The Lady Vanishes

I’ve vanished before, but never like that. Never to that extent.

No one really knew I was leaving, save for a few. The rest, when they saw I wasn’t at my usual haunts, couldn’t be found on Facebook or Instagram, slowly reached out to me.

Once I got over the white hot anxiety of touching my phone, I’d reply to some of their messages at the clinic on Sundays.

I had woken up sometime in the new year with blood stains on my head and pillow and no recollection of how I’d gotten them. Before that, P saw bruises down my arms and on my thighs and asked me if I’d been man-handled.

I didn’t have answers for her.

When it got really bad, it was two bottles of wine in the early morning hours while I watched David Cronenberg movies (Rabid and The Brood); the afternoon was usually spent polishing off a handle of whiskey and eating some chicken nuggets before inevitably drinking more wine until I passed out on the carpet.

P had asked me what was wrong. Why was I sleeping all day. Why I never visited her when I said I would, and wouldn’t I like to try on a pretty dress she’d gotten the other day, and wouldn’t I like to share an Arnie Palmer and tell her what was the matter.

But I stayed in bed, only getting up when the delivery driver knocked for my ID so he could hand me a bottle of red wine.

I still don’t know how I hit my head that night.