are you hurting, are you healing, are you hoping for a life to live? well, so am i.
It came to the point where Ian has gone completely mental.
"She's not here, Ian," Amy said. She gave him a pained look because she was hurting just as much as Ian was, for she also lost Dan in the same car accident he and Natalie got themselves into eight months ago.
"She is, Amy! Can't you see her?! She's right there!" Ian screamed for the umpteenth time in the past four months. Amy flinched and sighed. Ever since they lost their siblings, Ian slowly started having mental issues. She didn't think that issues are contagious, but she had the same mental issues (she hated saying problems because it was too much of a word for her) and instability for months, and had no one but Ian by her side. She had no one left but him to look after her, not since everyone was terrified of her and her state, and she was grateful that he stuck by her side.
Little did she know that he was slowly descending into a distraught state of mind as well, due to Amy's dark thoughts filling his head and translating themselves into delusions so close, yet so far from his reach.
'Don't listen to her, Ian,' Natalie whispered.
"Look at me," Amy said.
'Look at me,' Natalie said at the same time.
Ian shook his head. He didn't know who to listen to - he didn't want to know who to listen to.
Amy said, "The doctor said that this is just a phase because you lost Natalie."
Natalie scoffed and shook her head at Amy.
'I am the one who knows you,' Natalie said. She extended her hand for him to grab.
"I am the one who cares," Amy told him. She held his hand. He shook it off and looked back and forth between Amy and Natalie.
"Tell me what to do," Amy pleaded. "Tell me what to do to help you, Ian."
'Look at me,' Natalie repeated.
"Look at her," Ian told Amy. He pointed a finger to where Natalie was standing and Amy obliged so she won't anger him. She saw the burgundy-colored furniture instead of a beautiful olive-skinned girl and sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time that day.
Amy's emerald eyes met Ian's amber ones when she turned back. He raised an eyebrow at her expectantly and her lips formed a thin line. Ian didn't need to hear anything from her - she didn't see Natalie. Ian fumed.
"She's there, Amy! She's right behind you!" Ian said.
Amy was taken aback by Ian's words. Those were the same ones Dan had told her when she was going through this situation. 'I'm alive,' Dan said. 'I'm right behind you.'
Natalie's anger started to boil. 'Why can't you see?' she fumed.
"I can see you," Ian replied. "I can see you, Natalie, don't get angry."
Amy started feeling hopeless. Was it like this when she was in his situation?
"Ian, she died in a car accident eight months ago. Remember when we both laughed when Dan announced that he and Natalie were going on a date?" Amy said. "They collided with a truck the night after he told us - the night of their first date."
"You always say that," Ian said. He gritted his teeth and looked at Natalie.
'Are you waiting, are you wishing, are you wanting all that she can give, Ian?' Natalie asked. He shook his head in response. "She can't give anything," Ian replied.
It was then Amy started to get angry. She knew that he was referring to her. "If you think that I don't give a damn, you just don't know who I am!" she said. I'm holding on, Ian, Amy thought.
"Let me go," Ian said. Amy's grip on his hand became tighter.
"I won't let go," Amy replied.
"Let me go!" Ian shouted.
"I want you to know," Amy said. "I am the one who cried, Ian. For you, for Dan, for Natalie. We were the ones who watched while they died. They were in the hospital, remember? They were beside each other; they were talking, we were there. I was the one who loved you, and I was the one you loved when we lost them."
Ian stared at her. She was shaking, and she was in the verge of tears. Despite his mental instability, he still remembered that this was how he knew that Amy was in the dark void that was filled with anger and sadness. The same look she had when Natalie and Dan died.
Then he started to remember.
"Intersection 25," Ian said slowly. Amy started to brighten. Natalie looked at her brother sadly.
"9:34 in the evening," Amy said. "Go on, what else can you remember?"
"Ambulance. Police station. White room. Big gash. Natalie's cheek."
"What else?"
"She said, I'll see you soon. Then the defeaning sound of a flat line. Then another flat line."
Dan's flat line, Amy thought sadly.
Amy waited for the next item Ian would say, but he shook his head.
"It hurts to remember," Amy said. Ian only nodded in response as the memories slowly filled his mind. "Can you still see her?" she asked.
Ian looked over Amy's shoulder and caught what looked like Natalie waving a goodbye to him, but it was gone before he could blink. "No," Ian said, but it was clear that he was still distraught.
"That's okay," Amy said. "It'll be okay soon."
Edited - Thank you so much to musiclover3 and Illuminating Flames for pointing out my mistakes in my tenses! I must not have noticed it because I rushed this a bit - which meant that I rushed the publishing of this story as well. I fixed the summary, but the words inside the brackets are stylized in lowercase letters because that is the format I've decided to use in my following summaries and it is the way Next to Normal's stylized as. Lastly, to avoid any questions about the following chapter, I really did intend to put Ian's story first (with hints of Amy's story), just so I could bend the usual way of writing a little bit.
