I lived with severe clinical depression, and Simon’s best female friend, Morgan, considered herself the patron saint of tough love. During my worst relapse in five years, she fed rat poison to Sammy, the emotional support retriever who had kept me anchored to this earth. When I found him limp and cooling on the kitchen tile, my mind fractured. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop shaking. Desperate to silence the screaming inside my skull, I reached for a blade, but Morgan slammed the master bedroom door shut, turning the brass lock from the outside. “Suicide is just self-indulgence,” her voice drifted through the wood, light and infuriatingly breezy. “Throwing a tantrum over an animal? Leave her in there. Once she gets tired of the drama, she’ll snap out of it.” I slammed my palms against the heavy paneling, the paring knife clutched in my right hand rattling against my knuckles. The cold edge hovered over the blue veins of my wrist. “Don’t do it,” I told myself, over and over, until my jaw ached from clenching. “You promised you wouldn’t.” I dropped to my knees, crawling toward the nightstand, yanking drawers open until they flew out of their tracks. Empty. Morgan’s sharp, mocking laugh echoed from the hall. “Looking for your little happy pills? I flushed them down the toilet twenty minutes ago.” “Morgan, please—” I gasped, but she talked right over me. “Just breathe through it, Sadie. Taking handfuls of Lexapro every time you feel sad has turned your brain into mush. One minor inconvenience and you threaten to end your life. Grow up.” My nervous system collapsed into full somatic shock. My lungs seized, pulling in thin, useless sips of air. My fingers curled into claws against the hardwood. I clawed my way to the door, wheezing Simon’s name. The brass knob finally turned. Simon stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the hallway light. For a fraction of a second, something like pity flickered across his face. He leaned down, reaching for me, but the moment his fingers brushed my sweat-soaked shoulder, he recoiled two full steps. “Morgan is right,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at me. “This isn’t an illness anymore, Sadie. You’re just wallowing.” He rubbed his temples, his voice dripping with an exhaustion that felt colder than cruelty. “You can’t expect everyone to stop their lives and walk on eggshells for you. Just tough it out. It’ll pass.” I dragged myself across the floor, collapsing over Sammy’s stiffening body. His golden fur was cold against my cheek. Whatever tiny spark had kept me fighting for five years went completely dark. Right then, I lost the will to survive. … I curled around Sammy’s body, burying my face in his neck. A tidal wave of grief hit me so hard my diaphragm locked; I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Not a sob, not a breath. Just dry, silent heaves. Morgan stood by the kitchen island, arms crossed over her linen shirt, her lip curled in disgust. “Look at her. Some people just love playing the martyr. It’s an animal, Sadie. If you hadn’t left rat bait where he could reach it, we wouldn’t even be here. Frankly, if it weren’t poisoned, I’d say call the vet and move on.” Simon looked uncomfortable. Out of sheer five-year habit, he stepped forward to pull me up. “Get off the floor. Let’s talk like adults.” Without waiting for me to stand, he turned toward the laundry room. “Rita, grab some heavy-duty trash bags. Take the dog out to the curb before the heat gets to him.” “Don’t you touch him!” The scream tore from my throat, raw and animalistic. I clamped my arms around Sammy, pressing his dead weight against my ribs. The world around me muffled suddenly, as if a thick sheet of tempered glass had dropped between me and the rest of the room. Sammy was the last piece of my mother. Whenever the physical tremors took over—when my chest caved in and paralysis pinned me to the floor—Sammy would press his wet nose into the crook of my neck, his steady, rhythmic breathing grounding me until reality returned. He was the only reason I was still here. When my father walked out on us for a woman half his age, my mother broke. The depression ate her from the inside out until there was nothing left. I was the one who found her in the clawfoot tub, the bathwater overflowing onto the tile, thick and crimson, soaking into the toes of my socks. The trauma hollowed me out. When I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, Simon didn’t flinch. He proposed three months later. “I’m not going anywhere,” he had whispered into my hair back then, wiping my tears with his thumbs. “In sickness and in health. I’ll hold you until you’re