The rest dissolves into a sob that rips through me. My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the railing, the cold metal biting into my palms.
The guilt comes in waves—sharp and unrelenting. Every missed clue, every smile I took for granted. Every time I told her to go play while I finished a painting. Every second I didn’t see her getting worse.
I used to think surviving made me strong enough to mother her, like all that pain had built something useful in me. But standing here, shaking, my heart racing against my palm, I feel like the same terrified girl I was when I woke up alone in a hospital bed years ago—waiting for a mother who never came.
Even now, after she’s come back into my life, after seven years of carefully trying to rebuild something fragile and human between us, there are nights I still feel like that abandoned kid. A child pretending to know how to take care of another one.
“Hey.” The voice comes from behind me—low, unfamiliar. I turn, blinking through tears.
A man stands a few yards away, near the smoking area by the bench. He’s tall, maybe late thirties, with a denim jacket zippedhalfway up and a cigarette dangling from two fingers. His hair is too neat for someone up this early, smoothed back with a thick glob of gel but fraying at the edges.
He gives me a crooked smile. “Didn’t mean to startle you, but you remember me don’t you?”
“No,” I shake my head, wiping my cheeks quickly. “Sorry.”
“It’s me…Justin.” He says gesturing to his face. “Your biggest fan.”
My skin goes cold.
“Um…” I glance around the empty space, suddenly hyper-aware of how quiet it is. The snow has stopped completely, leaving only puddles that reflect the pale sky. The benches are empty, no nurses on smoke break, no patients in wheelchairs—just us. The sound of the automatic doors sliding shut behind me makes the silence worse.
He keeps talking, that easy brightness in his voice like he’s still standing in a gallery, not on a hospital patio with a crying woman. “I came in wanting to buy that painting a couple of days ago,” he says, smiling so wide the sunlight flashes off his teeth.
I swallow hard. “That painting was destroyed.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect, but my pulse stutters when he takes a slow step toward me.
“Bummer.” His tone is flat, not disappointed so much as amused. “It was… really something. Dark. Sad. Kinda sexy, though.” His eyes drag over me as he says it, slow and deliberate, like he’s cataloguing me the same way he looked at my work. “But you look… wrecked. What happened?”
The way he sayswreckedmakes my skin crawl. I glance toward the doors, gauging how fast I can reach them. “I’m here with my daughter,” I say carefully. “She’s sick.”
His eyebrows lift, but his smile doesn’t fade. “Your daughter?”
“Yeah.” My throat tightens. “And my husband.”
Justin clicks his tongue, shaking his head slowly. “That’s rough. Poor thing.” His gaze drifts toward the hospital entrance before sliding back to me. “Must be hard, huh? Watching someone so small hooked up to all those machines.”
“Yes.”
“You know something about that, right?”
The question hits too close. My stomach twists. “I should get back,” I say quietly, edging sideways toward the door. The motion feels clumsy, obvious.
But he keeps talking, his voice dipping lower, intimate in a way that makes the hair rise on my arms. “You know, I fell in love with your art the first time I saw it,” he says. “All that pain. That beauty. You’re just like your paintings. Exactly like I imagined.”
I freeze. The sunlight reflects off the melting snow, dazzling, disorienting. My heart is thudding so hard I can feel it in my throat. “Justin,” I say, my voice sharp now, trembling on the edge of warning. “Please don’t.”
He lifts his hands, mock surrender, that same too-white grin plastered across his face. “Hey, relax. I’m just saying, not everyone can wear their darkness like you do. You don’t hide it. You’re real.”
I take another step back. “I said I need to go.”
His eyes flick over me, dark with something I can’t name. Then he takes a small, deliberate step forward, closing the distance between us until I can smell the faint, metallic tang of something chemical on his jacket.
“You really shouldn’t run away from me,” he murmurs, almost tender. “You and I are so alike.”
I open my mouth to respond, but before I can move, something cold and sharp brushes the inside of my arm — so fast I almost don’t register it. A pinch, a prick, then a strange warmth flooding outward.
“What—”
My knees buckle. The sunlight blurs into white noise. I try to grab the railing, but my hand won’t close around it. My vision tunnels, sound slipping away like it’s underwater.
