My Family Left Me on Read So I Disappeared Forever Chapter 05
I thought death would be quiet.
It wasn’t.
The instant the wind rushed past my ears, the roar was deafening. Then came a dull, sickening impact.
The sound didn’t come from somewhere outside me. It came
from somewhere deep inside my body. It was the sound of my bones breaking.
Did it hurt?
I couldn’t tell. It felt as though my entire body had been
plunged into ice water. I was numb all over, yet somehow
felt everything at once.
I thought I heard someone shouting, but the voice seemed
impossibly far away, as though an entire building stood
between us.
Then everything disappeared.
There was no wind, no sound, and no pain.
There was nothing at all.
I didn’t know how much time had passed before a faint,
rhythmic beeping reached my ears. Steady and measured, it
sounded like someone counting heartbeats.
The sharp smell of antiseptic filled my nose and made me
want to sneeze, but I couldn’t summon enough strength to
move,
“Evie? Evie! Can you hear me?”
The voice was so close that it made my temples throb.
I tried to open my eyes, but the light was too bright, forcing
them shut again. When I tried again, the first thing I saw was a blank white ceiling.
Then Mom’s face appeared above me.
She leaned in close. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, her
hair was tangled, and her clothes were badly wrinkled. She looked as though she had aged ten years overnight.
“I’m here, Evie. I’ve been right here the whole time.”
She wrapped both hands around mine and held on so tightly
that her knuckles turned white.
“You scared me to death. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through these past few days?”
I stared at her and tried to speak, but my throat felt as
though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper. I couldn’t
force out a single word.
“You can’t ever do this again.”
Still clutching my hand, she began to cry. Her tears splashed
onto the sheet.
“If anything had happened to you, how would I have gone on? What would everyone think of me?”
I heard that last sentence clearly.
She wasn’t afraid of losing me.
She was afraid of what people would say about her.
I wanted to pull my hand away, but there wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt. Even the slightest movement of my fingers sent pain tearing through me.
The door opened, and Ethan stood in the doorway holding an
insulated food container.
When he saw that I was awake, he paused, then walked over
and placed it on the nightstand.
“You’re awake. Good.”
His tone was as flat as if he were telling me dinner was
ready.
I looked at him. My lips moved several times before a faint
whisper finally came out.
“Where’s the baby?”
He exchanged a glance with Mom.
“He’s staying with my mother. He’s fine. You need to focus
on getting better.”
Focus on getting better.
It was always the same answer.
I closed my eyes. The pressure against my back hurt more
than anything else.
That was when I remembered that I had struck something
before hitting the ground.
A nurse later told me I had landed on a second–story awning
first.
“You were unbelievably lucky,” she said while changing my dressings. “That awning was supposed to be removed months ago, but building management kept putting it off.
The removal had been delayed for half a year.”
Lucky.
I had thrown myself from a rooftop, and even then, the
world had refused to let me go.
Two police officers came that afternoon. One was younger,
while the other looked to be in his fifties.
The older officer placed a clear evidence bag on the
nightstand. Inside were my phone with its shattered screen and the receipt I had left on the rooftop.
“Did you write the message on the back of this receipt?”
I looked at the words on the receipt.
[Seventeen pots of hydrangeas. I wanted to count every
blossom for him.]
I nodded.
“We also need you to confirm what you wrote in the Notes
app on your phone.”
He read the entries aloud one by one.
Where the vaccination record was kept. Which formula to
use. That my son was afraid of thunder and needed someone
to cover his ears.
The final line said:
[I’m sorry. I really did try.]
I had written it.
Every single word.
“We need to understand what happened that night.” The officer opened his notebook. “What was going on at home
before you went to the rooftop?”
I opened my mouth, but before I could make a sound, Mom’s
voice came from outside the room.
I didn’t know how long she had been standing behind the
glass panel. She kept her voice low, but I could still hear
every word.
“Officer, my daughter became emotionally unstable after
giving birth. We’d been trying to get her treatment, but none of us ever imagined she would…”
The officer looked up at her.
“We reviewed the records from her postpartum care. There’s
no record that Evelyn Bennett ever received psychiatric
treatment.”
Mom froze.
“She… She refused to go. We tried to convince her many
times.”
“The record from her postpartum home visit shows that Dr.
Rachel Morgan recommended an urgent mental–health
evaluation nearly three months ago.”
The officer turned a page.
“The clinic scheduled the appointment for the following
week. The cancellation note says you were the one who
called and canceled it.”
The hallway fell silent.
Mom’s lips trembled.
“I was afraid a psychiatric record would follow her and be
used against her as a mother someday. I was only trying to
protect her.”
Her voice suddenly rose.
“I’m her mother. Why would I ever hurt my own daughter?”
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Her mother..
It was for her own good.
For twenty–five years, those words had sawed through me
like dull knives.
Even now, they still hadn’t stopped.