend some time with the others before it is time for bed. I promise I will come and see you before you are sleeping ok.” Mi stopped walking so suddenly it felt like I Had to stop with her. My suggestion seemed to offend her somehow but I wasn’t sure what she was expecting. It was more than my jobs worth to let her get involved in the situation and she knew that. That didn’t mean it would stop her protesting.

“How are you going to talk to her without me?” She had a point. There was going to be a language barrier that I couldn’t get over and there was going to be something very patronising about just smiling at her as I prodded at her wounds. It wasn’t like a kid who had fallen over and scrapped their knee, you couldn’t just smile and them and tell them that you would rub it better. It was bigger, even bigger than words but at least you could try if you had them.

“We will get around it. You know I can’t let you help Mi. It’s already bad enough that you found her. I will come and let you know that she is ok after I have done with her ok. I promise I would leave you in the lurch.” Mi nodded before taking a step back and letting me progress along the corridor alone towards the flight of stairs that lead to the top floor.

I knocked out of habit when I reached twilight before letting myself into the room. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find as I had no prior knowledge of how Hev dealt with such things. We all new that she had a history of self-harm so we all knew that there was a chance of her hurting herself but so far she had been the beacon of courage and strength while in our care to the point when none of us really had an idea as to why she was still in a secure unit and not out living her life with everyone else. It was going to be sad having to write in her book that things had changed.

Hev’s eyes greeted me as I hovered by the door and then walked to over to her bed. She was scared of what I was planning to do to her to where she half-heartedly tried to hide the wounds on her legs.

“It’s ok Hev, you’re not in trouble.” I said as clearly as I could hoping that she could lip read if I was clear enough. “Can I have a look and see what you have done to yourself?” She nodded slowly as she uncovered her leg again and moved it so I could see the pits and gashes that leaked ruby red blood from her legs. I was going to need to stitch the worse ones if she would let me and cover the others. There where over twenty cuts that followed no pattern or reason just pain and they were made to make another bigger pain go away.

“Are you feeling better? Has this helped? Hev looked at me suspiciously caught off guard by the somewhat strange question. It was a valid one though people were trying to achieve something by their self-harm they didn’t always get what they wanted from it. In fact a lot of the time it was a desperate act but it could work in some way. It once had worked for everyone who had tried it. That was the reason why we kept chasing it down to the very ends of the world because when it worked it felt so god damn good.

“I know it sounds like a silly question but you did this to try and achieve something. Has it helped?”

“Does it ever?” Hev asked stiffly her word slurring into each other showing how much she hated to communicate in this way.  

“Well you do it for a reason don’t you?” Hev smiled a looked away tears glittering somewhere inside her eyes she didn’t need to answer the question for me to know the answer.

A cuts Language

A cuts language

Something drew me closer to her. I had planned to run and get help. I had planned to run so fast that I could have rewound what she had done but her sad eyes and her laboured breathing drew me to her bed because I wanted to help and I seemed like the best person for the job even though I was in a place filled with nurses that had better training.

“It’s OK.” I signed as I sat

 down next to Hev on the blood soaked sheets and allowed myself to look at the wounds. It was meant to be a glance I was meant to make assessment on weather I had to go running but as soon as I saw the wounds my eyes got stuck. It was a mess. The cuts where deep and blood pushed at their surfaces and it was terrible but something about them meant so much more to me than they did to another person looking. I was looking at stories not wounds. I was looking at a language not a cut and they shouted their words at the top of the voice but they were private sentences at the same time. There secrets belonged to Hev and not even myself with such knowledge could understand them just that they were strong. 

I am not sure how long it took but in the end I looked away and laid a towel over the wounds. It was hard in a way I wanted to see them on display as much as she was reluctant to see them go. People where always so eager to clean up the feelings when you wanted them to spread on for ever. When there was a bit of you that wanted to strip off and walk proud threw a hundred people asking what wounds they were on about when they asked because they didn’t hurt at all compared to what was on the inside. It was impossible to get deep enough to actually remove what really hurt and with the plasters and sticky tape holding them together they stopped screaming out your pain far sooner than the internal screaming had ceased but they had to go away sooner than you would like for everyone’s sanity. Even I felt uncomfortable in the presence of such raw pain.

I searched my head for words to say but nothing would have made a difference to what had happened and nothing could have made her pain go away. I had known she was upset even the staff had known she was upset but none of us new how truly tortured she was. I hadn’t even known that Hev was a self-harmer her arms where clear of all scars and if she was in real pain she never showed it. Her personality had always been clear of visual blips. She never cried. She never even looked sad. Even now any tears that she was to shed where dried up along with her blood.

