Together

Chapter 10

October 2nd 2017 1:00 pm

Class is so boring now. I used to love it. I used to love hearing ms.Ellwell call out everyone's names just to check that nobody decided to skip class. Not anymore.

"Ramona?" She calls.
"Here," a cheerleader answers from the seat in front of me.
"Ray?"
"Here," a boy I've never met says.
"Robbie?"
Silence.
"He was here this morning, does anyone want to go look for him?" Ms.Ellwell asks, she sounds exhausted.
"I can!" Elliot says, just a bit too enthusiastically.
And he's off, going to 'look' for Robbie, they're probably just skipping class together.

[ELLIOT'S POV]
The first place check while I'm looking for Robbie is the library. He's not there. Now I'm worried. Robbie is not the kind of person to skip class on purpose. Maybe he just went to bathroom at the end of lunch? I know that he's been going through some stuff lately but he wouldn't just disappear over it, right? I sprint down the hall until I get to the boy's bathroom. Why am I so worried? He's probably fine.

He's not fine.

Holy shit.

He's passed out on the bathroom floor covered in a small pool of his own blood, razor blade in his hand, and a yellow envelope next to the sinks. I get down to check if he's alive straight away.
He's breathing.

He's not dead.

Thank god.

I pick him up and run as fast as my body allows me to get to the nurse.

"What happened to him?!" Melanie asks.
"What's does it look like?"  I bark back at her.
I place him on the bed and she tells me to go inform the principal of what happened and have him call 911.
I hope he's okay.

[MELANIE'S POV]
Oh god, this is the second time I've had this poor boy in my care this year, always with his friend by his side. Sadly, this time it's worse, it's so much worse. He has several deep horizontal cuts over his wrists, obviously self inflicted. The cuts are deep and will most definitely need to be stitched up, but I don't have the equipment to do that here safely. I need to clean the wounds with hydrogen peroxide and dress it to prevent infection and stop him from losing even more blood.

1:34 pm

I wake up in a hospital. Wait, what? I woke up? That's not right. I shouldn't have woken up. I'm not supposed to be alive.
"Oh! You're awake! Someone else will be here in a moment." A nurse says from the other side of the room before leaving.

A different woman enters the room. She's tall, maybe 6'0"?
"Hi Rebecca, I'm Emma." She says. Fuck.  I haven't heard my dead name in forever. I forgot how much it hurts. How much it feels like a punch to the gut with every syllable. I should have legally changed my fucking name by now.
"Robbie." I say, quieter than I would be normally.
"Pardon?"
"My name is Robbie." I say, a bit louder this time.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm here to-"
"Let me guess, you're here to find out why I tried to kill myself." I interrupt.
"Um, y-yes if you want to get straight to the point."
"Well too bad then, I'm not gonna talk about it."
"I understand completely, but could you tell me why you went from being very direct about the topic to not speaking about it?" She asks, sounding annoyed by my sudden character change.
"I can't tell you something if I don't know the answer." Its true. I don't know why I did it, maybe it was because of how people reacted to me and Kosta's relationship, maybe it was because Kosta stopped talking to me. Maybe not. I don't fucking know.
"You don't know why you did it?"
"Meh, not really. How long will I be here?" I need to change the fucking subject. I know that she's here to talk about what I did, but I'm not a cooperative person, so fuck her.
"I don't know, that's not really my area of expertise."
"How long do you think I'll be here?"
"I'd guess about three weeks, now do you want to try and figure out why you did it or should I let you have some peace and quiet?"
"I can talk, but I don't think you'll get anywhere."
"That's okay, where do you want to start?"
"I dunno, my boyfriend broke up with me recently."
"I'm sorry to hear that, how long were you together?"
"Since last February."
"Why did you break up, if you don't mind me asking?" Emma asks
"When he told our classmates we were dating a few of them beat us up, he didn't talk to me after that. The last thing he said to me was that he hates me." I reply. I don't like to talk about this but she probably won't leave me alone until I do.
"Oh dear, when did that happen?"
"September."
"Is that why you did it?"
"Sure. I don't care what you write down, I just want him to talk to me again."
"Okay, I think that's all for today, you should get some rest."