A nurse came in. Older woman, gray hair, soft hands. She didn’t call Sandy “Bambi.” She asked, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
The medication made her feel like she was watching herself from across a lake. Someone else was taking the pills. Someone else was nodding at the therapist. Someone else was that girl—Bambi Sandy—with the big eyes and the no-mouth.
The nurse nodded. “Alright, Sandy. Let’s get you standing again.” Bambi Sandy Downward Spiral
The spiral began quietly. Not with a crash, but with a slow leak.
She woke up in a hospital room with a brace on her leg and her father crying in a plastic chair. Celeste was not there. The first thing Sandy did was reach for her phone. The second thing she did was put it down. A nurse came in
It started with sleep. Sandy couldn’t close her eyes without seeing her mother’s back—the beige trench coat, the click of the gate. So she stayed up, scrolling through old photos, listening to voicemails that no longer existed because her phone had been reset. By the time she finally slept, the sun was rising. Then school became a blur of missed alarms and forged excuse notes.
In the quiet of the room—machines beeping, rain tapping the window—she realized the spiral had stopped. Not because she was saved. Not because of the crash or the brace or her father’s tears. But because she had hit something solid. The bottom. Someone else was taking the pills
The third turn was the fastest. A boy from her chemistry class, quiet and kind, asked her to a party. She went because saying no would require an emotion. At the party, someone handed her a red cup. She drank. Then another. Then something harder, something that burned. For a few hours, the lake dried up. She was in her body again—laughing, dancing, falling.
At first, Sandy hated it. But after her mother left—just walked out one Tuesday with a suitcase and never came back—the name stuck. She became Bambi Sandy, the girl who flinched when doors slammed, who jumped at laughter in the hallway. The girl who started biting her nails until they bled.