Chapter 37 Harper James
Something beeped.
I drifted in and out of consciousness for days. Awareness came in fragments. Fleeting. Disjointed. Never connecting properly before darkness pulled me under again.
The first time I surfaced, I was lying in a bed. The sharp scent of antiseptic filled my nose. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. My limbs felt impossibly heavy, like I was sinking into the mattress. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even twitch my fingers. That terrified me more than the pain.
The beeping got faster.
I tried to scream. Something was lodged in my throat, choking the sound. I gagged, chest seizing, and the beeping exploded into a shrill alarm. Hands were suddenly on me, voices above me, none of it making sense.
“Easy. You’re safe.”
“Oxygen’s dropping—”
Every instinct screamed at me to run. To hide. To escape. But my body wouldn’t obey, and I slipped under again.
The next time I surfaced, the tube in my throat was gone.
My throat felt raw, scraped with glass. I could move my fingers against the sheets.
Then my arms, slowly. I forced my eyes open and only one obeyed.
My vision swam, blurry and distorted. Machinery surrounded the bed.
IV lines disappeared into my arms. Slowly, sluggishly, my mind pieced together the sterile setting.
Hospital.
I closed my eyes and tried to think, but my mind offered only broken shards. Why was I here? Where was Mom?
Then the memories crashed over me. Mom. Harmony. The screaming. The fire.
My heart rate spiked. Alarms shrieked.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” A woman leaned over the bed, her voice gentle but urgent. “You’re safe now. You’re in the hospital.”
A blurry face came into focus. “I’m Janet,” she said softly. “I was your mother’s friend.”
Recognition flickered somewhere deep inside me. Then the memories slammed back in.
I tried to speak. Pain flared through my shattered jaw.
“Mhh… Mom? Harmony?”
Janet’s face crumpled. She took my hand gently, the one without the IV.
“Sweetheart… I need you to listen to me, okay?” Her voice trembled. “There was a fire at your house. You were the only one who made it out.”
I stared at her, waiting for her to say something else. Something that made sense.
Janet’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, Harper. Your mom didn’t make it. Neither did Harmony.”
I turned my head away as much as I could. Tears leaked from the corner of my eye, stinging the deep cuts on my face. I had already known, some part of me had known the moment I woke up, but hearing it out loud still carved something out of me.
They were really gone.
The days settled into a miserable rhythm of pain, drugs, and nightmares. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Thomas’s smile. Heard Harmony’s scream. Smelled gasoline and smoke.
One evening, as Janet adjusted the blanket around me, she spoke quietly.
“No one knows you’re here. For now, you’re listed as Jane Doe. Brian thought it was safer that way… until we figure out exactly who did this.”
I barely reacted. I was too numb to feel afraid anymore.
Two police officers came a few days later.
They sat by my bed with a notepad and asked questions I couldn't answer through my wired jaw.
Janet stood by the door the whole time. No doctors.
No nurses. Just the two of them, speaking quietly, writing things down that I couldn't see.
They left after twenty minutes and never came back.
Later, I would learn they had moved me to a different hospital while I was still unconscious — all part of keeping me hidden.
The next day, a surgeon came in with Janet beside him. He explained my injuries in a calm, clinical voice while I stared at the wall.
"Fractured orbital bone. Crushed cheekbone. Broken jaw. Deep lacerations with glass embedded in the tissue. We've already performed several surgeries, but you'll need more. We're using biodegradable scaffolds to rebuild the bone structure. Your body will absorb them over time."
He paused, glancing at Janet before turning back to me.
"You haven't shifted yet," he said. It wasn’t really a question. "When your cougar comes, and she will, the repairs must hold through the shift. That’s why this process is taking longer than usual. Everything we build has to integrate properly afterward.”
I lifted a trembling hand and touched the thick bandages covering my face. The skin beneath didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt like something ruined. Something foreign.
I stopped listening after that. His words faded into background noise. Nothing he said could fix what actually mattered.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Four days later, I asked about them again.
My jaw was wired shut, so I wrote on the notepad Janet had left on the bedside table. My handwriting was shaky and childlike, the pen slipping in my weak fingers.