whole again.” Looking up at the man standing over me now, I couldn’t find a single trace of the boy who had made that promise. Simon stared down at my red-rimmed eyes, his face settling into a mask of pure weariness. “Sadie, please stop this. Morgan only did what she did to help you.” “Help me?” My voice was a splintered rasp. “You can’t depend on a dog to keep you alive forever,” he said flatly. “Dogs die. Everything dies. You have to face the real world eventually.” I stared at him. The weight pressing on my sternum felt like concrete. I couldn’t draw a clean breath, but beneath the panic, an instinct kicked in: “I can’t die like this. Not on their terms.” “My medication,” I whispered, trembling. “Give it back. Please, Simon. Just give me my pills.” Simon’s hand drifted toward his coat pocket. The familiar plastic rattle of an amber prescription bottle sounded, but before he could pull it out, Morgan’s hand clamped over his wrist. “If you give in now, she wins,” Morgan warned, her voice smooth and reasonable. “Coddling her is what got her here. You’re enabling her sickness, Simon. You’re killing her with kindness.” Simon froze. He looked down at the floor, then slowly slipped his empty hand out of his pocket. “Sadie, you have to understand I’m doing this for your own good,” he said softly, avoiding my eyes. “The only way you get out of the dark is by walking through it. Once you do, you won’t hurt anymore.” He stepped back and pulled the bedroom door shut again. Through the crack, I heard him give the order to our housekeeper: “Take the body to the crematorium immediately. Don’t let my wife see it again.” The latch clicked into place. Whatever fight was left in me drained straight into the floorboards. I dragged myself to the corner of the closet, reached into the hidden lining of my winter coat, and pulled out a small blister pack of Ambien I’d stashed months ago. One by one, dry and bitter, I swallowed them all. The next morning, the fog in my head was so thick I could barely walk straight. I took a cab to the psychiatric clinic downtown, gripping the edge of the reception desk to keep my knees from buckling. “Doctor Campbell,” I croaked, leaning against the counter. “I need an emergency refill. Sertraline, Clonazepam… anything. Please.” Dr. Campbell pulled up my chart, his brow furrowing as his finger tapped the screen. He looked up, his expression guarded. “Mrs. Conrad… your husband came by this morning. He officially revoked your medical authorization, canceled the private pay agreement, and terminated your treatment protocol. As your legal healthcare proxy, he signed the release. I can’t write you a script.” A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. There it was on the digital intake sheet: “Simon Conrad”, scrawled in bold, decisive black ink. Before my brain could process the betrayal, my phone buzzed violently in my coat pocket. It was my department head from work. I hit answer, but before I could speak, his voice tore through the speaker, venomous and loud: “Sadie, the medical leave program at this firm exists for employees with legitimate, diagnosed disabilities! Faking a psychiatric condition to milk corporate benefits makes you a disgrace!” “What? No, I have records—” “Save it. Clear your desk by five, or I’m handing your file to legal and pressing fraud charges.” The line went dead. He blocked my number before I could draw my next breath. “Faking it.” The words sank into my chest like barbed wire. I took the subway back, moving like a ghost through the city. By the time I pushed open the front door of our brownstone, my vision was swimming with red. Simon was in the kitchen, brewing coffee. “Why did you tell my office I was faking?” I demanded, my voice shaking so violently the words could barely hold their shape. “Why did you pull my prescriptions?” Simon didn’t turn around. He pressed the plunger of the French press down, his voice laced with irritated condescension. “Because you aren’t sick, Sadie. You’re just spoiled. I’ve coddled you for five years, and it ruined you.” He turned, leaning against the marble counter, his gaze cold. “Besides, is clinical depression something to be proud of? Do you really need to parade your brokenness to the entire world?” Five years of agonizing panic attacks, of sleepless nights, of clawing my way back from the edge—erased in two sentences. A rustling sound came from the master bedroom down the hall. My stomach dropped. I rushed past Simon and shoved the door open. Morgan was standing over a pile of heavy-duty black trash bags, packing up my mother’s handmade quilts, her antique jewelry box, and the porcelain music box that sat on my dresser. She