Page 82 of Overdose
Her eyes shine, not with tears, but something deeper.
“You’re the one who was meant to survive. The one with fight still burning in her. You’ve got that spark, that fire I never had. And right now, you need to use it. You need to fight like hell.”
The world shifts.
The water rises.
I try to hold on. To stay in the light, in the quiet. In this place where my sister is still real. Still breathing.
“Fight? No Brynn, I don’t want to. I don’t want a world where you’re not there. I can’t take it.”
She’s fading. The moon fractures above us like shattered glass. The sea’s rushing in, swallowing my feet, my breath, my reason. Her hand starts to slip from mine.
Everything blurs. The stars fracture. The moon collapses inward. My lungs tighten, clawing for air that won’t come. The cold punches through my ribs like knives, slicing deep, dragging everything warm and alive out of me.
And I fall.
Backwards, off the shore of whatever dream this is. Out of the memory. Out of her reach.
I fall into darkness. Into pain. Into the weight of my body again—limbs heavy, throat burning, heart barely thudding in my chest.
I fall back into reality. Into the aftermath. Into the overdose.
Seventeen
Blair
The first thingI hear is the beeping.
God. That beeping. Slow, steady, obnoxiously self-important—like it’s proud of keeping me alive. Like it thinks it’s doing me a favor.
Then comes the smell. Bleach. Latex. That sterile, too-clean scent that tells you you’re either in a hospital or a serial killer’s wet dream. I crack my eyes open and immediately regret it. The ceiling is a flat, aggressive white—too bright, too fake, like someone painted over hell and called it healing.
My vision blurs around the edges, like someone smeared Vaseline over my corneas. I try to sit up.
Yeah. Cute fucking idea, Blair.
My ribs and spine protests. My throat feels like I gargled razor blades and chased them with battery acid. And my mouth? Tastes like blood and regret. Which feels... on brand.
I’m in a hospital.
That realization hits slow, then all at once. I’m alive. Not exactly thriving, but here. IV in my arm, bandages on my leg, monitor blinking beside me like it’s checking to see if I’ll try to die again just for the drama.
Cool.
“Good morning,” chirps a nurse I didn’t hear enter. Blonde, middle-aged, with a face like she’s seen too many overdoses and stopped being surprised by the wreckage. “Glad you’re finally awake. We almost lost you after someone dropped you off, a few times.”
“Someone?” My voice comes out cracked and grainy. Like gravel dragged across asphalt.
She nods, flipping through my chart like I’m just another near-corpse in a bed. “Didn’t leave a name. No ID. Just carried you in, said you needed help, and disappeared.”
And that’s all it takes.
The memories don’t trickle in—they fucking crash.
Hands on me. Rough. Grimy. The van. The zip ties digging into my wrists. The bag over my head. The voice whispering,“She’s prettier than her sister.”
I see the basement—cold, reeking of bleach and rot. I remember the fists. The bruises. Someone holding my face. Forcing my mouth open. Shoving the pills down my throat while I choked and clawed and screamed.
