𝐷𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛. ʙʀɪᴛɪsʜ ʀᴏʏᴀʟ ғᴀᴍɪʟʏ

43 ♔♕ 𝘀𝗶𝘅𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿

𝟸𝟹𝚛𝚍 𝙽𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝟸𝟶𝟷𝟸

It had been hard.

Exhausting actually.

A rollercoaster of emotions that she was really, really ready to get off.

But this was a big step forward. At least that was what her doctors and nurses and therapists and family and friends were saying. Progress. That was one word she was slowly becoming tired of hearing.

In all fairness, it was good. And she was glad of it. Truly, she was.

That afternoon Bella was going home. Finally. Sixty three days later, she was going home. It was, quite honestly, one of the best birthday presents she could have asked for.

26.

She was now 26.

Three and a half months ago she had been planning her birthday party. Well, more of a lunch or a dinner. She hadn't gotten round to making the decision. Instead, she had fallen from, and then been effectively crushed by a horse, before then also being stood on by said horse.

She was 26. And instead of having a lunch with her family and then dinner with all of her friends, Bella was learning to write properly again, learning to speak using the right words, trying desperately to remember that her right foot was incredibly damaged and that she wasn't supposed to even put weight on it, but the short term memory loss tended to make that a bit hard.

Her lungs had recovered which was good. Now she only had a brief pain in her ribs or side or back when breathing hard. Any organ damage that might have occurred had also repaired itself, the loss of blood not doing too much in that way of damage.

Apart from her brain of course. That was damaged.

A traumatic brain injury they had said.

On the cusp of being very severe as she was unconscious for more than 48 hours, but not quite very severe because her post traumatic amnesia only lasted 52 hours which was apparently very good.

According to the doctors and nurses and therapists and everyone else, she was doing remarkably well, making a much better recovery than they thought.

Bella was grateful, honestly, she was.

But part of her also couldn't get it out of her head that she had just turned 26, having spent the past 63 days in hospital, with one more operation to go and a recovery that would take god knows how long.

She was trying to be positive. Really trying. And she was getting better at it. The frustration was getting better now people knew how to actually interact with her. The fact that her leg was also showing signs of improvement was also good.

However, at that moment, Bella was also terrified. Because no matter how much she wanted to go home, and she really, really did, her hospital room at Kings had become a safe place.

Ten days after she had come round, they moved her from the High Dependency Unit at St Mary's to a nice room in King Edward VII's. A room that had slowly become her sanctuary.

Bella knew that she knew where everything was in that room. She knew that she didn't have to ask about anything, not anymore. She knew where her hairbrush was and where her clothes were and where the toilet was.