Chapter 6 - Breaking the Silence
I spent the next four days in the orthopedic ward of St. Jude’s Hospital. On Tuesday morning, Dr. Vance performed an open reduction and internal fixation surgery on my wrist. Through a four-inch incision along my forearm, he aligned the shattered bone fragments and secured them with a permanent, five-hole titanium plate held in place by surgical screws.
When I woke up from the anesthesia, my arm was encased in a heavy plaster cast stretching from my knuckles to below my elbow. Maya was sitting in the armchair beside my bed, working on her laptop, while Mrs. Chen sat nearby knitting quietly.
My phone, resting on the bedside table, had been buzzing continuously for seventy-two hours. There were over forty missed calls and dozens of text messages from my mother and father.
“How could you do this to your sister?” one message from my mother read.
“You are destroying Sarah’s future over a stupid misunderstanding,” my father had written. “Call the district attorney immediately and drop these ridiculous charges before you ruin this family forever.”
I held the phone in my left hand, reading through the barrage of guilt, anger, and manipulation. For my entire life, I had been conditioned to put their comfort above my own survival. I had accepted their cruelty because I believed that endured suffering was the price of belonging to a family.
I looked down at the heavy plaster cast covering my right arm. Beneath the bandages was a metal plate holding my bones together—a permanent physical reminder of what their "love" actually looked like.
Without saying a word, I opened my phone settings. One by one, I blocked my mother’s number, my father’s number, and Sarah’s contacts. I blocked their social media accounts and deleted my shared family cloud storage. Then, I handed the phone to Maya.
"Can you help me change my mobile number?" I asked softly.
May you like
Maya looked up, her eyes shining with warmth and pride. "It would be my absolute pleasure."
When I was discharged from the hospital two days later, I did not return to my parents' house, nor did I return to the small apartment I had rented near their neighborhood. Mrs. Chen welcomed me into her home, preparing a quiet guest bedroom overlooking her flower garden where I could heal in absolute safety.
