Recover My Heart

Comfort

I'd spent my whole life being told I was a whore, that I was worthless, that I was disposable. For once, I wasn't going to listen to her. That woman had ruined my childhood, and I wasn't going to allow her to taint this part of my life.

I'd spent too much of my life worrying about what other people thought about me, and I wasn't going to stand for it any longer. It only mattered what I thought about myself, and right now, I wanted to let Luke come inside.

So I did.

And I let him walk around my empty condo. I let him have some of the lasagna. When he suggested I get some sleep, I let him stay with me, not wanting to be all alone, as I'd been for so long.

He slept a few feet away, a respectable distance. It bugged me. I wanted to move closer, but I was too shy. Not to mention I couldn't handle the rejection, or the awkwardness it might lead to, considering he was my patient.

Instead I fell asleep, fitfully.

My mother visited me in my sleep. It seemed as soon as I decided to leave her and the poison she spoke behind, she had to start invading my dreams. I watched as she lifted a candle up and poured the hot wax onto my bare leg.

It burned, but only for a minute as the wax solidified on my skin. It would leave a red mark for the night, and be gone in the morning. It was a temporary pain, unlike kneeling on the gravel outside, or on the rice in the kitchen. Those pains stayed for a few days, at best.

She poured the wax again, this time on my collarbone. I was tied down to a crate. The plastic dug into my flesh, and because it was broken, some parts stuck out to poke me. I had to use my legs to keep myself from falling through the center, which would have only been worse.

My mother was saying something that I couldn't hear. She spoke venomously. I tried my hardest to keep her tuned out. She didn't like that. My mother left, and when she returned she had a thin twig in her hand.

I was confused until she began to strike me with the small piece of wood. The bite of the wood raised my skin up in welts, and I cried out for her to stop. But she didn't finish until the twig finally snapped. Then she left me, weeping and sore. Too exhausted to attempt to get out of my bonds, but knowing if I didn't, she'd only come back for more.

"Sang, sweetie, come on, wake up... you're dreaming.. Hey there sweet pea. Are you okay?"

I blinked a few times, only to find that I had been crying in my sleep. I hadn't dreamt of my mother in a few months, and her sudden recurrence made me want to vomit. I hesitated slightly, before shaking my head and bursting into sobs.

Luke's arms came around me, and he murmured soft words into my hair as I let it out. This was not the silent cry I had perfected. No, I didn't feel like I had to do that around Luke. I might not know him very well, but I did know that he was good people.

When I stopped crying so hard, and was just sniffling every once in awhile, Luke asked if I wanted to talk about it. I shook my head in reply.

"I'll be here when you want to, even if that takes centuries."

It took a while for me to calm down. When I did, I realized I was curled up to his chest and cuddled up in his lap. His arms were safely around my body, protecting me. My primal instinct, the one that had been beaten into me, urged me to clam up and apologize. To scoot from his lap and not touch him ever again.

But I shoved the instinct away and shut my eyes. My voice wobbled. "Thank you for being here Luke."

He kissed the top of my head in reply. My mother's words echoed in my head, calling me a slut. I pushed her away. I wasn't a slut. If anything, I was a saint. This was the most intimate human contact I'd had in my life.

Luke wasn't a stranger, I decided. He was a nice boy who teased his brother and loved to cook. He was playful, he liked to joke a lot, and he held open doors for strangers. He checked in on the person who was supposed to be caring for him, and he didn't judge people. He was patient, he was kind.

I might not know the little things, but it didn't mean I wasn't willing to find out.

The professional side of me tried to scold me. I shouldn't be letting my patient hold me as I cried. But I didn't care. I'd throw away those last four credits, the last three years of my schooling, if it meant finding a family like Kota and the others seemed to have found in each other.

Part of me wished they would accept me into theirs, but even if they didn't, I vowed to find my family. Not the one I'd been birthed into. Just by watching Luke, North, and Dakota interact, I knew what a real family looked like, and my birth family wasn't it.

I'd build my own family, of people I cared about, and who cared about me.

My only problem was I was starting to care for all of the boys. Even the ones who hadn't even woken, or arrived. They all, through either their charts or how the three I'd officially met talked about them, had touched my heart in some way. I wasn't sure how put together I would be if in the end, they walked away like I was just a doctor who helped them feel better.

Like they should.

I pressed closer to Luke.

Deciding to live in the moment and worry about the future later, was arguably the easiest decision I'd made to date.