Let Go

23: White

Harken's Pov:

I woke up in a white room once again. I was hoping it’d be a different room for the past three mornings. I knew it wouldn’t magically change into a more hospitable room, but did I really care? It wasn’t all that much different than my room back in the House of Solace Sanitarium.
Though, this time, I was clean of drugs. I was high on suicidal thoughts, only.

I haven’t left my room since I got admitted here. I didn’t try to oppose them. I didn’t care about what they did to me anymore. In case they didn’t notice, I had given up long ago.

My memory was back, albeit a little fuzzy. However, I remembered everything I needed.

Before the incident, I was hung up on one thing and one thing only: Aiden Haile. After I woke up and “got blessed with a new life” I cared about one thing only still: Death.

I didn’t want to kill myself anymore. That much was figured out. But I wanted to die. They wouldn’t let me end my life here, anyway.

No one has pushed me out of my room yet. As long as I was taking my medication and eating my meals, I was left alone for the most part. Like I said, I wasn’t putting much of a fight. I was finally defeated, I guess.

The physiotherapist was seeing me three times a week for two weeks. Luckily for me, it could all be done from the comfort of my room. It would’ve felt like a hotel room if it didn’t lack all sorts of entertainment. I couldn’t even have a smoke. The window was barred, too. By the looks of it, I was on the third or maybe fourth floor.

I specifically instructed everyone that was responsible for me that I wanted no visitors. I didn’t want to see anyone I knew. Not dad, not mom, not Aiden, and this time, not even Thomas. I wanted to be left alone for once.

Was it going to make me more depressed? Maybe it would. I wouldn’t know unless I tried. But then again, I was sick of everything. It seemed fitting that I had a barren room with blank features. No paintings on the walls, no TV, nothing that resembled life.

So, me.

I lay in bed and stared at the blank ceiling. As much as I wanted to believe that I wasn’t going to think about my past life, I found myself slipping slowly into it. I didn’t know who thought it was a good idea to leave a depressed person alone with their thoughts, but damn they didn’t think it through.

I had never prayed before, but when I did, it backfired. It was the one thing I remembered the most about that night. I remembered praying that no one would find me. That it would sail smoothly and I’d just slip out of their lives like how I slipped into them. Unseen. Silent. Ghostly.

But I didn’t.

The doctor told me that Thomas found me and got me in time to the hospital or else I would’ve been in “grave danger”. Well, I wanted to be in a grave.  She also told me that Aiden Haile was the blood donor that saved me. She was not supposed to disclose it, but she thought it might cheer me up to know that he cared about me.

So even through death I managed to get more of Aiden in me. He runs through my veins. I involuntarily looked at my wrists. They were scarred now, but did I care? The last thing I’d care about right now was a scar on my skin. I was already glowing with colours.

I must have fallen asleep, because when I came to, I heard the nurse doing his rounds. He was called Najib. I had never heard that name before. He had a thick accent, and he didn’t tolerate my sense of humour. My sense of humour being that I wanted to actually die.

It was going to be mere minutes before he entered my room to give me my medication. A dose of I didn’t know which to help I didn’t know what. They said it was supposed to help me overcome the suicidal urges. I wasn’t going to do it again, but they didn’t believe me. They tend to not believe you when you’re a recent patient.

Najib was accompanied by my psychiatrist, Professor Linda Peter-Grayson. She was appointed specifically to me by dad and his brother, none other than the professor’s husband. I could call him my uncle, I guess.

She was wearing a dark red pencil skirt with a matching blazer and lipstick, her hair in a messy bun, and you could tell she was tired. Najib administered my medication with no problems. Not because my psychiatrist was here, but because I didn’t care what they gave me.

“How are you feeling, Harken?” She asked, tucking her notepad underneath her arm. She never visited around this time. It was either early morning or late at night. But then again, I hadn’t been here for too long to memorise schedules.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t wanna speak to anyone, and I meant it.

“Nurses tell me that you haven’t left your room yet. You do realise you’re not locked in?” Again, no response. I did know that I wasn’t imprisoned here. It did feel like I was, though. “You’re allowed outside, you can do group activities, you can have your lunch in the cafeteria,”

When she finally gave up, she let out a sigh and wrote something down in her notebook, then tugged it back underneath her armpit. She looked around and took a seat in the armchair.

“Do you need anything professor?” Najib said, eager to please his boss. She was clearly his senior.

“No thank you, Najib.” She spoke to him in a different tone. She was warmer with me. She wasn’t necessarily cold to him, but she was definitely more considerate to my feelings. I hated that. I hated everything they did here. I hated the excessive care and niceness they provided. It felt too ingenuine.

“I’ll be seeing you regularly starting Monday,” She said, her tone firm and professional now, “Every Monday and Friday, and we’ll schedule more sessions if we see the need for them,” I didn’t see the need for those ones to begin with. I was fine. Sure, I didn’t wanna be alive, but I was fine. I wasn’t even going to speak, so it wasn’t really needed.

“I respect you refraining from speaking, but it’s not in your favour to do so. It’ll only hurt you and those around you,” I’d start caring about those around me when I start caring about myself in the first place. “I know you think these sessions are useless, most patients do. But you’ll thank me later.” I highly doubted.

She finally stood up to leave. “Remember, there are people waiting for you outside, even if you think they aren’t. I know for a fact they have been missing you for months.” That was what she didn’t get. People. People. People.

I didn’t care about people waiting. I didn’t care about people not. I simply didn’t care about people right now. I didn’t care.

But I did.

His blood was in my veins.

She left my room with a click of the door, and I was left with my thoughts again.

A crack of thunder snapped my head towards the window, and suddenly I was in tenth grade again, playing football during a free period. And then it had started raining, and the teacher couldn’t get us to go inside. But I had to rush to shelter so my skin doesn’t show the vitiligo underneath. Mom would’ve been mad.

So, I went inside and watched. I watched no one but him. Aiden Haile. He was playing to his best, getting soaked by the rain, his clothes sticking to his perfect body, and his hair going in every direction possible. And I watched, and watched, and wished I could be the one who took him home and washed the mud off and dried him with the softest towel I could find, then cuddled him so he could rest in my arms. I wanted to be the one who got Aiden at his highs and at his lows.

Another crack of thunder.

How did I end up so close to you, Aiden, and so far away from you at the same time? I was so near, Aiden. You just needed to close your eyes and feel me. But life wasn’t that smooth sailing, and things weren’t that easy. And when you had your daughter to go to at the end of the day, I had my pills, this cold pillow, and an empty room where nothing but my thoughts echoed against its walls, where they reverbed images of you and you only.

Because my mind never calmed down unless it was in the home I created of you.

A/N: you should start expecting shorter but more frequent updates.

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