Page 172 of Sinful Desires
The window blinds were drawn too tightly, casting hard slats of light across the linoleum floor.
Bare feet hit the tile as I staggered toward the door.
My head screamed with every step.
I threw the door open.
Bright corridor. Walls too white. Air too clean. My breath ragged.
A nurse turned the corner, eyes wide. “Monsieur, attendez!”
But I wasn’t listening. My pulse was in my teeth.
And then I heard it.
Screaming.
Not mine.
Cries. Shattered sobs. The kind that made your spine curl.
I turned toward it, heart thudding. And that’s when I saw her.
She was on her knees on the hard, sterile floor, hands crushed against her face as if she could hold the scream in, but it still tore out of her, broken and raw. Doctors stood around her in a loose circle, one of them with their arms around her on the floor.
“No, p-please do s-something, please,” she begged, voice splintering on every word.
One of them looked down, his eyes hollow, clipboard held to his chest like a shield. “Je suis désolé, madame.”
I stepped closer, sweat pooling in my palms. Every part of me trembled. When I reached her, I turned my head toward the bed and my heart dropped.
Not fell.
Crashed. Dead on impact.
My father lay there, barely recognizable. Tubes covered his face, machines hissing beside him. His arms were tucked under a blanket, motionless.
His skin was pale. Grey. Lifeless. But it was the bandages that wrecked me.
Thick gauze wrapped around half his face, stained with deep, dried blood.
He was breathing. The machineskepthim breathing.
But nothing else moved.
Then came the words that split me open forever.
“Monsieur LeRoy a subi une lésion grave de la moelle épinière.Lors de la noyade, les vagues l’ont englouti, et c’est contre les rochers que sa nuque s’est brisée.Nous avons fait tout ce que nous pouvions…”
Severe spinal cord injury. The chances of him ever walking again were close to zero. Waking up one day? Less than ten percent.
He wasn’t dead. He was trapped.
Buried alive inside a body that no longer answered to him. And they dared to call that survival.
The guilt slammed into me. This was because of me.
All of it.
