Page 92 of Her Sloth

And then, I cry.

Cry like she usually does.

My fists clench with the nails painfully digging into my palms because I can’t get out of my own skin, cannot outrace the sensation, cannot escape this hell.

I am not an emotional person.

I don’t cry.

I don’t feel.

Least of all in front of others.

But even that doesn’t matter right now.

The doctor puts her hand on mine and sits with me. She sits with me for God knows how long, and the more she sits the more I have to cry.

“Go,” I tell her at some point. “I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“No,” she says. “Not right now.”

And I cry more.

Until I can’t stand myself anymore.

I can’t stand being in this bed.

Being in my own body.

I need to get up. She tries to stop me, but I am too powerful.

Everything is too much.

“She means much to you, doesn’t she?” she asks me.

“Don’t,” I say. The word Addy said countless times to me.

“It’s okay to feel that pain,” the doctor says.

“Nothing is okay!” I shout, and suddenly words come out of my mouth like a waterfall. “It’s all my fucking fault! I am too fucked up. She—she—I should’ve—she did it for me. Because she cared more about me than herself. And now—now⁠—”

“Now she might not make it, and you are all alone.”

I stare at the doctor.

“We were supposed to die together.”

I swallow hard the moment the words came out of my mouth. Words I said about Elise. And now about her sister. How fucked up is that?

“And now you might live together,” says the doctor softly.

“She’s fucking dying!” I shout. “She was already dead! Even if she comes back, she will hate me forever.”

A weak smile on the doctor’s face.

A squeeze on my arm.

“And what if she’s not making it?” she asks. “What if she dies and you weren’t there?”