The Bikini Syndrome | WATTYS2019

» twenty-seven: a decision

       
Holly was thinking long into the night.

Long after visiting hours were over.

Long after the nurse had come in, shut her window, and asked if she needed anything.

Somewhere between the greyness of the moments before dawn and the harsh noon sun, she had dozed off.

She wasn't sure what she had been expecting when she woke. An epiphany? Some kind of divine guidance on what she was supposed to do next?

She got neither.

Instead, she got a knock on the door.

Holly's heart rose in her throat. She couldn't help but hope it was Oliver.

There was something about him that made her feel so much less agitated.

"Come in," she said.

The door opened to reveal Sadie. She waved shyly at Holly, then took the seat beside her bed.

"Hi."

"Hi."

They stared at each other. Holly was the first to look away. It felt like something was lodged in her throat, and she couldn't seem to speak through the guilt, shame, and indecision that plagued her.

"Thank you for doing what you did."

"I didn't do anything," Holly said, briskly.

She bit her bottom lip so she wouldn't cry. She was doing a lot of that these days.

"No, you did. I don't...I don't know how to thank you. I'm sorry that you had to go through all that, and if there was a way for it to not happen, I would want that for you instead. But...you showed so much strength and courage, so thank you for that."

"He might still get away with it."

The corner of her blanket has wrinkled over, so Holly focused intensely on smoothing it over. She wished the wrinkles in her heart were so easy to fix.

"Holly, I'll be honest -- I'm still not okay. Some days, I don't want to get out of bed. I can't walk down the street without thinking about what I'm wearing, or what I'm doing, wondering if that's the reason I got raped in the first place. I could barely go to the beach that day, if Oliver hadn't said he'd come with me. Most days," Sadie's voice trembled, "I blame myself. And isn't that just the worst damn thing in the world? To be plagued by guilt and shame and fear that you shouldn't have to feel responsible for, but...but you can't shake this...small, small bit of you that wonders if it's all your fault that it even happened in the first place."

Holly finally looked up.

Sadie's eyes were rimmed with red, and she tried to brush away the tears that were forming.

Holly handed her a tissue, then grabbed one for herself, realizing she was crying too.

"It's not your fault," she said, feeling the knot in her throat ease up.

Somehow, Sadie had said everything Holly had felt.

Holly knew there was an entire gulf, a whole galaxy really, between raped and almost-raped, but she felt like she could understand where Sadie was coming from.

Because the same emotions were plaguing her as well, eating away at her self-confidence and courage and ability to not cry every ten minutes.

"Some days, I believe it. Some days, I don't."

Sadie didn't look like that gorgeous, put-together, life-was-easy-breezy girl Holly had thought she was when they first met.

She was like broken glass, or a shattered mirror -- remnants of something that used to be whole, used to be perfect, used to admired.