The Broken Places

Chapter 1

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward some are strong at the broken places,” Ernest Hemingway

“And fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him that is able to destroy both soul and body,” Matthew 10:28

When Carrie Rey tried to kill herself, everyone was shocked. 'She was so happy, though,' everyone told each other in confusion. Then, stopped and thought for a moment, trying to remember if Carrie was happy or not. No one really knew Carrie. But she seemed happy. There was no reason (that anyone could think of anyhow) for her to be unhappy.

She was a fairly cute girl, in a girl next door way. Most days she was nothing special. However, when she showed up to dances or took a few minutes to clean up, she turned heads. She didn't wear black or listen to “emo” music. Her grades were all fantastic and she sat in the back row of advanced classes, diligently taking notes and never saying a word. No one could possibly imagine a reason for her to want to end her life. All anyone really knew was that one day she was at school, and the next rumors about her attempted suicide were flying around.

“I heard she tried to hang herself in her mom's closet-”

“No way! She drove a car off a bridge so she'd drown.”

“You moron! Don't you think the bridge would be closed if that had happened? No, she definitely jumped.”

“You're all wrong. She put on a wedding dress and swallowed a bottle of pills.”

None of those were true of course. In all reality, it was nothing so dramatic. But, rumors spread like wildfire and by the end of the day, the truth was even farther away than it was at the beginning. The only ones who truly knew what happened were Carrie, her parents, and the doctors. It was nothing so theatrical as drowning herself or putting on a wedding dress. She just sat in the bathroom and looked at a knife she'd used to open her new razor and slit her wrists. She went in a vertical line, knowing it would bleed more, and waited. She knew it probably would have done better to have done her thigh, as cutting her femoral artery would make for a faster death, but it just seemed right for some reason to use her wrists.

It didn't take long for her mother to burst into the bathroom after it had happened. It wasn't that Carrie was making noise or even that her mother had to use the bathroom badly. Mrs. Rey didn't really know what drove her into the bathroom that night like that. Instinct, she would call it later. A mother's instinct. Her baby was dying and no matter how blind she'd been to her misery before, there was no way she wasn't going to just know about this. She'd been sitting at the table, reading a trashy romance novel, when her stomach just dropped. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest until a physical pain emerged and she felt ready to puke. Her fingers and toes tingled and she just knew something was wrong.

Without a second thought, she threw aside her book and ran like a madman to the bathroom. She tried the door, only to find it locked, but located the key and opened it in record time. She didn't care how ridiculous it would seem to frantically burst in on someone doing nothing more than bathing or using the toilet. Adrenaline was rushing and she was panicked. The most horrifying thing Mrs. Rey ever saw, and ever would see, was her darling daughter laying almost unconscious on blood stained tile with red blood oozing from long vertical cuts on her arm.

She screamed, the shrill girly scream only ever heard in horror movies and rushed for a phone. Everything seemed to go by in rush. She dialed 911. Held cloths tightly to Carrie's arm to staunch the bleeding. She didn't even notice her husband until the ambulance showed up and he told her to ride with them. He'd drive.