Was there a funeral?
Janet read the note and went very still. She took a slow breath before answering.
"There was, sweetheart. Three days ago. We buried them at Lincoln Cemetery, next to your father. There was no family left, so Brian and I arranged everything."
I stared at the paper. The words blurred. I hadn't been there to say goodbye. The pen trembled in my hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to write anything else.
Janet leaned closer, her voice gentle. “Harper… to the rest of the world, you died in that fire too. The official report says there were three victims. That’s what everyone believes.”
I looked up at her slowly.
“No one knows you survived,” she added.
Why? I scribbled.
Janet hesitated, glancing toward the closed door before leaning in.
“The men who came to your house… Brian believes they’re part of something organized. Dangerous. If they find out you’re alive…” She let the silence finish the thought. “This was the only way to keep you safe for now.”
I set the pen down and turned my face toward the wall.
They had buried my mother and sister while I was unconscious. The world had already moved on. I was dead to everyone. And some part of me wished I really was.
The next day, Brian arrived with Janet. I wrote the question that had been burning in me since I woke up and held up the notepad.
Why didn't you let the police help?
Brian pulled the chair closer and sat forward, elbows on his knees.
"I've been watching the investigation," he said. "I have people keeping an eye on it. The fire scene should have been full of evidence. DNA, fibers, prints. A crime like that, you don't walk away clean unless someone is cleaning up after you."
He let the words sink in.
“Three weeks later and almost nothing. No suspects. No forensic results. Evidence that should exist… doesn’t. That tells me these men have people inside the system. Police. Forensics. Maybe higher.”
I stared at him.
“If we go to the cops with what you know,” he continued, “we’d be handing your name straight to the same system that’s making this case disappear. Can you guarantee it reaches the right person? Or that it doesn’t land on the desk of someone who’s already been paid to bury it?”
I didn't move.
"And the second you come forward, they know you're alive. Right now they think you died in that fire. That's the only thing keeping you safe." Brian’s eyes were hard. "They burned your house down with your family inside it, Harper. What do you think they do to a loose end?"
I wrote slowly, the letters jagged.
So they just get away with it?
Brian looked at the notepad for a long time, then back at me.
“For now,” he said.
I put the pen down. Something inside me that had still been holding on, some small stubborn piece that believed the world worked the way it was supposed to, went quiet.
Weeks passed in a haze of painkillers, surgeries, and nightmares that never let me rest.
My face stayed wrapped in thick bandages for most of that time. Nurses helped me relearn the simplest things. Standing without falling, walking without dizziness, swallowing soft food through the narrow gaps in my wired jaw without choking.
When they finally removed the bandages, I didn’t look like me anymore.
The swelling and surgeries had distorted my features into something unfamiliar.
Fine red stitches traced along the left side of my face, disappearing into my hairline and down beside my nose.
Bruises still bloomed yellow and purple under my skin.
One eye remained bloodshot and glassy. I stared at the stranger in the mirror while the surgeon proudly declared the reconstruction a success.
I wondered what exactly he thought he had saved.
After that, the days lost all meaning. I stopped asking questions. Stopped caring what day it was. They gave me a walker and made me pace the long white corridor three times a day. I obeyed because it was easier than arguing.
The hallway became something I knew too well, every scuff on the floor, every supply closet, every nurses’ station. Especially the medicine cabinet at the far end.
It was always locked.
I watched the nurses retrieve the key from the top drawer of the station halfway down the hall, unlock the cabinet, take what they needed, and lock it again. The same pattern, every shift. Over and over.
I wasn’t planning anything at first.
I simply watched.
The nightmares grew worse at night. I would wake gasping, still feeling their hands on me, still hearing Harmony’s scream as it cut off. The physical was nothing compared to what waited for me when I closed my eyes.
One night, after bolting upright in bed with my heart hammering against my ribs, I stared at the ceiling and thought, I could make it stop.
The idea arrived softly. Almost kindly.
I didn’t have to keep dragging this ruined body through a life I no longer wanted. I could join them. Mom. Harmony. I could slip away and finally be with the only people who had ever loved me.
The medicine cabinet stopped being an object.
It became an exit.