Machines beep beside me. A monitor traces a line that rises and falls in time with my heartbeat. I watch it for a while, just to make sure it keeps going.
Soon, a nurse comes in, sounding frantic but acting calm. She looks surprised to see my eyes open.
While she helps me drink some water through a straw, she tells me I’ve been asleep for months. That I’m stable. That my muscles will learn how to work again, faster than expected ‘cause they’ve been treating me in my sleep.
I listen and nod, even though the words reach me really slow.
At some point, she hands me a phone with a number already dialed.
“Emergency contact on file,” she says.My sister.
Something tugs at my chest. It’s a feeling I always got before I called her. Before I ran to her room. Before I did anything I thought might make her worry.
I need to hear her voice. That’s all I know.
The nurse puts it on speaker, then slips toward the door. She murmurs something about getting the doctor.
The phone rings for a second.
“Hello?” my sister says, her voice shaking.
Still, the sound of her voice calms me like when we were kids, when the house was too loud, when everyone else got in my head.
My throat locks up. I don’t say anything at first. I just listen.
“Is it really you?” she asks.
I can picture her, holding the phone tight. “Yeah,” I manage, my voice raspy like the words are ripped out of me.
Her inhale shudders through the line. “I knew you’d wake up,” she says. “I felt it.”
Something inside me loosens up. My shoulders sink into the pillow. My lungs start to work on their own like they remember how to live.
“You’re okay?” she asks. “Are you in any pain?”
There’s plenty of pain, but I’m not going to tell her that. “I’m okay,” I whisper, and it itches my throat. “I’m breathing.”
“You don’t have to do anything else.” She has a way of talking like the rest of the world can wait. “Your earring… Did they keep it on?”
My arm feels heavy and wrong, but I force myself to move it. The motion sends spiking pain up my shoulder, but eventually, my fingers brush my ear, and I feel…
Cool metal. The familiar touch of the piece of gold that’s still there. The one she gave me when we were kids trying to survive family. We’ve survived even worse since then.
Anger licks up my spine, but the warmth in my chest spreads faster. So fast it steals my breath, sharper than pain, stronger than exhaustion. The gold’s proof that she’s always cared. That I wasn’t stripped down to just a body on a bed. Even after, when I left her without looking back.
“It’s still on,” I tell her, trying to clear my throat.
“I’m glad,” she whispers with a relieved little laugh that feels huge for my heart. “I missed your voice.”
My eyes sting. I swallow. I want to say the same, but I’m afraid she’ll hear me cry. I can’t worry her the second I wake up.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” she goes on. “I’ll start with the most important one.”
I hear her take a deep breath that breaks from the sound of her light laugh.
“I got married,” she says, trying to contain her excitement.
Relief hits harder than any pain in my body. That’s what I’d hoped for, back when I went over that cliff. That she’d live the life she deserved.
