11. Mia
The halls were becoming familiar now, the nurses welcomed me with a warm smile, a sharp contrast to my first visit here.
The minute I stepped through the door, Millie’s smile dropped, she zoned in on the mark on my face and tears immediately welled in her blue eyes that mirrored mine. “Mia…” she whispered, her bottom lip wobbling.
“It’s fine, it’s just a scratch.” The makeup helped hide some of it, but in a few hours, the bruising would be more than I could hide with concealer. “I got you some stuff.” I held a plastic bag up in the air, hoping it would distract her from my face. “Your books, and some clothes?—”
“You shouldn’t have gone there!” she cried. “You could have been hurt… or…” The fire in her eyes was the most life I’d seen since I got here.
“Or what?” I argued. “I could have been seriously hurt by your abusive boyfriend? Is that why you stopped answering our calls and refused to come home. Did he do this,” I pointed at my face, “to you?”
Her eyes lowered to the bed, shame written all over her. “I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered. “You would have come here and?—”
“Yes, I would have come here and brought you home.” My annoyance leached out of me, I dropped the bag of goods on the chair, and scooted her over on the bed so I could join her. Our shoulders pushed together on the tight space. “You’re my sister. If I’d known he was hurting you, I would have been on the first plane over here.” To be honest, in the deep recesses of my mind, I’d thought that maybe she was ignoring us because of this exact reason, but I’d brushed those aside in favor of a happier scenario, not wanting to consider that my little sister was someone’s punching bag, thousands of miles away. I squeezed her hands between mine. “Why didn’t you tell us… tell me?” I spoke softly to my wearied sister. I braced for the answer; worst case scenarios vividly racing in my mind.
“Because… because you would never let someone treat you that way, and…” she swallowed, “I didn’t want to let you down?—”
“You could never?—”
“Yes, I could. Disappointing you was always my biggest fear, you were always the smart sister, the sensible one that Mum and Dad relied on. I always got why can’t you be more like Mia?”
I sucked in a breath, hearing the pain in her voice. I’d never known she’d felt that way, I was just… me. I’d thought I was being the reliable role-model to my much younger sister, but instead I’d set expectations that she had thought she’d needed to live up to.
“I tried to do well in school, but I just wasn’t as clever as you. I didn’t get the highest grades, I wasn’t the most popular, and then… well, Mickey… He didn’t care about any of that, and he was going back home to the US after uni and he wanted me to go with him. He wanted me,” she stressed. “Dumb Millie, who had to retake English exams and you come out with the highest grade in the whole year. Do you remember? The headteacher called Dad to congratulate you, you got a whole fucking letter sent home.” Tears tracked down her cheeks, and a pang hit my chest as I watched my little sister cry for a childhood that I wasn’t even aware of.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” I whispered as she gently wiped the tears from her face. I grabbed a tissue from the little box beside me, handing it to her and listening to her loudly blow the snot into it.
“Of course you wouldn”t know, and here you are,” she waved her hands, the snotty tissue balled in her fist, “being all heroic and rushing to get my stuff from a place that could have been dangerous. It’s just stuff, I could have replaced it all!”
“I had to get your passport, Millie. How else?—”
“Why would you need that?” she interrupted, her eyes narrowing.
“So you can go home obviously.”
“Are you kidding? I don’t want to go home.” My mouth hung open, and I jumped up from my perch beside her. “I like this place, Mia. No, I love this place.”
Digging my fingers into my eyes, I flinched as I rubbed over a sore spot. “You can’t be serious? Look at what happened to you. Look at what happened to me,” I declared, my fingers tracing softly over the welt, feeling the lump that felt like it was getting bigger. My head pounded in my skull as I stared at my defiant moronic sister. “Mickey clearly doesn’t give a shit about you,” I stated harshly. “He left you to die in that car, and you want to stay?”
She rolled her eyes, and she reminded me of all of the times she’d done it to Dad when he had lectured her on something. “I’m not staying for him. Fuck him. He left me, I’ll never forgive him for that,” she spat. “But you’re not getting it, this is my home now.” Her voice softened, she must have seen the confusion and sadness on my face. “I walk down the street here and everyone knows me, they wave and say hi, everyone’s so friendly. I have a job.” My surprise showed, and she chuckled at my raised eyebrows. “I know, all those years at university and I work in a flower shop arranging bouquets, but I love it.”
Her eyes turned dreamy as she talked about the little shop that looked like something straight out of one of her stories, the blooms of color that she was learning to place together into expert bundles of beauty and sold to those who walked in and greeted her by name.
She’d found the small-town atmosphere where everyone knew everyone, and she was thriving on it.
“What about Dad, and your mum? And you can wave to people in the street at home. Why is it so different here?” It felt like my last ditch attempt to get her to come back with me.
“Are you kidding? I wave at random people in London and I’ll probably get mugged.” My lips twitched, holding in the smile that wanted to break free. Her own grin widened, lightening the tension between us. “Come on, don’t be mad, please?”
With a great sigh, I hung my head. Because now I had a bigger job on my hands, and that was getting my stubborn, romantic sister a real place to live before I could go home.
It’s a good thing I had so many holiday days saved at work, because it seemed I’d be staying just a little bit longer.