Page 26 of The Shape of my Scar (The Unbroken #1)

T he sliding door sighed shut behind Cormac, muffling the hum of the machines and the muted voices beyond the glass. But nothing prepared him for what he was about to see.

And there she was.

So small.

Paler than he remembered, almost translucent against the sterile white sheets. The ventilator hissed rhythmically beside her, a cruel stand-in for her lungs. Tubes disappeared into her arms and chest, wires like lifelines but none of them could guarantee anything.

Cormac walked closer. Each step felt like it belonged in a dream, or a memory.

He reached out, his big, rough hand finding hers—thin, cold, motionless. Her fingers didn’t curl back, didn’t stir at all. Her hair was still the unfamiliar brown she had to colour it for the mission. She looked like Faolan but also not like her.

Both their hands bore scars, only his were on the outside. Hers were buried deep where no one could see.

His throat clenched, and in his mind, unbidden, the past came rushing in.

He remembered the call…

Arthur’s voice on the other end, rough with exhaustion. “I don’t want to give you hope, lad…but we think we’ve found her.”

He had dropped the phone.

Callum caught him as he sank to his knees, clutching him in a desperate, wordless embrace. Neither of them said anything—they couldn’t. Callum just held him, crying into his shoulder as Cormac shook silently.

Time had stretched like a rubber band, taut and trembling, as they waited for Arthur to pick them up. It felt like hours before his car pulled up to the curb of a large building in the middle of nowhere.

They didn’t go to a hospital, as he’d assumed.

Arthur drove them to a quiet industrial block, the sky bruised with dusk, the world far too quiet.

“She refuses to come out,” Arthur had said as they climbed out. “We found three other girls , all locked in separate rooms. But she…she was in the basement. She has dug a niche in the wall. We can’t get her to come out. She screams whenever we try to get close.”

When he approached the crumbling dugout, he heard an unearthly moan which made his hair stand at end.

It was a cry of pain and fear that he thought came from an animal.

Cormac remembered sitting on the cold concrete floor and humming an old lullaby—the one she used to beg for at bedtime when they were little.

At first, there was nothing.

Then…a rustle followed by a thin scraping sound.

Her head came out first, followed by the rest of her.

His breath had left his body.

Her face was all sharp angles and shadows, dull blue eyes too big for her face. Her hair was filthy, clinging to her temples in stringy clumps. Her arms and legs were skeletal, covered in grime and bruises. He could barely recognize her, but it was still her.

He hadn’t dared move too quickly. He’d just unfolded a blanket, draped it gently around her trembling frame, and whispered, “Can I hold your hand, Fee?”

She’d looked at him for a moment like she didn’t know if he was real.

Then she whispered his name.

Seconds later, loud ugly sobs of relief burst from her. Like she was waking up from an unending nightmare.

She clung to him with thin arms and sobbed until she had nothing left. Her whole body had shuddered against his chest, and he had rocked her like he had when she was little and scared of the dark.

That had been the last word she’d spoken for weeks.

In the hospital, sterile and quiet, she hadn’t made a sound.

He’d sat beside her every day, watching her shrink into herself.

Doctors ran tests—STD screens, trauma assessments.

Words too big and too awful for someone who was only nine to understand.

Worse because it had to do with his little sister.

But he’d shouldered it all along with Callum. Because he had to.

Now, twenty years later, she lay before him again, as fragile as she’d been back then.

Still fighting.

Still breaking his heart.

He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, careful not to disturb the IV. “I’m here, Fee,” he whispered. “Just like I was back then.”

The machines beeped. She didn’t move.

“I’ll wait again,” he said softly. “As long as it takes.”

The days blurred together.

It was two steps forward, one crashing step back.

On the second day, just when hope had begun to flicker at the edges, everything unravelled.

Faolan spiked a fever, and the monitors told a story no one wanted to hear.

Words like septicaemia and multiorgan failure hung in the air, and by nightfall, the surgical team had taken her back to the theatre.

The rib fractures had to be stabilized, and they had to explore for a collection in the chest, which they called it an empyema.

The mood in the waiting room turned brittle. Tempers flared. There were arguments over nothing, over coffee orders, over how loud someone was breathing, over a word or a phrase spoken in the wrong tone.

