The Day My Family Left Me to Die novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Chair by Bay Four
Millicent crawls into the ER where her family waits with Blythe and is left to bleed; she dies after telling an intern where the cabin is, then wakes in a cleaner's body to hear her mother say her name.
My mother told the triage nurse I was a stranger.
She said it without looking up from my sister's wrist.
I was standing three feet from her, holding the back of a waiting-room chair so I wouldn't fall.
Someone had carried me to the ambulance doors and set me down on the concrete.
His hand was split across the knuckles, and he said "I'm sorry" twice before he ran.
I walked in on my own after that, one hand on the wall, leaving a line on the paint.
This was the hospital where my mother runs the emergency room.
I knew every floor tile in it.
Under the lights, my adopted sister, Blythe, sat wrapped in a blanket with a paper cup of tea.
My fiance knelt at her feet.
My brother stood over both of them with his radio on his belt.
Everyone I loved was in one place, and they were all facing the wrong person.
"Mom," I said.
It came out as a scrape.
One of my eyes had swollen shut, and they had cut off most of my hair.
"Mom, it's me. It's Millicent."
My mother's hands stopped on Blythe's wrist for a second.
Then my brother, Nolan, stepped in front of her and put his palm flat against my chest.
"Ma'am, sit down."
"Nolan, look at me."
"They told us this would happen," he said, low and fast, the way he talks on the phone with men who have hostages. "They said they'd send someone in her name. Don't engage."
"The dog," I said. "Dad buried him under the pear tree. You cried so hard you threw up."
Nolan's jaw moved.
"They have her phone," he said. "They have everything. That's how it's done."
I looked past him at Chad.
My fiance, Chad, looked at my face once, and then he looked at Blythe.
"Oh, don't," Blythe said softly. "She's hurt, Nolan. Look at her."
She stood up with the blanket around her shoulders and took my hand in both of hers.
Her hands were warm.
Her hair was clean and smelled of lemon soap, the little bottles you get in a hotel bathroom.
I looked down at her wrists.
There were two neat red bands, one on each, and not another mark on her anywhere.
I had hung from mine for three days.
"Come sit," Blythe said. "You can have my tea."
She said it so kindly that for one breath I wanted to believe her.
Then she leaned in to tuck the blanket around me, and her mouth stopped beside my ear.
"Don't make this harder on Mom," she whispered.
I pulled my hand away.
My knees went, and I sat down hard on the blue chairs.
A young intern with red hair and a coffee stain on her scrubs dropped beside me and pressed both hands over the wound under my ribs.
"This is arterial," she said over her shoulder. "Dr. Penfield, she needs a bay now."
"Bay four is for my daughter," my mother said. "Put this one behind her."
"She's bleeding out."
"I decide triage in this department."
My mother still had not looked at my face.
She looked at everything else, at the blood on the floor, at Nolan, at Blythe's tea.
The intern's name tag said HEIDI.
"What's your name?" she said to me, and I could tell she meant the real one.
"Millicent Penfield."
"Okay," Heidi said. "Okay. I'm listening."
My mouth was filling, and I spent what I had left on facts.
"Quarry Road. Green door. Two chairs."
"Two chairs," she repeated.
"She walked out the front door the first night. Smell her hair. Hotel."
Heidi's eyes went to Blythe.
She did not say anything, and she did not take her hands off me.
The lights above the chairs went white, and then they went small.
I heard Chad say, "Blythe, sit down, you're shaking."
I heard Nolan ask someone to move the crowd back.
I heard my mother say, "Where is the security guard? I want her out of the waiting room."
No one said my name.
I was cold from the feet up.
Heidi's voice was near my face, still counting something, and I decided I was done asking them to look at me.
If there was anything after this, I would spend it on them.
Then there was nothing for a while.
I woke on my back on a gurney with a thin blanket over me.
My hands were smaller than mine.
A badge hung on a clip at my chest, and the print on it said HATTIE LANG, ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES.
The curtain across the aisle was open.
Beyond it, under a white sheet, lay a body with my hacked hair.
My mother stood beside it with her sleeve pressed to the dead face.
She was wiping the blood off, slowly, the way she used to wipe jam off my chin.
Her hand stopped.
"Millicent?" she said.
I opened my mouth to answer her, and nothing came out.
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