The Day She Died
It was a normal Thursday, except that it was not normal for her. She looked at the two bottles in her hand. ‘Ambien 10mg’, the name read. Getting a hold of these drugs had been tough, she had been trying for months. This was a prescribed drug. It slowed the heart rate and ceased the breath, something similar to sleep apnea. Finally she managed to get it through a friend who worked for a pharma company. A couple of bottles missing can easily go unnoticed.
She decided to walk home that day. The sun shone brightly in the blue sky. The snow had melted and people had come out of their houses to make the most of the day. Kids were running and playing around in the park as she walked past it. This reminded her of the early childhood years when she used to go to the park with her dad. The voice of her laughter back from her childhood echoed in her mind. She brisked her pace. There was a lot to be done and there was very little time. She gave one last glance to the park, to the people and decided this was the one; the memory that she needed of her city. The city where she was born, the city she grew up in and spent most of her youth. The city she would die.
Once home, she put the bottles carefully on the study table, took a sip of water and lay down on the bed. This had always been a pre decided plan. She did not decide to die in a frenzy. It was not a stemming impulsive reaction from a fight she had but because of the fight that she had been having with herself, every single day for months. She was a patient of clinical depression but the doctors could never understand what was the cause of her condition. Getting guys had never been a problem for her; she was beautiful in her own way and she had a satisfactory job. What they didn’t understand was that she was just unhappy. She wanted to be around someone who could give her the care and love she needed and that was what she never got. She was lonely and unhappy. And one can blame the monotonous humdrum of her life, she had lost the reason and the will to live.
The clock ticked 4 and she got up to execute her plan. She had thought about this day a million times in her head. She had googled ‘Least painful ways to die’ and ‘Most painless deaths’ numerous times. Every time the suicide helpline number flashed on the screen, she chose to ignore it. Women, when they die tend to choose more romantic methods like slashing wrists or gulping drugs which is exactly what she did except that her reasons differed from the others’. She did not want to jump of a building because that would deform her body and it would have been a horrific sight. Neither did she want to slash her wrists because she could not stand the sight of blood. Nor did she want to shoot herself because that would have been very painful. Rather, she chose to overdose on sleeping drugs. She also got the antidote along, in case she wanted to turn back.
She prepared her favourite meal, spaghetti with meat balls. She hated a miserly dinner. Next she took out two glasses and poured white wine in one of them. She had read somewhere that the combination of alcohol with drugs amplified the reaction. Moving on, she picked the pills. The recommended doze is one tablet a day with little toxicity. She bought two bottles of 30 tablets each just to be safe. She did not want to risk dying. Carefully she took the tablets and crushed them in a stone mortar she had brought from the flee market and proceeded to add the powdered tablets in the wine. Then she crushed activated charcoal, mixed it with water and poured in the other glass- that was the remedy. She went ahead and laid it all on the table along with two jugs of water and the antidote for the pills. She just wanted to be very sure of her actions.
She ate her meal and had the wine in sips. She didn’t want to rush it or regret her decisions. She knew if she wanted to go back, all she needed was one phone call to her downstairs neighbor. After she had finished the food and the wine, she went to bed. The drugs had already started to take a toll on her. She felt nauseous but did not want to throw up; ‘If I vomit, I won’t die’- she thought. She decided not to think of the stabbing pains in her stomach and tried hard to concentrate on the rapidly falling night, on her inconsequential, meaningless life. The noise in her ears was becoming more and more strident and for the first time since she had taken the pills she started hallucinating.
Someone was having a condescending power over her. She was being confronted by the entity. The figure was shapeless, dripping, melting, sickening and even smelled bad. There were no colors or visions, just a hazy figure. She was suddenly pulled back to reality. She saw the clock on the wall and the posters of Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix, the celebrities she has worshipped. She realized in that very minute how unlikely it was for her to die in the same manner as her idols.
Seconds later, panic gripped her body again. She was right there; exactly where she wanted to be. She had fantasized about this place so often. It was all void and black. Nothing was linear, she could only hear her ideas at impossible intervals. Then she saw a tiny point of light amidst the vastness spread around her. She remembered immediately that she had poisoned herself, this was death. But not even for a moment did she regret her decision.
The second vision was of a black sheen descending over her body like a shroud. There was a very direct awareness of an overwhelmingly powerful presence. It was neither frightening, nor encouraging. It was just there, hanging around. A stray thought came into her mind. But it did not last long because…
Soon after, she lost consciousness!