Chapter 11

ZARIA

Darkness wrapped itself around me, it felt heavy and humming.

I floated somewhere between sleep and pain, and honestly neither felt like safety.

I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t speak.

But I felt everything.

The ache in my stomach. The icy cold of the IV drip in my arm. The burn in my throat from earlier when I’d vomited blood. My limbs were too heavy to move and too weak to fight.

I wasn’t dead. But I wasn’t entirely here either.

Somewhere in the haze, with swirled voices that sounded low and muffled. Doors opening and a beeping machine.

Fingers brushed my wrist. A soft press on my arm and check of my pulse, at least that's what I thought..

I wanted to scream.

I didn’t know where I was. The last thing I remembered was the bathroom, the way the sink spun around me, the taste of blood and then… falling. Falling fast and hard.

Then everything turned to static.

Is he safe?

The thought hit me like ice water, slicing through the fog. My mind flinched and latched onto it.

Leo.

My son. My boy. My reason.

Is he safe?

I could almost hear his voice. Soft and sweet, asking me to draw with him. Telling me he missed me. Saying that the sky looked “extra blue today” and that I should smile more.

My throat tightened.

I hadn’t heard his voice in days.

He was supposed to be with Rosa, tucked away in the tiny countryside house where no one could find him. A safehouse decorated with sunflowers and dust.

But what if something went wrong?

What if someone followed me from the clinic?

What if that man with the camera had tracked me all the way to the alley?

My heart began to race, even in my unconsciousness. The monitor must’ve picked it up, because I heard movement, nurses maybe, footsteps, something sharp in the air.

‘Calm down. You can’t afford to panic”.

But how could I not?

My body had betrayed me.

All the plans I’d made, the walls I’d built, the control I’d clung to, it shattered the moment I hit the tiles in that bathroom. The secret life I’d stitched behind Darian’s back was slowly tearing at the seams.

I felt my chest rise sharply, like it was trying to scream without sound.

And in the void, I remembered the last time I held Leo. The way his tiny arms wrapped around my neck, how he smelled of honey and markers and mischief.

“Be brave, Mama,” he told that night. “Like lions are brave.”

But I broke again inside. It felt wild and desperate.

Was he scared now?

Did Rosa tell him I was okay?

Or did he feel it, did he feel that something had gone wrong? That his mother, the woman who promised she’d always come back… might not?

A soft pressure brushed against my knuckles.

Warm.

Big hands and frankly rougher than I remembered.

But they held me like I’d break, like I was something worth being careful with.

A voice followed, low and quite close.

I didn’t recognize the words, but the voice lingered in the back of my mind, deep and strained. Familiar in the way a song hurts when you hear it again after too long.

I drifted again. The pain numbed. The sounds faded.

And then….I was in a memory.

Not a clear one, but pieces, like a broken snow globe falling out fragments in slow motion.

Rain tapping against windows.

Leo spinning in circles on the rug, laughing as he drew monsters and superheroes holding hands.

My own hand scribbling grocery lists beside his crayon tornado.

“Don’t use all the blue, baby,” I said softly.

“But Mama,” he said, grinning wide, “The sky is big! And blue is my favorite!”

“You say that about every color.”

“Yeah, but this time I mean it.”

I smiled in the memory, even as tears ran silently down my real cheeks.

I wanted to go back to that. Just for a second. Just one more bedtime, one more stuffed story, one more chance to press a kiss to his curly head and tell him he was the bravest little boy I’d ever known.

My fingers twitched weakly on the hospital bed.

Then I heard another voice.

Outside the room this time, a male one and it was sharper.

“…her stress levels have been through the roof. Blood pressure, nutrition, even hormonal imbalances. If this continues…”

It drifted off.

A door creaked and footsteps entered.

Then another voice, that became closer, but still familiar and clipped.

“You said she’s been seeing you for months. Why didn’t you say anything?”

My heart stuttered. But I couldn’t speak.

“Because she asked me not to,” the doctor replied calmly. “And unlike most people in her life, I respect boundaries.”

Silence.

“She’s... not who I remember,” the second voice said.

“No. She’s not and you’d be amazed how much a person can change when they’re trying to survive.”

I wanted to open my eyes.

I wanted to tell them to stop talking like I wasn’t there.

But I couldn’t. My body was waterlogged. Trapped and distant.

A tear slid down my cheek, but a thumb brushed it away.

The bed dipped slightly beside me with the weight of a person and someone whispered, “What the hell did I miss?”

I almost laughed.

Everything.

You missed everything.

The betrayals. The nightmares. The nights I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified the truth would crawl through the window and rip my son from my arms.

You missed the pain in my bones, the nine months of carrying him alone, the ache in my back from working three fake jobs just to fund escape routes. You missed Leo’s first word. His first fever. The time he drew a picture of “Mommy and the moon” and cried because he couldn’t mail it to me in time.

You missed the war I’ve been fighting.

The silence I’ve lived in.

And still, somehow…I missed you.

______

Time passed. I didn’t know how much.

The machine beeped softly. My body grew heavier and calmer.

Someone stood and a door opened.

Then a voice again, but this one shaking:

“Zaria…”

It cracked at the edges. Like the person speaking hadn’t expected to see me here. Not like this.

Dr. Felix.

He knew.

He was the last one I trusted. The only one who knew both my lives. The secret visits. The pills. The fake names. The panic I wore like skin.

And now the two halves of my world had collided.

Darian had brought me here.

Felix was already waiting.

And I couldn’t protect anything anymore.

Not my health.

Not my secrets.

And maybe… not Leo.