Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Alice Jenkins

Oh, Christ. You're alive.

It was Alice's first sentient thought, along with it a sense of deep disgruntlement. Like she was back in secondary school, her teacher handing back the essay she'd worked so hard on, only to end up with a B. That, of course, hadn't happened many times. But failing to take her own life? It would be the second. The first she didn't usually like to reflect on, preferring to pretend that it hadn't happened; after all, it had been years before and the only person that had known about it was Vanessa. In a rare moment of sisterly magnanimity, she had heeded Alice's wishes to keep quiet about the whole thing and then used her womanly wiles to inveigle the diffident male nurse into letting Alice go home, telling him that the overdose had been an accident. That there was no need to take further action on the matter. The surroundings that she had found herself in following that first attempt were much the same as the ones she had just woken up to, a silent hospital room, an IV embedded in her arm, a vase of flowers on the side table with a note sticking out of them. Frowning, she reached across and with a trembling hand, prised the card out to read it. Can I worry about you now? It said, Tim Robbin's name scrawled across the bottom. He must have been the one that found you, she thought to herself, placing the note back on the side table and swinging her legs out of the bed, wincing as she pulled out the IV. She was not going to lie there and wait for the Supplier to come and finish her off. No fucking way.

She would do it herself.

Her first steps were fraught, uneasy, and she couldn't help but teeter from side to side as if she were trying to walk in a new pair of heels. She was lightheaded too, which was not a surprise, though that fact didn't assuage the discomfort of it. Her first move was to raise the vase of flowers above her head and then slam it down on the ground, so that it shattered, pointed shards hurtling across the floor.

Perfect, she thought to herself, picking up the sharpest one she could find and holding it like a knife as she treaded gingerly towards the door. Twisting the handle, she peered out through the window to check that the corridor was unoccupied and then, pushed the door open and stepped out. The lights overhead were subdued, which reminded her that she didn't even know what day it was, let alone what time. How long had she been unconscious for? Did anybody know, besides Tim, what had happened? Surely, one of her family members knew, since she was in a private room. Who else would pay for such a morbid luxury? And if they did know, where were they? Waiting in a taxi outside to send her off to another of those awful rehab facilities, polluted by the customary miasma of stale tobacco and alcohol? Only the clip-clopping of what Alice assumed to be a pair of woman's high heels disrupted the thoughts going through her head, which were rapidly gathering speed, heating up her brain like a rocket ready to catapult itself up through the atmosphere.

"Alice...Alice, sweetheart."

Ah. Not just a woman, but a patronising one at that, Alice thought.

Slowly, she turned round on the spot and raised the shard up defensively. Standing there with the woman, was no less than four other medical professionals, each one of them with their arms crossed to their chest.

"Are you going to put that down and let us help you?"

"I don't think so. No." Alice said bitterly, stepping backwards towards the double doors behind her. Maybe, she deluded herself, if you go slowly they won't notice. Unfortunately, however, that capture the flag logic didn't work so much when she was the only one on her team. The doctors, nurses, whatever they were, advanced quickly, holding her up against the wall before she had a chance to retaliate. Her grip on the shard only tightening as they attempted to prise it off her, the edge of it began to cut into her hand, crimson blood dribbling down her wrist, hitting the hospital floor with a gruesome splat. That, the tears saw as their permission to fall freely too, though they did not splatter. Instead, they rolled down her cheeks, warm and familiar, this followed by the whole veneer crumbling altogether, like a sandcastle under a stampede of roisterous children's feet on the first hot weekend of the year. The shard tumbled out of her hand and clattered to the floor and her body slackened, the nurses letting go of her and the suited woman rushing forward to take their place, resting a gentle arm on Alice's shoulder. Inspecting Alice's mangled palm like a carnival psychic, the woman grimaced and began leading Alice back towards the room she had first woken up in.