A Fractured Fairytale

Prologue

The fragile words glided from his mouth like it was a natural thing to say, his sentence crumbling into the atmosphere. There was no sight of even a tear framing his eyes as the words fell gracefully from his lips, and there didn’t appear to be even a crack in his voice as he broke the news to the young woman. “Your condition is incurable.” Her face distorted into white, the individual words the doctor spoke had the power to extinguish every last bit of hope the woman had. The hands of time were whizzing round the clock just leading up to the moment when death’s hands would snatch the woman away from the winding path of life.

Her heart was thumping so loud inside her chest you could almost hear it breaking up the eerie silence strewn across the hospital room. The woman, rigid with fear in the hospital bed, stayed silent, as if somebody had sealed her lips together and thrown away the key, which unlocked them. She was so scared about the route, that from that moment on, she would be forced to take, that if she tried to speak, no noise would come out. The world, before her, was washed away by the tears, discolouring the deep blue her eyes once were. The woman’s hair, which tumbled down her shoulders, was so light that if it descended into a lighter shade it could be classed as white.

How was she going to bring herself to tell her family? When? The answer was simple-never. Then she spoke. “You cannot tell anybody about this.” Her lips quivered, somehow merging into the words she spoke. Maybe she knew what she was saying, maybe she didn’t. The woman pieced the rest of her sentence together,” My family included.” She just needed to hold on for a little while longer, to spend a few more weeks with her family to tell them how much they really meant to her, then after that she would be obliged to go. She would bring herself to leave life behind and let death welcome her.

Soon she would be torn from this world into a new unknown place. Maybe she was already there? Because if this was how she felt now how would she feel dying? Would it be worse than the pain she was experiencing now? She couldn’t tell. The woman ran her finger along the crumpled picture lying on her lap; it was drawn by her little girl. Her beautiful little girl.

The woman was over eighteen and so she had the right to confidentiality. Nobody could make her say a word. She knew that this would shatter her family’s lives, but there was nothing more she could do. She continued, her hands shaking uncontrollably, “There is one person, especially, that can never know the truth. My daughter. Elsie Foster.”