�You wake to hear overlapping voices as luminescent lights bear down on you as though you're somehow being examined. Beside you, you hear a cacophony of unpleasant noises rattle against metal, but you ignore it when your efforts of staying alert exhaust your mind.

From your drugged state, you can only make out a couple of words that a nurse mutters to another standing beside her as they both huddle together, flipping through a clipboard of information. It's the usual thoughts of those who review your medical history, yet even you don't know why you decided to take your own life for the third time — maybe you wanted the attention or something along those lines.

You moan softly, stirring just a bit, but when you try to move, you find that your limbs are too weak. The smell of disinfectant tickles your nose, and when you turn your head to the side, the scratchy pillow case greets you with a harsh kiss on the cheek.

The nurses tending you immediately cease their gossip at your movement, holding their breath for seconds before going back to their work. You hear one of them scribble something down on paper before tearing the piece away and handing it to the other. Pushing back your wish to drift off to some la-la land due to the drugs attached to your right wrist, you force your eyelids open, barely managing to see anything in your wake.

A scene of white catches you first, but as you shift your eyes slowly to a door to your left, you see a retreating nurse starting down the hallway — glossy black hair tied back into a high ponytail that swings back and forth like the pendulum of an antique grandfather clock. When you focus your attention on the nurse who is left in your room, she gives you a saccharine smile. "How are you doing?"

Closing your eyes, you allow the vision of her kind facade to disappear. "Where's my family?" The words crack in your unused throat.

"They're waiting for you outside, dear," she says.

You wait for a moment before speaking. "Could you... could leave me for a few minutes?"

You watch her hesitate, eyes pinpointing the platter of steel instruments near your bedside, and without hesitating, you bluntly say, "I won't try to kill myself, okay?"

The nurse winces at your words as if she can feel her own hands pushing something sharp into her heart, as if she can feel the coldness pierce the living and pulsating thing that kept her body alive. Quickly picking up the platter, she lightly pushes the door open, looks back with what seems like empathy in her eyes, and bids you a good rest before leaving. The door swings shut behi�nd her.

You consider her sympathy, but shake your head, convincing yourself that it's pity and nothing more.

With a sigh, you get up and weakly push your legs off the side of the bed, ignoring the bed sheets that follow your movement. Sliding off the bed, you welcome the solid touch of tile beneath your bare feet, pleased at the feeling of something several temperatures lower than the stifling heat of your covers.

Your eyelids slide shut and you breathe in, then out. A needle throbs at your wrist. Without looking, your confident fingers find the IV, and you pull it out, letting it hang uselessly against the metal pole that is attached to the plastic bag of drugs they have been dripping into your veins. But immediately, the free feeling you experience twists into something unwanted. Your hands quiver, and you squeeze them into tight fists, weak muscles trembling with the pressure. "I hate being alive," you whisper.

"Do you?"

The question reverberates at the back of your mind, and you're suddenly reminded of that voice that told you to tip back the entire plastic bottle of sleeping pills. You're reminded of that whisper, telling you to take your life. It's that desire that builds up high like skyscrapers, ready to overcome the boundaries of the heavens and break through the clouds. It's that sadness, that loneliness, that horrible emptiness that you feel each and every day when you want the world to end, but it doesn't.

Then that voice retrieves a memory from your mind, showing your dead mother's corpse meters away, lying in a mahogany coffin with relatives and friends standing still and weeping. Tears carve lines into their faces and forces the smiles you grew to love into cries of pain. The memory changes again and you see yourself gazing down at a group of children a few years younger than you, kicking around an old soccer ball. Their laughter rings through the air, high and crisp. Faces are turned upward, basking in the warmth of the sun. A piece of your heart aches — yearns — to share the same emotions they felt.

You feel the desire morph into something different when the wish isn't granted.

Emptiness hollows out that piece of your heart as their laughter snatches it away. You want to push yourself away from the memory, but that voice doesn't let you.

You find yourself face to face with your mother, her chocolate eyes glowing as she offers you a hand, calling out your name affectionately. But your own hand won't take hers — it won't reach her. What seems like hours go by, and you can start to feel the sting of tears in your eyes as the image of her retreats further and further away. When she disappears, you lash out at that voice at the back of your head, asking what you ever did to it to make it hate you enough to show you those painful memories.

"Weren't you the one who did this to yourself?" it whispers.

You stop. Did you push yourself to this extent? Were you the one who kept on playing these memories over and over again?

You are the creator of your own pain.

The words linger in your mind as you jerk awake. You didn't even notice your leave of consciousness when the first memory of your mother played in your mind, and now you find your father cradling you against him on the cold floor of your hospital room as the rest of your family looks on with worry etched in their eyes. The same nurse who looked after you stands to the side, allowing you some time with your family. No words can come to your lips, and you just stay there, thinking about everything... yet nothing, all at once.

You lick your dry lips and slide yourself up into a sitting position, finally opening your mouth to break the silence. "How long was I out?"

"A minute, but... please don't leave again." It's your sister who speaks, voice almost inaudible.

A minute ago, you would've thought all the hurt in their voice was something fabricated— that whatever concern they had for you was nothing but a show, but the thought of it all vanishes when you listen to the voice in your�� head that sounds clear through your muddled emotions.

"Say you won't."

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.