Every day from the Lord is a new beginning.
It was quiet now. Holding her breath, she peered around the corner, and despite her best efforts and preparation for the worst, she was so wired and strung out from all that had happened yesterday that she couldn’t help but scream when she saw the hulking mass of man on her couch. Without thinking any further, she fired.
She didn’t remember how she got there, but she knocked on the open door of room 245. Only one bed was occupied. The woman was covered in bandages, and the places that didn’t have bandages were bruised and swollen. She was plugged into almost every wire and tube in existence. Lanie was still staring when Susan’s eyes slit open.
Now, he cocked his head at her. The light grey of his shirt tamped down the brightness of his eyes, darkening them to rainclouds. They were dilating now, and widened with surprised curiosity. “Do you think I’d submit to you?”
“Ben, if you won’t let me look, you should let the Chief. Someone has to assess you. Or do you want me to take you to the hospital?” Although McGuinness says it gently, Ben flinches as though he’s been offered a trip to the morgue
This morning, while her other daughters slept, the mother made two shrouds. One for her child, one as a donation for a future corpse. Or maybe she wishes she could use it for herself.
“I think he’s stupid. He doesn’t stop to think about what would happen to him, and he puts the burden on everyone else to look out for him, and patch him up, and save him.”
His lungs were filled with razors. His head was a balloon about to burst. His whole body was agony, and a tiredness as heavy as an elephant lay on him.
She pressed against him, making him moan and kiss her deeper, playing his tongue in her mouth. For a moment, she pulled away. “B,” she whispered against him. “Touch me. I need you to – ”
“The last time I saw him, we had a minor disagreement about methods for disciplining a seven-week old baby.”
“Do you ever feel like you’ll wake up one day, and be in your real life? The simple, uncomplicated life?” Chelsea thinks every day about going back to New York when her mother is finally done grieving her dad and can face their home again. But Emma Wallstead has a long memory when it comes to grief, and Chelsea has the feeling that she might have to make the trip alone, and lose her last remaining parent.
“Do you believe that he brings people together for a reason? I keep thinking I might be deluding myself that I can be there for her and Dre. How can someone like me be what they need? But I can’t leave.”
“Why do you want to leave?”
“Because I don’t deserve them. Not even a little.”
He wasn’t sure what Rowan saw in his face, because he didn’t even know that he was about to cry until she scooted over to him, and wrapped him in a hug. For a moment, he was stunned, but then he brought his hands up, and hugged her back, wrapped up in her floral, old-lady perfume. Though he was at least three times her size, he felt so small, once again.
Unfinished 