My other half part 3

I am sitting on a couch beside mom and dad in the school psychologist’s room. I was injected a week ago. I was medicated. After I woke up I found out that I don’t have any sister, I never had any twin sister. Ian was my only sibling. ‘Nora’ was my imagination. As Ian said, ‘…She is just a projection of your mind.'

He was right all along, and I thought he was the one who was crazy. Ian is fine now, but he can’t walk because ‘Nora’ stabbed him in his thigh. I feel terrible…

I lift my eyes, ‘Nora’ is sitting on top of a small table behind Mr. Parker. She is enjoying this. I sigh, nobody notices that. I go back to listening what mom was saying,

“…When Nina was young, very young, she used to talk about this girl called Nora. She used to say that the girl was her twin sister. We never thought it as a problem. We thought that it was just her imaginary friend, like some of those other kids who have imaginary friends. We thought it would go away once she got older. And she did stop talking about her when she got a little older. We thought that ‘Nora’… Was gone. We never realized that… She never stopped imagining… That girl.”

Dad starts talking now, “Now it all makes sense, the twin bed, school books, the clothes, the back packs… Even why she bought two toothbrushes!”

Mom: “This is all my fault!”

Dad: “Oh no honey! No, it’s not.”

Mr. Parker takes off his glasses, “Seems from what I have heard from all of you, Nina’s problem started because she felt like she wasn’t cared for, enough, unlike her older brother. She also had no friends when she was young. She wanted someone to be close to her. She tried common ways to get your attentions first, but after it didn’t work, she started imagining a sister. A sister who cared about her, was her friend, who was always there for her. She started from when she was very young so she doesn’t have any memory without Nora.”

Mom: “She did start talking about Nora short after when she learned to say… A full sentence without any mistakes.”

Mr. Parker: “As for all the things she has done, pushing Ms. Britney Delfino off the stairs, Stabbing her brother Ian, trying to kill Britney again, were done by Nora in her mind. She never understood that it was actually her.”

Guilt takes over me when I hear those words…

Mr. Parker continues, “She wanted to hurt all those people, sub-consciously, but she never wanted to actually do it by herself. So, in her mind, Nora did it. But when in reality, She was the one hurting all those people.”

Dad: “What do we do now?”

Mr. Parker: “I suggest she gets treatment as soon as possible.”

My parents as Mr. Parker discuss about my treatment for the rest of the time. Then we leave his office and I get admitted to a mental hospital shortly after three days.

I am sitting in the corner of my bed, close to the wall. It is not my own room, a room of the mental hospital. My knees are folded and I have my arms around them. I am talking to ‘Nora’. She is walking around the room. She is on the other side of the room right now.

Nora: “This place isn’t so bad, is it?”

Me: “What do you care? You got me into this.”

“No sissy, It was you, it was you all along.”

“It was…” I don’t know what to say so I stop.

She smiles seeing that.

I talk again, “I don’t even know why I am even bothering to talk to you!”

She sits at the edge of the bed, “Yet you just did, out loud!... You gonna eat or not?”

I look at the food tray. Omelet, 2 apples and a steak, there’s fork and a knife too, also some orange juice. And at a side of the tray there’s a small vase with a red and a yellow flower.

I answer her, “I won’t.”

“Please take a bite, or else I’m gonna die!”

I look at her, “Then just die already. I don’t want to see you alive anymore.”

She rolls her eyeballs, “You can be so dramatic and so stupid at the same time. By my death I meant yours. If you die, I die. And you’re gonna die if you don’t eat soon enough.”

She is right! If I die, she dies too. I look at the knife on the tray. It’s sharp. If I try to stab her, what’s gonna happen? Will I hurt myself sub-consciously? Or will I hurt Nina in my mind and she will die?

“I know what you’re thinking.” She says, “I know what’s on your mind, you know.”

“Whatever, you still won’t be able to stop me.”

