At fifteen, poor Sadie had felt the end had come. She was flunking out of school, she found it almost impossible to make friends,and the insidious trap of bulimia snagged her by the feet and dragged her,like an automaton, from kitchen fridge to bathroom toilet, sometimes up to twenty times a day. As the golden-haired woman-child stared disgustedly at her skinny, bone-wracked body, she punched herself hard in her concave stomach.
"You fat pig! "Sadie hissed angrily to herself. "No wonder you have no friends. Nobody wants to hang with a ton of lard". Pushing the ever-enviting pills of self-destruction around her bony hand, Sadie thought of her brother, Bruce, who would greatly miss her when she was gone. The two had been very close since childhood, since they were less than two years apart in age and often Sadie had sat in his room, festooned with "Green Day" and "Oassis" and "R.E.M.", and posters, and confided in her tow-headed younger brother some of her pain.
Sadie had recently been diagnosed with clinical depresssion, seeemingly a scourge of 1990's youth and had been put on the antidepressant called "Paxil" to help quell the emotions that threatened to destroy the fragile teen.
Bruce would play soothing songs by R.E.M. for Sadie when she got like this, but was really too young to do much to "snap her out of it". He just stayed with her during the most difficult times, as their yuppie parents both worked twelve hours a day, obstensibly to put their children through college, but actually to uphold the grandiose, BMW lifestyle they had come to enjoy.
Sadie's mother did talk to her daughter, but only about things like school, finding a boyfriend, and all the things that mothers figured that their offspring wanted to discuss. But Sadie didn't either want or need that. She just wanted Erin Schilling to sit down with her for a couple of hours and really LISTEN to what her troubled daughter had to say. Erin had no indkling that the Paxil was not working and that Sadie was "sliding down the slippery slope" toward self-destruction.
Bruce, who didn't find it as difficult to approach his busy mother, said one day, "You know, Sadie's been really down. I don't think those pills are doing anything for her".
Erin smiled, showing bright, white teeth framed by the most expensive lipstick. "Now, you know what her doctor said. The pills take time to work. Your sister just needs to be more patient".
"But I'm kind of worried about her", Bruce responded, kicking at the linoleum with his sneakers, "She hasn't been herself lately. She stays in her room dressed in black most of the time, with dark eye shadow and listening to really depresing CD's like Nine Inch Nails' "Downward Spiril".
"Huh. If their nails are that long, they need a manicure".
"Mom, you're not listening!! You're too busy with your executive job, martini lunches and living the "life of Riley" to see that your older kid's in a lot of pain!"
Erin rumpled Bruce's hair affectionately. "Sometimes I think you are the older one. You are wise beyond your years. Tell you what: As soon as I get back from this extremely important board meeting, I shall have a long, heart-to-heart with Sadie". "Promise?" Bruce had heard this line of patter before.
"I promise. Now don't worry so much! You just got into your teens. Enjoy them! They're the best time of your life!"
"You never told Sadie that, did you?" Bruce frowned, thinking of what a negative impact this would have on his depressed sister.
"I might have. Does it matter?"
"Nevermind, Mom. Better get to your meeting".
Erin kissed Bruce tenderly on the cheek, careful not to leave a trace of lipstick and then was out the front door before Bruce even had a chance to ask when she would be back. Afterward, Bruce returned with trepidation to Sadie's room, wondering why he felt so creepy.
The answer was agonizingly evident when the boy entered his sister's dimly-lit room. She lay sprawled on her bed, eyes closed and unmoving, with an emtpy bottle of pills at her side.
"Oh God...Sadie you didn't!!! Oh my God!! I gotta call 911!!"
But even after the paramedics arrived, there was nothing they could do. "She took enough of this Paxil to kill an elephant in a half hour. Must be over two hundred pills if this bottle was full. And I assume it was since the prescription date is for today".
Bruce was numbed with shock and disbelief. With words forming with difficulty he stammered, "She hadn't been taking them for a month....she had a four-month supply stored up. But I never knew she was this bad. Honest. I just didn't know!"
One of the paramedics put a comoforting arm around the distraught boy. "Where are your parents, son?"
"At work. They're both at work".
"But it's after seven PM".
"They like to work late. Brings in more cash", Bruce responded ruefully, suddenly feeling waves of rage for his mother and father.
"All the money in the world won't bring her back", he said, returning to the bedside of the dead Sadie.
Bruce slid down the wall and sat on the floor, bursting into tears of sorrow and anger. This hadn't had to happen. His mother should have been here and not at some dumb board meeting.
Suffice it to say, both Erin and her husband would pay the price of disenfranchising their children and "Xing" them out of their lives. A young life had to be sacrificed before those parents saw the error of their ways.