Authoress here in the physical but not necessarily mental sense.

You all know you watched Pokémon. Maybe you still do. For simplicity's sake, I'm sticking to the original 150 (or was it 151 with Mew...?) Pokémon because they're the only ones I can really remember. I stopped watching, you see, before the newer episodes started airing.

START CHAPTER

They're gone. The only ones I had left.

Giovanni had his toadies come and steal my Pokémon as some sort of revenge for quitting or bitching at him or...something.

But the details don't matter. All that matters is that they're gone, and I can never get them back.

They came to my apartment, knocked on the door like normal people. I thought it was Akio, the man next door, coming to help me with the sink. Instead, it was two Rocket grunts. They pushed me down, pointed a gun to my head, and demanded all of my Pokémon. They didn't try to challenge me to a battle or anything. In the time I was gone, things had really changed.

I could barely see through the tears in my eyes as my Pokémon were snatched right out of my hands. I barely had time to press my lips to each ball, biting back sobs, as I whispered goodbye. It wasn't until then that I realized, as much as I may have told them that they sucked and were hopeless, that my Pokémon were my friends and a huge piece of my life.

To top it off, they laughed. Laughed at me, weeping on the floor, a poor shell of a woman. I can only imagine what I must have been to them. A target, a pathetic quitter who couldn't take the pressure of being a Rocket...

I can't leave that behind. I'm still a Rocket, whether I work for them or not. I poured too much of my life into being a Rocket to just let it go like that.

They left the door open when they took off, still laughing their asses off.

I was in a haze. I still don't know why I did what I did.

I was so miserable. My only thoughts were of ending the pain. I wasn't strong enough to handle the loss of my lifelong companions, my job, and the only man I'd ever loved.

So I grabbed a knife from the countertop, put the blade against my wrist, and tried to make a cut on my left wrist. The pain lanced up my arm, but I hadn't cut deep enough to do anything. I watched the skin spread and blood leak out of the second cut, but I still hadn't done it properly.

So I tried again, and again, and again...until finally, I felt the world slip away, my vision grow dark, the pain ebb into numbness...

Then I saw him. Akio, standing in the doorway. He stared at me for maybe half a second before seizing my phone to call for help. He yanked off his shirt and pressed it, hard, on my bleeding arm with one hand, and took the knife away from me with the other. His eyes never left mine. He had this look on his face, a look I can't forget no matter how hard I try. His piercing, questioning, worried gaze. His eyes were the last things to fade as I fell into blackness.

When I woke up, I saw white. Everything. The sheets on the bed, the walls, the floor, the heavy cotton wrapped around my forearm. There was an IV stuck in my hand, and I silently thanked whoever had the sense to put it in while I was still unconscious.

Then I noticed it. I was in a padded room with no metal, no sharp corners, nothing I could use to hurt myself. I looked down at the IV and found that there was no metal needle, just a hollow plastic tube in my vein. They had removed the needle. To protect me...from myself.

Then the shock hit. I had tried to kill myself. I had almost succeeded. If not for Akio, a man I barely knew, I would have been dead right now.

The tears began to fall, slowly at first, then faster and faster until I had to press my face into the sheets of the bed. I cried for a long time before I realized I wasn't alone in the room.

Another girl was there – much younger than me, maybe fifteen at the most – watching me with a calculating expression.

"What did you use?" Her voice was hoarse and raspy, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

I stared at her for a moment. "A...a knife."

"Wow. That's brave. I swallowed a bottle of aspirin," she added calmly. "I tried slitting my wrists too the first time, but I couldn't cut deep enough. I heard the doctors talking about you, though. Down to the bone."

"My God..." I croaked. I hadn't realized I had cut down so far.

The girl smiled. "It's okay. You'll have a scar, but you'll be fine."

She must have mistaken my look of nausea at what I had done for fear of disfigurement, because she continued, "It won't be that bad of a scar. See, look." She pushed up the sleeve of her flannel pajamas and turned her arm to me. Up and down the flesh of her inner arm was a spider web of scars and cuts, some fresh and others old and shiny.

She pointed to the largest of the marks and said softly, "This is the one that landed me in here before."

In that moment, I experienced the biggest mood swing of my life. I didn't want to die – I wanted to live! I wanted to live so badly I ached. If I died, I'd never see my family, my friends, or James ever again.

What I had almost done made bile rise in my throat. Seizing a bucket beside my bed, I heaved into it till my stomach was empty and my skin was pale and clammy.

The girl watched me appraisingly. "You didn't plan to do something like this, did you?" she asked incredulously once I had shakily wiped my mouth and set the bucket down. She stood up and went to get me a glass of water to rinse out my mouth with, then went and dumped out the bucket into the toilet. I heard the flush as she exited the bathroom, looking oddly calm for someone who'd just dumped another girl's vomit into the toilet. She went to my bed, and sat down on the edge of it.

"I got robbed," I managed to say, feeling that I somehow owed her an explanation. I noticed that my own voice was still croaky and weak. I hoped it would pass soon.

"So you tried to kill yourself?"

I shook my head slowly. "You don't understand. They took...they took my Pokémon. The ones I grew up with. They're gone." I found that I couldn't cry anymore. That hurt more than anything.

"Hmm." She mulled over that statement for a while before she changed the subject. I didn't blame her. "That guy who brought you here was worried. Said he had no idea why you did it and that he'd only known you for a few weeks, but still wanted them to tell him once you woke up." She paused, then finished with the answer to the question I had been about to ask. "You were out for two days. They had to give you a blood transfusion since you lost a lot in the ambulance. The guy told them to do whatever it took to make sure you'd be okay, and said he'd cover the bill."

My sense of pride crumbled. A guy I barely knew was footing the bill since he knew how broke I was. I had fallen so far from the cruel and beautiful thief I once was to a vulnerable and pathetic bum passing her debt onto others.

How childish I must have seemed to that girl. An adult, sobbing and choking into her bed sheets in the Self-Injury Recovery Wing in the hospital. She thought her life sucked, and I knew she planned to kill herself as soon as she got out.

I couldn't believe how much we both still had to learn about life.

"Why did you do it?"

"My parents split and they're fighting over me. I just couldn't take the pressure of having to choose. I love them both, and I don't want to hurt either of them."

I realized then how much older than her I really was. "You didn't want to hurt them, so you tried to kill yourself? That makes no sense. You'd only hurt them more."

Her eyes widened as though I had slapped her, and she inhaled sharply. Her skin paled as her hands tightened on the edge of the blanket.

She didn't say anything for the rest of the day. She just walked slowly to her bed and climbed into it with her back to me.

The nurse came a little while later to check on us. She seemed happy to see me awake, but a little concerned when Mayu (that was the girl's name, I guess) didn't respond. I quietly told the nurse that she was thinking about what she had done and hadn't said anything to me since we'd talked, and the nurse pursed her lips and nodded.

She started to leave, but I called after her to not let Akio come see me. I told her not to tell him it was my request, just that it was policy for all suicide attempts or something. She considered what I said for a couple seconds, then nodded.

"Forgive me for prying, but is he your boyfriend?"

"No. He's my neighbor. He found me, and I just...don't want to feel obligated to explain what I did." It was hard to put my reasoning into words, but I guess I did well enough for the nurse's standards. Akio didn't come to see me, but I heard from other patients in the wing that he had tried.

The worst part, though, was calling Aneko and explaining why I wouldn't be able to come into work for the next couple days. Sympathy was dripping from every syllable when she told me to take as much time as I needed, and not to worry, my job would be waiting for me when I felt ready to come back. She apologized ahead of time in case it would offend me, but told me that I should probably wear long sleeves to cover the scars so that the customers wouldn't feel awkward around me.

I really wanted to just scream into the phone at her. The customers feel awkward? What about me? I was the one they would be judging, I was the one who would get the stares, the wondering glances, the unspoken questions shot at me through their eyes.

What happened to her? Why'd she do it? Is she still suicidal?

As much as I hated her for saying it, I would have worn long sleeves anyway. I don't think it'll ever come to the day when I'll be able to wear t-shirts again. If it does, that won't be anytime soon. Right now, I'm still too embarrassed to let anyone see. Thankfully all the scars will be close enough together that if I wanted to, I could probably wear a sweatband and it would cover them.

Then nurses took away my pen since the tip was fine-point and metal. I guess they thought that either Mayu or I would stab ourselves with it. They wanted to take this notebook too since it's spiral bound and there's a coil of metal holding it together, but I refused to let go of it.

Finally, the nurse who was in before told them that she had seen me writing in it, tears dripping on the pages, and that it was a diary. She lied to them and said that we had approved it as a method of treatment, and made them give me my pen back.

She told me that if I did anything stupid with either of them then she'd have me buried naked and face down in the coffin, and let the other patients write foul things on my ass. So I'm not going to do anything stupid. I don't honestly think she'd really follow through with her threat, but I appreciate her trust too much to let her down.

I never thought I'd wind up like this. Lying in a hospital bed spontaneously etching my problems into a notebook, my left arm heavy with bandages.

They're letting me out in a few days, right after they psychoanalyze me to figure out why I did it and if I'm prone to try it again.

I'll be glad once they let me out of here so that I can get on with my life to distract me from all the crap piling up in my head.

The pain meds made me tired. I'm going to bed now. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, this will all be over with.

Jessie

END CHAPTER

I realize that this is two chapters in one day, but I was really motivated!

Review and make me feel accomplished!