Killing myself didn’t go as planned. It should have, though. The rafters were high enough. The rope was short enough. I had drunk enough liquor to properly stupefy myself, liquid courage to knock the chair away. I was done, ready to die.
John walked in and saw me hanging from the ceiling beams. Maybe he had heard the crash of my chair toppling to the wooden floorboards. Maybe it was intuition – a funny sense that my banter had been forced lately. John ran, grabbed me by the legs and held me up while he fumbled for his phone and dropped it. He screamed for help until someone came, found the scissors in my desk drawer and cut the rope. The second man forced air down my windpipe while John called the paramedics.
And here I was thinking he had my back.
It was Hell. I was half dead with an ear listening to both sides of the Void. Sara’s voice was an ever-present and impossible whisper across my skin, but I heard the paramedics talking into their radios. It was a savage reminder of their futile efforts; any second now they would realize just how futile.
“Kill me,” I begged Sara. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her. She sat closest to me, her fingers caressing my face. In the background I heard animate chatter – medics wanting to defeat my purpose.
Bright white light faded into the dark hue of night. Other buses poured into the parking lot behind ours. It was a cacophony. They wheeled me through the clear glass doors, not bothering to wait for Sara. Her sharp heel steeps were fading into silence.
“Twenty-three year old male, apparent suicide attempt, severe injuries to the trachea,” announced the EMT to the E.R. doctor running beside him. She barely glanced at me before directing us onward.
“No,” I wheezed, “Sara.” My vision blurred. I was being unreasonable – she was gone – but she’d just been with me. “Where is Sara?”
A nurse shushed me, unable to bear my croaking. My throat was in excruciating pain, the breathless burning ripping through me, and tears were coming all too easily.
“We’ll get her for you,” the nurse said again, and my heart froze.
You weren’t supposed to bring back the dead.
