Page 2 of Untamed
I love Kara. She’s been around almost half my life. Thinking about her being dead is…
No. I can’t do it. I can’t breathe. Can’t think.
And if this is how I feel, I can’t even imagine what my brother is feeling.
But I can make sure I never find out.
Prologue
Ruth-Age 22
FIVE YEARS AGO
Ihate this place. The smell of it. The sounds. The pit I get in my stomach every time I walk through the doors.
It’s awful. Almost as awful as the reason I come here every day.
The only bright spot in any of this is the kindness of the people who work here. The empathy. The understanding. The patience.
But even they don’t make me dread coming here any less.
The woman at the front desk—Marcy—greets me with a soft smile. The kind you give someone when you’re happy to see them, but sad over the circumstances.
It’s an expression that’s become very familiar over the past month. I’ve received enough of those kinds of smiles to last me a lifetime.
I’ve even dished out a few of my own.
But as much as I hate coming here, I'm going to hatenotcoming here even more. And I’m afraid that time is closing in.The point where everything will become before and after. That tomorrow I will wake up with no reason to visit this awful building.
I follow the path I’ve taken every morning for the past twenty-eight days, clutching my bag tight to my chest, like it can help hold me together while everything is falling apart.
While the person who’s always lifted me up is slowly leaving me alone.
When I reach the door to my mother’s room at Stillwater Hospice, her morning nurse is just coming out. She stops short when she sees me. Instead of giving me the same sort of smile Marcy did, her expression is pinched. Strained.
Confirming my fears.
I quickly step past her, entering the space where I’ve spent the majority of my time this past month, worried I wasn’t there for my mom when she needed me most.
My breath catches at the sight of my frail, but still radiantly beautiful mother, sitting upright in bed, a wide smile on her gaunt face. “There’s my darling girl.”
I haven’t heard her voice in nearly a week, and the sound of it takes my breath away.
She waves me forward, her bony hand gesturing over the tray of breakfast placed in front of her. “Come tell me how school’s going.”
I struggle to breathe as I move toward the woman I thought I’d already lost in spite of her heart’s continued beating. I’ve watched her deteriorate more and more each day, the moments of lucidity becoming fewer and farther between.
Until one day they stopped completely.
But now she’s here. Really here. There’s clarity in her bright eyes as she reaches for me. The haze of pain and pills is gone.
A tiny bit of hope blooms inside of me. I know it shouldn’t—there’s no way she will ever get better—but it still plants itself beneath my skin.
Slowly, I lower into the same chair I’ve occupied every day, setting the bag with my laptop and notes onto the floor at my feet before taking her hand. Her grip is so strong. So steady as she gives my fingers a squeeze, her browless forehead lifting.
“Well? How are classes?”
“Classes are good.” I swallow thickly before managing to continue. “My professors have been really great about being flexible.”
