The morning light sliced through the blinds of Helena's Elm Street apartment, carving jagged shadows across the cluttered living room like cracks in a broken mirror. The space which was once her haven, with its sleek gray couch, a teetering stack of legal thrillers on the glass coffee table, and a defiant fern basking in the corner now felt like a trap, the walls closing in with the weight of her shame.
Helena sat curled into a ball on the couch, her hair a wild snarl framing her pale face, her body swaddled in an oversized robe that grazed her skin like a taunt, amplifying the ache between her thighs.
She'd fired off a curt email to the hospital, claiming a migraine to skip work, but the lie was a flimsy veil over a brutal truth, she was wrecked, body and soul, from what happened at Tranquil Touch.
