Chapter 6 - The Plaster Prison
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I survived the fall only because the ancient oak tree acted as a brutal, violent net, breaking my momentum before the flagstones could finish the job. But survival is a relative term.
When I finally woke up, my world was reduced to the rhythmic, electronic beep of a heart monitor and the sterile, blinding glare of fluorescent hospital lights. I couldn't move. Panic flared in my chest, a wild, trapped animal, but my body refused to respond.
I was sealed inside a rigid, agonizing shell. A full-body cast encased me from my collarbones down to my ankles. My ribs were broken, my pelvis fractured, my right leg crushed, and my spine dangerously swollen. My face felt swollen to twice its size, a map of deep purple bruising and bandages.
I tried to speak, to scream for a nurse, but my throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass, and a thick tube was taped securely near my mouth, aiding my battered lungs.
Through the haze of heavy narcotics and blinding pain, I heard voices floating above me.
“The swelling in the spine is severe,” a deep, clinical voice said. “And with the traumatic brain injury... it’s uncertain if she’ll regain cognitive function, let alone mobility. For now, she is essentially locked in.”
“It’s a miracle she survived at all,” a softer, female voice replied.
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I lay there, staring blindly at the ceiling tiles. They thought I was gone. They thought the fall had wiped my mind clean, leaving nothing but a breathing corpse. A terrifying realization washed over me, cold and absolute: if Cordelia and Adrian realized I was fully conscious, that I remembered everything, they would not let me leave this hospital alive.
The doctors had unwittingly given me my only weapon. My survival depended on my silence. I had to become the empty, broken doll they believed me to be.
