Chapter 1
Liliana
The smells are the first things that hit me. Huddling into myself, knees tucked under my chin as the hospital doors whisk open and shut, a sick sort of feeling sinks its claws into my stomach. I’m ill. Have been for days.
Throwing up, always nauseous, and my boobs hurt.
Biting my lower lip I glance at my father sitting beside me. Angry doesn’t even begin to describe how he’s feeling. The school called, said their daughter was puking her guts out. He’d seen me puking my guts out the last ten days. Every time he’d give me a look that said, “girl, that better not be what I think it is.”
I close my eyes as the ache in the back of my skull intensifies.
The smells in here are awful-- blood, sweat, and vomit. Beside me a little kid is hacking her lungs out. I’m not a germaphobe, but each time I get blasted with the spray I tuck further into myself and count to five before taking another breath.
Surrounded by people, but I’ve never felt so alone.
I wish mom was here with me. She would hug me, tell me it will be okay. But she hasn’t been feeling good the last year.
Doctors say she’s in the beginning stages of multiple sclerosis, which means dad had to come.
The doors slide open with a loud whoosh. Huffing the bangs out of my eyes I look up and my heart stills.
In fact, everything seems to freeze. It’s a strange sensation, sounds grow dim, and the world recedes to a pinprick of light, a halo that surrounds him. I have no idea who he is, a perfect stranger in a room full of them, but something about him stands out and makes me notice.
He has dark wavy hair and intense blue eyes. He stands squinting in the doorway and it’s obvious why he’s here. The entire left side of his face is a swollen mass of discolored skin. Grabbing onto the corner of his jaw, I notice his knuckles are also split open. Hard eyes scan the waiting room, and for a second, I glimpse in his face the same emotion I’m feeling right now.
Anywhere but here…
Then our eyes meet. He’s older than me, I can tell. There are whiskers on his cheeks, and he doesn’t look like a boy.
Especially not like the boy who did this to me.
The look lasts only a second, but feels more like an eternity-- a stolen moment in time that exists outside of where we’re at right now. But like so much in my life, it’s fleeting.
He sits far in the back of the room.
I want to turn and look. To see if I’d been right and he’d understood-- if somehow a stranger understood exactly what I was going through.
But I can’t, because then a nurse comes out and calls my name.
“Liliana Delgado?” Her voice is calm, cool, and it sends chills straight through me. Wrapping the ends of my thick sleeves around my closed fists I sit like a deer in the headlights, spooked out of my mind with a mouth tasting like cotton.
“Get up,” my father growls low, for my ears only.
Coming here, it’s just a formality. We all know, but it’s one of those things that you can ignore until you no longer can.
Swallowing hard, I look back at the guy one last time.
He has his face turned and is staring at the wall. No one is going to save me from this.
