Page 74 of Do Not Disturb
I stare up at him. I can see in his brown eyes that he means it. I finally pushed him too far. He’s done. “I see.”
“We’re both miserable,” he says. The understatement of the century. “I think it’s time to call it quits.”
I had thought my life was as awful as it could possibly be, but at the moment, my heart rips in two. “I agree.”
“I mean, do you even still love me anymore?”
I look up at his face. He’s still the same guy who tripped over his own feet while running track in high school because he couldn’t stop staring at me. The same guy who bought me a restaurant so that I could have my dream. We’ve been together for eighteen years, and all but the last five were so happy. Maybe we used up all our happiness. Maybe everybody only gets so much.
Do I still love him? Of course I do. He’s the only man I ever loved. The only man I everwilllove. But he has a chance to be happy again. I don’t.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
He looks like he’s about to break down, but to his credit, he keeps it together. He always does. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll move out.”
“Fine.” I feel oddly calm about the fact that the love of my life is walking out on me. “You should sell this house. I’ll go stay with my parents.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Now that we have reassured each other that everything is fine four times, he turns and leaves the bedroom. I watch him go. The ache in my chest is so painful, I want to scream.Please don’t go, Nick! I love you! How could you ever think otherwise?
But that would be wrong. The right thing is to let him go.
I take out my phone. I type into the search engine: easiest way to commit suicide.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ispend a good hour searching websites, trying to figure out how I’m going to do it.
The search immediately brings up a suicide hotline. But that’s for normal people, who are just depressed. My life isactuallyhopeless. I would be better off dead, and I know it.
Even the websites that tell you how to do it are still trying to talk you out of it.Think of the people who care about you.Yeah, right. I’ve got a husband, who is walking out on me. I’ve got my parents, who I have disappointed every step of the way. Really, the website doesn’t get it. If they knew me, they wouldn’t bother trying to talk me out of it.
My physical limitations will make this tricky. I can’t jump out the window or off a building. Hanging myself is way too labor intensive. I’ll have to go the medication route. Nick will have to give me my pill bottles before I move out. Or I can ask Dr. Heller for a prescription for a sleeping pill.
I haven’t quite decided on a plan yet, but I’m tired from thinking about it. I look back up, out the window, and see a woman moving around room 203. But it isn’t the blond woman. This woman has dark hair.
Unless it’s the same woman, and she just dyed her hair. That’s a possibility.
Nick dropped the binoculars onto the bed, within my reach. I grab for them and focus on the window again. I zoom in close to the woman in room 203.
It’s somebody different. Somebody older. Curvier. Definitely an unfamiliar face.
I guess the blond woman must’ve left, and he gave the room to a new guest. I look down at my watch. It’s barely been an hour. Quick turnaround.
I watch this new woman for a minute, but she doesn’t seem to be doing much. Her head is bent, and she seems to be looking down at her phone.
I drop the binoculars on my lap. My life has become pathetic. I’m watching a woman surf the internet on her phone.
I wish I could just end it all right now.
Then the woman’s eyes lift from her phone. She’s looking straight at the window. Right at me.
I push my hand against my wheels, backing up a foot. At least she didn’t catch me holding the binoculars. But there’s something about this woman that’s making me uneasy. Not jealousy—that’s become a very familiar emotion lately. Something else unnerving.
My phone buzzes from where I left it on the bed. I swivel my head and see a text from Nick:
