Page 13 of Shattered

“Before you say anything,” I started.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re thinking it very loudly.”

She smiled slightly. “What am I thinking?”

“That I’m a disaster. That I’m falling apart. That you think you need to fix me.”

“I’m thinking,” Sarah said carefully, “that you danced until your ankle broke because you didn’t know what else to do with all that pain.”

The accuracy of it hit me straight in the chest.

“I needed to move,” I said quietly. “I needed to feel something else.”

“I know.” She reached over, squeezed my hand. “But Delia, you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep destroying yourself piece by piece and expecting nobody to notice.”

“I’m fine?—”

“You’re not.” Her voice was gentle but firm. “And that’s okay. You don’t have to be fine. You were left at your wedding a month ago. Your mom is sick. You’re allowed to be a complete mess.”

I looked at her, Sarah, with her clear eyes and her steady presence and her refusal to let me lie to her face.

We’d been friends since high school. She was the new girl who sat next to me in art class and said my painting wasincredible, who’d stayed through every bad break-up and every family crisis.

She had dated my brother briefly when we were younger—that weird year during the end of high school and when Daniel was pre-med and Sarah was pre-SLP and they’d tried to make it work before realizing they were better off as friends.

“I don’t know how to not be fine,” I whispered.

“You start by admitting you’re not. Then we figure out the rest.”

The nurse called my name. Sarah helped me up, grabbed my crutches, and didn’t leave my side through discharge.

When I got back to my apartment, Sarah’s words flooded my thoughts, and I decided to be exactly as she said: a complete mess. I rotted the hours away, and didn’t even notice when it was night. I ate takeout every day, watched a thousand movies, and slept a million hours. Nothing could get me out of my bed.

Until two days later, when Sarah showed up at my apartment with a plan.

“Get dressed,” she announced. “We’re going out.”

“Sarah, I can’t?—”

“You can. You have crutches. They’re mobile.”

“I look terrible?—”

“You look human. Now get dressed before I dress you myself.”

I knew that tone. That was the tone that meant arguing was pointless.

Twenty minutes later, I was in real clothes for the first time in days. Sarah had brought coffee and pastries, helped me down the stairs, and loaded me into her car where her stepdaughter Lily was already buckled in the back.

“Hi, Delia!” Lily waved, bright and cheerful. “Mom said we’re going on an adventure.”

“Something like that,” Sarah said, pulling into traffic.

We drove out of the city—just far enough for the buildings to thin, the noise to fade, and for sky and trees to finally appear. Sarah found a small park with a lake, spread out a blanket, and let Lily feed the ducks while we sat and watched.

“How’s Hector and married life?” I asked after a while.