“Maybe, but you don’t actually want me to go away. Remember what I said that night? The night I was about to kill Britney? I was about go away forever, but you stopped me! You stopped me from leaving you alone. And that’s because you want me stay.”

“That was way back then! I was hallucinating! I can’t believe I actually thought that I had a sister! But now I know that this isn’t real and I don’t want you to stay, please just go away!”

“I know what you want more than you do, and I know that it’s not the truth.”

I stay shut. I’m gonna try and ignore her. I look away from her. My eyes go from her face to the vase on the tray. The flowers are beautiful. I have seen them before but I don’t know their name. They look just the same, except that one of them is yellow and the other one is red.

“Kinda like us, huh?” Nora speaks, I look at her again. She continues, “You know, from the outside, their just like us. Their only difference is the colors of the petals. And look at us, the only difference that you can see are the colors of our hairs!”

I wanted to ignore her but I speak anyway, “It’s only the way we look, we’re not the same.”

She rolls her eyeballs, “You’ll never accept it, will you? Anyways, the red one is you since you’re hair is red. And I’ll be the yellow one.”

This time, I roll my eyeballs. She is just being childish. But what can I say, it’s actually me. But anything that she is doing is just annoying for me now. I ignore her and I look at the flowers again, I take a close look at the yellow flower this time. It kind of looks like the flowers from the dream I had when I was sleeping because of the medication a couple of days ago…

All of a sudden someone opens the door. It’s one of the nurses. She smiles at me warmly, “Someone’s here to see you!” She makes way for someone to enter, the person takes a peek inside the room first. I become shocked seeing who it is, “Ethan? What are you doing here?!”

He enters the room, “Nothing, just here to see you.” He looks back at the nurse, “You can go now Lila.”

The nurse smiles at us again and then she closes the door and goes away. I am in a shock, “Ethan, I can’t even believe that you’re here!! Are you even allowed to see me right now? And I’m not asking about your parents, I’m talking about the hospital authorities.”

He pulls a chair close to my bed and sits down, “I don’t know. Lila was a friend of my sister, I knew her. So I asked her before talking to anybody else and she brought me straight here to you.”

“I still can’t believe that you’re here. Actually, I can’t believe anything anymore, I don’t know what to believe! I just can’t tell reality apart from fantasy.”

Ethan leans over and takes my hand, “Trust me, I am real. And I am here to see you.”

He gets up from the chair and gets on top of the bed, “If you thought that I was gonna leave you, you’re wrong. I don’t care about all this that has happened. All I care is that I want to be with you, I love you. I really really do! And there’s nothing that can change that. I am always gonna love you just the same, no matter what happens.”

I that moment, everything seemed perfect again. I started to have that peaceful feeling that I always have when I am with him. His smile corrected all the wrongs in the world. All my worries disappeared, all my sadness were gone. For that moment, I believed that everything was going to be okay again. I found my ray of hope in his eyes. He reassured me of happiness, of delight and of contentment. He leans over and kisses me, I kiss him back.

Everything was going just perfectly. But at a moment I open my eyes and see Nora’s face again, Nora was about to stab Ethan with the knife that was on the food tray. I quickly stop kissing Ethan and I try to stop her. But I was too late, Nora has already stabbed him in the back. I scream, “NO! ETHAN!!”

He falls back from the bed and he hits the floor, the knife sinks in even deeper into his back.

I quickly go down to him, “ETHAN!?”

He looks at me for one last time and says my name, “Nina?”

I shout as loudly as I can, “CAN SOMEBODY HELP PLEASE!! PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HEAR ME!!? HELP, WE NEED HELP!!”

I hear him whisper for the last time, “I don’t blame you.”

Then he becomes perfectly still.

Tears fall down from my eyes, “No! NO!!” I look at Nora, “What have you done?”

Nora was standing, not far away, “It wasn’t me Nina. It was you!”

