“Grace, come back. I’ll never be harsh with you again… Grace, please… I’m begging you. Come back…”
She finally opened her eyes after five days.
The moment the nurse saw her awake, she rushed over. My mother, however, clung to her desperately.
“Please, tell me where my daughter is. Please, I’m begging you!”
In her desperation, my mother groveled at the nurse’s feet.
She had mistaken this nurse for the one who had once looked after me.
The nurse quickly tried to pull her up, but she refused to budge. Instead, she stayed on the floor, crying my name over and over.
1/2
Chapter 5
+25 BONUS
At that moment, my father walked in. His voice trembled as he said, “I know where Grace is now. Let me take you to the last person who saw her.”
The person was a janitor from my school. She had found me discarded by the trash, wrapped carelessly in a tattered mat. At first, she thought it was garbage. Then she realized it was a body.
She had called the police, but after a cursory look, they had left without taking any action. Unable to bear the sight, she used her own money to have me cremated. My ashes were still in her home.
“That poor child,” the janitor said softly. “I used to see her all the time at school… I never imagined the last time I’d see her would be in that manner.”
She took out her phone and showed my parents the photo of how I had been found.
The image crushed them completely. It was as if they had aged twenty years in an instant, their bodies bent under the weight of their grief.
The pain was indescribable, a sharp, all–consuming agony that coursed through them.
My mother trembled as she buried her face in her hands, her sobs breaking through the silence. My father sat slumped in a chair, weeping uncontrollably.
It wasn’t until they saw the photo that they finally understood–I was truly gone.
The person in the photo was undeniably me. They begged to take my urn home, desperate to reclaim what little of me was left.
