The Last 384 Hours

4

Song: Stargirl Interlude by Lana Del Rey and The Weekend

~

The previous evening, my feet had carried me back to the ward, and I'd fallen asleep on my cot. My father hadn't left when I'd come back. He'd succumbed to slumber on the armchair near my cot, and his snores had given me slight comfort, and eventually, I'd let sleep take me to a vast space of nothingness.

Chubby, little fingers were skating down my arm, and I was sucked back into consciousness. The bright light above me blinded me, and for a short while the objects in the room were nothing but shifting, indistinct figures.

A pair of large, round green eyes were blinking at me, and a rosey cheek beneath one of them was squashed up by a tiny, chubby hand. Serena leered at my flesh with such intensity, it seemed to me that she was trying to get my eyelids to flutter open.

"Mom, can Ro hear us when we speak to her?" Serena asked, and for a brief second, her eyes shifted over my shoulder.

Of course Mother had come, and she'd brought Serena along with her as an excuse to not pour her heart out. Unlike Dad, Mother looked perfectly fine. Not like her firstborn almost died a day ago—or probably was dead, but no one could tell.

On the armchair, Mother remained seated, and her eyes raked my body broodingly. "She's not dead now, is she?"

"No. Dad said that Ro is in a deep sleep—like Aurora."

The flat expression on Mother's face wasn't friendly at all, but Serena still stared expectantly at her, her big eyes forcing a response out of her mouth. Eventually, Mother sighed. "Serena, this is real life, okay? Maybe if we were in a different world, Rose would indeed be in a deep sleep—the Sleeping Beauty kind, but here it's not like that."

"What happened to Rose then? Didn't an evil queen cast and evil spell upon her?" Serena was sitting up straight now, and her eyes were the widest they could ever be.

Serena had always been inquisitive. Often too inquisitive for my liking. But she was sweet and Mother was being a smellfungus—as per usual.

"Serena, please," Mother raised her voice a little, "just, don't do this now, okay? I'll explain everything to you when we get home."

"But I want to stay with Ro," Serena whined, and her cheeks were becoming red and splotchy all over.

"Serena! I said not now," Mother hissed.

I was hit by a wave of anger and the pain in my stomach was a fist. Life had been bearable when Mother was away for work, but now that she'd come back, I couldn't see myself coping. I hoped that she was only going to stay for a short while and then hit the road. She always did that anyway.

Serena pouted and crossed her arms defiantly, but after a short while, she lugged a little stool from the side of the bedside table and pulled a pink glittery sketchbook out of her backpack.

The pain in my stomach subsequently simmered down, and I felt the tiniest smile pulling at my cheeks. I'd gotten her that sketchbook last Christmas. And as I watched her sketch with her little, dark eyebrows knitted together, it occured to me that I would never spend another Christmas with her ever again, or shut my bedroom door in her face when she started asking me too many personal questions. I would never help her practice her ballet while trying to surpresss forbidden memories of my childhood from surfacing, or give her my share of Dad's failed experiments when they became too much for me.