Forever August ✔️

chapter twenty-three

"your lips, my lips. apocalypse."
- cigarettes after sex
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IT WASN'T GRAND.

That was Aurora's first thought when she heard about her accident. There was nothing extraordinary about falling down a staircase, breaking one rib, one wrist, spraining an ankle and having a concussion.

This was not a story she could have pride in when retelling. The bruises and the bumps mapped onto her body where not riddled into awe, but rather embarrassment. Instead, she wished the purple and the green that stood out against her brown skin would disappear, to hide the traces of a silly misstep.

She was only glad that she didn't die. Because dying from something so ordinary was not good enough for her.

Aurora's mom walked into her bedroom, long black hair flowing behind, arms moving wildly as she spoke. The green emeralds hanging off her ears caught the sunlight, reflecting off the ceiling.

"You heard that, hun?" she asked. Aurora's head snapped back to her mother, eyes focusing.

"What?" She sat up in bed, wincing at the pain. Over the past week, her bedroom had turned into what resembled a hospital room. After her parents convinced the doctors to move Aurora's care to home, with a nurse watching her every move, her room no longer felt like hers.

Her mother sighed. She sat on the edge of the bed, sunken brown eyes watching her daughter carefully. "Your father and I are going to pick up your test results," she said slowly, brushing the hair off Aurora's face.

"They're not going to find anything, Mom."

Aurora's pain had long passed the physical limits. In seven days, her parents had dragged her to three hospitals in three different states. She had been poked and prodded. Stripped and scanned. Each doctor looking for something wrong with her so it could be fixed, and she would be saved.

She wondered when her life had started to feel like it belonged to someone else. This summer was supposed to be hers, one month she could control and bend to her own will. Now, even that had slipped away. Now, she really felt like she was dying. She cursed Thomas out in her head for telling her parents about her looming death. Now they were hellbent on fixing her— on saving her. All Aurora could do was simply lay back and watch as August slipped away, the end of the month speeding towards her, inching closer every day.

It was August eighteenth today. And she hadn't spoken to Gus since that day in the hospital a week ago, when he told her loved her and all she gave him was silence.

"Your nurse is running a little late," her mom said, but Aurora's eyes were locked on her phone, waiting. Hoping. "Thomas is going in to work late so he can watch you until she gets here. Sound good?" Aurora nodded, managing a small smile as her mom kissed her forehead.

"Mom?" Aurora asked just as her mother's hand grabbed the doorknob. She turned around, eyebrows raised. "Can I go outside today?"

Her mother's face fell, the answer written clearly into the worry lines. "We talked about this, baby. Not until August is over," she said.

Aurora nodded. "Right." Her mother blew her a kiss before closing the door behind her.

She laid perfectly still as she listened to the sound of her mother's heels walk down all fifteen steps. Then her parents talking in the foyer, until the satisfying sound of the door closing and the sound of tires rolling over gravel, then driving away.

Aurora sucked in a sharp breath and did what she hadn't done in a week: she stood up. Her ribs ached and her ankle felt like it was on fire as she grasped the crutches firmly to her side. With one wrist in a brace and an ankle wrapped inside a cast, she managed to wobble to her dresser, put on clean clothes, and make it to the hallway where Thomas stood, blocking her way to the stairs.