I bury my face into Ethan’s chest, I start to mumble, “Please wake up Ethan. Please, please wake up! Please tell me that this is just dream!!” I take him on my lap.

Nora, “He’s not going to WAKE UP Nora. It’s alright, its fine. Get used to it…”

She says some more stuffs but I can’t hear her. I am looking for the knife that was used to kill Ethan, it’s still stuck in his back. I finally touch the knife and I slowly start to pull it out. I hear a little noise of pain coming out of Ethan’s mouth while I do. It is very low, the only reason I hear it, is because I am close to his mouth. But I can hear it, I really can!! I find some hope again, he is still alive! But I contain myself. For some reason, Nora doesn’t know what I am thinking anymore.

She is still talking, “… I am you’re other half, Nora. You can’t ever get rid of me…”

She isn’t trying to stop me! I look at Ethan’s face for one last time, I won’t be able to see it ever again. I hope he will stay alive… I kiss him for one last time. I hear Nora saying, “You’re kissing a dead guy? Eww, gross. I know that you’re crazy, but I never knew that you were that crazy!”

I smile hearing what she just said. She has no idea what I am thinking, or she does and she is just pretending. I put Ethan back on the floor from my lap, “Do you notice anything different Nora?”

“Different? No.”

I look at her, “Nothing?”

She pretends to think for a second, “Mmm… You’re not crying anymore?”

I smile, “Yes, but that’s not it.”

She becomes confused, and then she finally realizes what’s wrong. She becomes frightened, “Nina, what are thinking?”

My smile widens. She gets even more scared, “Nina? Tell me what you’re thinking?!”

I keep smiling, “What? You can’t tell!?”

I look at Ethan again and I brush my hand in his hairs, “Goodbye.” I lean close to his ear, “I am sorry for everything, please forgive me if you can.”

I sit up straight. Then out of the blue, I stab myself in the chest, right where my heart is. It happens so fast even I can’t tell when the knife cuts into me. Nora screams, “NO!”

I slowly fall on the floor beside Ethan. It seems like time has slowed down to me right now. Ethan is lying right in front of me. His face is right in front of my eyes. I feel peaceful even though the pain is un-takeable. Nora is still screaming and panicking. I hear the door opening, what took them so long? I close my eyes for the last time, and the last thing I see is… Ethan.

“Goodbye kids! Have fun!” I wave at them. They smile and wave at me too, “Bye mommy!” Ethan throws me a flying kiss, I pretend to catch it. Then they all turn around and keep going. Tiana was holding Ethan’s hand, A.J starts to fight with her because he wants to hold his dad’s hand. Ethan holds his hand with his other hand. I keep watching them. I’ll go when I can’t see them anymore.

It has been 17 years since that incident at the hospital. Ethan was saved, and I was too. For my luck the knife missed my heart by just 3 centimeters. I didn’t die, but that doesn’t mean that Nora didn’t either. She died. At least I haven’t seen her ever since, and I’ll hope that I never will ever again. I am now happily married with Ethan with two kids. A.J is 6 and Tiana is 4. They are growing up wonderfully and I can’t think of a happier life. Ethan forgave me for everything that happened. He really did never blame me. I was released from the mental hospital a year later. And everything turned back to normal. But only now, I didn’t have an imaginary psycho killer sister!

They get mixed in the crowd. I turn around and start unlocking the cars door. I have groceries in one hand. I have no problem unlocking the door. But just right before I open it, I look up. My eyes go all the way across the street… Can it be? I see a woman just like me on the other side of the road. She looks completely like me but her hair brown. She is looking at me too. In her hand she has a flower, a yellow flower. She was smelling it. When she sees me looking at her, she stops smelling it and lifts her head a little higher. She looks at me straight in the eye. My jaw drops a little and the groceries fall from my hand, on the ground. Everything inside falls out of the back. But I don’t notice it, I just keep looking at her.

I keep looking at my other half. She was right, she is never gonna leave me alone… Never!

FIN!!