For a moment, the hospital disappeared. The walls. The nurses. The years. All of it.
All I could see was my sister sitting in front of me with a little girl at home learning terror before she had even learned safety.
I stood up.
“You didn’t come to visit me.”
Lidia blinked through tears. “What?”
“You came here for help.”
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Her face changed, confusion turning into fear as she understood what I meant.
“No,” she said immediately. “No, Nay. You can’t.”
“I can.”
She shook her head harder. “They’ll know. You don’t know what it’s like out there anymore. You’re not…”
“Not what?” I asked. “Not sane enough? Not soft enough? Not tame enough to walk back into that house and pretend?”
I stepped closer and took her by the shoulders.
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“You still think they might change. I don’t. That’s the difference between us. You survive by hoping. I survive by knowing exactly what monsters are.”
The bell announcing the end of visiting hours rang in the hallway.
We looked at each other, our faces so alike it used to unsettle people when we were children. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same cheekbones. But only one of us had spent ten years learning what to do with violence.
We switched quickly.
She put on my gray hospital sweater. I took her clothes, her badge, her tired shoes. When the nurse opened the door, she barely glanced at me.
“Leaving already, Mrs. Reyes?”
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