The Demise of Megan Dewtrop

17.For your eyes only

So.... Megan.
Megan was sick.
She did tell me. So what did I expect...
I expected lies, that's what I thought.
Because of Jim and that sickly sweet Daisy. Because... Goddamn them!
They told me she was a liar, a pathological liar... That's what they said.
And then everything that came out of her thin little mouth was tinted with foaming black stink. Lies.
And I kept remembering her wide blue eyes, which I shivered at, I thought they were crazy-eyes. But really she was dying.
This is my deathbed, really.
Her raspy voice tinkled through her mind. And she wasn't just talking about missing out on her life, she thought that she would be carried out in a body bag.

And maybe all the psychologist and psychiatrists and expert witnesses would laugh in the knowledge and glee that they were right, that, wahey! Megan Dewtrop really was heartless. A heartless, murdering bitch. God... Didn't she deserve it? they could laugh. And I wondered who would come to her funeral, besides the sharkish reporters, snapping away with a cackle.

And, yes it was true, Megan was almost heartless, I recalled Jim's strained voice, "She... Err, has heart failure... Heart failure... Caused by severe hyperthyroidism... And then there's the juvenile rheumatoid arthiritis." A long breath escaped from his lips, which were dry and cracked. "It doesn't look good..."

He pushed himself wearily off the desk, I heard his elbow pop and the hollow sound filled the room before sniffing out against the concrete block walls. "Ok let's go."

I was slightly stunned at this, not his movement, or the pop which instantly made me think of Megan's rotting joints. It was the casualness at which he told me that her life was limited. There was such tragedy in the Dewtrop family, more than their fate share. And I thought I knew what I was dealing with, then, just a freaky kid and two jumped up doctors. I felt the cool table under my sweating hands. Jim placed a large palm on my shoulder, how were like furnaces, I felt their guilty warmth radiating into my jumper.

"I have a medical degree," he wiped his nose with a quick finger and tried to catch my eyes. I couldn't look. "Ok... See, I know what she's doing, both in her mind and to herself."

My eyes closed heavily and I scrunched them up good and right. Trying to imagine the creases on the lids and hiding away my heartache in the deep crevices. My mother always said that I was too sensitive, feeling sorry for people was my weakness. I'd always thought of it as a strength. Still...'mother knows best' apparently.

I was standing in the corridor before I opened them again, and the pressing white light dazzled me as it hit my aching retinas. Jim and Sally moved efficiently ahead of me, aiming towards the far end of the corridor. To cell 04. I heard their footsteps fall in rhythmic unison.

My vision seemed to turn to a flip book of bright images, and as I swivelled my eyes around me, the normally smooth movement was broken and I felt myself reeling. What was wrong with me?

In my dizziness, I saw the cell open up, the shiny blue door, with patent paint, swung swiftly out towards me, the two stepped inside. I dwindled slowly behind.

I really needed to sit down, I thought through the haze. Man my legs ache, I thought. Oh shit... Now I feel guilty... I thought. Because Megan hurts more.

Stop thinking about her.

"Megan!" Jim's harsh voice bounced off the hard walls. I would at least think he would be a bit gentler. I hung back in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of me and comparing it to the camera footage of seen earlier.

Megan looked terrible. I mean god-awful-she-should-be-in-hospital terrible. Her skin was so pale, I could see the delicate web of veins underneath, it tinged her complexion purple. She lay motionless, eyes still and unresponsive. Just staring at the ceiling. I hobbled merely a few inches more into the cell, I wanted to catch a glimpse of what held her so intently. The ceiling was as blank as the walls around her. I could now see the way the joints in her hands had swollen painfully, I imagined the stiffness and curled my own fingers around my crutch tighter. She was so bony and tiny, sunken away. My eyes scanned the room, trying to pick out something that made this one special from the others. Something to make Megan special.