Who Can Really Blame You?

“He’s on quite a few pain medications; he’ll be out of it for awhile.”

“He’ll be fine though?”

“…full recovery…”

“We didn’t know… How?”

I open my eyes, and see five or so silhouettes against the bright light. I feel a groan rip from my throat. All the figures move, and I’m instantly bombarded with people saying my name.

I can’t speak, and I reach my hand up carefully to my mouth, and feel a thick plastic tube coming out from my mouth. My eyes fill up, and I close them tightly.

“It’ll come out once you’re healed,” the doctor says, then asks me to follow a pencil with my eye and move my toes. Apparently I pass. “You have no brain damage,” he says, looking through a clipboard, “Your nose is broken, but that will heal fine. You have a punctured lung, from your rib, which is broken. Very clean break though, it’ll heal nicely. We went in for surgery and fixed that up. But, I was wondering if you and I could spend a moment alone to discuss what happened.”

I nod, and look to everyone else in the room. Talia looks happy to see me, as does Tayler. Hadley is crying. My aunt looks flat out worried. Carter looks like he’s going to be sick. I reach my hands out and make a writing motion. Hadley reaches onto a table next to her, and hands me a pen and paper. Everyone says they’ll be raiding the vending machines, and they file out of the room neatly.

“Ainsley, I’m going to just come out and say it,” the doctor says. I nod slightly. “There was evidence of a rape,” he continues, “We’ve hooked you up to an antibiotic, and you should be nearly healed by this time next week, but the damage was… extensive. In my professional opinion, the amount of force it would take to inflict that kind of internal injury suggests that this wasn’t rough sex gone too far, and by the extents of your injuries, I would recommend you speak to the police and have charges brought against him.”

I don’t answer.

“If you would like, I’ll have the police come and start a file in the morning,” he offers. I still don’t answer. He sighs, stands, and tells me that they’ll be here, and that that would be the time to have made a decision.

Talia says she’s proud of me, for being so brave and having the police go to arrest him. I wish I could talk right now to tell her to shut up and please give me the remote. I told them nothing they didn’t know. He beat me, and then he left. I can’t make myself say it, and my doctor can’t say it for me, so I just won’t mention it.

“You’ll be discharged tomorrow morning,” my aunt says, coming into my room again, just having left ten minutes ago to speak to the doctors. I point to my throat. “They’ll take it out at four,” she promises, and I glance at the clock, not quite indicating two in the afternoon. I sigh.

I know something’s up, as my aunt comes back into my hospital room from a talk with the police. I wish I could ask what’s wrong, but they haven’t taken out the tube, afraid that my lung’s too weak to do the breathing by itself, or something. I give her a questioning look. She looks at me sadly.

“Ainsley,” she says, sitting down next to me, and for a moment I think that she’s going to tell me that I have cancer, and if that happens, I’m buying a gun and shooting myself, because this is getting ridiculous. I stare up at her, worry filling my gut.

She pauses for a long time.

“The police went to Mitchell’s dorm to take him into custody, and he locked himself in his dorm room with his roommate…” she says, “He shot his roommate, and then himself.”

My hands go to my face, and I want to go back in time and never be born.

“Mitchell’s dead,” she says, placing her hand on mine, and pulling it from my face. She holds my hand for a moment, before I pull it away, and roll onto my side, facing away from the world for a little while.

I am discharged, but I am not left in my own care, and it’s just getting tiring. Everything is, honestly. The way my aunt bustles around me, offering me pillows, offering me cold glasses of water, trying to get me to say more than two words. I’m too tired, and the weight of another person’s death, along with the loss of someone I loved, is pressing down so fiercely on my chest that I swear I can feel my bones shift and groan to try to hold up the weight.

My aunt comes back into my bedroom, and she asks if I need anything, for perhaps the fifth time this hour, and I shake my head.

“I’m going to sleep,” I tell her, and I see her sag slightly as the disappointment at the most words I’ve spoken since the tube came out three days ago, and the weight they actually bear. She nods, offers me another blanket, and I accept it, though I’m weighed down by the two already on me, maybe because I feel bad for disappointing her. I feel the odd urge to keep her feeling a bit more useful while she takes care of me.

I do try to sleep. I’ve been trying since I left the hospital. I’ve been faking for my aunt’s wellbeing, but at this point, I’m so used to not sleeping that it’s gotten to be little more than an annoyance, not even a legitimate worry.

I’ve been staying in bed for three weeks, too depressed to get up. I feel like a fraud. I’m not hurt. Sure, I’m a bit sore, and my lung will never be the same, but I’m not bedridden, except by guilt. My story made it into the newspaper, only because of him, how he killed his dorm-mate because we had a fight. People have been sending me letters, and suddenly my neighbors realize I live here. I heard the man next to me, a guy with a strong German accent, on the news this evening, saying how we always seemed a bit off to him, how he heard noises in the apartment, but never realized what was happening. Then my aunt changed the TV station and tried to get me to eat something. I politely refused. I feel like a fraud. I should be able to get up right now, and continue on with life, just fine. Just plain and dandy and stop being a little bitch about the cards I was dealt.