I know she's not real.
I know this is just my brain torturing me.
But I answer anyway, because I'm too tired and too broken to do anything else.
"Because of you and my own fucked up issues," I whisper. "Because I found you dead. Then I was in my accident and I didn't know how to handle it. Because the pain was so big and the needle made it small."
"That's not the whole truth."
"It's enough of the truth."
She reaches out and brushes hair from my face, and I swear I can feel it.
The ghost of her touch, as real as any memory. "You were always so strong, Savannah. Stronger than me. That's why I was so scared for you."
"Scared?" I open my eyes, looking at her.
In this version, she's somewhere in between—not the healthy mother of my childhood and not the corpse of my nightmares.
Just... tired. Worn. Human.
"You were scared?"
"I saw myself in you. The same hunger for escape. The same desperate need to be anywhere but inside your own head." She smiles, but it's sad. "I knew that if you ever found the needle, it would own you the same way it owned me."
"So it's your fault?" There's anger in my voice now, hot and bitter. "Is that what you're saying? You passed this down to me like some kind of fucked-up inheritance?"
"I'm saying you come by it honestly. But that doesn't mean it has to define you." She leans closer, and her eyes—for just a moment—are clear. Alive. The mother I remember from before. "You're stronger than I ever was, Vanna. You just have to believe it."
"Everyone keeps saying that. That I'm strong. That I can do this." I'm crying again, the tears coming so easily now that I've stopped trying to hold them back. "But I don't feel strong. I feel like I'm dying."
"You're not dying." She cups my face in her hands, and they're warm. Not the cold, dead hands from my nightmares. Warm and alive and gentle. "You're being born. It just hurts like hell."
When I blink, she's gone.
Just an empty chair and the pale morning light filtering through the curtains.
But for the first time since I got here, I feel something other than misery.
I feel hope.
The second week is marginally better.
The vomiting stops, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that makes even lifting my head feel like running a marathon.
The hallucinations become less frequent, less vivid, fading from full-color horror movies to shadowy suggestions at the edges of my vision.
My body is starting to remember what it feels like to function without poison in its veins.
I still want to use.
That wanting hasn't gone away, and the counselors tell me it never will entirely.
But it's starting to feel less like a scream and more like a whisper.
Something I can acknowledge without being controlled by it.
I'm allowed out of bed now, allowed to move through the facility with the other residents.
