Depression

Chapter 18

Bubbles was filled with a sense of joy, staring out into the blue sky with a small smile playing on her features. Boomer's alive... He's really alive... She subconsciously began to move her fingers up and down over the bandage the doctor had put on her wrist. The door opened and she transferred into a sitting position, turning her head towards the door.

Her eyes seemed to glitter when she saw Boomer standing there. "Hey Bubbles," he said gently. She didn't like seeing an angry Boomer like what happened yesterday, so seeing him back to his mild disposition just added another bit of joy to herself. He walked across the room and took a seat on the bed beside her.

To his utter surprise, she threw her arms around him. "You're really alive!"

Awkwardly, he stayed frozen, then removed her arms. Tears of joy glistening at the corners of her eyes, much to his shock. She's worried about me? he thought, appalled. Worry about yourself! "Bubbles, if you don't mind, I want to talk about your..." He paused, searching for the right words.

"Suicide attempt?"

He nodded mutely. She only shrugged. "Then just talk." Then her fervor returned and added, "But first, tell me how you just suddenly came back to life! You have no idea how upset I was when they told us they couldn't bring you and your brothers back!"

"You were worried about us?" The words just shot out of his mouth before he could even think to filter them at all.

"Of course." She kept her smile on but her fervor shifted to relief. "Why wouldn't we be?" She tilted her head slightly. "Aren't you going to tell me how you came back to life?"

Boomer told her all he could remember. Bubbles eyes glazed over when she heard about Dr. Fromm's untimely demise. "Dr. Fromm was always nice to me."

"I always got the feeling Fromm didn't like me," Boomer said.

"Boomer, don't you ever feel that way," Bubbles told him. "How could anyone not like you?"

Then Boomer realized they were straying from the subject. "Bubbles, can we talk about your suicide attempt? Utonium's really worried about it."

"Well... I guess it starts when we were..." She closed her eyes tightly, and her hand resumed to feel her bandage. "When we were remembering your deaths."

"What happened?" Boomer asked.

"It was on your death anniversary," she said and her sudden energy seemed to drain as she relived the moment. "It was like... like some sort of black cloud had settled over us the second we opened our eyes. Somehow, we knew. We knew what day it was. When we checked the calendar, it was confirmed. It was the day you died."

"But you didn't kill yourself that day?"

Bubbles's fingers just kept on rubbing at her bandage, and her teeth nibbled her lower lip. "It was tempting. To just do it and get it over with. I don't even know how I managed to get through the day. But every hour after that, it just... weighed down on us, until it was far too heavy for us to handle."

Our death anniversary must've been the trigger, he realized.

"Bubbles, why did you move from Megaville?"

A sob escaped her. "Because it was just so painful. But after we moved to Roseford, the pain didn't go away. It just... grew as the days went by. I was suffocating, Boomer, and struggling to breathe. We managed to pull ourselves up, but... on your death anniversary, we just had a revelation. No matter what, no matter where, no matter how... it's just a wound that stopped bleeding. It would never heal."

"Is that why you cut yourself?"

Bubbles's hand stopped moving over her arm. Boomer wished she had something to cover all the scars on her arms. With only the short sleeves of the hospital gown, the tangled scars on her arms were visible, and he hated to think how many scars there were under the sleeves.

"Yeah..." She wiped her tears but more just replaced the ones she wiped away. "Cutting myself just seemed to relieve the pain... Like it was lifting some of the guilt I carried around with me..."

"Bubbles, Dexter said that every quarter of a year, he and a few other scientists always had a psych evaluation to check how you and your sisters were doing. They said you were fine. You weren't cutting yourselves and you weren't attempting suicide. What happened?"

"We put on an act.... Pretended we were normal... like we had finally moved on. We were so good at it, we fooled even ourselves. They never noticed the scars on my arms. I always wore a jacket or a sweater or something. It's not like they would strip-search us to see if we were cutting ourselves anywhere else on our bodies."

"So what made you try suicide anyways? What made you think it was the only solution?"

Bubbles tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The doctors had let her hair down, and it now came over her shoulders. "It was just tiring. Lying to them, to myself, living with the guilt... We were on our last line, and we just wanted to let go."

Boomer's eyes grew wide. "You mean... you guys made a pact to kill yourselves?"

Bubbles nodded. Boomer stared at Bubbles as if she was a stranger. And indeed, this Bubbles was new to him. He would never have thought her to be the kind to agree to suicide, no matter how depressed she might be. Nor would he have thought her incapable, or unwilling, to talk her sisters out of suicide at all.

"Bubbles?" She looked up at him. His eyes were serious as he spoke. "Never ever try that again. If we're gone again, I don't want you to become like this again. Okay?"

Bubbles gazed at him for what felt too long a time, although in short it was only a few minutes. But she nodded, her smile gracing her features once again and wiping away the tears that once streaked down her face. "Okay."

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DISCLAIMER: AT THIS POINT, THIS DISCLAIMER IS STARTING TO BECOME MOOT, BUT WHATEVER. ELEMENTS OF DEPRESSION, SELF-HARM, AND SUICIDE.

Almost there to the end! (っ＾▿＾)💨 This story is nearly to its closing! All that's left now is to make it to the finish!

- BlackAndWhitePersona