Depression

Days go by and she no longer has the desire to leave her room. A permanent exhaustion seeps into her weary bones, her dreams plagued with visions of Sybil's last moments. The nightly bombardment of seeing her daughter die over and over is too much and she stops sleeping all together. She is aware of Robert and O'Brien on a detached level as they pass in and out of her hazy fog. They are the only two allowed in the room and usually meet once a day, near the door, O'Brien leaving with another untouched tray and Robert entering, inspecting it with a frown. He is somewhere she cannot reach. He hangs on to her as she weeps and strokes her hand as she stares out the window. She is drowning and she wants to beg him to let her go before she pulls them both under, but she knows he won't. He will try to bring her back to shore.

The pain she feels is a full body sickness that leaves her shaking, begging to be released. Her whole body pulses with the pain of loss and she feels as though she is being torn apart. Some days even breathing seems an insurmountable chore and she struggles to take in air. When she does there is a brief respite before the oxygen leaves her body, and it caves in on itself needing more air, each gasp leaving her drained and she wonders when the tiredness will take over and she will cease to be.

Robert barely leaves her side and she wonders, vaguely, if he is afraid she'll harm herself. She thinks about it, sometimes, in the darkness that bleeds into the bedroom at two AM. But she cannot act on her thoughts; this is her punishment for vanity, greed, vice, pride and all of the other sins she is guilty of and she is glad to pay the penance, believing this overwhelming grief is her due. Robert cannot understand this, he coaxes her to do little things, take a bath, have a bite of toast and she relents because it is easier than fighting. There is a small part of her that wants to cling to him and let him take it all away and sometimes she relents to this too and he holds her so tightly that the comfort of his arms borders on pain. He whispers nonsensical things in her ear, his voice breaking over pleas to come back to him, to let him help her and her broken heart breaks more knowing she is the cause of his pain.

Most days she says little, she feels as though she is hardly existing, the only proof that she is still there is Robert's attention. She feels the great void of time pressing in around her. There are no seconds or minutes, day or night. She cannot say how long she has been laying in this misery, but she dimly suspects it is a long time, the weariness of her body like that of someone long in battle. She is sure she can't take much longer of this and by the haggardness of Robert's face, neither can he.

There comes the day that she just cannot get out of bed. Her mind is telling her to rise when O'Brien comes in but her legs do not obey. She is mildly curious, but even pondering the new revolution of her body's functions is too much and she leaves it as something not worth thinking about. Robert is called but she just stares ahead, too tired to acknowledge him and her awareness is only brought back to the room when Dr Clarkeson's face is inches from hers. His voice seems to travel through molasses, the words sticking and slow in her mind. "This will help you sleep". It's a meaningless jumble of sound to her and she swallows the liquid in her mouth and feels her eyelids droop and she cries as sleep puts its arms around her and pulls her down.