Chapter Text
The lake’s dark water was cold against the woman’s clothed skin as she waded into its depths, though she hardly noticed the icy sting.
When her covered feet no longer touched the bottom, she didn’t attempt to swim. She didn’t attempt to hold her breath, but exhaled the air in her lungs, then breathed, flooding her airway with water.
There was nothing but the darkness now. There was no place to swim. The rocks in her coat continued to pull her down.
The water numbed her limbs and there was a dizzying realization that she was drowning. There was no going back.
She tried to fight as the water burned in her lungs, her arms and legs giving out in exhaustion.
Darkness shrouded her mind as a new feeling coursed through her, the panic subsiding. It was almost over. She felt detached from her body. Why was she fighting? The darkness was soft and warm. Soft thoughts were easy.
She sank farther under, incoherent and far away. Fading in and out, she let herself succumb to the rising darkness.
* * *
Three summers had passed since that day. Ellis Emerson sat slumped against her bedroom door. Her blonde hair hung down to her shoulders as she nervously played with it, trying to soothe herself. Her shirt sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, exposing the even, precise scars on her forearms.
She was crying, again, and it was all too much to bear. More often than not, she found the idea of life overwhelming. She didn’t want to be saved and barely remembered the flurry into the hospital after her boyfriend, Avery Harper, found her suicide note and rushed into the lake to rescue her.
She never wanted any of it. Not the pain of her mental health, her parents’ deaths, or the multiple hospitalizations.
Then again, she bore more than her fair share of adversity in her twenty-three years. Born premature and ill, the doctors and her parents never thought that she would live past her first week. Instead of welcoming a new life, her parents took her home to die. Nurses checked in daily to aid in hospice care and console her parents.
“They never thought I would live, but I cheated death. That’s all this is, an extra life!” she sobbed. The self-deprecating monologue in her head agreed. Undeserving. Worthless. Not good enough.
Three days after birth, she suffered a major hemorrhagic stroke. That alone should have killed her, but she survived. The cerebral palsy left her disabled and the doctors said that she may never walk on her own.
“Why did it have to happen? Was this my punishment?” An involuntary spasm racked through the left side of her body.
However, little Ellis fought on against the doctors’ predictions. She began to improve and surprised them all, turning into a happy child, the threat of illness and death behind her.
Her muscles would always be overly tight, but at least she could walk, and she learned how to do most things with her unaffected right hand. Her left wrist was turned outward, and the fingers were splayed out and stiff. She had some limited use with grasping and holding things, but she couldn’t even wiggle her fingers or count numbers on that hand.
A short knock on the opposite side of the door broke her from her thoughts. “Elle, can I come in? I know you’re hurting.”
“Is it just you, Mer?”
“Yes,” the man, Merrill Kendrick, answered. “Avery is still on his shift at the hospital.”
Ellis sniffled, then moved aside, unlocking the door. Merrill opened the door, cautiously looking around the room before looking at her. His face dropped in relief. Had he thought she was hurting herself again?
“I don’t have anything sharp, I swear,” she said, pulling her shirt sleeves down to her wrists. Even though it was May, she still wore long-sleeved shirts to hide the scars. Perpetual reminders of the past always seemed to find her, relentless and unyielding.
“I believe you, mon lapin.”
Ellis giggled a little through her tears, not caring that her glasses were already wet. Mon lapin. My rabbit. The French language always did have a certain, pleasing sound to it.
“How were finals?” Merrill asked, kneeling down to sit on the floor. He took her hands lightly and closed his eyes. The last few days were trying, only proving to worsen her self-confidence. She needed the credits, but the work rattled her.
“Ah, I see. Well, it’s all over now, isn’t it? Let all those bad thoughts go. You’re done for the semester. No more worrying.”
She reached out and stroked his black hair, then rubbed the cotton twill fabric of his plaid shirt between her fingers, liking the soft texture. When he first read her, she was caught off guard. Psychics weren’t real anyway, just con artists looking for quick cash.
Yet, he, a maven, was undoubtedly real. She had known a few mavens before with different abilities, and she trusted his empathic and telepathic powers. A warm sense of calm radiated from him, keeping the monster in her head at bay, but it could only be caged for so long.
“Would you like some lunch? Avery’s shift ends later tonight, but I know he’d want you to enjoy your last day.”
Ellis laughed. “What, no three-way date this time?”
The three of them lived together and considered themselves a triad. Ellis and Avery met Merrill two years ago and, after a while, they all decided to take the jump into polyamory. It worked well once they got over some bumps. The emotional and mental load of the relationship was not restricted to one person, freeing them from the fear of trying to manage everything alone.
While Avery and Merrill’s involvement with each other was often driven by their sexual dynamics, Ellis didn’t want sex. However, she still shared a strong romantic relationship with both men and after several months of dialogue, they figured out a working system so that everyone’s needs were met.
Merrill shook his head. “No, not today. However, we can still make the best of it. Did you take your medication?”
Ellis sighed. Bupropion for depression and methylphenidate for ADHD in the morning, escitalopram for anxiety in the evening, with an occasional sleeping pill.
She was back on track after recently skipping them for two weeks and hitting withdrawal. She barely did anything during that time except lie on the couch while the monster overtook her every thought, feeling detached from her body and her surroundings as time passed in a haze.
Luckily, Avery was a doctor and was able to intervene before the withdrawal became any worse, then began tracking her pills with an organizer.
She felt her body flush defensively, but she couldn’t blame Merrill for asking. “Of course. You could have checked the organizer. I’ve been taking them now and they’re helping, I promise.”
“I know. Remember, you’re never alone in this, no matter what the monster in your head says. We’re always here for you, Ellis.”
He helped her up from the floor and they walked out to his car. She walked slower than him and with a limp, her steps clearly audible with heavy footfalls from her orthotic. The multicolored plastic brace went up to her knee and kept her left foot and calf in proper alignment.
She could walk without it, but her ankle was too weak to perform a proper heel strike and her foot turned outward, so she wore orthotics since infancy to normalize her gait. They didn’t fix the problem, nothing could, but they corrected her movement by immobilizing her ankle while she wore them to prevent her foot from dropping.
When Ellis got in the car, she had a strange, uneasy feeling that this was the deciding moment in her life when things changed. This moment, as they went out to eat at a diner?
It felt good, but good things were bad because something always took them away. She didn’t know whether it was just her mind playing tricks on her or not, but she took Merrill’s hand, nonetheless.
His green eyes unfocused, then cleared as he massaged her left hand, working at the spastic muscles. “I know. I feel it, too. Things are going to be different now. Face it with your head held high.”
Not feeling the least bit confident, Ellis tried to keep her thoughts from splitting into different directions. The anxiety would well up like water, suffocating her. Only this time, as Merrill grabbed her hand and chased away the bad thoughts, she knew that she would rise above.