SHATTERED BY CHOICE

The Room Nobody Saved a Seat For

Evelyn's POV

Mercy General Hospital smelled the same as every hospital I had ever been in. Cold air and something clean that doesn't quite cover something sad underneath.

I found the waiting area on the second floor, where the nurse at the front desk had pointed me. My older brother Francis was already there, standing against the wall with his arms crossed. He did not look up when I walked in.

My older sister Mirabel was seated, her hands wrapped around a paper cup she wasn't drinking from. She looked up when she saw me. Her face did not open.

"How is she?" I asked, stopping in front of them.

"They took her into the theatre for surgery twenty minutes ago," Francis said. Still not looking at me. "The car hit her on the passenger side and the driver is nowhere to be found."

"Which car was she in?"

"She was coming from the market." Mirabel's voice was flat. "She was on her own."

I sat on a seat two chairs away from my sister. Not next to her. There was a version of my life where I could sit close to my siblings and it would feel natural. That version had stopped existing a long time ago.

The three of us waited in silence.

I thought about the envelope still sitting on my table at home. I thought about Luca's strawberry shampoo. I thought about anything except the fact that my mother was on an operating table and neither of my siblings had acknowledged me beyond the bare minimum.

Francis finally looked at me. "You took your time getting here."

"I came as fast as I could."

"It's been forty minutes since Rita called you."

"I was on the other side of the city, Francis."

He hissed and made a sound that said he did not believe me or did not care. Mirabel turned the paper cup in her hands.

"Does Samuel know?" I asked. Samuel was Mirabel's husband.

"He's coming," Mirabel said.

I nodded.

More silence.

"Mom asked for you, by the way," Francis said, and for just a second the cold in his voice cracked. "Before they took her in. She was asking where you were."

That cracked something in me that I was not ready for.

"She asked for me?"

"Don't look so surprised." He finally sat down, two seats on the other side of Mirabel. "She's still your mother."

I pressed my back into the hard plastic chair and stared at the ceiling. Eight years of silence between us and she still asked for me. I didn't know whether to feel warm or guilty. Probably both.

After about an hour, a nurse came out and told us the surgery was going well. Another hour. Francis went to get food that none of us ate. Mirabel called her husband twice.

I sat and watched the clock on the wall.

When the surgeon finally walked out, I stood up before I even realized I had moved. He looked at all three of us and said it was a success. The impact had broken two ribs and fractured her left wrist, but she was stable. She would need rest and care for several weeks.

Mirabel burst into tears. Francis put an arm around her shoulder.

I stood a little apart from them, the way I had always stood, and breathed out the fear I had been holding the entire time.

"Can we see her?" I asked the surgeon.

"One at a time. She's tired and needs some rest right now."

"Mirabel should go first," I said.

My sister looked at me, surprised. "You don't want to go?"

"You haven't seen her in longer than I have…go."

Mirabel wiped her face and followed the nurse. Francis watched her go, then turned back to me with an expression I couldn't read.

"That was decent of you," he said, as if decency from me was not something he expected.

"She's my mother too. I care about her," I replied. "I want her to be okay."

He nodded slowly. We stood in our separate corners of the room, two strangers who shared blood.

Ten minutes later, a commotion rose near the elevator at the end of the hall. A voice I had not heard in eight years cut through the hospital noise like glass.

"Where is she? Which room? Nobody answers their phone in this family!"

Francis went still beside me.

I turned slowly.

She came around the corner pulling a rolling suitcase, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, cheeks flushed from rushing. She looked exactly like she had eight years ago, just older, sharper, and more sure of herself.

It was Sylvia.

She saw Francis first and ran to hug him. Then she saw me.

Every word I had ever rehearsed for this moment dissolved. She stared at me, and her face did something complicated that settled into something cold.

"Evelyn," she said. One word that sounds like a door shutting.

Before I could answer, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out on instinct.

It was a message from an unknown number, and the four words on the screen made all the air leave my lungs.

"I know what you did.”