My Family Saved Their Adopted Daughter First, Then I Died Before Their Eyes novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Episodes

Eli checks Birdie and wraps Nell's cut hand while Marian tells the police Nell has episodes since she lost the baby, and the viral video can't stop Dale from waiting at home with a doctor and a form, ordering her to sign herself in quietly.

Eli crouched in front of Birdie and shone a penlight in her eyes.

"Hi, bug. Follow my finger."

Birdie followed it. She kept her other hand shut in a fist, as she did around strangers.

"No bumps," Eli said. His voice wasn't steady. "No scrape. She's perfect."

I looked at her forehead and breathed for the first time since the radio.

"Nell." He stood up. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

I had split my palm open on the corner of the control panel. I hadn't felt it.

Before he could take my hand, my mother arrived with her arms out.

"Birdie! Oh, my baby."

She lifted Birdie out of my arms, and Birdie put her face in my mother's neck.

My brother Brody stood behind them with his phone in his hand, white-faced.

A park manager ran up with two officers. "Who hit the stop?"

"I did," I said.

"Officer, I'm so sorry," my mother said, and her voice shook just enough. "My daughter has episodes."

She touched her pearl earring.

"She's been like this since she lost the baby. We've all been so worried."

Eli turned his head.

I had not said the word baby to him in six years, and my mother had just handed it to a stranger in a uniform.

"I don't have episodes," I said. "I'm not on any medication."

"That's exactly what she says," my mother told the officers, gently.

The manager didn't look at her. He looked at the wreck, where a hundred people stood far back behind the tape.

"There were forty-one people in that line, ma'am," he said to me. "How did you know?"

"It was grinding. You could hear it. Rust was coming down."

"We heard it," a woman called from the crowd. Her two boys stood against her legs. "She screamed at us to run. She saved my kids."

Somebody started clapping.

Then more people were clapping.

A man with a phone pushed up in front of my father.

"Dale Ostrander, Ostrander Motors," my father said. "We raise brave kids in this family. You can quote me."

I stared at him.

That morning he had called me dramatic and checked his watch.

Eli stepped between us. "Nell, I need to look at that hand."

He cleaned it behind the first-aid tent with a gauze pad and a bottle of saline.

He didn't ask about the baby. He taped the wrap down and held my hand between both of his for a second longer than he needed to.

His left little finger bent in at the tip. I looked at the gauze instead.

"You'll want a tetanus shot," he said.

He tore the paper off the gauze and wrote ten digits on it.

"Call if the shaking starts tonight. Or if you just want to say something."

I put it in my pocket.

The video was already online by the time my father pulled the SUV into the driveway.

I watched it on my phone in the back seat. A woman in a gray cardigan slapped a red button and screamed at a crowd to run.

It had three million views in two hours.

The top comment said, "Her mother's face, though."

My mother had her hand over her mouth in every frame, and her eyes were on the camera, not on me.

Birdie was asleep against my arm again. I carried her up the porch steps.

My mother took her at the door. "I'll put her down. Go in and sit, Nell. Your father has someone here to see you."

A man in a gray suit stood in the living room with a leather folder open on the coffee table.

"This is a doctor from the hospital's behavioral unit," my father said.

"Nell," the doctor said. "Your mother tells me you've had a very hard week."

My father shut the door and leaned his back against it.

"Marian says you're not sleeping, and today proved it," he said. "You embarrassed this family in front of a thousand people."

I had died in front of him that afternoon, and he had never turned around.

Now he wanted my name on a form.

The doctor held out a pen.

"You'll sign yourself in for observation," my father said. "Quietly."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend