Serendipity (Jamilton)

Chapter Two

I stared at Mom in shock. “A… America? How? There- There is no way we can afford that.” She was probably bluffing. She had to be. There was no other explanation other than that. We had virtually no money where we were, so why would we have money in America? Unless Dad sent us something, but that was basically impossible. There was no way he would do something like that for us after the “courtesy” he showed all those years ago.

Mom only let out a soft breath. “I talked to an old friend. He’s willing to fly us out in exchange for us staying in one of his apartments. He gave us a really reasonable down payment for it, too. There was no way I could turn it down.” She paused for a long moment. “I was actually going to tell you yesterday but then there was the… the storm,” she said slowly as she fumbled for words.

I looked down at my hands. “Which old friend would this happen to be?” Mom had some good friends, but she also had some that were a little… questionable. Nah, that didn’t even begin to describe them. Some of her “friends” were just damn creepy.

“John Lavien.” There was a long silence after this as I stared at my mother and she looked down at her hands in shame.

John Lavien was her ex husband who had abused and tortured her in almost every way possible. I couldn’t believe that she would even think of contacting him. How could she? It was possibly the stupidest thing she could do. Who knew what she was getting herself into? I wasn’t worried about myself- I would take whatever abuse if it meant protecting mom- but I didn’t know how long I could keep that up. And I wouldn’t always be there. What would happen if he did something while I wasn’t there?

I flinched as I came back to reality, realizing that I had said all that out loud. The biggest indicators of that were that tears were falling down my mom’s face in a steady stream and the hospital had gone virtually silent, many doctors, nurses, and patients staring at us now.

I bit my lower lip and let out a sigh. “How long until I can get out of here?”

“They said not for a fe-ew days,” she replied, hiccuping softly in the middle.

I was not known for doing what people so when I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, Mom wasn’t surprised, though she did try to stop me. I shrugged her off, looking around for my shoes. Did I even have a pair of shoes on when I got here?

I finally looked down and noticed that my same old pair of grubby sneakers were there and swiftly began to tie them. In the background, I could hear the muffled protests of a nurse and my mom, telling me to lay back down, but as I said, I never did what anyone said before. I stood slowly, my body extremely sore.

My mom quickly made her way over to me and attempted to help me walk, but I just shook my head and she stepped to the side. Together we made our way out of the makeshift hospital.