Chapter 3 - The Echo of the Past
Two days later, I was transferred out of the ICU into a private room on the orthopedic surgical floor. My left leg was held together by three titanium pins and an external fixator frame that looked like a piece of industrial scaffolding. Every movement was an exercise in calculated pain, but for the first time in my life, the air around me felt clear.
At 2:00 PM, my phone rang on the bedside table. It was a number I didn't recognize, but the area code was local.
I answered it.
"Maya?"
The voice was thin, trembling, and instantly recognizable. My mother.
"You're not supposed to call me," I said, my hand tightening around the plastic casing of the phone. "There's a restraining order."
"Maya, please, listen to me!" Evelyn cried, her voice rising into that familiar, theatrical register she used whenever the world refused to bend to her script. "They have Tessa in a cell! A holding cell with real criminals! She hasn't eaten since yesterday! She’s twenty-three years old, Maya—she can't survive in a place like that!"
"She unplugged my heart monitor, Mom," I said coldly.
"She was panicked!" Evelyn shouted, dropping the motherly warmth instantly. "She was overwhelmed! You know how sensitive Tessa is! You were lying there acting like you were at death's door over a few broken bones, and she just wanted the noise to stop! She didn't know it was dangerous!"
"She reached behind the bed and yanked the main power lead," I said. "And what about the intake note, Mom? What about telling the ER doctor I was a drug addict so they’d leave me screaming on a gurney for three hours?"
A beat of absolute silence fell over the line.
When my mother spoke again, her voice had lost all its trembling grief. It had turned into the flat, calculating stone I knew better than anything else in the world.
"You've always been an ungrateful little monster," she said quietly. "After everything I sacrificed for you. After your father left us with nothing. I gave you a roof over your head. I fed you. And the second you get a little attention in a hospital bed, you turn on the people who raised you."
"You used my phone to transfer my insurance payout while I was unconscious," I replied, reading the numbers off the printout Eleanor had left on my table. "Eleven-forty-two PM. That's grand larceny, Mom."
"That money belongs to this family!" Evelyn snapped. "Tessa needs a down payment for her apartment! You're single, you have a steady accounting job, you have savings—you don't need a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement for an old car! Why do you always have to hoard everything for yourself?"
I listened to her. I listened to the utter, complete absence of guilt in her voice. To her, my body, my health, my savings, and my life were not mine; they were merely reserves to be drawn down whenever Tessa ran out of cash.
"The police have the timestamps, Mom," I said softly. "The bank has frozen the transfer. And if you call this number again, I will give this recording directly to Officer Hendricks as a violation of the protection order."
"Maya, don't you dare hanging up on—"
I ended the call.
My hands were trembling, but not with fear. With a strange, cold release. I pressed the options menu on my screen, blocked her number, blocked Tessa's number, and then dialed the direct line Eleanor Vance had given me for the legal team.
"Eleanor?" I said when she answered. "I have the phone call recording. They're trying to hide the financial records."
May you like
"I'm on my way up," Eleanor replied instantly. "And Maya? The prosecutor just called. The grand jury returned an indictment against your sister ten minutes ago. Felony reckless endangerment and third-degree assault."
I set the phone down and looked out the window. The sky over the city was gray, thick with incoming winter rain, but for the first time since the crash, I felt like I was breathing real air.
