Suffocation

She emerged from the water gasping, her clothes drenched. She vaguely heard someone calling her name above the fury that someone had intervened.


The smell of rust spiked the air and violated her taste buds. That person gripped her wrist hard, making the blood gush everywhere. Drops of them stained the side of the tub, the floor, and stood stark against the fresh white towels.


Soon there was a strip of cloth around her wrist just below the cut that exposed her bones. The ringing in her ears drowned out the words spoken to her, but all she felt now was distraught as darkness started to consume her vision as the person beside her cradled her to him.


She awoke to the beeping of a machine. She heard that before, from movies, and television programs.


The afternoon light hurt her eyes, and she felt alien objects all around her body, connecting her to the jumble of machinery that surrounded her. Her fingers touched something obnoxiously cold, then warm fingers. Her palm was pressed against a stubbly face.


She made out his figure, then slowly, his features. Light shone from his grief-darkened face, and watched as his lips said her name. He was so scared, he said, he thought he lost her.


He said again and again that he was sorry, that he didn't mean to, that he had no choice.


She chuckled at him. There's always a choice. She had a choice, but she chose him nonetheless. What he chose, however, was something she would never understand, just like how everyone else would never understand her.