But her father’s gone, and her mother’s half a world away.
Ellenor’s trying, in her own way, but she’s raw too.
And for all the time I’ve spent by Lily’s side, I’m not what she needs most.
She needs someone who’s simply hers. Someone who always was, and always will be, bound to her by unshakable ties; by years soaked in history. A love she was born into.
I know what it feels like to have loving parents. I was fortunate to have them too. And I can’t help but think it would make the world of difference to Lily to have her mother here—if only it were possible.
I sink into a chair and take out my phone. While they talk, I scroll for flights.
And book the first one.
39
Misaligned
Lily-Anne
I’m wheeled through an endless maze of pale-green corridors, doors gliding past while I stay helplessly still. It’s real. And it’s happening to me.
The gurney rattles with every seam in the linoleum, each jolt sending a flicker of pain up my leg.
It’s been four terrible days of lying in bed trying not to think about my foot being broken, the bones sitting in the wrong place, and being visited by paranoid nightmares about them fusing together and healing crooked. I can’t stand it. I need this to be over.
It doesn’t make the prospect of being operated on any more reassuring.
They’ll keep me in for a few days after surgery to monitor me.
That’s if I don’t die.
“Don’t say shit like that!” Ellenor scolded.
I apologised automatically, my eyes glazing over the consent forms, the words blurring together.
“Would you like to know more about the procedure?” the kind doctor asked.
I’d said no, and she nodded sympathetically…only to go through every possible complication anyway.
Infection.
Blood clots.
Chronic pain.
Ellenor wanted the doctor to guarantee that I’d be fully asleep. I wish she hadn’t said anything. I didn’t need to know it was possible for some people to be half-awake during an operation without anyone realising.
So now I’m trembling like a leaf, heart thudding too fast, breath refusing to steady.
Maybe it would help if I hadn’t spent the last few days fighting off a fever.
Or if Jack hadn’t stolen my songs.
Or if my guitar weren’t broken.
Or if Brandon were here.
That last one stings the most.
