Trashed and Scattered

I was a broken woman lying on an ages-old mattress in an isolated ward in Cedars-Sinai. Hundreds of people passed by my door every hour, peeking in, cringing at the very sight of my body. Bruises covering every inch of skin that wasn’t covered by bandages. What was covered was far worse. Festering, oozing, and stinging to the point where I couldn’t keep my attention on one subject at hand. I was itching for an out, a way to escape the misery that has become of me. I pitied myself too much to wish to suffer any longer.
Brian and Matt were with me most of the day. I slept while they were here, slept while they were away. I had little to say except for the many thousand complaints of discomfort, thirst, hunger, and longing to be home on my couch. Without dozens of tubes in dozens of incisions across my entire body. I was a bag of useless flesh just wasting away my hours. Only to be sent home in the end, still scarred. My mind was a bag of mesh right now. I just wanted to sleep, forget everything. My dreams were always so much more pleasant.
Slowly I was becoming more intolerable, more depressed. After the third week all I did was sleep. Brian grew more fearful of my condition. He didn’t know the pain of feeling so broken, so horrendous. The very sensation of a monster between my legs, snatching my dignity to keep and torture. I was broken, completely helpless.
The worst part of it all was when different nurses on different shifts asked me the same questions over and over again: why wasn’t any of my family there with me? I had family listed down as emergency contacts after all, but none of them, not even my mother had come down to see her little girl in the ICU. Surely no one knew, no one had been contacted. Brian was the only one I wanted around, but even he was too much. I wanted to be alone in my misery.
I barely ate day to day. I grew weak, lost weight at an alarming pace. Brian commented often on how scared he was for me, pushing me to eat. I’d snap at him, he’d apologize and become weepy. The nurses usually fed me intravenously for the baby’s sake, but at that point, I didn’t care about anything anymore. I wanted out of this ridiculous gown, out of the awful, confining space that smelled ripe with isopropyl alcohol wipes and disease that roamed the halls. I wanted to be home in my bed.
Little by little, regardless of how weak I was, my wounds healed over. The pain faded, and eventually I was weaned off the painkillers. The morphine, codeine, what have you. None of it worked. Might have taken the edge off but nothing could erase my nightmares, the reason why I longed for dreamless sleep. Just to pass by the time. All I could ever see, even in Brian, was a man in a mask, holding me down by my throat. It would have been a miracle for me to ever be comfortable in bed with Brian again. Certainly would take a while. Years, worst case scenario.
Truth was, I felt like it was the guilt which held me up the most. And it weighed down on me, the very idea that I would never look at myself in the mirror the way I used to without seeing the scars, being reminded of what happened when Brian left me as he went on tour. Honestly, I’d expect him to hate himself for it for a while. It would hurt me to see him punish himself, just as he watched me punish myself the way I do.
Regardless of what I felt about myself in spite of what Brian did, I was still Melissa, the bride-to-be and expectant mother of a legitimate child with a man whom I loved. Who gave me strength each day to hold on, despite how much I truly wanted to let go. Who blessed me with a child I would love just as much as I loved him. And it was for Brian that I fought, for my child that I fought, thrashing against the gripping darkness of depression and despair that I’d been clouded by for days. Admittedly, it wasn’t the worst case of depression anyone would have seen. One might argue that it was post-traumatic stress, or even my lack of dealing with my emotional state following the trauma. Benign neglect, really. It cost me a great deal.
One of the nurses whom I’d grown to know on a personal level, Kim, came into my room on her rounds and brought with her some fresh bed sheets and a towel I’d requested earlier that day. She checked my vitals as she’d been doing each hour, the same as every nurse working ICU for the past month had done. Things were looking good she assured me. And as she assessed my prominent, visible injuries, I could see the sadness wash over her face like it always had. “It burns me that whoever did this to you is still out there.”
I nodded. I was able to speak now, without the god awful raspy voice, and with enough breath to be heard across the room. “Burns my ass to know people are still blaming my guys.” I didn’t mean to sound bitter, but reminding myself of the cold realization that the cops had nothing all too better to do besides tell me that my fiancé was a suspect, was a slap in the face.
“Guilty until proven innocent, huh.” She bluntly replied. I could see a grim smirk on her face. I tried not to get angry and worked up. “Brian wouldn’t ever do such a thing.”
“I believe you.” She said firmly, tearing the blood pressure cuff from my arm. The cold face of the stethoscope felt refreshing on my skin.
“Thank you.” I went quiet for a few minutes while she measured my respiration. “Just wish others could see it.”
She was finishing up with my vitals and finished off with cleansing my unhealed wounds with a damp cloth. “Will be nice when the little pricks are off the streets, huh. Oh, how crude of me. Sorry, Melissa.”
“Don’t worry about it. When I was sleeping earlier, did he come by? Or anyone at all?”
“No, you haven’t had a visitor since yesterday. Were you expecting anyone?”
I shook my head. “Maybe later. Anyways, gotta get back on my rounds. Call if you need something.”
“Thank you, Kim.” I sighed while she left the room. I was saddened by the fact that Brian hadn’t come around yet today, but kept in mind that he might have been busy. Busy or not, I wish he would have tried to contact me somehow. Yeah, I could have called him. In fact, I should have.
I was still quite tired, unsure whether it was the persistent oncoming depression or that I was actually quite tired of being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses on an hourly basis. Each time they checked my bruises and lesions I felt more and more exposed, wishing still that it would all go away, knowing that it would be a while before I could regain that level of confidence of having people look at me. Unbiased hospital staff were one thing, yes, but those who meant the world to me… I wished Brian was able to understand it would be a long while before intimacy was restored.

Notes

Little bit of agony, despair going on. Apologies for the depressing stuff. It's gonna lighten up next chapter.