Medicate

Beyond Human Light

Unlike usual, the car ride was silent too. Emily's head was pressed against the window and her eyes were shut. She wasn't pretending to be asleep, but she was hoping if she did fall asleep she wouldn't have to go. Maybe Nick would take pity on her and let her go home. She would be safe. She felt confident in that today. She might cry a little, but she was so drained from the night before all she wanted to do was sleep. Her day program was for Nick. He needed this peace of mind and it was the only kind she could give him until she got her shit together a little bit more.

It wasn't an uncomfortable drive. There was an understanding that there was a lot on both of their minds and they didn't have it in them to talk just yet. They got that about each other and were okay sitting in silence together, just morning talk radio and the air conditioning cutting through the quiet. There were few words exchanged before Nick dropped her off at the hospital her program was in, then he wheeled the car around and went into guest parking. He just needed a minute before work. He could be late. He didn't give a shit. He did, but he just couldn't. Not yet. Not after last night.

Nick lay his head on the steering wheel and started breathing deeply. It was some dumb exercise he would try to do when he held Emily during a panic attack so she would mimic his breathing. He loved Emily more than anything in the world. He loved her from afar before they started dating. He loved her the entire time they'd been dating. He loved her when they got married and he couldn't see himself ever not loving her. When he talked to her it was like their hearts were melded together by something otherworldly. They never went to church and he didn't consider himself religious, but he knew that what they had was crafted by something outside of themselves. It was created beyond human light. They were a perfect harmony. They had their issues, so many issues and fights and disagreements and blow up arguments that he couldn't count them all, but the way they always went to bed in each other's arms couldn't be explained. He loved his wife.

So why couldn't he shake the feeling that this wasn't going to get better? Why did it feel like they'd been doing this dance for a thousand years and like they'd be doing it for a thousand more? It horrified him to think that this could be what their marriage was. Breakdowns and day programs and medications. He knew she was more than her mental illness, she was so much more, but it had eaten into their lives to the point where it all felt folded together. It made him feel like garbage because it hurt him to think of his wife and their situation as a hopeless case, but he couldn't help it. It felt like they were spiraling around a drain and he was grabbing at the sink with his nails but he couldn't find purchase. The thought of them hitting the bottom of it was enough to make him want to cry. He thought they'd hit rock bottom before, but when it happened again and again he realized it wasn't rock bottom, but the start of a new low for them.

Emily couldn't help herself. She'd tried to fix her brain on her own and it hadn't ended up well. All she'd said to him was that she'd been feeling "a little down lately". She hadn't shown any other symptoms. She was functioning normally; she'd just seemed a little sad. He figured it was because they'd been trying to have a baby and it wasn't working as easily as they'd hoped. But when he'd found her in the shower with her arms bleeding and covered in a dozen older cuts he realized it was a lot more serious than a case of the blues.

He'd never been able to get that image out of his head and he knew it would haunt him until the day he died. She'd looked so broken and he'd felt like a failure as a husband. He should have noticed. Emily had sworn up and down that it wasn't his fault and that he shouldn't blame himself but he couldn't shake the feeling. He was torn up about it for weeks. He hid it from Emily because she didn't need the self-flagellating mope, she needed a supportive rock. He had called his mom about it. He called her frequently to unburden himself. She told him to see a therapist, but he couldn't because then Emily would find out. There was no way she could know how much this affected him. It would make her feel like shit and she couldn't afford that. Neither of them could.