Her Legacy

XXXI. New Normal Again

"Maybe we needed to break a little, so we could put ourselves back together more beautifully than before." Leah Raeder, Cam Girl 

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Chapter XXXI – New Normal Again

I was released from hospital two weeks to the day of my kidnapping. I thought I had been ready to go home much earlier but Mom insisted on monitoring me for much longer. I had no idea how good our health insurance was, but it had to have been for such a stay. I also thought that some of the doctors and nurses were scared of her to go along with it.

Nobody could get between a mama bear and her cub.

Mom and Shea both helped me inside the house, which looked oddly comforting with our stuff still strewn across the place as though we had only been here yesterday. I was set up on the couch with a blanket, tea, some snacks, and the remote.

It was the first week of December. I had already missed a lot of school and it was only too easy to fall behind. I was going to try and get my mom to let me go back on Monday. We would see how that went.

She, much to her dismay, could no longer get any more time off of work. She had used all her sick leave and hadn't been working long enough to rack up much in the way of annual leave. So that Friday morning, she set off to work, with strict instructions for me to check in every hour with my temperature.

Oh yeah, I also had a thermometer handy.

I made Shea go to school as well. It was even more important for him to go as he was a senior. He promised to come by right after school.

And then, for the first time in what felt like forever, I was alone. The house was quiet. It felt odd to suddenly not hear the annoying beep of the heart monitor, or the nurses chatting away outside my room about hospital gossip.

I turned on the TV for some noise and began to flick through all the shows that had been recording over the last two weeks. I settled on my favourite soapy drama and clicked play.

I wasn't five minutes into the show before there was a knock at the door. I was surprised, but then not so, when my first instinct was fear. Anxiety began to rise inside me as I didn't know who was behind the door. It could be anyone. I was alone and vulnerable.

I stopped breathing as my heart sped up, my eyes flicking around the room for some sort of weapon to defend myself with. What if it was Lex? Oh my God, how the hell was I supposed to defend myself against him?

But my fears were quickly quashed seconds later. "Calm down, Saraphine," came the comforting, deep voice of my dad. "It's your dad."

I breathed a sigh of relief two times over. Not only was I safe, but my dad had come back to see me. I knew why he'd had to stay away. But I'd hated it.

Carefully I made my way off of the couch and waddled over to the door. I took a deep breath before turning the handle. I swung the door open to see him standing before me. Now that I was standing before him, I could appreciate his height and size. I really had inherited my height and build from Mom. He was probably about six and a half feet tall and he clearly looked after himself. He didn't look like most dads with their thinning hair and beer gut.

He looked down at me with the same look of parental adoration that mom did. I thought back to his words in that video and I knew how much he loved me. I had a dad. I had another parent. Two parents who loved me to pieces. Jesus Christ, this actually felt like the damn lottery.

"Daddy," I whimpered, before throwing my arms around him. The stretch pulled at my abdomen, but I didn't care. I was hugging my father for the first time in my life.