“Hev, it’s going to be OK,” I said gently shaking her shoulder to get her eyes to focus on me. “You will get looked after here, they won’t be angry at you.

“Like I care what they think of me Mi. They have no idea what this means to me, or how this feels I couldn’t give a damn if they want to shout at me or not. I don’t cut for them or anyone else.”

It was bull shit. It was a cutters shield that made her hands move in hostile ways. We all cut for someone.  She would have only ever had shit thrown at her about self-harm and to get on with it she made out that she couldn’t feel what other people thought of her but only her mother and fathers words really had the power to knock Hev so far on her ass. She cut for them because they were the ones that made her feel far too much

.

“Leave me alone Mi,” Hev said defeated as she turned to her legs  and started to mop the blood off of her legs with the sheet revealing the holes that now littered her legs like she couldn’t even feel coming from them.

I did what was asked of me without saying another word and left Hev alone in her room. A part of me wanted to just wonder back into my bedroom and put my sheets over my head and let  a member of staff find her as they eventually would but she needed looking after and even though I couldn’t be the one to do it I could do my bit.

I eventually found Esmee in the office doing paperwork about five minutes after I left Hev on her own. She smiled at me though the panel in the door as I knocked and she got to her feet to come and see what I wanted. I wished I could have smiled back at her, that one day I could just be getting her attention because I wanted to tell her that I loved her and not that there was something wrong.

“Hello, Sweet, what can I do for you?” Esmee asked.

“It’s Hev. She needs help.” I said noticing the blood that was dried onto my hands and across my knuckles. “I found her in her room. She’s cut herself.”   

behind twilight

Behind twilight

Emmet landed up calling someone else to cover for me after I sunk back behind my bedroom wall but it was hardly needed as that evening just before the night shift came on the found a doctor that wasn’t so scared of me to allow Emmet to reduce my observations right down to twenty minute checks. It wasn’t what I had been on beforehand and I would have preferred the two hourly observations but it was better than having an unwelcome shadow.

I had not been able to see Hev for the rest of the day though I was anxious to know whether she was OK after what had happened. The problem with Hev even though she was deaf she seemed to have no reason to be in the unit at all. I know she had a story I knew from the first time I saw her distressed state in the corridor that hev wasn’t happy all of the time but she had no physical scars. Her arms where pure untouched peaches and cream and she wasn’t like Pollyanna who was so painfully thin most people found it hard to look at her. She did not talk to the voices in her head or address hallucinations. She was perfectly in contact with reality and if you had the ability to communicate with her in her chosen language she was usually funny ad upbeat. her continued stay in the walls of an acute unit where a mystery to most even to her but she told me she had nowhere else to go apart from her posh boarding school that was refusing to take her back after finding her semi coherent with a belly full of pills.

As soon as I was let off of my observations I went and knocked on twilight which was the room Hev was now in after being moved up from the main floor a few days ago. It was not an easy task. I had tried to avoid the room since Bella had died like I tried to avoid lingering too much in front of Courage I didn’t even like walking past them let alone going in them because since she died nothing about them was right. She had given the rooms life she had breathed something into them and without her they were voids of nothing that tried to suck something out of me every time I was too close to them. It hurt every time I thought of her. Even when I was ok and doing normal things she would just pop into my head and it would feel like I was going to sink though the floor. Most people told you that time made it easier but Emmet had contradicted that when he had caught me one of the times I had fallen. He told me that the feelings stayed as intense and as devastating you just learnt to cope better with them when they hit. And he was right that was how it was like yet I had a long way to go with both Bella and Arabella they both had me on my knees. The trouble was I liked Hev and no matter how much I wanted to run away screaming as I pushed the door open to twilight to see if she was all right and wanted to come and play a game with myself and Esmee if I could grab her after handover.

Nothing could really prepare me for what I saw when I pushed open that door with a wave of my hands and before I could stop myself I let out a little yelp and grabbed the wall to steady myself as I looked at the scene from a horror movie. There first thing to see was the bright red blood that covered Hev’s legs and the blankets that where rolled up around her but more devastating was her. Fun and care free Hev had gone somewhere far away as her dead eyes stared like a zombies into the gashes on her legs before put down the tiny silver blade to the side of her and singed the words I’m sorry as her chest heaved up and down with heavy adrenalin filled breathes.