The ward was too quiet. Margherita walked in first, professional poise cloaking the tension in her shoulders. Behind her followed another woman, softer in presence, perhaps even warm, but with eyes that missed nothing. Lili didn’t move from the bed when they entered, though her posture stiffened just slightly. Her gaze tracked Margherita immediately. Then narrowed on the second woman.
“This is Nurse Eliane,” Margherita said gently, stopping by the bedside. “She’s here to help me check your wounds. Just a quick look, and we’ll be gone.”
Lili didn’t answer, watched them through two dimmed coals beneath the mess of her hair.
Eliane gave a small, careful smile. She looked nothing like the sterile white walls or the calm of other staff—she wore earth tones, soft shoes, and a necklace with a tiny brass sun that caught the light as she moved.
“I’m just here to assist,” Eliane said steady. “If that’s alright with you, Lili.”
Margherita glanced at Lili’s hands first, where the cuts had been cleaned and bandaged just hours before. She reached gently for her wrist, gauging the pulse, the warmth of the skin.
“Any dizziness?” she asked.
Lili shook her head barely once.
Margherita slowly lowered the blanket from Lili’s side. The gunshot wound looked clean, but the bruises across her ribs still bloomed in dark colors.
Margherita pressed two fingers lightly against the side of Lili’s torso.
“Still tender?”
Lili’s flinch was her answer.
“Ribs are healing, but slowly,” Margherita murmured. “You’ve also been refusing most of the pain meds.”
“I need to feel it,” Lili said quietly.
Eliane crouched beside the bed now. “Sometimes pain is a reminder,” she said, her tone gentle. “Other times, it’s a punishment.”
Lili glanced at her sharply, eyes narrowing, suspicious. “You said you’re a nurse.”
“I am,” Eliane said with a small nod. “But I also speak with people… people who’ve been through hard things. I help them carry it sometimes.”
Lili’s lips twitched into something brittle. “You’re a shrink.”
“I prefer ‘listener,’” Eliane replied. “But yes.”
Silence again. Lili looked away, toward the window this time. Her fingers curled slightly almost imperceptibly into the sheets.
“I’m not crazy,” she muttered. “You don’t need to evaluate me.”
“We’re not here to evaluate you,” Eliane said softly. “We’re here to make sure you don’t drown in what’s left behind.”
Margherita placed the blanket back over Lili’s side and stepped away. “Your body is trying to heal. Let us help your mind do the same.”
Lili tensed, jaw tightening like a trap set to spring. Her gaze slid away, chasing a crack in the wall as if it might open up and swallow her whole. “I don’t understand what you intend me to say,” she murmured. “Is this only because I tried to kill myself?”
Eliane didn’t flinch. She stayed where she was grounded and still. Lili’s lips parted again and this time her voice was sharper at the edges. “Trust me, it’s the best solution for everyone. Including myself.”
Margherita’s breath caught.
Eliane talked first. “That’s not a truth, Lili. That’s despair talking. It tells you that your absence would be a gift.” She tilted her head slightly. “But your absence would be a wound that won’t heal for the people who care.”
Lili let out a dry humorless chuckle. “I’m starting to wonder just how many professions you actually have,” she said, voice raspy but laced with a thin thread of sarcasm. “That’s the third one I’ve heard now. You talk more like a philosopher than a psychologist.”
Eliane’s lips curved into a small, patient smile. “Maybe both. Maybe neither,” she replied softly. “Sometimes survival teaches you more than any degree ever could.”
Margherita glanced between them, the faintest shimmer of relief passing through her eyes. There was a flicker of something else than despair in the air even if barely visible.
“You’re deflecting,” Eliane added gently. “That’s okay. Humor’s a shield. Use it as long as you need to. But we’ll still be here when you’re ready to lower it.”
“I’m not deflecting,” Lili said sharply. Her hand lifted trembling as she gestured to herself—her bandaged ribs, the healing wound at her side, the faint, angry red marks still coiled around her neck. “I just know the same people who did this to me… they’re not done. Not even close.”
Her gaze burned now with the knowledge that carves itself into the marrow. “They’ll come for me. One way or another. That’s how they work. And whatever time I have left before that happens… it won’t be roses. It’ll be silence and blood. Because they’ll make sure I don’t talk no matter the method.”
Eliane didn’t flinch. She didn’t deny it. “Then let’s make them fail.”
Lili blinked at her, caught off guard.
