"Malakai, you are awake."
The words drifted to me like an echo breaking through water, soft yet heavy with meaning, and my eyes struggled to obey as I forced them open. The lids felt like they had been weighed down with lead, reluctant to lift, and when they finally did the world was blurry, unfocused, twisting at the edges like a dream refusing to end. I blinked again and again, trying to ground myself, and slowly the haze receded, leaving me face to face with a man.
At first he was just a shadow, a form without detail, but then I began to see the truth of him. A middle aged man with a clean shaven scalp that gleamed faintly under the fluorescent light, skin pulled tight over sharp bones, stubble roughening his cheeks and jawline. His eyes were the worst of it, sunken deep into hollows with bruised shadows pressed beneath them. He looked like sleep was a stranger to him, like he had carried something too heavy for too long and had no choice but to endure it.
I wanted to speak. My lips parted and air scraped its way out, but it was nothing more than a sound, a broken rasp that cracked halfway. My throat burned as if I had swallowed fire and sand. Every attempt to shape words felt impossible.
The man leaned closer, his voice soft, careful, the way people speak to fragile things. "It is okay. Do not force it. Give it time. Let your body remember."
He reached for something beside my bed, lifted a glass of water, and offered it to me with steady hands. My fingers shook as I curled them around it, so weak I was afraid I might drop it. The glass was cold and real against my skin, almost startling in its weight. I tilted it to my lips, gulping greedily, but even that felt strange. The water slid down my throat, cool and clean, yet something in me resisted it. My body did not quite remember what it meant to drink.
I coughed, tried again, and this time when I spoke the sound that came out was rough but real. "What happened to me, doctor?"
He let out a sigh, long and quiet, the kind of sigh that spoke of words he did not want to say. His eyes softened with something I recognized instantly, something that twisted my stomach. Sympathy.
Sympathy never meant anything good. Sympathy meant loss. Sympathy meant something was wrong. Sympathy meant I was not going to like the answer.
He shook his head slightly, his voice calm but evasive. "Do not worry about that right now. Your mother is on her way here. She will be so glad to see you awake."
He gave me a smile that felt small, hollow, a smile that was more of a mask than an expression, and then he turned and left before I could demand more from him. The door closed softly behind him, leaving me in a silence that pressed on my chest.
The room felt vast without him, though it was just four white walls and the steady hum of machines. My gaze wandered and landed on the ceiling, on its sterile tiles, before dropping to a cluster of balloons floating above me.
"Get well soon" they read in bright cheerful letters, some metallic, some filled with confetti, all tethered together like they were meant to bring joy. They hovered above my bed in an arch, as if they were trying to crown me in hope. For a moment I almost laughed. Balloons, as if those could fix whatever had been done to me.
I turned toward the window instead, and there I found something that made me stop. The sky stretched wide and endless, shades of blue layered across each other, streaks of white clouds breaking apart to reveal the sunlight cutting through. The rays looked like golden lines drawn by some great artist across the heavens. It was beautiful, achingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that made you want to believe you were still alive.
I wanted to feel that light on my skin. I wanted air that was not recycled and cold. I shifted slowly, carefully, pulling the covers back.
Then I froze.
My breath caught.
My body was not my own.
I stared at my arms, my legs, my chest, and horror clawed up my throat. I was so lean, so frail, bones pressing against skin that looked stretched too thin. My wrists were sharp, my hands skeletal, my legs weak and narrow. I looked starved, emptied out, drained of everything that had once been me.
What had happened to me?
The panic was sudden, overwhelming, a tide rising higher and higher until I could not bear it. I yanked the covers back over myself, hiding from the truth of what I had seen, burying myself in fabric as if it could shield me. No, I was not ready to face it. Not yet.
And then, shattering the silence, a voice cried out in the hall.
"He is awake? Where is my baby? Where is he?"
The words were frantic, desperate, heavy with urgency, and my chest tightened because I knew that voice.
The door burst open and she came inside. A woman, breathless, eyes wide and wild until they locked on me.
"Malakai!"
Her voice hit me with force. Familiar. Known. Home.
"Mum," I breathed softly, the word tasting strange on my tongue, like it had been too long since I had last said it.
Her eyes filled instantly, tears spilling down her face as she looked at me. She was dressed in black trousers and a button up shirt, clothes she might wear on an ordinary day, but they were wrinkled, messy, not like her at all. Her hair was tangled, strands sticking out, and her face was bare without makeup, stripped down and tired. She looked like someone who had been running forever without a chance to stop.
She stepped toward me slowly, almost cautiously, as if afraid that one wrong move would break the moment. When she reached me she bent down and wrapped her arms around me. My own arms stayed limp at my sides, too weak, too uncertain, but her grip was firm, trembling, desperate.
She buried her face against my neck and I could hear the sound of her crying, soft and broken. I felt the tears soak into my skin, warm trails sliding down as she held me like she would never let go again.
"Mum?" I whispered.
"Yes, kiddo?" Her voice shook, but she tried to steady it for me.
"What happened?"
The question filled the air like a storm. She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. Her lips parted, her face twisted with something she was fighting to keep hidden, but she said nothing. She just looked at me with a sorrow that said more than words could.
Her hands clutched mine tighter. She was keeping something from me. She was holding something back.
And whatever it was, it terrified me more than anything else.