Alone I Break | LingOrm FF

~ Part 2 ~

Over two hours had passed since Orm was left standing just inside the emergency room as they had taken her brother away behind the curtains. She'd stood there for who knows how long, unable to move, before a nurse had come and led her to a waiting room for family members. She hadn't wanted to go. She'd wanted to stay close to her brother, but they'd made her.

Now, Orm sat on one of the uncomfortable chairs, knees pressed to her chest as she rocked back and forth, praying to whatever higher powers there were that James would be okay. She knew there were others in the room with her; people who also knew her brother, and strangers waiting for news just as she was. More than once, someone had tried to talk to her. What they'd said, she had no clue. Her mind was lost in memories.

She remembered the day James had come to live with her and her parents. He was only her half-brother; the product of a relationship her father had in his freshmen year of college. Until he was nine, he'd lived with his mother, but when she got married, her new husband didn't want kids. So, she'd shipped him off to live with his father, despite the fact that he had shown little interest in his son. But then that was typical of her father. Work always came first for him. If her mother hadn't insisted James come to stay with them, who knew what would have happened to him.

They'd bonded instantly, her and James. He was the big brother she'd always wanted. He played with her even though he was four years older and looked out for her. Then, later, when the relationship between her parents disintegrated, he comforted her. Orm couldn't count the number of times he'd sat in her room with her while their father and her mother screamed at each other downstairs.

When her parent divorced, it came as little surprise that her mother took custody of James. The three of them moved from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi when Orm was just twelve. It was rough the initial few months, but then, for the first time in years, they'd been happy.

She should have known it wouldn't last. Two short years later, Mom collapsed while at work from a previously undetected brain aneurysm. She passed away before either of her children could make it to the hospital.

The emotional drama had been trying enough, leaving a gaping hole in their lives, but what came after proved to be almost as tough. If James and Orm hadn't already known their father was an uncaring bastard, the fact that he couldn't even be bothered to come for the funeral or help his two children figure out what to do next would have been more than enough proof. He was too busy trotting around Europe with his secretary to bother with them. 

With no other relatives stepping forward, eighteen-year-old James had been begrudgingly granted full guardianship of his fourteen-year-old half-sister. He dropped out of college and took a full-time job so he would be able to support them and avoid further uprooting Orm's life by making them move out of their family home. It hadn't been easy. Money was short, and emotions were spent, but they pulled through, relying on each other to keep them going.

James was her rock; the one person she could always turn to. He held her when she cried after her first boyfriend had broken up with her. He listened patiently whenever she ranted about an unfair teacher. He was everything she could want in a brother and a friend. And now...

No, she told herself. James was going to be fine. In a few days they'd be laughing about all this and getting back to their normal routine. At least that's what she tried to convince herself as she silently sobbed in the hospital waiting room.

~'~'~

 "She doesn't look so good," Mikey mumbled half to himself and half to the woman sitting next to him.

"Can you blame her?" twenty-five-year-old Lingling Kwong responded, not taking her eyes off the shaking blonde on the other side of the room.

"No," Mikey sighed dejectedly.