Page 8 of Kill Me

They just want you to be all alone again.

We’re your friends, Quinn.

Don’t let them separate us!

SHUT UP! Throw yourself off the bridge, Quinn! Don’t be so selfish!

Herpes, as always, is the fucking loudest of them all, telling me to stop being a coward and throw myself off the bridge—hence me being here. At this point, a lobotomy sounds more pleasant. From my extensive research—and I know not everything online is true, but I made sure to only take my information from reputable websites and actual trained doctors—there are a lot of things to consider.

Before my procedure, I have to fast from midnight, no food or drink except for small sips of water for essential medication, like the morphine I take for my pain—when I’m lucky, and she thinks I’m deserving. They have to do an exam to check my heart and lung function, and considering I’m my mother's daughter, it may be hard to find a functioning heart; if they do, it’s probably black and dead. Then they have to put in an IV line for anaesthesia and muscle relaxants because, oh joy, I have to be put to sleep. They’ll monitor my heart through an ECG (echocardiogram) and my brain through an EEG (electroencephalogram) as they prepare to induce seizures and trigger the brain waves. I thought my way out would be to not give consent. To ask them to tell my parents, because of the monitoring, that they saw something that needed extra investigation. It turns out, while I was unconscious after being hit by the car, they obtained a legal document that gives them medical power of attorney. They’re in charge of all decisions regarding my health because they have my best interests at heart, unless it can be proven otherwise. How fun?! Imagine you’re the sole reason your mother has spent her entire life depressed and angry, and now she’s in charge of you having electrical currents slammed through your brain. Sounds like an adventure, right?

Once all of that is out of the way, the procedure will commence. The muscle relaxant is given to prevent injury, and they’ll place the electrodes on my scalp. According to what I’ve read, the common places to attach them are on both of my temples, which could cause me cognitive side effects, or one on the right temple and one on the vertex—the posh definition for the crown of your head—which has less risk, or risk of fewer cognitive impairments. And let’s be honest, it’s not like I can afford any more, is it? Once they’ve placed the probes, they will deliver a brief electrical current that typically lasts less than a minute while providing oxygen through a mask and protecting my teeth and tongue with a mouth guard. Being in the ring with Tyson Fury sounds more entertaining than this, I won’t lie. After the procedure, patients usually wake up within ten minutes.

And don’t get me started on the potential side effects: temporary memory loss, confusion, headaches, muscle soreness, nausea and jaw pain are common ones. The memory loss could potentially go as far as weeks or months after the procedure, which, in case you’d forgotten, I already have. A whole fucking year of my life is gone. The less common, but more serious ones are seizures—the irony—impaired balance, difficulty recognising faces, and it turns out it isn’t a one-off procedure. Women are also at more risk of experiencing the rare side effects if exposed to the treatment for a prolonged period. The world just likes to fuck women up without their consent, doesn’t it? Who needs misogynistic prime ministers and presidents when you have medical treatments like this that your parents can force you into as an adult?

I found out it wasn't a one-off procedure thanks to Dr Google, not my parents. Typically, two to three times per week for a total of six to twelve treatments. And knowing my mother, she’s gonna fight for the most treatments possible to try and avoid any chances of me recovering my memory. It’s become clear that that is not something she wants. Any conversation where I try to uncover blocked or missing memories is diverted into something I’ve done wrong, accusations of me being dramatic or faking for attention because I couldn’t possibly have forgotten a whole year of my life. I’ve caught her and Eric whispering in corners a few times, but the moment they see me, they stop short and go off in different directions.

I haven’t seen Millie, either. When I was in the hospital, she brought me flowers, a card and her Kindle to borrow, but over the last few years the closeness between us has dissipated, and the distance and length of time between visits has just gotten bigger. Gone are the sleepovers and movie nights. I’m lucky if I even get a reply on WhatsApp nowadays. Her parents have come by, they say she’s busy with a new job. I make a mental note to go and visit her myself after the ECT therapy—if I can remember. I could never be too busy to check on her if the roles were reversed, but I’m realising as time goes on that I give more to my relationships than I tend to get, and I think it’s about time I rectify that.

Chapter Seven

Quinn - Present Day

I chose to leave the house just before dusk, determined to watch one last sunset in my favourite quiet place next to the lake. I’ve always dreamed of having a dog to be able to take for walks and enjoy them together, but I’m glad I never did. I could never leave them behind, and thankfully, I’m not like my mother in the context of taking the things I love with me.

It’s the one time my brain isn’t so loud, and I can find some semblance of peace. Watching the different colours blend in the sky, the clouds almost disintegrating as the sky darkens, and the stars' visibility enhances, is cathartic. The monsters become a whisper, no demands, just words, which is surprising considering that on those evenings, I’m a stone's throw away from teetering on the edge of a bridge.