was tossing them in like table scraps. “Stop!” I lunged forward. “Don’t touch her things! Those are my mother’s!” Morgan tightened her grip on the plastic bag, not giving an inch. “Surrounding yourself with dead people’s junk is why you’re constantly suicidal, Sadie. Clutter breeds depression. I’m doing you a favor.” She reached for the nightstand, snatched the framed silver photograph of my mother holding me as a toddler, and dumped it into the bag. “Crack.” The glass shattered. A jagged fracture ran diagonally across the frame, slicing my mother’s face clean away from mine. A red haze overtook my vision. I dropped to the floor, plunging my bare hand into the bag, wrapping my fingers around the jagged glass to pull the frame out. Shards bit deep into my palm; warm blood immediately welled up, dripping down my wrist and onto the white wool rug. Morgan lunged to rip it away from me. “Give it here—” Her index finger caught on an exposed corner of the broken glass. “Ow!” she shrieked, instantly pulling her hand back. The bedroom door flew open. Simon rushed in, completely bypassing me on the floor, and took Morgan’s hand in both of his. “Morgan! Are you okay?” Panic laced his voice. “You’re trying to help her, but you have to be careful—you know you pass out at the sight of blood!” I sat frozen on the floor. A puddle of my own blood was soaking into the carpet beneath my knees. The splintered wood of the picture frame was digging under my fingernails, tearing the flesh, but my nervous system was so overloaded I didn’t feel a single pulse of pain. Simon carefully wrapped Morgan’s finger in a clean handkerchief. Only after he inspected every inch of her hand did he finally glance over his shoulder at me. “It’s just glass, Sadie,” he snapped. “I’ll have Rita take it to a framing shop later. It’ll be fine. Stop making a scene.” “Shut up,” I whispered. I looked up at him, my eyes burning. “Shut your mouth.” Morgan caught my gaze, her eyes welling with delicate, theatrical tears. She pulled her hand out of Simon’s grip and ran toward the front door. “Morgan, wait!” Simon took two steps after her, stopped, and turned back to me. He dropped down, grabbing my bloody shoulders, his grip bruising. “Morgan is the best friend I have,” he hissed, his voice tight with desperation and anger. “Everything she does, she does so we can have a real marriage. Stop treating her like a villain! If you can’t control your crazy, take it out on me, but stop coming after her. I’m begging you, Sadie, just stop.” The exhaustion in his tone was an open wound. And Morgan—breezy, unburdened, vibrant Morgan—was the sunshine he wished he had married. She was the mistress my father had run off with, shiny and uncomplicated, while my sick mother slowly withered away in a dark room. Simon Conrad wasn’t my savior. He was just my father, wearing a different face. And I refused to die in a bathtub. I pulled out of his grip, my bloody fingers brushing the folded envelope tucked inside my back pocket. The divorce papers I had printed weeks ago. “Simon,” I said quietly, the air finally returning to my lungs. “We need to—” “Simon!” Morgan called from the foyer, her voice a fragile lilt. “I’m leaving!” Simon didn’t hear a word I said. He leaned down, pressed a careless, distracted kiss to my forehead, and stood up. “Tomorrow night is our class reunion dinner. Morgan set it up specifically to get you out of the house. It’ll do wonders for your head. I’m driving you.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He took off down the hallway, chasing the sound of her heels. The next evening, he arrived at six sharp to escort me. He gave me no choice, leading me to the car like a prisoner on parole. The private dining room at the steakhouse was already loud when we walked in. Morgan was sitting at the head of the table, laughing. The moment we stepped through the door, she grabbed a rocks glass filled with amber bourbon and slammed it down in front of me with a theatrical grin. “Let’s clink glasses, Sadie. Water under the bridge, okay?” “Drink it,” Simon said softly, nudging the glass closer to my fingers. “She’s extending an olive branch. Don’t humiliate her in front of our friends.” I didn’t touch it. I stared at Simon in absolute horror. At our wedding reception five years ago, a bartender had accidentally cross-contaminated my mocktail with rum. I have an anaphylactic alcohol allergy. I went into respiratory arrest and spent thirty-six hours in the intensive care unit. Simon had sat beside my hospital bed in his ruined, wrinkled tuxedo, weeping so hard he couldn’t speak. “I didn’t know,” he had sobbed, kissing my limp fingers. “It’s all my fault… I swear to