Page 20 of Reckoning

My father sticks to my side, his hand firmly on the metal rail of the bed they’re transporting me in. His presence should be comforting, his presence should make me feel better - only it doesn’t.

The corridor is empty beyond the occasional person in scrubs who passes us by without even looking our way.

“Daddy?” I whimper.

He shoots me a look, one that tells me to be quiet. To behave.

We reach another sterile looking room and I’m transferred across, laid out like a sacrificial lamb while something is clipped onto my thumb and they connect a tube to the needle in my hand.

“Daddy?” I cry louder.

“Stop that.” My father says, slapping me around the face.

If the nurses in the room are shocked they don’t react.

A man walks in, with a strip of fabric covering his hair and a pair of the weirdest looking glasses hanging from his neck.

“Hello, Sofia,” He says smiling. “Are you excited for your surgery?”

I don’t know how to reply. I don’t even understand why I need surgery. I’m not sick. I’m not injured. There’s nothing wrong with me.

“She’s ready.” My father replies, doing his usual trick of talking for me.

The doctor looks across at him and inclines his head. “I know my colleagues have been through the risks already, considering she’s only nine years of age, and this is highly experimental…”

“It doesn’t matter.” My father cuts across him. “If you can fix her, if it will make her normal.”

The doctor glances at me with a look that’s full of sympathy. “We’ll do what we can.”

I flinch back, that word echoing in my head. Normal. I’m not normal.

“What’s wrong with me?” I gasp. Am I dying? Surely I’m too young to die? Surely I’d know if I was? I’d be in pain. I’d be unwell. But I feel fine.

“There, there,” A nurse says quickly, patting my hand. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to put you to sleep and when you wake up it will all be done.”

“I don’t…” My eyes well up as I start crying. “I want to go home. Daddy, please, I want to…”

“Shut up.” My father snaps, smacking me again. “You should be grateful. Most girls with your condition never get fixed, never get cured. You’re lucky you’re a Montague. You’re lucky that these doctors even want to treat you.”

“But I’m not sick.” I repeat.

My father growls, turning his back on me. “Put her to sleep already.” He instructs.

Again, the nurses exchange looks and the doctor nods his head.

I watch as they produce a plastic mask from what feels like nowhere. They press it to my face, covering my mouth and nose and though I don’t want to breathe whatever it is in, I do it, I gasp, gulping in the gas. My eyes grow so heavy. My body feels like something is pressing down on it, but it’s comforting, soothing.

The last thing I think before I drift off is that maybe my father is right, maybe I am sick.

Maybe this surgery will make me normal.

And that maybe, just maybe, doing this will be enough for him love me.

* * *

“Her bloods are clear.”

I don’t know what I expected. Did I think that I’d be vindicated? That these strangers in their clinical white coats would come to my defence?