The sun is beginning to set behind the clouds. It’s still dusky; pinkish-red hues scatter across the sky, reminding me of the saying I’d heard my entire childhood: “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.” A rhyme that came into play when England was living in a time where there were no accurate means of forecasting the weather, they would use the little information they could grasp from the sky, put two and two together and usually come up with five. Not really surprising when back then the sailors and shepherds who used it were men.

Traffic moves along the road below me, a stark contrast to the silence you hear on the other side by the river. It’s almost like the moment you hit the centre of the footpath that separates both sides, the noise from below turns off. I wish it was that simple inside my brain.

I sit on the side of the bridge, my legs dangling. It’s wooden and rickety, with old train tracks running along it that clearly haven’t been used in decades. The gaps between the wooden planks get gradually bigger where the wood has started rotting away. So that’s why the sign’s there.

I’ve been walking up here for months but have never actually trusted myself to get on the bridge. All I know from local gossip is that they’re planning on renovating it and reopening the entrance on this side to the cemetery. From where I’m sitting, I have a decent visual of the gravestones and the abandoned church inside. Most of them are overgrown and forgotten about. Trees surround the vicinity, keeping it mostly shaded. It’s not like they’re gonna overheat now, is it? As my eyes scan the area, I stop at the sight of a man sitting by a grave. I don’t have my glasses on, so honestly, my vision isn’t great, but from what I can see, he’s tall with dark hair and a jacket on. Someone I would probably find attractive if I wasn’t going to die today.

It’s not that I’ve never wanted love. I just haven’t ever been lucky enough to know how it feels. When I was younger and still at school, aside from being friends with Millie, there was always this one boy I noticed who I thought was cute. He was nerdy, quiet, and kept to himself. Millie always teased me for talking to him. But he gave me the attention that I craved. We were friends. He was my first-ever kiss. A quick peck with cold lips under the oak tree at the back of the playground as we both sat reading. We’d met in the library and bonded over our love for fiction. How the same twenty-six letters in the alphabet could form so many different words to evoke many different emotions depending on the context they were used in. We even talked about writing our own book. We would sit together under that old oak tree in the sun, hands clasped, only letting go to turn the pages.

With him, I didn’t feel the need to exaggerate the monsters because he silenced them. He saw me. He understood me. We had that cute childhood love that you think can stand the test of time, until it doesn’t. And then, when my mum tried to kill herself, he was no longer allowed to talk to me. I had a disease. It was the label that anyone with mental health issues got back then because it was misunderstood. It became hidden moments in the library where the teachers couldn’t see. Stolen kisses. And then one day we took a risk and met up outside of school. We had the best time. We found a field full of bluebells that he chased me through, as I squealed like the girl I was, and on the other side of the field we found a hidden lake. It had that kind of sand that wasn’t real, that was made from construction materials, but we made sand angels in it anyway. We went swimming in the lake, unafraid of any of the things that could possibly be lurking beneath the dark surface, but I’d never noticed the bridge. The bridge I’m sitting on now. As we left the field and crossed the road, his dad was driving by, and we were caught. I never saw him again. Back in the times of no mobile phones or internet, I had no way to find him. No way to track him down. And I never felt safe with a boy again.

I waited for him to be my first. Hoped he would come back for me. But it soon became clear that I never meant to him what he meant to me. I’ve dated. I’ve had sex—if you can call it that. Two pumps and a squirt, no orgasms, and sloppy kisses full of saliva that made me want to gag. Nothing stuck because as soon as they met my mother, she’d list all of the reasons I’d drain the fun from their life, and that would be that. Why did I continue to introduce them, I hear you ask? Well, I didn’t. She would conveniently turn up in places I would be with them, introduce herself, invite them round for tea and then spend the entire time belittling me. So I gave up. Until that fateful day in the hospital when my future ex-husband turned up to visit me. He was one she was in favour of, and that should have set off a nuclear episode in my brain as it was, but no, I was so pathetically desperate for affection I decided it was worth the risk.

I should have fucking listened to my shitty brain for once.

I’m so stuck in the nostalgia of the fond memory of the boy I once loved that when my brain comes back into focus, I notice the man is gone, and I’m sitting on the edge, swinging my legs to and fro. I’d been watching him the whole time and didn’t even realise he had moved. There’s another loss of time to add to the very long fucking list.

Chapter Eight

Quinn - Present Day

Yet another memory clouds my mind as I contemplate my life on the side of the bridge. So many things I’ve chosen to forget come back to me in this moment, yet none of it encourages me to stay.

Quinn Age 15

“Quinn!” My mum shouts up the stairs as I’m getting ready for school. We only live around the corner, so I walk by myself every morning. It’s about a ten-minute walk, which is nice because there’s no rushing around.

“Yeahhhh?” My tone is bored. I know what she’s going to ask. It’s getting more and more often now that I’m picking Eric up from school and looking after him while she sleeps her life away in her bedroom. Might as well have given birth to him myself.

Yuck. Not an image I’d like in my brain.