Cry Until You Bleed

11- Leather Jacket

The next morning, I start the same routine that I usually do. The alarm wakes me up so I get out of bed before the nurse comes around to make sure that we’re all up and if we’re not up, she gets us up. I cross off yesterday’s date on my calendar that’s hanging on the wall beside my desk and then flip to the current page in my journal and write “It has been 38 days since I have attempted suicide” on the next line. I take a shower and then put on a fresh pair of blue scrubs and a tan fleece to hide the bandages on my wrists that come off this weekend, which is pretty exciting for me because they seriously itch a lot and it’s annoying.

However, as I’m about to leave my room to go downstairs for breakfast with Renée and Mia, I hear a lot of commotion outside in the hallway. There’s a few male voices calling to each other which is rare here because most of the patients and nurses are female. I mean, there are some male nurses and patients but they’re just rare and they sure don’t spend their mornings yelling around the dorm halls. I can here other people talking too, which is also weird because usually, I can’t really hear other people from inside of my room unless they’re in the hallway.

Curious as to what’s happening, I slip my shoes on quickly and then hurry out of my room and into the hallway where almost everybody is already standing outside of their doors, looking down the hallway to the left as if something exciting is happening down there but I stretch my neck as far as I can and I still can’t see what’s going on.

I’m tempted to ask the girl to the room beside me who’s looking for any action but I don’t, I just stand there and look down the hallway to try and get something to clue me in onto what’s going on. I don’t see those people who were yelling just a few moments ago so maybe they went down that way or something.

Finally, after a few minutes of stupidly just standing there, I hear those voices again and I hear chatter start to rise in the hallway as people start to push themselves closer to the wall instead of standing in the middle of the hallway. As people start to peel out of the way, I start to see what the commotion was. The male voices were paramedics, I can see them hurrying down the hallway in my direction, rolling a stretcher with them. I can hear the wheels creaking and rolling before I see the actual stretcher.

As they hurry the stretcher down the hallway though, I can start to see the person laying on top of it. I can see tousled blonde and pink hair messy and flowing over the side of the stretcher and I start to feel a pit in the bottom of my stomach. They get even closer and I can see the pale skin underneath of an oxygen mask as one of the paramedics is pumping air into Renée’s lungs because she’s unconscious and she can’t do it on her own.

In a panic, I step forward in front of the stretcher. “What happened to her?” I ask, feeling my breath become shallow and uneven.

“Ma’am, you need to stay back,” One of the paramedics gently grip my shoulders and push me back so that the stretcher can get through.

“Just tell me what’s wrong with her,” I insist, trying to push against the paramedic but he has at least a foot on me and there’s no way that I’ll be able to get past him to the stretcher to see Renée before they take her away. I just want to see her- to make sure that she’s okay. “She’s my friend, I want to know!”

“I’m sorry, you just have to stay back,” The paramedic says before he returns to his colleagues to get Renée’s stretcher into the elevator.

The paramedics are saying a lot of medical stuff as they roll into one of the elevators but I can’t take my eyes off of Renée’s limp body looking helpless on the stretcher. She just looks like she’s asleep- No blood anywhere or marks or anything. Without even thinking about it, I follow the paramedics down to the first floor on the next elevator and when the doors open on the first floor, there is a huge crowd of both nurses and patients swallowing the scene around where the stretcher holding my unconscious friend is being rolled out onto an ambulance truck. I can feel tears start to edge out of my eyes, sliding down my cheeks but my arms feel as useful as cooked noodles and I can’t move them to wipe the tears away.