Other Worlds - The Wilds

Chapter 37

  Recovery was pain like Toni had never known before.

  Despite being pretty well accustomed to injury, the brain injury and induced coma changed everything. Her body refused everything that Toni wanted to do.

  She struggled to move for days before she could actually properly get out of bed and walk around without her legs threatening to give out.

  After about one week, it became pretty clear that her brain function wasn't coming back perfectly like the doctors had hoped. The doctors called it 'post-concussion syndrome.' Information still floated around aimlessly in her head, just out of reach and she had never had such a hard time in her life trying to stay in the moment. Her mind drifted during conversation and activities, those events were mostly resolved with a gentle 'Toni, are you listening?' from one of her friends. They knew she wasn't but were kind enough not to make her feel bad for it.

  When her concentration faded, her brain often took her to difficult places. Carol's house, her mother's death, and Shelby. Mostly always Shelby. Mostly always the moments before she drove away, gazing out the rear window of her dad's car.

  She found it hard to centre her focus on one event with Shelby, instead their entire relationship — before and during — tending to run through her mind in bursts before moving on to the next; until it would finally land on the end. The rear window of Dave's car.

  Toni didn't contact Melanie until a few days before Christmas, weeks after Carol's attack. She was not ready to face that conversation, whatever it might entail.

  It was hard to reach Melanie, or at person in general, automated voices flaring up Toni's less securely contained anger. Toni had to get Bernice to help her after getting frustrated and nearly tossing the Blackburn family landline at a wall. It was so much harder than normal to control her impulses, which was not helpful when Toni's impulses tended to veer towards the aggressive end of the spectrum.

  The doctors said that would happen too, though, sometimes she scared herself; remembering Carol's prediction for her life.

  Melanie was fine. But not great. She was demoted for her inability to keep Toni safe during the attack and for her inability to realise that Toni was in an actively dangerous situation while she was calling the police. Toni felt bad for her despite being the casualty of her inefficiency. She really had tried to help Toni, she just didn't realise the severity of the situation.

  Once she got through, they spoke for nearly an hour on the phone, going over the dark reality of all of Toni's foster placements. The only exception was Mrs Conners. When Melanie asked, Toni told her that it was one of the happiest times in her life and left it at that.

  Toni had no idea how Melanie did it, she assumed it was desperation as a result of her guilt, but she was able to access some old records of Carol's life. Newspaper clippings, police documentation and general information from contacts.

  All of the information that Melanie found was still sitting in Toni's drawer in Martha's house. She was too scared to read everything. Too scared to rehash anything.

  Toni's body recovered well, other than her brain, obviously. Her rib hurt but it was a pain that she was used to and it didn't bother her too much, her wrist was in a cast so that also didn't cause any problems, with it being totally immobile.

  By Christmas, Toni was slowly starting to gain her physical strength back but her mental strength was going to take much longer because for the first time in years, Toni could let her guard down, which allowed everything else to flood in.

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  "Marty," Toni whispered loudly, "It's Christmas!"

  Martha groaned an arm flinging over her eyes. "You might as well speak at normal volume Toni. Whispering is meant to be quiet, you know."