The plastic taste of the breathing tube coated the back of my throat, a gagging, foreign thing I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t escape. The lights above the bed were too bright, haloed in a blurry ring as my eyes struggled to focus. My chest rose and fell in shallow, forced breaths, the machine hissing in a rhythm that didn’t belong to me.
I felt like a puppet whose strings had been handed to a stranger.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move much without pain lancing through my abdomen. But I could see.
I saw my mother’s purse strap slide up over her shoulder.
I saw my father shrug into his worn team jacket with our town’s mascot stitched over the heart. I watched my mother glance at the clock on the wall, her mouth tightening—not with worry for me, but with calculation.
“We really have to go,” she said softly, as if the quiet tone could make up for the words.
My father stepped closer to the bed. The edges of his face looked wrong, bent by the tears in my eyes.
He patted my hand like he was comforting a nervous dog at the clinic.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “You just rest, okay? Be… well, you know.
Be good. Be supportive.”
Be a good sister, he meant. He didn’t say it this time, but the words hovered between us like they’d been etched into the air.
Be supportive of your brother. Be understanding. Be reasonable.
Be less.
The monitor beeped a little faster. I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or rage.
My mother leaned over me, careful not to touch any of the wires or tubes. There was a faint scent of her perfume, something floral and expensive.
I had a sudden, irrational thought that the smell didn’t belong here, in a room that still reeked faintly of antiseptic and blood.
“Tyler’s team made the playoffs,” she said, speaking slowly, like I might need time to process that monumental fact. “They moved the game up because of the weather. If they win tonight, it could mean a scholarship.
You understand, right?”
I couldn’t nod. The tube, the straps, the pain—everything kept me pinned. So I blinked once, because blinking was all I had, and because habit is stronger than common sense.
My father took that single blink as agreement.
Of course he did.
“That’s my girl,” he said. “We’ll be back. They said you’ll be out of the woods by tomorrow morning.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
