What Two Months Leave Behind

Two Months Later

Gwen’s hands were bleeding again.

She looked down at her palms....raw and blistered from hauling garbage bags without gloves because the pack didn’t provide them to omegas....and felt nothing.

She’d stopped feeling things around week three.

It was easier that way.

"Move faster, omega," Hector’s voice barked from across the collection yard. "We’ve got six more buildings to clear before noon."

She didn’t respond. Just grabbed the next bag and hauled it toward the truck.

The bag split halfway there.

Rotten food and god-knew-what-else spilled across the ground at her feet, the smell hitting her like a physical blow. She gagged, pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and tried not to vomit.

Behind her, someone laughed.

She didn’t turn around to see who it was. Didn’t matter. Could have been any of the pack members who found entertainment in watching the traitor’s daughter clean up their garbage.

She grabbed a shovel and started cleaning up the mess.

This was her life now.

Six days a week, six AM to six PM, hauling trash and cleaning up after people who wouldn’t even look her in the eye anymore. The work was brutal and degrading and designed specifically to break her.

It hadn’t worked yet.

She wouldn’t let it.

***

The hospital visits were getting harder.

Not physically, the walk from omega housing to the pack hospital was the same forty-minute trek it had always been. But emotionally, watching her mother lie there day after day, week after week, month after month with no change...

It was destroying her in ways the garbage duty never could.

Gwen pushed open the door to room 412 and found it exactly as she’d left it yesterday.

Beatrice lay still against white pillows, machines doing all the breathing, monitors tracking vitals that never changed. The doctor had stopped giving updates weeks ago. There was nothing new to report.

Still comatose.

Still unresponsive.

Still possibly never waking up.

Gwen pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down heavily. Her back ached. Her hands throbbed. Her entire body felt like one massive bruise from two months of manual labor she’d never done before.

She took her mother’s hand carefully, mindful of her own raw palms.

"Hey, Mom," she said quietly. "It’s me."

The machines beeped their steady rhythm.

"I got written up today at work. Hector said I wasn’t moving fast enough." She laughed, but it came out bitter. "Fast enough. Like there’s a speed record for cleaning up other people’s shit."

In, out. In, out.

"Two months down," she continued, her voice dropping lower. "I don’t know how many more to go. Dr. Hallow hasn’t said anything about transferring you yet, but I see the way she looks at your charts. Like she’s calculating how much longer the pack will tolerate the expense."

She squeezed her mother’s hand gently.

"I’m trying, Mom. I’m trying so hard. But I don’t know how to make enough money to pay your bills. Omegas don’t get paid much. Most of what I earn goes to rent and food and there’s barely anything left." Her voice cracked slightly. "I don’t know what to do. Dad always knew what to do but he’s gone and you’re here and I’m...."

She stopped.

Took a breath.

"I’m scared," she admitted. "I’m really scared. And I’m so tired. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this."

The machines beeped.

Her mother’s hand stayed still in hers.

No response. No comfort. Nothing.

Gwen sat there for another thirty minutes, just holding her mother’s hand and listening to the machines keep her alive.

When visiting hours ended, she kissed Beatrice’s forehead gently and left.

The walk back to omega housing took her past the main residential area.

She usually avoided this route....too many memories, too many people who used to know her and now pretended she didn’t exist. But tonight she was too tired to care about taking the long way around.

She regretted it immediately.

Because standing outside one of the nicer pack homes, laughing with a group of warriors, was Miles.

Her ex-boyfriend.

The one who’d told her he loved her right up until her family got demoted.

She tried to turn around before he saw her.

Too late.

"Gwen?" His voice carried across the distance.

She kept walking.

"Gwen, wait...."

Footsteps behind her. Fast. He caught up in seconds and grabbed her arm.

She yanked it free. "Don’t touch me."

Miles held up his hands, stepping back. "Sorry. I just....I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been trying to find you for weeks but nobody would tell me where you were staying and....."

"What do you want, Miles."

He looked at her. Really looked at her. And she saw his expression shift as he took in what two months of omega life had done to her.

The weight she’d lost. The exhaustion in her face. The raw, bleeding hands she couldn’t quite hide.

"Jesus," he breathed. "Gwen, what happened to you?"