—We're not from here.—

"How long have you felt numb?"

It's a useless question, I think. They're always trying it, because its the only lead I give them, the only symptom they can identify. Their mission is to diagnose me, heal me, and my purpose is to let them.

I don't know who is asking this time. It's a woman, I suppose. Her eyes are kind behind the glass wall of my room. She looks like she really wants to help, like she actually might care. Well that makes one of us.

"Forever," I say, because it's the truth. I don't remember a feeling for before; numbness is all I have ever been. But they can't accept that.

I reach out to the glass that separates us. I can see my hands on the sleek, transparent surface, but what does it feel like? I don't know.

"What do you remember?" she asks this time.

I think about this question. I spend a lot of time in conflict. While two halves of my whole battle it out, one half is always asking.

Do I want to save myself?

"Yes," means remembering. "No," means immunity from unending agony.

The other half can never decide.

So I consider the options her question presents.

After an unnervingly long pause, I life my head. I avoid eye contact because my eyes are said to be fearsome. They say the hollowness of my light grey gaze is practically terrifying.

Her own eyes widen a little as I stare, but she does not look away, she does not break the connection. If she can withstand the apparent intensity my eyes possess, then she deserves to hear my story.

"The beach," I tell her, finally breaking the silence. I look away again. I can't stand the simple contact after such a long time without having any.

"What do you remember about the beach?" she inquires, and her voice contains a carefully concealed amount of relief. It must be because I responded. No-one else has achieved as much.

"Footsteps," I whisper, and I can see them too, in my mind's eye.

"Whose footsteps?"

A pause. This hurts. I feel like she might be taking it too far. As soon as she has asked the question, his name is in my head and on my lips, and his face is all I see.

"Anthony."

She gasps and makes comforting noises, not because she knows who he is, but because, I can see my reflection's cheeks are now sparkling with tears. I am crying now, silently.

How strange.

I raise one hand, brushing a finger under my eye, to observe the light refracting off the wetness at the tip.

Tears. Really?

It is a distraction I am grateful for.

I concentrate on the light glancing off my fingertips as I say, with a certain level of detachment, "My brother had been ill for a while. It was the morning of his sixteenth birthday, the day he didn't get out of bed."

"Why didn't he get out of bed?" she presses on.

I don't see her or the glass walls of my room any more. Images of Anthony, and my parents, and footsteps in the darkening sand of the beach flash across my mind like a slide show on repeat. My heart breaks a little more with each new picture.

"'Because he was depressed,' they said."

"Go on."

"They said, 'It had all become too much for him.' They said, 'He needed a break from it.'

"'From what?' I would always ask.

"They never told me before, but I know now: he needed a break from life."

I can see myself now. Nine years old and banging on the glaze of the plain white door, screaming for entrance.

A man strides down the corridor, a brick-faced man dressed head-to-toe in black, with his shirtsleeves rolled back to reveal burly forearms covered with hair.

He seizes me around the middle, hoists me into the air and carts me back up the hall, in the direction from which he came. Suddenly, I am facing the inside of an identical door. I hear the lock click and heavy footsteps travel away from where I am, locked in my own room for entirely different reasons.

I stayed there for three days, fasting until they let me see my brother. I didn't care about the pain in my stomach or the weakness I felt. I slept a lot. Drank water, too.

"They wouldn't let me see him," I say, "until the forth day I refused to eat.

"The lights were off, the curtains drawn. The darkness seemed to radiate outwards from the ghost of my brother. It felt cold and lifeless in there, and he was just lying on his bed, doing absolutely nothing but breathing. And even that simple act seemed to be a taxing operation to perform! He looked so tired and old in the half-light."

The tears were openly streaming down my face now, but I still couldn't feel them.

"He stayed like that for weeks! Just wasting away. When they let me visit, they sometimes gave me food. Plain toast with honey on it, or pears and other fruits. The smell was so sickeningly sweet for him. Sometimes he couldn’t take it, and would dash into the bathroom just in time to retch.

"He never ate though.

"Then, one afternoon, I heard the back door slide open. We were the only ones home, so it had to be him.

"I ran to follow, but I was too far behind. Too small and slow to catch up. All I could see were the footprints along the water's edge. I followed them, until they disappeared. When I turned, I could just make out his head, disappearing into the murky water.

"I ran into the waves, ignoring its cold sting and the tang of the salt in the air. I screamed and cried, kicking and flailing to stay afloat, but he never came back. He never rescued me.

"Eventually, I gave up. The waves carried me onshore, and the brick-faced man found me there, soaked in sea water and tears and totally alone."

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

"The cold seeped into me that day. It got under my skin, and into my bones, and I've been numb ever since."

-o-O-o-