Do Not Resuscitate

The house breathes and sighs with the calmness of night. I listen to the silence, the nothingness that comes with others’ deep sleep, and breathe in time, deep in, sigh out, over and over. Our snow globe has settled, the chaotic flakes resting, until daybreak shakes the fragile glass again. Under the pressure of doctor visits and the detention to follow, our globe might break.

I’m not going.

There’s a clarity in the darkness, in the night, in the three am haze when I should be sleeping to prep for the powder keg of commotion, like Dad, like Val, like Brooklyn, but can’t because my thoughts are too loud. These are the hours when the world makes sense, and our brains kick into overdrive, and we have massive revelations about our lives and how to change them, only to neglect those master plans in the morning. I won’t scrap mine. I can’t.

I have made my bed. I will lie in it.

It’s eerie, the way the tranquility blankets me. This will be over soon. I’ll be okay. My heart hurts, my cartilage and muscles are deteriorating, my hair falls out in clumps, my teeth are crumbling, my sides ache, my nails are tinted blue, my skin tinted yellow, my brain cells are eating each other to survive, the damage is permanent, but I will be okay. Ironic.

Three fifteen.

This is it. No more waiting. No more dragging it out. I don’t have the luxury.

I struggle out of bed. I stand on bony feet. I clutch the bedpost till the spinning stops and the spots clear. Same old, same old, except it’s different now. Every action is cut with the undercurrent of enormity. My time is limited. I should appreciate the last moments, the feel of plush carpet against my toes, the way the dim bedside lamp casts dreamy shadows over my bed, the perfect emptiness of my room, like I don’t even live here.

I don’t live here.

Enough of that. Three twenty-one. Time to go.

Walking hurts, but I do it anyway. The assurance of permanent relief is fuel, and I am out of my room and staring down the nightlight-lit hall towards Dad’s room before my body can consider collapsing. I watch, clutching my doorframe, motionless. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, no movement. Dad won’t be up for hours. He’s on Rock Star Daddy schedule, asleep by one, awake by seven, in the kitchen by seven-oh-five to make breakfast for The Child of Darkness and Glitter. I’m safe.

But I keep standing here, watching, waiting, wanting. The seconds are ticking. The window of time is shrinking. And I stand in place. Nothing happens.

I shake my head, and move.

Through the hall to the child safety gate at the top of the stairs. More irony, I’m sure.

In the dim lighting and fog of hunger, my fingers are clumsy. The shaking throws my motor skills further off. I fumble with the gate, time tickingtickingtickingticking, until, by some miracle, it slides open.

Breath rushes out of me. Relief.

I take two shaky steps down, turn, shut the gate, and creep the rest of the way. I don’t look back. It feels important that I don’t.

The child safety gate at the bottom of the stairs is open. I’m thankful. I couldn’t open another one if I tried. I would laugh or cry—stopping this could have been that easy, one more gate—but I’m beyond hysterics. Because this is almost over. The night is young, and I’ll be gone before daylight.

Dad keeps the lamp in the front hallway on at night to ease Brooklyn’s fear of the dark and the lurking unknown monsters. Tonight is no different. The light is on, and I don’t run into side tables or knock over miscellaneous decorations or step on the forgotten doll with the chewed up face in the middle of the carpet. Dad will never know how simple he made this, or maybe he will.

It doesn’t matter.

They won’t miss me.

Electric shocks pulse in my legs. My breath comes out in quick spurts. I stop at the dining room archway, and grip the hard edge for support. I’m winded from walking the shortest distance possible. My room to the dining room. Pathetic.

Have to keep going.

I step into pitch black.

Salvation is in the kitchen, in the unlocked cabinets, in pretty orange containers. So I blindly hobble-walk in the dark despite the pain and the exhaustion and the sheer desire to curl in a ball and give up. I feel the table, grope at tucked in chairs, tread carefully, kick a soft toy—Brooklyn’s or the dogs’, I don’t know, but it doesn’t make a sound—stumble to the wall, and try not to pass out.

I will not stop. I can’t. This… has to be done.

My hand hits empty space. The kitchen doorway. Finally. I almost want to savor the moment, but I don’t have the time. Getting here was only half the battle. On goes the kitchen light.

Damn, that’s bright.

I blink, cover my eyes, turn my head, anything to adjust to the sudden brightness. With pseudo sunlight does not come sanity, just a sharp stabbing in my brain. I wish it would end.

It will end.

A renewed sense of drive washes over me. This will end. If I make it end. Stop wasting time on nonsense. I open my eyes, and—oh, God.

Big hazel eyes.

Picture, it’s a picture. Brooklyn isn’t really standing in front of me, smiling big and stylized for the perfect Christmas photo. She’s a picture held in place on the fridge by a sparkly heart magnet. She’s not here.

But I don’t move.

As if, if I do, she’ll pop awake with the awareness that Sissy is in emotional distress, she’ll somehow know I’m conspiring with myself against myself, which is impossible. She is tucked in bed, fast asleep, upstairs, what feels like miles away. She won’t wake up to my silence.

I still don’t move.

She’s paralyzed me. I do nothing but stare at her adorable face. I can hear her voice echo in my ears. Very hungry catepittars and chocolate and you not strong and helphy and Swiper, no swiping and I don’t want you to die. I can feel the comforting warmth of her itty bitty body against my bones. I can see her sitting proud in the middle of a pillow explosion she claims is a nest. I can see fierce scowls and puppy dog pouts. I can see her face crumple under realizations much too heavy for her. I can see big, beautiful eyes welling with tears.

I’m propelled into motion.

To the fridge.

I grab the bright purple fuzzy pen hanging from the grocery list and underneath “rice crackers, apples, ???” write:

Dear Mom, Dad, Val, Brooklyn,

You're welcome.

Dannilynn Sanders

I drop the pen, I turn away, and I don’t even glance at the picture Brooklyn’s smiling face. It’s done.

This is for the best.

The pack of Diet Cokes Dad bought to fit my self-imposed dietary restrictions sits on the counter. He keeps them in sight to remind himself to make his dysfunctional child special food. I think he’d forget otherwise. There’s four left. I grab the pack, with both hands to support the weight, and carefully place it on the floor, nudge it with a big toe to line it up against the bottom cabinets. Four is enough for tonight.

He won’t need to restock.

I open the cabinet.

The weight of exhaustion, the twisting nerves, the monumental high of perverse excitement, and the unspoken promise preserved in the rows and miscellaneous boxes full of meds upon meds upon meds slam together inside me. I shake harder. The labels blur till the names printed become unreadable ants. I can’t tell what pills are mine, the magic pills and heart medications intended to keep me stable, and what meds are Dad’s, Val’s, and Brooklyn’s, gathered throughout the years instead of taken in their entirety in accordance with doctor’s orders.

I grab at them.

Boxes and individual pill bottles, whatever I can reach, stacking and tucking them under my arm, letting bottles clatter to the floor, I’m a regular kid in a candy store, frantically taking more than I could possibly consume but doing it anyway because the pills are there and the consequences mean nothing. I sink to the floor with my hoard, gaze upon the solution to the plans Dad ruined. A niggling thought wiggles at the edge of my consciousness. But it’s not fully formed, and I don’t care. This is the point of no return.

I don’t think anymore.

I do.

Pop open soda cans and struggle with child safety caps and shake pills straight into my mouth and chug carbonated liquid to force them down. I work the process into a science, four pills at a time, four counts between swallows, the briefest of pause to prevent choking, tipping in barely enough liquid to get the pills to trickle down my throat but avoid uncomfortable fullness, pulling my lips back to make sure no pills or metallic rims touch them, perfect. I am a well-oiled machine.

I feel weird.

But I don’t stop.

In the span of minutes, hours, I don’t know how long I’ve been here, the concept of time is skewed, the shake, chug, swallow has become a calming routine. I couldn’t stop if I tried. The motions are compulsive, second nature, the only thing I think about. In this moment, all that matters is taking these pills. They are the key to survival, and it makes no sense, but it does, deep down in my cramping gut, and I take and take and take…

I run out of Diet Coke.

I lean back against the cabinets. I am outside my body, looking down at a scene of devastating carnage, but inside at the same time. Empty pill bottles and blister packs litter the floor. I have choked down most of them.

It hurts.

In my abdomen, where my digestive organs clench and twist in protest. A sudden head rush of nausea knocks my center of balance off. I’m not breathing.

I forgot to breathe.

Panic claws at my insides—I’m forgetting to breathe, people don’t forget to breathe—but my limbs are jelly and my fingers are numb and my head is lolling and I have no strength left in me. I shake. I fight to breathe. I’m going to throw up. I try to swallow saliva, but I have none, my mouth is like cotton, and I wish I had saved a few sips of Diet Coke.

I’m tired.

So, so tired.

“Dannilynn?”

The sluggish name slices through the overmedicated fog, spoken from lips that are most definitely not mine and most definitely aren’t a hallucination. I pull the energy I have left to look up, to flop my head back hard against the cabinets and barely peer up from under my lashes and mess of hair, at him.

At Dad.

He’s rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, slouching against the island in his sweatpants and rumpled shirt, roused from sleep far too early to be cognizant. This is not part of the plan.

“What are you doing—” he yawns, cutting himself off, long and pitched high and completed with a mini stretch, then finishes, “—awake?”

He opens his eyes.

And freezes.

His eyes grow wide, wider, wider still, it’s almost comical, as he takes in the bottles and blister packs, the miscellaneous pills littering the floor, the cans of Diet Coke, me shaking so violently my teeth chatter, back to the bottles and blister packs, back to me struggling to remember to breathe. The panic eating at me takes over his face.

“Did you—”

I throw up.

“Shit.”

My eyelids shut, for a second, just a second, they’re so heavy, but when I open them again, Dad is sitting at my side, clutching me against his body, propping me up, ignoring the vomit splattered all over the place, and it’s doubled, the amount of vomit in my hair, stuck on my face, on my clothes, coating the floor. The landline is against his ear, and he’s yelling “I don’t know what she took! We need an ambulance!” Time jumped. I missed… I missed something.

I’m scared.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Dad says, smooths my hair, then presses his face against the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay.”

It’s not going to be okay.

“The ambulance will be here soon. Stay with me, Danny.”

It hurts.

“Goddamn it. Val!” His voice cracks mid-yell. “Come on, sweetie, you can do it,” he says, insists. “Val!” he yells again.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.” His voice is coming from farther and farther away, and he hasn’t moved a muscle. “I love you, Dannilynn. It’ll be okay. Stay awake.”

It’s too late.

“I’m dying,” I say.

Try to say. My jaw doesn’t work right and my tongue is heavy and I can’t remember how to breathe and the words come out in a mumbled slur.

“You won’t die. I promise.”

But I will.

“I did it,” I mumble, drag my eyes up to meet his, and even though I can’t really make out his features anymore, I know I’ve said enough for bits and pieces to fall together and make a semi complete picture. “I did it,” I repeat.

He crushes me. He rocks. He speaks frantically. He yells… And I think I made a mistake. I don’t want this. I’m not ready. Make it stop. Turn back time, an hour, a week, years, to the decision that led me down the path to this, the first binge, the first purge, the first crash diet, the first cut, the first time I looked in the mirror and told myself I was stupid. Help me. Please, help me. Dad, I don’t want to di—