God, never again.” From that day on, our home had been entirely dry. No wine, no beer, not even vanilla extract made with alcohol. “I can’t drink this,” I said, pushing the glass away. Simon’s face darkened instantly. “Sadie, Morgan is trying to be nice. Stop disrespecting her.” Across the table, one of his old fraternity brothers chimed in, chuckling nervously. “Come on, Sadie. None of us care that you’re a little high-strung, but don’t be rude. Take a sip.” “Yeah,” another voice called out, laughing. “We basically risked our lives coming to dinner with you tonight. Least you can do is take the peace offering.” Before I could back away, a heavy hand gripped the back of my neck. Someone tipped the glass against my mouth, the sharp, suffocating burn of bourbon splashing over my lips, burning my tongue. Panic flooded my veins. I gagged, thrashing violently, knocking over plates. My hand hit the polished handle of the serrated steak knife on the table. Without thinking, I gripped it and slashed through the air to force them back. “Get away from me!” Morgan suddenly surged forward, crying out, “Sadie, stop!” Under the guise of disarming me, she dragged her bare forearm directly across the serrated tip of the blade. “Ah!” A shallow line of red opened on her skin. Morgan stumbled backward into the arms of the man behind her, clutching her arm and bursting into hysterical, breathless sobs. “I just wanted to help you… how could you try to kill me?!” The entire private room went dead silent. Simon lunged forward, wrenching the knife from my fingers with so much force my wrist popped. When he looked at me, there was no pity left. Only pure, unadulterated loathing. “Threatening to kill yourself wasn’t enough for you?” His voice was a venomous whisper that carried across the room. “Now you’re stabbing people? Do you honestly expect me to throw away the rest of my life babysitting a violent psychopath?!” His words felt like physical blows. My knees gave out. Around us, the room erupted into chaos. Someone was wrapping a cloth around Morgan’s arm. Others were backing away from me, whispering behind their hands. “She’s totally unhinged. Just like her mother.” “People like that belong in an asylum. Letting her out in public is a liability.” “Morgan planned this whole night for her, and she tries to butcher her?” The walls of the dining room seemed to bend inward. The air smelled of seared meat and heavy perfume, thick and sickening. Simon stepped into my space, his eyes wild with fury. “Sadie, when are you going to let me go? When will you stop poisoning everything I touch? Is it really that hard to let me have a normal life?!” “Poisoning everything.” Every sleepless night. Every time I held his hand and apologized for being broken. Every silent prayer I muttered, begging God to make me a better wife. To him, it was all just poison. The last tiny string holding my heart together severed. A small, lifeless smile touched my lips. I bent down, picked up the steak knife from where it had fallen on the carpet, and aimed the blade straight at my own abdomen. Simon’s eyes went wide. “Don’t touch her!” He thought I was going for Morgan again. He didn’t hesitate. Simon lowered his shoulder and slammed his entire body weight into me, violently shoving me away. I flew backward, the small of my back slamming into the sharp brass corner of the oak credenza before I hit the hardwood floor. A tearing, white-hot agony ripped through my pelvis. I gasped, clutching my stomach. Simon stood over me, panting, looking down—and then the color completely drained from his face. A dark, heavy warmth was spreading between my thighs. Blood soaked through my linen trousers, pooling on the floorboards, expanding in a terrifying, crimson circle. My vision narrowed into a pinprick of gray. And then the darkness swallowed me whole. When I opened my eyes, the ceiling was made of industrial acoustic tiles. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. I tried to lift my hands, but thick leather restraints held my wrists and ankles pinned to the steel frame of a medical cot. A visceral terror spiked through my chest. “Where am I? Why am I tied down?!” A speaker crackled on the wall. Behind a pane of reinforced one-way glass, Simon’s voice floated through the intercom, sounding muffled and clinical. “Sadie, what happened at the restaurant proved you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you. The attending psychiatrist recommends electroconvulsive therapy. They say a neurological reset might finally cure you.” Cold bile rose in my throat. “I’m not psychotic, Simon! Look at me! My body can’t take this—” The heavy metal door clicked open. Morgan