“You don’t have to shout,” Eliane continued, her voice soft, but edged. “You don’t even have to speak their names. But every breath you take is one they didn’t take from you. And you’re still here. That’s not weakness, Lili.”
Margherita adjusted the blanket once more. “Let us help you survive long enough to make them regret every scar they left.”
Lili turned her head to the side, her gaze distant and unfocused as if she were watching ghosts dance on the ceiling tiles. Her lips barely moved into the sound:
“I’m done fighting…” she whispered, the tremble in her voice from exhaustion. “I fought for years. I bled for people who turned me into this. I don’t even know who I am… just what they made me.” Her voice cracked at the end, almost inaudible. “Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t have to fight like you used to. Let us hold the line until you remember how to breathe again.” Eliane added.
Lili closed her eyes. No answer passed her lips, but a single tear slipped free. Yet beneath that silence, deeper than grief, coiled a truth she couldn’t speak aloud. For someone like her, there was no future untouched by the past.
Silence lingered soft but suffocating. Margherita’s voice was the second which broke it: “Your parents are here.”
Lili’s eyes flew open. And in an instant, the quiet unravelled. She didn’t move but panic flared through her merciless, seizing her breath before it could settle.
She had believed that she had killed her father, she’d imagined his last breath more times than she dared admit, and each time, it hollowed her further.
The weight of that truth crushed her into guilt.
She knew they would judge her. Of course they would. She was the stain on their legacy. A daughter who disappeared and returned in blood.
Lili’s hands twisted in the blanket. She turned her face away. She wasn’t ready. And a part of her knew she never would be.
“Eliane,” Margherita murmured noticing the sudden shift—Lili’s breath had gone shallow, her eyes no longer seeing the room, but something far behind it.
Eliane leaned closer. “Lili?”
But the girl didn’t lift her gaze.
“Please,” Lili whispered, the word fraying at the edges. “Just… leave me alone. I don’t want to talk anymore,” she added, barely audible.
Eliane didn’t answer immediately. She only watched her, eyes soft with knowing, with the ache of someone who’s heard that same tone too many times in places too dark to name. She nodded once, slow and full of understanding.
“All right,” she said gently and stood careful not to disturb the silence Lili wrapped around herself. Margherita gave Lili one last glance, adjusting the corner of the blanket by instinct more than need.
Then they turned toward the door.
“We’ll be close,” Eliane added before stepping out. The door clicked shut behind them, and Lili was alone again.
Outside the ward, the corridor pulsed with silence. Astonia sat rigidly on the bench, fingers laced so tightly her knuckles were pale. Colin remained standing, though he leaned against the wall with a weariness that wasn’t just physical. The door finally opened, and both parents tensed as if pulled by invisible force.
Eliane stepped out first and Margherita followed close behind.
“She’s awake,” Margherita said. “But we had to step out. She asked to be alone.”
“Did she say anything about us?” Astonia asked in a trembling voice.
“No,” Eliane replied, measured. “But… she reacted.”
Astonia’s brow furrowed. “Reacted how?”
“When your names were mentioned,” Margherita answered, “something in her cracked. Just for a second. Not words. Just—fear.”
Colin’s eyes darkened with guilt. “She’s afraid of us?”
“She’s afraid of what seeing you might confirm,” Eliane said. “And fear doesn’t always speak plainly. But you could feel it. She tensed, her eyes widened. There was a panic in her breathing.”
“She thinks we came to punish her,” Astonia whispered, more to herself than anyone.
“She’s convinced she deserves it,” Eliane said. “Even if she didn’t say it out loud. Her mind’s building a courtroom around her, and she’s already handed herself the verdict.”
Colin flinched. Astonia stepped closer to Margherita. “Please, tell us what we can do.”
“Wait,” Margherita answered. “She’s not ready. If you walk in there now, you’ll only confirm every fear that’s eating her alive. That she’s a monster, that her family fears her, that she can’t ever go back.”
“She is our child,” Colin said. “No matter what happened—”
“Then prove it,” Eliane interrupted softly but firmly. “Prove it by giving her time and patience. She’s not the girl you lost. She’s the woman who survived.”
A beat of silence.
“Let her want to see you,” Margherita added. “Let her ask first. And when she does… be ready not to judge what you find.”
Astonia’s voice cracked. “What if she never does?”
Eliane didn’t answer at first. Then, with a breath:
“Then we find another way.”
And with that the two women led them further down the corridor, away from the door their daughter had retreated behind. Away, but not too far. Just enough for the walls to breathe.
Just enough to leave space for the fragile hope that healing might still find its way back in…
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