After My Fiancé Faked Amnesia to Destroy Me

The room had no windows. I knew that because I'd stared at every inch of the walls. Concrete. Gray. A single drain in the center of the floor like something out of a butcher shop.

I didn't know what day it was anymore.

They'd injected me with something the first night. A man in latex gloves. No words. Just the needle sliding into my arm and a chemical burn spreading under my skin. The world went soft at the edges after that. Not unconscious. Worse. Aware but unmoored. Time stretched and contracted like something I couldn't hold.

Zara came every morning.

I knew it was morning because she always smelled like coffee. Expensive coffee. The kind served in bone china cups at restaurants where they don't list prices.

She didn't perform anymore. That was the strangest part. The breathless voice was gone. The tremulous mouth. The tears that fell on cue. She spoke in a flat, efficient tone. Like a woman running a meeting.

"Tell me you lied," she said on what I think was the second day. She stood three feet from where I sat slumped against the wall. White dress. Always white. "Tell me you made it all up. That you drove me away because you were jealous. That Axl was always mine."

I looked at her. Didn't speak.

"Say it," she said. Still flat. Still calm. "Say you're sorry. Say you understand what you are."

I pressed my thumb into my wrist. One. Two. Three.

"No," I said.

She tilted her head. Studied me like I was a problem requiring a different approach. Then she turned and left. The lock turned. The fluorescent light buzzed.

I counted the seconds until the next injection.

The third day—or maybe the fourth, time had become something unreliable—they brought food. A paper plate. Bread. Water in a plastic cup. The man who brought it set it on the floor and left without looking at me.

I tried to drink. My hands shook. The cup slipped. Shattered against the concrete.

I stared at the pieces. At the water spreading across the floor toward the drain. At a single shard of plastic that had broken into something almost sharp.

I picked it up.

Held it in my palm. Felt the edge with my thumb. Not sharp enough to cut deep. But sharp enough.

I thought about my father in a hospital bed. About Axl's voice saying my name like it was a punchline. About three years of believing love was something you earned through endurance.

I thought about Zara's flat voice asking me to beg.

I pressed the shard against my left wrist. Dragged it across. Not deep. Just enough to open the skin. Enough to bleed.

The pain was clean. Immediate. Mine.

I switched hands. Did the right wrist. Watched the blood well up and drip onto the concrete. It looked very red against the gray.

I tore a strip from the bottom of my shirt. Wrapped my left wrist. Then my right. The fabric soaked through quickly but I tied it tight.

Then I sat back against the wall and waited.

The room tilted slightly. The chemical they'd been injecting made everything feel like it was happening underwater. But the pain in my wrists was sharp enough to cut through. An anchor.

I counted my heartbeat. One. Two. Three.

I was still counting when the door opened.

Zara stopped in the doorway. Looked at me. At my wrapped wrists. At the blood on the floor.

Her face changed.

Not concern. Not guilt. Something harder. Something that looked almost like fear.

"What did you do?" Her voice wasn't flat anymore. It had an edge. Sharp. Uncontrolled.

I looked at her. Didn't answer.

"What did you do?" she said again. Louder. She turned and shouted something I couldn't hear through the chemical fog. Footsteps. Voices. Hands pulling at my wrists. Someone swearing.

Zara stood in the doorway watching. Her white dress very bright against the concrete. Her hands opening and closing at her sides.

"You stupid—" she started. Stopped. Her mouth worked around words she couldn't find.

A man was wrapping my wrists with gauze now. Real gauze. White and clean. He worked quickly. Efficiently. Like he'd done this before.

"She needs a hospital," he said.

"No hospitals," Zara said. Her voice had gone flat again but it cost her something. I could see it in the way she held her spine. "Stabilize her here. I don't care how. Just do it."

The man looked at her. Looked at me. Kept wrapping.

Zara turned and left. The door stayed open this time. I could see a hallway. Concrete. Fluorescent lights. The edge of another door.

The man finished with my wrists. Checked my pulse. Looked at me with something that might have been pity if I'd had the energy to care.

"Don't do that again," he said quietly.

I didn't promise.

He left. The door closed. The lock turned.

I sat against the wall with my newly wrapped wrists and looked at the blood drying on the concrete. At the drain in the center of the floor. At the fluorescent light that never turned off.

I pressed my thumb against the gauze. One. Two. Three.

Zara hadn't gotten what she came for.

And she never would.