walked in, wearing an oversized white lab coat, holding a handheld digital controller. “If I tell them you’re crazy, Sadie, you’re crazy,” she said softly, stepping up to the side of my bed. A sickening smile curved her lips. “Simon and I have fifteen years of history. Who do you think he trusts? When I told him all that blood on the floor was just a heavy menstrual cycle from stress, he didn’t question it for a second.” My breath hitched. My hand strained against the leather strap, desperately trying to reach my lower belly. A baby. I had been pregnant. And neither of us had known. Hot tears spilled over my temples. “You monster…” “Save your breath,” Morgan said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Once I shock the dramatic little princess out of you, you’ll thank me.” She raised a second remote and clicked the power button on the large wall-mounted monitor facing my bed. The screen flared to life. My stomach plummeted into an abyss. It was the police evidence footage from ten years ago. The bathroom. The clawfoot tub filled to the brim with dark water. My mother’s pale, lifeless face turning toward the handheld camcorder I had left on the counter. “Sadie, my darling…” my mother’s recorded voice echoed through the metal room, hollow and tinny. “Don’t let a man break you like this. Don’t end up like me…” On the screen, my mother raised the straight razor and dragged it deep into the pale skin of her forearm. “Mom! No! Turn it off!” I screamed, thrashing against the restraints with every ounce of strength I had left. The leather bit into my wrists, stripping the skin away. “Simon! Turn it off! Please!” Morgan let out a soft, delighted giggle. “Can’t handle a little exposure therapy? Don’t worry. That was just step one. Here’s step two.” She flipped a toggle switch on the handheld console. The current hit my temples like a freight train. White fire exploded behind my retinas. My back arched off the mattress, every muscle in my body locking into a violent, agonizing spasm. The air was violently wrenched from my lungs. The smell of ozone and burning hair filled the room. My brain buzzed with electric static. From somewhere far away, behind the glass, Simon’s voice wavered over the intercom, sounding thin and panicked. “Morgan… that’s enough, isn’t it? Let her out.” “The doctor said a full therapeutic cycle takes twenty minutes, Simon,” Morgan called back smoothly. “Wait outside. Don’t ruin it.” Footsteps retreated. Simon didn’t say another word. Inside the closed room, the tearing pain in my lower abdomen returned with sickening clarity. A wet, sticky warmth seeped beneath my hips, soaking into the thin hospital pad. The last trace of my child was slipping away. Drowning in tears and bile, I looked at the dark glass of the observation window and begged with what little voice I had left. “Simon… let me out… I was pregnant… Simon, please…” The intercom crackled once more. “Just push through it, Sadie,” Simon’s voice drifted back, calm and detached. “If this works, we can finally have a real life. You wanted a family, right? Once you’re fixed, I promise I’ll give you a baby.” Just three weeks ago, he had held me in our king-sized bed, his lips against my collarbone, whispering that our baby would have my dark curls and my laugh. Now, that baby was nothing more than a stain on a psych ward gurney. A cracked, hollow sound escaped my throat. I looked through the glass, watching the two shadows standing side by side, chatting casually as if waiting for a load of laundry to finish. I stopped struggling. With trembling, bloody fingers, I reached for the exposed, high-voltage ground wire running along the edge of the metal headboard, wedged beneath the monitor casing. With one final, violent tug, I ripped the live cable from its terminal and slammed the sparking copper directly against the bare skin of my chest. A blinding burst of white light. A sound like thunder inside my bones. And then, for the first time in five years, the noise in my head stopped. Ten minutes later, Simon was walking back down the clinical hallway carrying two paper cups of coffee. A shrill alarm began to blare. Two nurses tore past him, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking wildly on the linoleum. “Code Blue in Room 4! The Conrad patient got hold of a live lead! Page the crash team and notify the family!” Simon’s heart skipped a beat. The cardboard cups crumpled in his hands, hot coffee scalding his palms. He moved on instinct, pushing through the crowd of orderlies, shoving his way through the heavy swinging doors. The sight of the room froze him down to his marrow.
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