Jamais Quitter [4] (ending modified)

[A/N: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing this for me! Even if you're just reading this sans review, I still love you, and I would love to hear your thoughts. If anyone has something they would like reviewed for all the love they're giving me, feel free to PM me. Happy reading!]

The polite thing, Aline knew, would have been to clean the blood out of the bathroom. Instead, she decided that her first act as an outpatient from the psych ward would be to ignore the blood as long as possible.

After two days of silence and blood in the tub, Savannah was fed up. When she came back from classes Wednesday night, she glared at Aline in a way that said we're talking now whether you like it or not.

Aline was curled up on her bed with Le Compte de Monte Cristo in her lap. She figured since she had a week off and no friends, the next best thing would be to devote her hours to finishing Dumas' masterpiece. Dumas was better than friends, anyway.

Pretending she was still reading, Aline watched as Savannah sat, folded her hands in her lap, and proceeded to look uncomfortable. Eventually, she bit her lip, huffed, and said, “Can you put your book down?”

Aline laid it on the bed, open to where she had been reading. “This is about the blood, isn't it?” she asked.

Savannah looked sick for a moment, put her hand over her mouth, then nodded.

“I'll clean it tomorrow.”

“Can you clean it today?” Savannah whispered.

Aline didn't reply.

The blood made her feel like she had lost a part of herself. Aline wondered if she could pull it back into her body and make it become her again. The idea of washing it down the drain seemed wrong. If Savannah did it for her, that was one thing. Aline couldn't imagine letting a part of herself swirl down the train, mixed in with filthy tub water.

“Can you clean it today?” Savannah repeated. She had been staring at Aline but now she looked at the floor. “I need to shower and I just...I can't shower with that in there.”

Aline lied back down and rolled away from her.

“I can do it today,” she whispered to the wall, knowing Savannah hadn't heard her. She said it for herself, to convince herself she could do it, in the same ridiculous way fat girls convince themselves they're skinny.

“I'll do it now,” Aline said louder.

“Thank you,” Savannah replied. “All the supplies are in there. I'm going to study for an exam in the library.”

There was a strange pause following her words, as if she wanted to add, “It better be clean when I get back,” but instead of a voice, Aline heard the door open then shut loudly.

In the corner of the room, the tiny fan hummed. Fans were available for students to rent and take back to their rooms, if they happened to be the unlucky ones who lived in dorms without air conditioners. Aline didn't mind the fan. It wasn't like the light in the hospital, droning and buzzing at all hours. The fan could be turned off, and more importantly, the fan served a purpose, and humming was part of that purpose. Humming was not required for the fan to push air across the room, but it wouldn't be worthwhile having a fan that didn't hum, she thought. After three years in the same dorm, Aline had grown used to the humming and it was a comfort.

When she finally got up, Aline unplugged the fan and brought it into the bathroom. Setting it on the floor and plugging it into the wall, she was careful to put it in a place where water wouldn't get at it.

She flipped it on and listened to it for a minute. The air pushed her hair out of her face and made her eyes feel dry, like she was driving in a fast convertible down a country road.

Under the sink, there was a bottle of bleach, some Drano, a big sponge, a can of Comet, Windex, and air freshener.

Aline thought about how worse this could have been as she pulled the assorted chemicals out of the cabinet. They could be sharing a bathroom with two other girls. Then she'd have to put up with two bitches complaining that she bled on their towels or something. At least Savannah was polite, even if she was too social for Aline.

Rather than turn around and look at the tub, Aline thought about which product to use first. She sat on the cold tile floor and stared up at the sink. Savannah had said there was blood on the sink. She didn't remember bleeding on the sink. Or on the floor, for that matter.

Had she cut herself while standing in the tub, or over the sink?

No.

Aline didn't want to think about that. Her scabs itched as she grabbed the sponge and bottle of bleach. She could just pretend it was someone else's blood. Some idiot had decide it was a good idea to cut themselves in her bathroom.

I was that idiot.

She turned around to look at the tub. She had expected the scene of a mass murder. Until now, she had gone into the bathroom with closed eyes or the lights off so she wouldn't have to see it.

It wasn't a murder scene, but she still threw up a little in her mouth. Aline dropped the bottle of bleach and turned away from the tub. The burn of stomach juices and digested food was disgusting. She spit in the sink and leaned her head over, turning on the faucet to wash her mouth out.

She would forget the sight of the blood before she forgot the taste of puke. Aline didn't know whether this was comforting or not.

Turning around again, taking a deep breathe, Aline told herself she would fight this. It could have been a metaphor for fighting her “depression” had Aline believed she was truly depressed. Seeing as she didn't, she decided to interpret it as nothing more than a chore.

The blood started in small drops on the floor, then got thicker in the tub. It slid down the sides, pooling in lines until it went to the drain. The porcelain was stained red. Aline wondered if it would always be like that. Students years from now would be telling each other about the girl who failed to kill herself in their tub. She'd be like the ghost in Grimm hall. Always talked about, never really understood.

