Page 93 of Broken Breath
Like I’m a project to be managed. A broken toy to be passed around between professionals until I’m polished enough to be tolerated again.
“Stop right there,” Dane snaps. “I don’t give a shit what our father thinks is best. I will not let her be turned into a fucking zombie.”
“Dane…” The physio’s voice softens. “Have you seen your sister lately? She’s already there.”
My stomach clenches, but I don’t move.
He’s right.
I haven’t gotten out of bed, haven’t tried, haven’t done anything but lie here in this room like a ghost in training.The last of the surgeries was done months ago. The pain is still constant, but at least it’s not the blinding one anymore, the one that made me scream for painkillers.
Or death.
It’s been a year, a whole fucking year, and outside these walls, the world kept turning, while I was lying there, hoping just to not wake up one morning.
The World Cup is on again.
Even if I tried to shut myself off from the living, I know that today is the final race of the season. In Snowshoe, just down the damn mountain from here.
The door creaks open, and I shut my eyes, pretending I’m asleep, pretending once more that I’m dead.But curtain rings screech, then light stabs the darkness, and I flinch.
The window opens, too, and air rushes in.Then the television clicks on, with the volume on low, but not so low that I miss what’s showing.
“Hey, Speedbump.” Dane comes to sit at the edge of the bed. “Look at this.”
I don’t want to. I really don’t, but I do.
The broadcast shows the final standings. Isla Raine is in first place in the women’s category. First in the men’s is Isaac Raine.I’d love to punch them both right in their pretty faces, but I don’t even have the strength to lift my hand.
“They won,” Dane says quietly. “Took the overalls as well.”
Something sharp stirs inside me because I should be there. I was supposed to be there.But they took everything, and now I’m here. Useless. Forgotten.While they celebrate.Whilehewins.
“How does that make you feel?” Dane asks softly after a moment, his eyes glued to the screen.I don’t answer, making him shift beside me until his gaze finds mine. “Alaina. Doesn’t that make you angry?”
I move my eyes to the ceiling, to the five hundred and ninety-nine different patterns in the wood I know by heart, since I’ve counted them endlessly.
“Well, I’ll tell you how I feel. It makesmeangry. So fucking angry, I want to scream.” Dane’s breath catches in his throat. “They erased you. Me. All of it. And no one even blinked. They deserve karma for it. Not World Cup wins.”
I look at the screen again.
Isaac Raine smiles into the camera as he sprays champagne across the front row of fans. The crowd roars as he raises the bottle like he deserves it.
“Don’t you feel anything anymore?” Dane’s voice cracks. “Tell me you’re still in there, Al. Tell me I still have a sister.”
I want to.
God, I want to.
He’s been with me through everything. He sat by my bed for days while I screamed in pain and begged for silence. He held me through the nights when my body seized up in spasms, when I thought I’d never move again. He fought the doctors, he fought our father, he fought everyone.
And now here he is,beggingme to speak, to tell him how I feel.I owe him something, anything, really, but it’s just so hard to reach that part of myself again. My brain built walls around it to keep me from drowning, and now I don’t remember how to open the door.ButI try for him.
“I used to,” I whisper. “I used to be…”
Somebody.
Now I’m nothing.