At one point, Maro squared up to Thane, eyes blazing, and Zel had to physically step between them. Lirian walked out and didn’t come back for nearly six hours.

But Thane never left.

On the fourth day, things shifted again. Her vitals stabilized and then improved.

“She’s doing better,” the doctor had said cautiously. “We’re trailing her off the ventilator intermittently. If things continue, she might not need a trach after all.”

It was a victory they all clung to.

Later that afternoon, the door to the waiting area pushed open again, and a young woman in mint-green scrubs walked in, her hair in a tight ponytail and a clipboard clutched to her chest. She looked barely old enough to vote, let alone deliver life-altering news.

“I’m the anaesthetist looking after Faolan,” she said. “She’s awake.”

The silence that followed was thunderous.

“She’s still on the ventilator, but we assessed her mental status. There are no signs of brain damage. She’s aware, following commands. We’re going to keep her in critical care for a few more days, then hopefully, step her down.”

Callum blinked. “When can we see her?”

The child-doctor smiled. “Now, if you want.”

***

Faolan

She floated at the edge of something heavy.

A fog, thick and warm, pressing down on her bones.

She dreamt—if it could be called dreaming—of Thane. Of him leaving her to burn. She followed, stumbling barefoot, calling his name. He never turned back.

She drifted between shadows.

Not quite awake and not fully asleep. Time didn’t behave the way it should. Minutes stretched like hours, and distorted faces swam through the fog. She did not know what was real.

Someone cried in the distance. Then there was laughter, followed by the sound of a machine screaming.

She tried to move but nothing obeyed.

Sometimes the fog thinned, and she heard voices she didn’t know. Other times, it thickened until even her own name sounded foreign, like someone else’s story.

Her body felt heavy, like someone had filled her veins with concrete. Pain bloomed in her chest every time she breathed, and when the fog lifted enough, she understood why. A crushing pain, sharp and deep, wrapped around her ribs and wouldn’t let go.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t cry. Couldn’t scream.

There were moments when she thought she might be dead.

Then came the dream.

In a clearing, he stood waiting…

Thane

He raised a gun to her head and gave her the smile which told her he despised her.

Then he pulled the trigger while Theodora peeped at her from behind him.

The crack of it tore through her skull…

And then she woke.

It wasn’t peace that greeted her. It was pain. A stabbing, unrelenting pressure on her left side. A fire blooming between her ribs every time she tried to breathe.

Someone was calling her name.

“Faolan.”

She couldn’t speak. Something blocked her throat. Panic fluttered in her chest.

Her eyes were covered. She tried to move, but her body refused.

Then there were hands—gentle ones—a cloth wiping her forehead.

Then light, too bright.

A warm voice said, “There you are, sweetheart.”

A brown, kind face came into view, framed by a surgical cap and soft brown eyes. “I’m Mary. I’ve been looking after you. You gave us quite the scare.”

They asked her to nod or blink when they asked her questions. She tried, but she was so tired.

She drifted in and out of consciousness.

Faolan blinked slowly, trying to focus.

“We have someone here to see you,” Mary said with a soft smile.

And then he was there.

Callum.

He looked older than she remembered. Tired. Frayed with new lines around his eyes and mouth and new grey in his hair. His voice caught in his throat as he said her name like a prayer.

“Faolan.”

She wanted to tell him she was okay. That she was glad he was here. But the tube down her throat made everything ache.

“They’re going to see if they can take it out soon, okay?” he said gently. “Cormac’s here, too.”

She turned her head slightly.

Cormac stood behind Callum. His shoulders were broad as ever, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in years. His eyes—so like hers, so like Callum’s—glinted with tears he wouldn’t let fall. He didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Callum took her hand.

He told her what had happened. Bits and pieces—her injuries, how her heart had stopped beating before they got her back, how long she’d been asleep, how they were all there.

Then, his voice dropped, hesitant. “Dad wants to come in, but there’s…someone else who really wants to see you.”

She blinked.

“Thane,” he added softly. “He hasn’t left the hospital since you were brought in. He’s been waiting. I know you probably don’t want to deal with that right now, but…do you think you’re up to seeing him?”

The question lingered in the air between them.

And Faolan, bruised, broken, and aching, blinked once.

Yes.