My mother doesn't recover the way I expected her to. For hours she lives breathlessly, hovering on the uncertain edge of deliria, crying softly words like again, and danger. It's all drowned in senselessness and influenced by fever. I lock the doors anyway, and hope for her healing.
When finally she has consumed enough liquid to sit up, I manage to pull her into a cool bath, where she lies for a long time in apparent peace. I watch for some time as the water ripples at her shoulders, and I brush hair back from her forehead as she rests.
"What is it," I ask her hesitantly at one point. "What do you have?"
I hope for an answer that is listed on the back of our generic painkiller's packet, but instead she simply looks at me with deepened eyes, a serious expression hovering over her face and says nothing.
I catch her looking at me in this way, skeptical and concerned, hauntingly suspicious for the entire day. I play it down to the fever, for her body is racked with heat.
"You're going to get better," I tell her during her fourth bath. "You're going to get better."
She squeezes my hand tightly, but her eyes are the same wild tone of a summer storm.
YOU ARE READING
When Wings Burn
Paranormale"Do you have a name?" "Harper. Just Harper." In a dangerously utilitarian world, Harper longs to experience the illegal. Whispers and hints of supernatural activity are everywhere, and yet one show of interest will mean immediate death. With no stor...
