Camille: There was silence for a long while. It seemed as though they were giving me time to process what I’d just heard. But I knew it was all in my head. They still thought I was unconscious and that was why they spilled everything. “I didn’t go after Rhea because I knew you fancied her. I already liked her. It’s not my fault she liked me back,” Daniel said. From how he sounded, I deduced he must have tried to explain that a hundred times before. “That’s bull crap and you know it,” she said offhandedly and returned to her position beside me. “It’s not,” Daniel cut in. “I accept it. I should have stepped back when you confessed how you felt about her to me and I didn’t. That makes me guilty, but you have to admit…” “Don’t say it,” she said threateningly. “She did not like you back, Lucia. That’s just the truth.” “If you hadn’t come into the picture, she would have realized her feelings for me sooner or later. How would she like me back when you of all people s
Camille: “Why are you such a hateful person?” Lucia snapped. “Can’t you see I’m worried about my best friend?” “I’m just saying a few hours ago you were all over your other ‘best friend’ Reggie and all of a sudden you’ve switched. You haven’t even spoken to him since and now you’re losing sleep over the same person you blamed for everything,” Daniel said. His voice was even but I could hear an edge to it. “So now you’re calling me two-faced? Let’s backtrack for a second. Aren’t you the one who’s seen her have an attack the most? Who’s the hypocrite here?” Lucia’s voice was too loud. My head was pounding. Everywhere was a blurry red, but I could make out their faces and voices. If this was my after life, then I was f*cked. I knew I wasn’t dead though. My headache was way too real. Maybe this was another hallucination just like all the others I’d been having. They’d all been terrifying. I was now on a hospital bed, but then Daniel and Lucia were arguing again. Was this
Daniel: “I already told your sister all of this just before I asked her to go home and get some sleep so it’s not so easy for me to report it all again but I’ll try. Cam…she was adopted.” I blinked, waiting for more. I already knew that. Did she really think that would be a blow to hear? When she realized I didn’t react to her news, she continued. “We didn’t adopt her as a baby though. She was adopted when she was seven and before then, she’d been in many foster homes and had ‘psychological issues’ caused by trauma. Her birth parents did a shit job of raising her. They were either always high or drunk and didn’t protect her enough from seeing things a girl her age wasn’t supposed to see. They fought all the time in front of her, said awful things to each other and it was almost always physical. When she was five years old, her mother was arrested as a suspect in her father’s murder and she was moved to a foster family who only wanted her for government money. Eventually, s
“No,” I murmured. I couldn’t even hear myself. “No!” Cams mother echoed my word but hers was loud enough to shake the entire ward. Lucia shivered even more as she moved from me to Cam who was on the bed and began to bawl into her back. The doctor looked at all three of us like we’d lost our minds and irritably asked one of the nurses to pull my sister away from Cam’s bedside. I knew she’d seen enough things in her day but how could she possibly be so insensitive. “Please stop with the theatrics and let me finish,” she said tiredly. “She’s my only child. If anything happens to her I’ll never forgive myself. She can’t d*e. I’ll d*e too!” Cam’s mother cried out. The impatient doctor pinched the bridge of her nose. “No one said anything about dying,” she said sharply. “We’ve tried everything to stitch the wound but she’s not regaining consciousness. I’ve done a test and figured out she lost too much blood. We need a blood donor fast, and she’ll be perfectly fine.”
Daniel: “You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened in my life,” Lucia cried. “I wish you were never born. I wish I was never born. I wish mom and dad died in a car crash before the ever got the chance to conceive. I hate you so much…” I wanted to say something, but no words came out. What could I even possibly say? I’d been wasting my time by responding all this time, choosing to believe instead that my sister was just a self-obsessed brat who thought the world revolved around her… I mean, she was, but that wasn’t the point. Above all else, she was my sister, my little sister. The one five year old me had wished was a boy I could play with. The one who got me disappointed with how much she cried and turned as red as a tomato for months after she was born. She was the one I’d grown up with, the one I’d had to protect and felt good doing it. The one who smiled at me with no teeth and made me feel like a great older brother. The one who ran to me when our parents were a
Camille: I could see the shock on her face at my words and it was funny to think of how it made sense for her to talk down on me and my parents but it was such a big deal for me to talk back. I couldn’t believe I’d worked under her for years and never saw this side of her. Scratch that. I had. But I just always knew how to navigate around her. I knew the right things to say not to offend her and how to stay out of her way when she was in one of those moods. I was the longest working employee she ever had for a reason, and now it seemed like that reason was what made her bold enough to talk down on me. Her face crinkled. It almost got me scared for a second, but what could she even do? There was a cop in here. “How dare you?” She asked, facing me completely because I assumed she couldn’t face my mother and was looking for the easy target. I hated the attention. I wished Daniel would just swoop in already but I could tell he wanted me to fight this battle on my own.