When the door closed, I finally let myself cry. Not because I felt sorry for them. Because I felt sorry for the sixteen-year-old version of me who’d been begging to be believed.
And because I didn’t know what came next now that the truth was undeniable.
Part 3
The hospital kept me overnight and then another day after that, because severe reactions can rebound. Every time the nurse checked my vitals, she did it with the same careful seriousness you’d use around something fragile.
I had never been fragile. I had been ignored.
Mike stayed as much as he could, sleeping in a chair with a blanket the hospital provided. When he left to shower or eat, he did it like someone stepping away from a fire they didn’t trust to stay contained.
“I should’ve said something sooner,” he told me the next morning, voice low. “I saw you get sick. I saw the flushing. I just… I didn’t want to fight Mom and Dad.”
I stared at the ceiling tiles. “I didn’t want to fight them either,” I said. “But my body kept doing it for me.”
He swallowed hard. “That changes now.”