I Woke From A Coma—Then I Heard My Son Whisper, “Don’t Open Your Eyes.”
Claire.
Her older sister. The one who had braided her hair when they were children. The one who had cried in the hospital waiting room, telling anyone who would listen that she would give her life for Emily.
Her expensive perfume reached the room before her footsteps did.
“Let him say goodbye,” Claire said, with the particular efficiency of someone who had arranged something and was watching the clock. “The notary will be here soon.”
“The doctor’s been clear,” Ryan replied. “I’m not going to keep paying to maintain an empty body.”
An empty body.
The rage that moved through Emily in that moment was unlike anything she had experienced. Not the clean, hot anger of an argument. The deep, bone-level fury of a woman who has been reduced to a transaction by the man who promised to love her, in a room where her child was standing.
“My mom’s coming back,” Ethan said, his voice cracking at the edges.
Ryan gave a dry laugh. “Your mom is gone, champ.”
Claire stepped close to the bed. Emily felt fingers adjusting her hair — a gesture that might have looked tender from across the room and felt like something entirely different from inside her silence.
“Even unconscious, she loves playing the victim,” Claire said.
Then, quieter: “When Emily is gone, we take the boy out of the country. The Chicago paperwork is already arranged.”
