CHAP 1 — Don’t Open Your Eyes
Darkness was not sleep.
Sleep has edges. Sleep lets you rise toward sound, light, memory.
This was different.
For twelve days, I existed somewhere beneath my own body, trapped under layers of pain, medication, and silence. Sometimes I heard voices as if they were coming through walls. Sometimes I smelled antiseptic. Sometimes I felt a hand on mine and tried to climb toward it.
Then Leo’s voice cut through.
“Mom… don’t open your eyes. Dad is waiting for you to die.”
I knew that voice.
I had heard it whisper from his bedroom during thunderstorms. I had heard it shout from soccer fields. I had heard it ask, at five years old, whether people could still love you after they left.
Now my son sounded like a child who had learned fear too early.
“Please,” he whispered. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
I gathered everything left in me.
My hand did not move.
Leo made a small broken sound and pressed his forehead against my sheet.
“I know you’re in there.”
The monitor beeped steadily beside me. An IV line tugged faintly at my arm. My throat felt scraped raw. My body belonged to machines and strangers.
Then the door opened.
Leo’s hand vanished from mine.
Marcus entered the room.
Even without opening my eyes, I knew the rhythm of his steps. Confident. Measured. Expensive. My husband had always walked like the world had been built to receive him.
“I already told you,” Marcus said, annoyed. “Your mother can’t hear you.”
Leo’s voice shrank. “I just wanted to see her.”
“You’re upsetting yourself.”
Victoria’s heels clicked behind him.
My sister.
The sister I had defended when we were kids. The sister I had paid rent for twice. The sister who cried in the waiting room and told everyone she would give her life to save mine.
“Let him say goodbye,” Victoria said softly. “The notary will be here soon.”
Goodbye.
Not visit.
Not prayer.
Goodbye.
Marcus sighed. “The specialist was clear. There’s no hope. I’m not burning through a fortune to keep an empty shell breathing.”
Empty shell.
Rage moved through me before movement did.
I lay still beneath the white sheet, listening to my husband discuss my life like an invoice.
Then Leo said the sentence that changed the air.
“My mom told me to call Ms. Lawson.”
Silence dropped over the room.
May you like
Marcus’s voice lowered.
“What lawyer, Leo?”
