I Said I Never Loved Him to Save Him

I clamped both hands over my mouth and the sob broke through anyway.

Why?

Why, when I'd finally caught hold of happiness?

Why was heaven so cruel that it made me push Wayne away with my own hands?

The tears slid through my fingers and struck the floor.

Slowly, my reason came back to me.

I forced the tears away and scrambled, wretched, to gather the pill bottle off the floor.

A knock came at the door.

Then his voice, low and rough, fighting to stay steady.

"Lacey, the house is yours. I'm leaving it to you."

"I'm setting the keys in the entryway."

"If anything ever comes up, you can still call me..."

"We can still be friends. Right?"

The bottle trembled in my hand.

My mouth opened, but not a single word came out.

A long while passed before his footsteps moved off, growing fainter, and the front door clicked softly shut.

Then the feeling I'd held down broke loose all at once.

I dropped to the floor and wept until my voice gave out.

He was the one I'd wounded, and still he was thinking of me.

When I was little, my father came home drunk and he and my mother would fight. When it got bad, they smashed things. I'd be sleeping soundly and the crash of breaking things would jolt me awake. My father came home later and later, and the fights turned uglier. Every time their shouting woke me, my heart would skip and stutter while I curled into a corner and shook. Over time, that kind of noise became a trigger. Even after I grew up, a sudden loud sound could send me cowering in a corner, trembling.

Wayne knew loud sounds frightened me.

So he muffled everything in our home as much as he could.

Every door was padded.

Thick carpet covered every floor.

Even our dishes were plastic.

I'd weighed the flimsy things in my hand and teased him.

"This is too much. I'm not that fragile."

He only pulled me close, gentle.

"Lacey, everything I give you has to be the best."

"I want you to feel that marrying me was the most right decision you ever made in your life."

The most right decision I ever made in my life

was saying yes to Wayne on that rainy night.

But we were never meant to last.

There would be no more after this.

I gave a bitter smile and pushed myself up.

The bottle that wouldn't open suddenly gave.

I pressed the pill onto my tongue,

and the bitterness spread in an instant.

A cramp seized my stomach, and the taste of blood rose up my throat.

My hand flew up and clamped over my mouth.

But the blood spilled out between my fingers anyway, beyond stopping.

I stared at the blood dripping onto the floor, and the world went black.

My whole body folded and hit the ground.

I dragged my hand toward the phone.

I could not die here, in the home Wayne and I had made.

With shaking fingers I called my doctor.

"I think I'm dying..."

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

Dr. Spencer Dawson stood over me, his face like a storm.

"You didn't follow a single instruction!"

"I told you to take your medicine properly. Did you?"

Weakly, I let my eyes fall shut.

I shook my head without a trace of shame. "No."

That made him angrier. "If you won't take your medicine, how do you expect to—"

"If I take my medicine properly, will I not die?"

His expression shifted, and he let out a sigh.

He tucked the blanket in around me.

"You need to be admitted. No more running off."