A/N- I'm going to try to limit the authors notes, so.. yeah. But, when it's Italic, it's either a text message, a dream, a phone call, or a night terror. Thanks. Enjoy...
Btw - Grady and Edaline are Sophie biological parents.
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"I'm so sorry Sophie" the doctor said while I stared at the wall covered with posters about health, and hygiene.
"I- I.."
"You're lucky we caught it this early. It could've been a lot worse if we caught it further down the road." He continued. I felt so.. helpless. What did I do wrong? Why did I deserve cancer? A single tear slipped down my cheek, and I quickly wiped it away.
Sophie, Foster... doesn't cry. Crying doesn't fix anything. It's just water that comes out of your eyes, and makes you temporarily blind.
"Um.." I muttered.
"When can I go home?" I missed my bed, and my comfy gray sheets, and Iggy..
"You can go home whenever James arrives." I tensed up at the mention of his name. I was exhausted. Hopefully I could at least get a decent nap in before I had to deal with all of his yelling. A clatter of a pill bottle with a few pills dragged me out of my thoughts and almost gave me a heart attack.
I mean.. there is no better place to have a heart attack than a hospital.
"I'm sorry Sophie. I'm just gathering some pills, and a few medicines to bring to your schools healing center." The doctor, Elwin, said with an apologetic look in his eyes. It wasn't his fault I had cancer. He didn't need to have an apologetic look in his eyes, or an empathetic look in his eyes either.
Just then, my phone went off beside me. Well, not really beside me. It was on the little table by the hospital bed. I reached for my phone, and opened messages. It was Dex. Oh wow.. this was gonna be good.
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Dex: Hey.. I heard you went to the hospital? I'm sorry if you're sleeping or something. You don't really have to read my message. But, I just wanted to know if you were okay. I don't need to know what happened.. YET. I do want to know what happened. But only if it okay with you..? I guess.. Idk what I'm doing right now. Pls text me back as soon as possible.
Soph: Sorry for not texting back ASAP.. ha.. I'm sorry you worried about me. I'll tell you about it tonight. Maybe..? If not, I'll tell you tomorrow at school.
Dex: You're going to school tomorrow?
Soph: I probably don't have much choice.. James will make me.
Dex: Soph..
Dex: You can't keep letting James push you around. Just because he's your uncle, doesn't mean he gets to force you to go to school if you don't feel good.
Soph: James does..
Soph: I'm glad he's not your uncle. I do feel bad that he lost his brother..... grief changes people. James used to be fun, and cool.. BUT he decided to become a total asshole. So.. sucks for me! It was either him, you guys, or foster care. LITERALLY! And James reached out first I guess.
Dex: Well, I'm glad to see your sense of humor has returned. I'm gonna let you get some rest. Sorry you ended up in the hospital. Love you cuz.
Soph: love you. Bye. And thanks.
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"I'm gonna take a nap before James gets here." I told Elwin, as I shut off my phone and put it back on the table beside the hospital bed.
"Okay" was all I heard, as I shut my eyes and slowly started to fall asleep.
"It's cold outside today.." I shivered as I took a sip of my hot chocolate, and looked at Jolie who was petting the family dog, Iggy.
"It's also.." mom started.
"A GREAT DAY FOR SLEDDING!! What do you girls think?" My mom, Edaline yelled. Sledding was probably our family's favorite part of winter.
"I like the idea." My dad, Grady said chugging his hot chocolate.
"Slow down, or your going to choke" mom laughed.
"What?! I just finished my hot chocolate.. and we drank all of the rest. Looks like we have to do a hot chocolate run some time this week." Dad said, and Amy started making weirs faces at him, making him laugh. I drank the last little bit of hot chocolate I had in my cup, savoring it remembering the fact that my dad said we were out now.
"I'll race you to get the snow stuff. You get the gear, I'll get the sleds!" I yelled to my dad, and I started running towards the garage.
"Don't run so fast! You might get hurt Sophie!" My mom screamed. And as if right on cue, I slipped on the wooden tile. My socks sure didn't help. I hit my butt on the ground when I fell, and I could already tell that that was going to be a bruise.
"I'm fine! Nothing happened!" I laughed, while getting up and rubbing my butt. Ouch. Anyway... I was losing time. My dad probably had his and Amy's snow stuff already at least. I opened the garage door and tried to remember where we kept our sleds. I think we kept them by the Christmas tree?
