The first time they let me into her hospital room, I thought they’d made a mistake. The person in that bed was all swollen and bruised and bandaged, with tubes going in and out of every place a person could have tubes.
“It’s not her,” I said to my mother, who was draped in a chair in the corner of the room, the relief dripping from every pore of my body.
But no one answered me.
“Someone’s going to have to find this woman’s family,” I continued. “And explain the mix up.”
More silence.
My father walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulder. His eyes were red and his cheeks were all puffy.
“It’s her, baby,” he said. “Look.”
He pulled aside the blanket to show me her ankle. There was a tiny little sunflower tattoo. Sunflower--my dad’s nickname for her--because no matter what happened in life, Callie always held her face towards the sun. She’d gotten the tattoo on her eighteenth birthday, and I thought my mother was going to kick her out of the house forever. My dad acted all mad at Callie, but secretly, he loved it.
I traced the tattoo with my finger.
It was her.
Callie.
Swollen and broken in the hospital bed.
YOU ARE READING
Callie's Sister
Fiksi RemajaIt is devastating enough when Maddie gets the news that her sister Callie has been in a car accident and is in a persistent vegetative state, but her parents bringing Callie home and installing her in the living room spins Maddie out of control. Al...
