The silence of the house had always been something I trusted, a steady companion that filled the spaces where voices used to live, but that night it turned into something else entirely—something cold, something watchful, something that seemed to wait as I lay helpless on the bathroom floor with my body broken and my breath turning shallow. I could feel the porcelain tiles draining the warmth from my bones while my right leg lay twisted in a way I knew, even through the fog of pain, meant something inside me had snapped for good. Just a few feet away, my phone kept lighting up the darkness with meaningless notifications—pictures, emails, fragments of a world that was still moving while mine had come to a violent stop.
“Help…” I whispered, though even to my own ears it sounded weak, like a voice already fading.