What bothered Aline most was the way the blood had collected in places and hadn't moved at all. It was just a thick layer of blood. Leaning further over the tub, sponge in hand, ready to poor the bleach on it, Aline could smell it. The blood was like a rusty bike or an undercooked steak.

The puke started rising up again, but Aline forced herself to hold it down. She couldn't imagine throwing up here, in the tub. Then she'd have to clean up blood and puke, which was easily worse than what she currently had to clean up.

Slowly she twisted the lid off the bottle of bleach, letting the notches in the lid rub roughly against her hand. Setting the bottle down on the tile, she leaned back over the tub (trying desperately to breath only through her mouth) and plugged up the tub drain.

She didn't know if this was the best way to clean blood. Aline didn't know anyway to clean blood. It wasn't one of those things she had ever planned in her life. She hadn't even thought about it before hand. Perhaps if she had thought about survival and clean up, Aline would have cut deeper.

Picking up the bottle of bleach again, Aline got down on her knees to sit next to the tub. She poured the bleach into it until almost all the blood was submerged. Not wanting to waste too much of it, she figured she'd scrub the higher stains with the sponge.

Before she had even put the lid back on the bottle, the blood had started to come off and swirl with the foggy liquid. It looked like when red food coloring gets dropped in water, only backwards, because the blood was rising.

After a few minutes, the bleach had turned from almost clear to foggy pink. Aline wondered how long it would take until it turned to a thick red like a pool of blood, or if it never would. Maybe it would stay pink.

How long until she could scrub the blood away?

Anticipation began to drip into her stomach like poison. She wanted the blood gone now, but that required she do something about it. Some of it started to come up in pieces and float on top of the bleach, like bloody islands in a sea of foggy waters.

Aline poised her hand over the surface of the water. It would only have to dip her hand in and pull the plug. For just a second would her hand have to be in that disgusting, bloody mixture of herself.

When her fingertips finally touched the surface, she was surprised by the way the liquid felt so neutral. The pink swirls moved with the motion of her hand, turning into tiny whirlpools.

Her hand was in to the wrist. The bleach stung only a little, but nothing compared to the thought in her mind: her hand was in a pool of her own blood. She yanked on the drain, then took her hand out. Without a towel in immediate reach, Aline laid her hand next to her like it was dead.

Gurgling and growling, the drain sucked the mixture into its belly. Aline kept her eyes on the dead limb next to her.

Aline turned her head to the toilet and threw up. It happened so fast, she hadn't thought about the taste or that she might get puke in hair. After a few seconds, her body stopped heaving because there was nothing left to come up.

When Aline stopped panting, she heard the drain in its final moments of consumption – burping, licking its lips in silence.

The blood, the bleach, all of it was gone now.

Grabbing a towel off the rack, Aline first wiped her mouth then dried her hand off. She noticed there was puke on the side of the toilet, and she cleaned that off too.

Aline pushed the towel away from her; it smelled like a dead animal. She lied down on the cold tile and pressed her cheek to it. Aline wanted to puke again, but didn't want to move. She knew she had to look at the tub eventually, do something. Had she the choice, she would have never gotten up.

After dry heaving a few times more, convulsing and salivating, her body finally lay still.

A moan fell out of her mouth as she pushed herself up. With reluctance, she looked into the tub.

All the blood had washed away. Only in a few spots would she have to scrub, and perhaps that would be easier than she thought. It didn't look as sick any more. It looked more tame; an accident, not a homicide.

She lied back down with the intention of finishing later. Her cheek pressed against the tile like a child putting its face to a toy store window. She wanted to fall through the tile, go somewhere beyond this bathroom with puke smell and blood stain.

Her blood was gone, down the drain, through pipes, perhaps into a lake somewhere south, or a cleaning plant up north. In less than an hour, the whole tub would be clean. There would be no sign of what she had done. No blood drops, no stains to show where she had lied. Who would remember if there was no proof it happened?

Aline opened her mouth, at first with the intention of breathing, but a small cry came out. Like a child lost in a crowd and forever separated from her mother, she wailed.

Soon, the tears followed, burning out of her eyes and trailing down her cheeks. Aline made no effort to stop herself, to make herself more presentable to the people who weren't there.

Bringing her hands to her face, she covered herself and half screamed, half moaned into her hands. She screamed until her throat stung. With her hands against her face, she felt the bandage rub against her chin. There was the memory, the sign of herself. Under the bandages, she had stitches and cuts. They dug as deep as possible, and once they were gone, there would be scars.

Aline started rubbing the bandages against her face, almost in an effort to wipe away her tears, but mostly because she wanted to feel her cuts. She wanted them to burn and itch and scream. She wanted to know they were still in her skin, still a part of herself.

At least, she thought, she would always have these cuts. They would always be in her skin. There was no scrubbing away of this memory.