Golden Wings

Chapter 21~ Present Day, The Blue

An hour later, Nurse Catherine is closing the door behind me silently as I slip inside. The room is dark, not a candle lit, and the only source of light is the moon. Catherine is across the room, facing away from me, but I see her shift at the sound of the closing door. She knows who it is.

"Sam..." I take a shaky step forward, seeing someone in the bed in front of her. Raphael. I freeze. The bedsheets around him are clotted with blood, and bandages cover his torso and face. He's asleep, but he looks far from peaceful. Every now and then, he shifts, but it's not so much a twitch as it is a flinch. He's terrified.

"I never told you, did I?" Her quiet voice echoes eerily throughout the room, but it's not projected in any way. It's weak, tired, and unsteady, much like herself. "How I died?" I stand, frozen in my tracks, by the end of the hospital bed. She chuckles with obvious effort. "Seems silly now. I trust you, you're my best friend. Why wouldn't I tell you? But I was just so... Scared." She nods her head at the chair across from her, and I slowly sit.

"Sam, you don't have to-" I begin, and she finally, frantically, meets my eyes. Her face is stained with tears, and she interrupts me.

"Yes, I do." I begin to shake my head, but she cuts me off by saying. "I want to." I stop moving, try to relax, and show that I'm listening. She takes a deep breath and begins.

"I don't quite know where to start, but I might as well start before... Before it all went downhill. Way downhill." She sighs. "My parents met when they were young. They fell in love, had a child. My father was hardworking, cool, calm, and collected. My mother? Not so much. She was adventurous, outgoing, erratic. But most of all, she was unpredictable and irrational. She thought of herself, and barely considered others, and would follow her dreams to the end of the earth. My father was devoted to her... But he was no more than a passing phase for her.

"Two years after Rafie was born, she left. No note, no... No nothing. I came home from school one day, and she wasn't home. She never came home. I was 15..." Samantha looks down at Raphael lovingly but in pain. She continues, and my heart swells, learning what this family has been through. "I said my father was devoted to her, but I never knew how much until she left. She didn't even bother taking her stuff, and he hoarded it, keeping it safe under lock and key. After she left, he began drinking. And drinking. And drinking... First one a night, to numb the pain, then two, to forget, then three, four, five...

"That's when he lost his job. The worst part is, this isn't even three months after my mother went on her next great adventure. I had picked up one job, once I realized that my father wasn't paying for us, just for his alcohol, but after he was fired, it wasn't enough. I got a second job, and the stress was so much... keep up with school, working two separate jobs, raising Rafie... then protecting him..." She fell silent, uttering the last part of her sentence quietly, in pain.

"Protecting him...?" I whispered, hoping that she wasn't going where I thought. Pleading. Praying.

But she was.

Sam looked at me, expression numb, and wiped at her face. She continued darkly, "My father turned abusive. Blaming us for my mother leaving, hitting me, yelling, throwing things. I never let him touch Rafie. He was too young, too sweet. I tried taking him to work, but my boss got suspicious. He was young, but he knew. He was smart enough to stay away from him, smart enough to stay in his room, even when things started going 'boom' and 'crash', even when I started screaming, crying, telling my father that, 'It's okay, Mum is coming back, she promised, she's coming back'." She takes a shuttering breath, and I'm too stunned to comfort her.

"He believed it, most days. Things never got too violent. I told it to Raf, too, and he also bought my lies." She turned away, sighing, "Sometimes, I even started to believe my own fantasies."

"Sam..." I muttered weakly, my voice breaking like my heart was. "Stop..."

"I can't," She murmurs weakly, so quiet I can hardly hear it, "I can't. I can't because it's my fault because I need to tell someone... I need to tell you." She looks me in the eyes, and I look back at her sorrowfully as she proceeds. "Then... then one day I came home late. I had to stay behind at school because the teachers were becoming concerned about my 'work ethic'. Stupid. I shouldn't have. I should've left. Then I had to work overtime to earn back the money I had lost while away, so it was well past nine o'clock by the time I got home." She sighs, shaking her head. "The house was quiet. I should have thought something was up. Sure, my father leaves the house often enough, but he was never out late, especially when he was drunk. I went up to check on Rafie, like I always do and-" Samantha stutters for the first time since she began, and swallows before saying, "And... there he was. Bloody, bruised, beaten...

"I thought- I thought he was dead." She covers her face, and her shoulders shake slightly. "I was in shock, I was in pain... I left. I ran to my car and started driving. Only now do I realize I was going to try to find my mother. It was impossible, but there was nothing else left for me. Before I knew it, I was sobbing, but I couldn't stop. It was winter, and I hit a patch of ice before careening off the road.

"I was able to crawl out of the car onto the snow before I died..." She looks up at me, finally, and I see tears in her eyes. "I can never set foot into snow again. The winter garden would kill me, and cold water is just as painful."

"Sam-" I begin, moving closer, but she stops me.

"I'm not done." She looks at Raf, pain and sorrow clouding her features. "He wasn't dead" Her voice is barely above a whisper, but I hear it. "He wasn't dead, and I left him. I abandoned him with... with a monster. I should've checked, I should've done more. For the longest time, he didn't- he couldn't have known that I died. He must have thought... I was just like his mother. I abandoned him. He was four!" Her voice had been steadily rising, and soon she was nearly shouting through her tears. "And then, nine years later, he was killed. He was killed by my father, exactly as I thought he had been. Except I was nine years early." Her voice was deadly cool. She stood, walked over to the wall, and punched it.

Her eyes fell on me, and her voice was like fire when she next spoke. "I don't know who did this to my Rafie, but when I do, trust me... there will be no place in The Blue, Earth, or even Gehenna where they can hide from me. I lost my Rafie once, and I swear it will never happen again."