Delicate

Chapter 66

Four broken ribs, a fractured ankle, dislocations in both arms and my eyes... those marked the most severe injuries to my body. I'd met nothing but darkness the first time I grew conscious again, darkness and so much pain that never simmered, no matter what they gave me.

None of the medication could ever quell the pain that rested deep inside of me, the most agonising of them all. 

The darkness was proving itself to be a permanent thing now. The open cuts and scrapes to my skin from the alleyway and the bruises I was sure were purple and green by now, felt like a numb throb in comparison to the rest.

I'd thought that when mother had seen me, heard my story given in the broken rasp, the only sound I could manage through my bruised windpipes, that she cared.
I thought that when she took my hand in hers so fiercely that the tears she'd let fall were for me, not just for show, not just for the nurses nearby, or any person who lingered to close by.

I thought that she was crying for me. 

"Your father is enraged and no matter what we've said to the Haynes, they refuse to listen to us," she'd carried on with another heavy sob, "because you couldn't just behave. All I've ever asked of you was to behave, and you couldn't even do that."

She'd continued to cry. Hard and long like I'd never heard her cry before, even when she'd done it for pretences. I'd realised then that that was the first time I'd ever heard my mother cry, truly, honestly cry, with tears sprung from emotions that weren't fraudulent or an act. 

It was the first time I'd heard it and it wasn't even for me, it was for the perfectly crafted life she felt slipping through her fingers at that moment.

And in my hospital bed, behind the many layers of gauze covering my eyes and through the neverending darkness I'd thought would be eternal... I cried with her.

Cried for the mother I wished I had and the fickle hope that I'd had her, even just for once. 

The hope that had drifted away the moment she'd spoken.

"There you all are!" Mother greets us with a gracious smile that was mostly directed towards Liam. "Dinner's to start soon but we couldn't find you boys anywhere. I was beginning to suspect you'd snuck off somewhere."

She said it so hopefully, as if she wished things had returned to the times when Liam and I would hide away from everyone else for a single moment between the two of us.
I once thought those fleeting moments so beautiful, precious, but now as I looked back on them, I couldn't understand how I'd ever thought them to be pure. 

Now they all just seemed so wrong, so very wrong...

"We were just catching up with one another," Mekhi answers without fault, quick to act as always.

"Yes, Liam mentioned that," Mother agrees looking from Mekhi to me, "I trust that you boys had fun."

"Oh, we had the best time," Damon confirms with the brightest smile he'd shared with anyone for the night, "right Liam?"

Liam nods his head in agreement, sparing a smile for Mekhi and Damon, "it was as if we only parted yesterday."

Mother's tense figure relaxes just a little at that as she stretches her smile to match Liam's, she seemed almost giddy at the news. "That's good to hear, I'm happy that you all had the opportunity to catch up. But it's time for dinner now."

"We were just on our way back," Liam says as he steps around mother, making the first move to put an end to this conversation.

"You boys go ahead," Mother says as she watches Mekhi move forward with Liam, Damon stays close to me as we try to do the same, "William, a word."