Marlena's Angel

The tears welled in Marlena's eyes. The gashes her hand was making into her thigh were painful, but not nearly as frightening as the wild beast that had been unleashed inside of her head. The rivers of red ran onto the cool white tile floor, her fingers splattered in the fresh bright liquid. She couldn't stop. She just wanted everything to end.

Marlena knew she suffered from Bipolar disorder. "Rapid cycling bipolar 1 disorder" the doctors had called it when she was a teenager. They had shoved countless pills down her throat that had robbed her of every natural emotion and threw her back out into her melodramatic world. It had taken her years to detach herself from modern medicine, studying ancient cures and herbal supplements. She learned that she had to know her disease in order to know herself and through this knowledge she gained control... at least for a while.

Everything was going so well. A fiance, a house, and her beautiful twin boys kept her happily busy. The small signs of a pressing roller coaster hidden behind her eyes would sometimes sneak out but Marlena knew her triggers and her behaviors well enough to cloud the truth from even those closest to her. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, everyone had forgotten the crazy teenager she once was and now had no idea of the battle that silently raged in her head.

They say that relapses almost always happen in private but as Marlena split her skin like liquid crimson calla-lilies, half the neighborhood bustled in and out of her home waiting for emergency vehicles and answers. Her fiance panicked as he rammed his small frame against the locked bathroom door trying his best to knock it down. Marlena only heard the sound of her own sobs. As the life poured from her veins, her entire world faded and turned to white. It was now up to me to keep her alive.

Invisible, I stood at her bedside amidst fast walking nurses and even faster talking doctors.

"She's lost a lot of blood..." they'd repeat to her family members as they refused to allow any blood transfusions. The doctor's thought of it as a form of murder but Marlena's family remained stead-fast in their beliefs. They recited their bible versus as their faith strengthened. They prayed with bowed heads and intertwined fingers not knowing that I was already there.

Quietly, I took Marlena's hand and a new layer of skin formed pinching her self-inflicted wounds closed. I kissed her cheek and the rose tint reappeared on her skin where my lips had been. I exhaled and my breath entered her nostrils and arteries, regenerating blood cells as her eyes flutter back into consciousness.

"Wake up child. Your time here is not done..."








































466 words