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Logic tells me she’s dead, but fuck that shit.

I held her in my arms, she was breathing, I dragged her, unconscious but alive, all the way to the shore. There’s no way she could’ve slipped out of my grip, not when I held her that firmly around the waist.

Not in this fucking world.

Today, my shrink said I’ll get better if I let go, that if I want to move on, I need to stop going to the bridge.

What the fuck is moving on? What’s its address? I just want to kill it.

She said casually. “I think the girl may represent something emotionally necessary for you. Sometimes the mind creates attachment where there is unbearable loneliness.”

I’m not fucking lonely. But I remained silent.

“Sergei?” She tapped her pen on the tiny notebook to grab my attention. “You’re clinging to a ghost and carving the wound deeper every time you go to the bridge.”

Silence again.

“Your mind recreated the same loss over and over because it’s the only version of love you understand.” She spoke mechanically, the sound grating on my nerves.

“You still think you’re the abandoned boy, who even in his own mind cannot imagine permanent love.”

“I was not abandoned.” I told her. More like shouted.

She pursed her lips and merely nodded, writing something in her tiny black notebook.

“You think I made her up because I want to feel the pain of losing my mother again?” I scoffed, the word leaving through a gritted jaw.

She nods. “Let’s say you did not imagine her, let’s say she’s real. But you’ve turned her into the emotional centre of your entire existence. That’s why losing her nearly destroyed you.”

“I’m not destroyed.” I amended. “I didn’t lose her either.

She is real and she is alive. I just have to find her.”

But when she said, “Sergei, you’re not exploring possible probabilities, you’re in denial. There’s a high chance she didn’t survive.” That’s when I lost all my composure and grabbed her by the collar.

High chance?

“Tell me, doctor, is there a high chance of you seeing tomorrow’s sunrise?”

I’m certain she thinks, there is a high fucking chance I’m insane, because I might’ve threatened to make a necklace out of her oesophagus. Which is ridiculous.

Because I’m not into accessories. And I’m not into violence either.

Now I’m gripping the railing, thinking I’m just like my father. I was ready to kill that woman, because she said things I didn’t want to hear.

I keep looking at the water, because that’s where I lost her and maybe if I fall back into it, I’ll find her again.

My eyes burn the longer I hold my tears back. My body hangs over the railing as the empty bottle slips from my hand.

There’s a sharp crack when it hits the stone below, shattering into splinters of glass.

“Planning on staying there all night, or is this the part where you jump?”

I chuckle.

“I wasn’t going to.” “You wouldn’t die.”

“I wasn’t going to jump.”