Buried alive

I feel like an imbecile. Holding such a doll in my weak arms; watching her fade like a final sunset. Incapable of resurrection - she is lost. I am sure. And yet, I encircle her still body as if I can do anything to prevent the inevitable. As if I, the weaker of we, could possibly save her.

It began a mere hour ago. Like a Bastille prisoner, buried alive for 18 years, Adelaide still lived, on occasion, in a hollowed out canoe of her own mind. It was there that she lived her adventures, the ones this world could never offer nor fathom. She survived in her own head, instead of her own body. Madly enraptured by venues of the psychological, I have often spent hours conversing with her about the journeys. In them, Adelaide was just as vulnerable as in physical life - perhaps even more so. The danger she received there, a knife to the skin, for example, cut and bled and scarred her mind, and she tended her own wounds accordingly.

Upon the conversing in Fauna, Adelaide became silent at the mention of a beloved. She stared ahead, and a terror griped me. One of recollection of the past. She was staring...static, disconnected.

10 minutes. She began to scream.
10 minutes. She shrieked and begged for mercy.
10 minutes. She began to breathe in gulps, sucking in the not so readily available air.
10 minutes. She cried. She said she understood. Said it was okay, she was inanimate. It's okay. It's okay. I'm fine.
Then she stared up at me. Back.

"Deirdre, my darling, don't get lost in the wave."

But I only looked at her, feeling like an impediment. Like a mental zombie. Like un developed social skills. Like a nurse that kills a patient.

I don't utter a word. For once, I realize that there is not an effort I can implore that has a possibility of helping, much less saving. So I lay next to her, clutching her, waiting without fingerprint of hope.