Killing Mila (wildfire: rewritten)

5. Night Shift

Somehow... I wake.

Surfacing is slow and painful, like the pull of a riptide in choppy waters, tugging me inexorably into consciousness. I open my eyes and cringe at the harsh glare of sunlight filling my bedroom. Through the window, I can hear the hum of passing traffic and a neighbour's dog barking shrilly, so loud it makes my head pound.

The longer I lie there, the colder I feel. The tighter the knot of fear grows in the pit of my stomach. It feels as though I've been hit by a bus, and it's not normal. It's not healthy. It's not right. My eyes are gritty and sore, and there is a brutal throb between my legs that hurts almost as much as it does to breathe, and God, it hurts to breathe.

At least that part is new: how raw my throat feels. Almost like it's been scrubbed down with sandpaper. Or like someone made a valiant attempt to crush my damn windpipe.

But I'm alive. I'm alive.

He didn't 'take care of' me. He didn't kill me.

There is this tiny, desperate part of me that wants to believe the fact that he left me alive is significant, somehow – but the voice of reality is louder. Colder. Nastier. Because the truth is that it's cleaner this way. Why murder me when nature is already well on its way to completing its course anyway? When I'm going to die, anyway?

Something raw cracks open inside me, and rather than face it, I force myself to sit up slowly, gritting my teeth against the pain. There's no sign of him anywhere. No stray hair or footprint, or a note on my nightstand that proves he existed. Not even an imprint on the worn carpet. Just the tell-tale sting between my legs.

I pull back the coverlet, gasping as the purplish marks on my bare legs come into view. Jesus. There's just so many of them. Everywhere he touched me, painting a violent kaleidoscope of colour across my fragile skin.

My heart rate starts to escalate. I trace the marks with fingers, rubbing them gently, like I can somehow remove the bruises with some magic eraser. There's no way he held me this tightly. This violently. Surely, I would have felt it? But the alternative –

I lurch out of bed, stumbling across the hall to the bathroom. With a crippling sense of déjà vu, I find myself hunched over the toilet bowl, spending endless minutes dry-heaving and choking up yellow, acidic tasting bile. My fear only exacerbates the nausea and by the time the cramping lets up, I'm so weak, my hands are shaking as I pull open the medicine cabinet. One tiny, white Zofran pill swallowed dry and chased by a toothbrush later, and I'm ready to crawl back into bed for another twelve hours.

On my worst days, the banal task of brushing my teeth had been an ordeal. I struggled to lift my hand, hold my jaw open and remain upright at the same time, like my body only had enough energy reserved to perform one tiny task at a time. But God, I hated the taste of vomit. I just wanted to feel clean.

Today is nowhere near a bad day, but it's still a horror show when I finally catch a glance at my reflection in the mirror.

My lips part in shock as I take in the patchwork of mottled blue and purple splotches spread across my collar bone and throat. They're so much angrier, more deliberate, than the bruises on my legs. A circle rings my neck, in the shape of four fingers. A thumb. Scabs of dried blood dot my shoulder. Teeth marks. Puncture wounds. Handprints across my breasts. Did he really grip me that hard?

I sway against the sink as the horrible, gnawing suspicion finally pierces the fog of denial: I'm starting to relapse. Regress. The leukaemia is back. I shake my head, trying to dispel the thought before it can take root. I'm not dying. I'm not dying. It was just rough sex. There is a reasonable and rational explanation for this.