They discharge me with a clean bill of health, even though nothing about me feels clean. But I can’t argue with the facts. My chart shows flawless numbers. Specialists worked my muscles while I slept, rotating my limbs, reminding nerves to remember me. Gave me top-tier medication. Round-the-clock monitoring. Zero expense spared.
The doctor explains all this in calm, technical phrases, but the words blur the moment they hit my ears. I nod like I’m following along. But really, my brain feels too new to hold anything that complicated. I keep the thought to myself—that I don’t know how they expect someone waking from a coma to remember terms likemuscle electro-whateveror what the hell a specialized mattress system is.
All of it sounds expensive. I don’t ask who paid for it. Don’t need to. No one else would’ve done this except the Song-Smiths. AndI don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that kind of care, but the evidence is stitched into every part of me that actually healed while I wouldn’t wake up.
They saved me. After everything. And I tried to die with Clo, their matriarch or whatever. So yeah, there isn’t a good way to settle that sort of messed-up math. But all I have is breath I didn’t expect to keep and a body that feels borrowed even though I know it’s mine.
Even hours later, walking still feels like borrowing my own legs. I get winded by stairs and by thoughts I don’t want to unpack. But I’m upright long enough to sign my discharge papers with a name that feels like a stranger’s. My chest locks at the letters in ink. For a minute, I think about tearing the paper in half. But I didn’t claw my way back to be stopped by some letters.
After all that, they get me to a plane and drive me to a port. Before I know it, my feet are on a gangway, and I’m standing in a ship where I share a cabin with Stan.
“A luxury cruise for twelve traumatized science experiments?” he jokes. “Overcompensating much? Not that I relate. Zero overcompensation here.”
I don’t even have the energy to react. He hasn’t stopped talking since Em left us here.
Right now, I’m sitting on the top bunk, breathing through the dizziness while the ship moves in a lulling way. Stan doesn’t seem to notice that I haven’t commented on anything for a while. Or maybe he has and doesn’t like silence.
“You know your sister got married, right?” he blurts out.
“She was my first call.”
“Yeah? That’s good.” He huffs. “And here I was thinking maybe the coma wiped your memory of how phones work.”
He leans back on the edge of my bed.
“Well, it’s official.” Stan groans. “She’s Mrs. Murderface now. AndI’m the idiot who cried into the cake.”
A laugh punches out of me. “That bad?”
“Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic. I only cried on the inside.” He tips his head back to look at me. “Guess that’s part of why I said yes to this science cruise. Needed a distraction. Or a lobotomy.”
His smile’s crooked and ridiculously warm.
“But having you as my mandatory roomie is a nice surprise.”
“Hm, weird thing to say.”
“That’s how this pretty mouth of mine works.” He turns and folds his forearms on my top bunk. “Weird words. Big feelings. Terrible impulse control. But hey, knew you’d make it. If anyone could survive falling off a cliff, it’d be you.”
I go still, staring at him. Stan looks a lot like Kai, more than he resembles his monster of a mother. “She’s not dead, is she?”
He sobers fast, frowning. “Nope, still comatose. That’s my mother for you. But you tried. That counts.”
I stare at my fists on my lap. “It was supposed to be the end.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But you’re here. That’s what matters more.”
We let the silence sit for a while. With Stan, that seems like a special occasion.
“How was it?” he asks. “The coma, I mean. You remember much?”
“Bits,” I say. “My sister’s voice. Kayla’s. Yours.”
Stan’s elbow bumps into my knee. “Mine?”
“You told me to fight. Made jokes. Complained about hospital food.”
His eyes light up. “That’s good. Thought it’d help, y’know?”