Yesss. I found them. We had three long sleds. One for me and Jolie, one for mom and Amy, and one for dad. He got competitive. Sometimes we switched it up. But that was the normal sledding pairs. Jolie and I have been 5 year champions, and I did not intend to change that.
I grabbed the sleds and ran into the living room, where Jolie, Amy, and mom were all sitting. Yes!! I beat dad!
"I did it!! I won!" I yelled, doing a little victory dance and putting a rhythm to the words "I did it, I did it. Mhm! I did it!" When I did a 360 turn I saw my dad walk in with everyone's snow gear.
"You look like you cleaned out the entire snow gear section at target or something!!" I laughed. To be fair.. he looked absolutely hilarious!!
"Thanks.." he said sarcastically.
"Everyone change into your snow gear so we can race!" He threw all of the snow gear on the ground and found his, as he headed to the bathroom. I went to get mine, and found it almost immediately, because Mine was the only one that looked semi-normal.
My mom insisted that all the girls have matching HOT PINK snow suits. So I was like.. um... no thank you. I just got a plain white snow suit, and Jolie, Amy, and my mother get to walk around looking like hubba bubba bubble gum or something. We all finished getting our gear on, grabbed our sleds and walked out the back door. We had like 20 acres in our backyard, and it was AWESOME.
We had a giant hill too. It was great for sledding. We didn't really have a gate around our so called "land" though, because mom thought that it was unfair that only we got to enjoy it. So sometimes people just came and played games with us in the backyard. We walked up the giant hill and set up our sleds, as we got situated. There were a few other people here, but... it was fine.
"You guys ready?" My dad said while he got on his sled, laughing like a maniac in his gray snow suit, and ski mask. He said it helped him "win". Clearly it wasn't working very well, since Jolie and I had been champions for 5 years.
"READY.." dad started, as we all got ready to slide down the steep hill.
"SET" he continued.
"GO!!!" He screamed.
Jolie and I were in shock or whiplash or something because dad like.. ZOOMED down the hill. All of a sudden, someone pushed us down the hill. And it was a strong push may I add. Jolie and I looked back, and saw a boy holding a snowboard.
"What the hell?!?" I yelled, furious. Well.. he did give us a strong enough push for us to kind of catch up to dad.
"You were losing!" He yelled back.
"Sometimes we all just need a little push." The blond said.
I awoke to Elwin scribbling down something on a piece of paper.
"What'cha writing?" I said, clearly startling him, because he slightly jumped, dropping his pen on the floor.
"Oh.. you're awake. Sorry, I was about to wake you up. James is waiting in the waiting room for you. I'm writing a note for you to give to him." He bent down to pick up his pen, and handed me the note.
I read the note and thanked him for everything that he did for me.
𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓇 𝒥𝒶𝓂𝑒𝓈,
𝐼'𝓂 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝓎, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝑒 𝒽𝒶𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝒹𝒾𝒶𝑔𝓃𝑜𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝐿𝑒𝓊𝓀𝑒𝓂𝒾𝒶, 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒸𝒽 𝒾𝓈 𝒶 𝓉𝓎𝓅𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝒸𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓇. 𝐼'𝓂 𝒿𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝓁𝑒𝓉𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝓎 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝓉𝒾𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝑒𝒶𝓈𝒾𝓁𝓎, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒𝓈 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝒹𝒾𝓏𝓏𝓎. 𝐼 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓂𝑒𝓈𝓈𝒶𝑔𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝒾𝓇𝑒𝒸𝓉𝓁𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑜𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓈𝓎𝓂𝓅𝓉𝑜𝓂𝓈. 𝒜𝑔𝒶𝒾𝓃, 𝐼'𝓂 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎 𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝓎. 𝐼 𝓈𝓊𝑔𝑔𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝑒 𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓈𝒾𝒷𝓁𝓎 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓎 𝒽𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝓈𝒸𝒽𝑜𝑜𝓁 𝓉𝑜𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑜𝓌? 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓉𝒶𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈.
𝒦𝒾𝓃𝒹 𝓇𝑒𝑔𝒶𝓇𝒹𝓈, 𝐸𝓁𝓌𝒾𝓃 𝐻𝑒𝓈𝓁𝑒𝑔𝑒
Elwin told me I was allowed to go, I just had to sign out at the front desk. So, I grabbed my phone, said goodbye to Elwin, and walked out towards the front desk. Something told me that James was not going to be happy about this.