Unravel(77)

Lana looked at me, still through the mirror, like I was insane. “I don’t need anything to make me sleep. I know how to make my pain disappear.” Lana held up the knife. The blade glinted in the light and my breath became stuck in my throat.

“Just hand the knife to me,” I pleaded.

But Lana wasn’t with me anymore. I could see in her eyes that she was stuck in the recesses of her memory. Drifting further and further away from reality.

“You don’t get it,” Lana said.

“Explain it to me.” I took another step into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. We were the only two people in the apartment, but I still felt the need to close the door. It felt like I was closing the world off from this extremely private conversation. “Make me understand.”

She looked at me like I was the crazy one. “This,” she waved the knife in the air, “is the only way to get the pain out of me.”

“No, it’s not,” I said quickly.

The knife went back to her wrist and even though she had a white knuckled grip on the metal, her fingers shook uncontrollably. I was waiting for that perfect moment to lunge forward and grab it from her without either of us getting hurt.

“Lana, if you just—”

“Will you let me talk?” she shouted.

I flattened myself against the door. I’d never heard her raise her voice to anyone, especially me.

I held my hands up in surrender. “Yeah. Yeah. You can talk. The floor is yours.”

She was breathing hard, staring down at her wrist like it was speaking to her.

“Once…” Lana started out slowly. “When I was twelve, my grandma had a lady over from her church. They were sitting in my grandma’s living room and I was eavesdropping outside the door. My grandma asked her how she was. The lady, who was in her mid-thirties, had a small packet of tissues on her lap. She had just lost her baby at 20 weeks. She said, ‘He’s still in here.’ She rubbed her stomach. ‘Even though he’s gone, I feel him every day.’ She went on to tell my grandma that sometimes she lifts her shirt up expecting to see a swollen stomach and when she sees nothing there, she just wants to die. My grandma told her not to think like that, said suicide was a sin.”

Lana continued to stare down at the knife. She had a laser sharp intensity on the knife. I finally took a step forward, my hand outstretched in front of me.

“But you know what that woman said? She said, ‘Is suicide a sin? I know my son’s safe now. Safe and happy. I just want to be with him. I want death.’”

“At first I thought, who wants death?” Lana looked at me, really looked at me, past my outstretched hand and cautious gaze. She laughed breathlessly as she said: “To me, death was terrifying. Most people fight it off for as long as they can. Yet this woman craved it. But then I thought of something. Maybe this lady understood something that we all will lose later on. When the tears and anger aren’t enough, maybe dying is the only guaranteed way to end your pain.”

Lana had tears in her eyes.

“I used to think that the abuse and humiliation would stop. But now I realize that it never will. So why am I putting myself through this pain? Why not end it all?”

Tears dropped onto her wrist. There was a small second where the two of us both looked down at that perfect wrist, only marred by a single teardrop.

Lana pressed down. The skin around the blade turned white. I lurched forward. It was too late. She dragged the blade across her wrist and then the other.

It took her only two seconds to cut open both wrists. There wasn’t even a drop of blood on the blade.

The knife dropped to the floor. Lana gasped and stared at me. I expected to see terror in her eyes over what she had done, but she looked happy, almost relieved.

She smiled and gazed down at the blood that was slowly but steadily starting to rise to the surface and trickle down her hands, falling onto the floor. They looked like colored teardrops.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. I stared between her and the blood. I felt numb.

The life was slowly draining out of her and she still managed to lift her hand in the air, watching those teardrops trickle down her ghost white skin.

“It’s all fading,” she said with awe.

My breath was coming out in short gasps. The blood was making me queasy. I held my breath as I stepped forward. I kept my gaze on Lana’s face and I focused on her lips. They were curled up in a small smile. I tried to picture happiness and laughter, instead of the hopelessness and despair around me.

“Lana, what did you just do?” I said, my voice a little faint.

Her body sagged against mine like dead weight. I reached for a towel and when I did, I slipped on her blood. We both lurched back and hit the wall with a loud thump.

Lana rested her head against my shoulder. I breathed slowly and stared up at the ceiling in a daze. My head throbbed and the light above me blurred in and out.

The two of us sat there in complete silence. There was only the sound of my labored breathing and Lana’s very faint breaths.

“She was right,” Lana finally whispered. “You’re really only safe when you’re dead.”



37—SCARS

I heard the monitors beeping, steadily breaking through the silence. Lana lay in bed, staring at the television with a faraway look in her eyes.

I stood outside her room. The only thing that stopped me from walking into her room was her parents. They arrived promptly at 10 in the morning and had been with Lana ever since. They were going on two hours. Instead of loving and fretting over their daughter with concern, they said nothing. Disgust and disappointment was written all over them. Her mom clutched her purse and touched the pearls around her neck. Her dad wasn’t much better. His lips were in a thin line, eyes hardened as he looked at Lana as if she was the weakest person he’d even seen.