A Plea of Forgiveness

I remember the first day I saw you. You sat in my office, and I titled the little blank page in my notebook ‘March 11th-Cassie’ in bold black ink. You sat in the red plush chair, head in your hands, ginger hair cascading down through your fingers in matted clumps. Perhaps you had been beautiful, despite your tattered appearance. The straight nose and stunning green eyes made for an angelic appearance. But all I had seen was a knotted ball of worries, complexes, and raw emotions for me to dissect, study, and put back together again.

You didn’t talk then. You just sat there. So I spoke. I went on about things empty of meaning. My breakfast, shopping, your clothes. Nothing moved you. Sometimes I would ask you questions, things about your past. Thoughts about the future. You gave no response, save for all the glances at the uniformly red numbers of the clock.

At nine ‘o’ clock, that first day with you ended, with a snap of my little blue notebook, hiding away that blank page titled ‘March 11th-Cassie’.

-~-

I have to tell you, that I didn’t much care for you. You didn’t talk. You didn’t listen. You didn’t eat. If you didn’t have access to the medical records, I could have sworn that you didn’t breathe either. Sometimes I believe you were a manikin, and there was no consciousness behind those green eyes.

But I just knew that there was something working, somewhere. I couldn’t give up. I have a guilty secret to tell you. Sometimes, when you were out, I would go through your bedroom. It’s fascinating what you can tell about a person from their bedroom. Even if it wasn’t particularly honorary technique, it had solved many a case for me. And yet, your room was blank. The monotonous white walls, and your bed dressed in white sheets. You had a nightstand by the bed. It was simple and white, nothing of interest. I thought there must have been something in your closet, but there wasn’t. Nothing but clothes of blank colores. White, black, blue, red, and repeat. Nothing even under your mattress either. There was no telling why. Perhaps you were trying to drown yourself into death. I could have told you that it doesn’t work that way.

-~-

Your file, I remember, was thin. Just a few sheets of paper inside a manila folder. It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t seen before. A few knives digging into the wrong things, and minor addictions. So I couldn’t understand what was wrong. Why you didn’t talk.

I had another patient who I think you would have liked if you’d met. Her name was Tracy. She had the same issues as you did. The cutting, the addictions. She liked to talk. I thought she did so, just to hear her own voice. Sometimes it was difficult to decide what information to trust. But she gave me information. I wondered why you didn’t.

-~-

There were hundreds of techniques for victims of drugs and self harm as yourself. I tried every single one in the book, and still you didn’t respond.

And then, there was light! All at once, you began to speak. Trivial things in the beginning, but those simple topics evolved into sessions full of delving into your mind. You were improving rapidly, and and soon, I began to see you smile. It made me smile, to see you like that.

You began to talk of your goals. How you wanted to go to school and make something of yourself. College was a bright maybe for you. I was hopeful for your release.

-~-

You were discharged. I signed the paper myself, knowing you were ready to go back into the world again, working towards a new life. One filled with happiness, and not sorrow.

-~-

I had no idea he existed. I had no idea how you met. I didn’t know how or when you spoke.

Johnny. He was twenty, four years older than you. Standard pretty face, shaggy brown hair. Really nothing special. His parents were devastated and confused, I knew. I knew because I told them. He was shooting for college, I think. Just like you. Heading straight down life’s rocky path to a bright, promising, and fulfilling future.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day when I arrived at the scene to watch you dragged off. You were covered in blood, I remember. The scarlet blood that gleamed on your hands, and dried in your hair. It was even decorating your chest in long, drawn our marks, your shirt halfway torn open. "Ms. Richard!" you called desperately. "Ms. Richard, you have to understand!" I couldn't reply, just looked away and pulled my thin brown hair up into a bun.

That day I realized that for the first time, you were alive. That hopeful, peaceful girl I had released? She was nothing but a mask, a ploy to escape the restraints in order to complete this grisly task. Nothing like the soul that slept inside. Perhaps I learned more of you that day. Perhaps I only found another layer, a doorway to the even more intricate maze of your mind.

In that moment, I felt like a failure. How easily I had fallen for your act, and lost another human life in the process.

They suspected a suicide pact. They thought he’d asked you to kill him, and when you were done, to join him in heaven. There was evidence enough. The knife that you had tried to turn on yourself as well, already stained with his blood. Friends said that Johnny was just as bad as you, just a better liar. He escaped notice, where you attracted it. You two were together, we knew that much, and there was no other motive for you.

His parents are mourning, you know. They curse you every night, wishing you grief to rival their own. And maybe it’s working, because when I see you, you are no longer dead. I see them in your eyes, gleamings of something. I like to think they are tears.

My boss didn’t want me to counsel you anymore. But we had no choice. We’ve got more patients than we’ve had in a long while, and I was the only one with an empty slot. So, back to me, you went.

You didn’t hold back anymore. I grimace just thinking about it. You were fond of detail. When you tell me just how it felt to take another’s life, you so thoroughly do so, that I wake up some nights, screaming with your words echoing in my head.

“It’s true,” you said. “Blood is thicker than water. It sticks to you in ways that nothing else does.” I didn’t speak much. If I interrupted your spiels, it would get words. Much worse.

They don’t suspect a suicide pact anymore.

-~-

I stare at you now, horrified. Somehow, you’d become important to me. Never, have I seen a soul so swamped with desperation, distrust, and despair, and I wanted so fiercely to help. I wanted to see you succeed, and rise up from that black pit you lived in.

Your room isn’t so monotonously white anymore. But you know that. You’re the one who redecorated.

The war wall is bathed in red. Letters are painted painstakingly in ever corner of the blank wall, the same words repeating over and over again.

‘Forgive me God’

It makes my eyes swim with tears, which spill over and run down my face in torrents. I think of how you’ve suffered, how you never seemed to try to pull yourself up again. And at the end, begging forgiveness from God.

-~-

Your body is mangled. You lie on your bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. I see you pain, your grief, your suffering. Etched into every cut, every well of blood. Your fiery hair fans out around you, reminding me of a halo. The sheets are soaked in red, leaving you lying in a pool of scarlet death. I see where your life poured out at the end, the wound in the hollow of your neck, encrusted with rusty brown.

There’s a note. Clutched in your hands, next to the twisted piece of metal off the side of a table that took your last breath. It is addressed to me.

‘Hello Anne. I think it’s okay now to call that, for I am no longer your patient, and you, no longer my therapist. After all, in heaven I won’t need one. You all think that I’m crazy. That’s okay. You don’t know what it’s like to see. I see all the hideousness and the hatred in this place, where no one really lives, and no one is really happy until they’re gone. I hear them. I hear my demons at night. They creep through the hallways and through my room. They crawl over the ceiling and hang over me when I sleep, and every night, I am afraid that they will drop onto my unconscious form and consume me. I know they will. You won’t believe me. I loved Johnny. I want everyone to know that. He is my other half, and I only did what I did, to save us. He didn’t want me anymore. I felt his forehead. he was ill, I knew. This... This world is so cruel, and a love so perfect and matched can never exist here. A life so merciless and desperate would tear us apart. That’s why I did what I did. I want to tell you something. I want to tell you, that I’m alright now. That what I did, it’s to stop this suffering.

I killed us, to set us free.’

I sink down beside you and weep, wishing I could have helped you.