Eclipse Child |✔|

|52|

Part IV

...we all have choices

and she finally gave herself one.

Turns out,

it was the only one she ever needed.

- Zachry K. Douglas

***

It was a sterol clean smell. Something my mind connected the place to even though I had never been there before.

I made the connections, but my mind still was disoriented. Dazed. I tried to move. That's when the pain hit.

"Soraya, don't move."

"We need to strap her down again."

"Put her under, she won't be able to handle this pain."

And then the screaming.

I don't remember screaming.

Leo told me later that I did. He didn't actually tell me...I just remember him whispering to mom one night, me overhearing him as they sat on the porch, "I sometimes can hear her screams...sometimes I can hear the noise she made when she woke up... That's when I wanted to be a doctor...So Soraya would never make a sound like that again..."

Ironic. One brother brought destruction and the other peace. Or maybe there was no irony. Just balance. Balance in all it's natural ways that such a darkness had to be balanced out by an equal amount of light.

Maybe.

I stared at the ceiling, crying. Wishing I wasn't crying. Wishing I wasn't. But I was.

His words still haunted my mind. Still sat within me, as Vincent's whispers came into my soul, branding it with each utterance.

I don't remember the next days. A blur of in and out. Of pain and then darkness. Those memories are vague. They're fuzzy and obscured.

Schulman told me later it was the medicine. The medicine made it that way. Made me think I saw what was never there. Made me hear what should not have been heard. Made me feel nothing.

But the medicine can only do so much.

Because there are some things, some handful of things, that I do remember.

Their whispers.

"Schulman...tell me the truth."

"Alpha...Her spine...There's damage to the nerves, I did as much as I could, and straightened it as much as was allowed during surgery...she'll need more though...and her first shift...I don't think...It's hard to say but..."

"Just tell me the truth. I don't care how bad it is."

"...She may never shift. And even if she did somehow...the pain would be too much."

Then silence.

"Is the Luna okay?"

"She's at the packhouse. She's...painting. This only brings bad memories for her, she doesn't need to be here."

I didn't hear that last sentence. My mind was too focused on the first. The first few details.

Never be able to shift. Never be able to shift.