I shook off her hand and repeated, “Dad, your mother needs to be hospitalized. She’s asking you to take her to the hospital.”
I was an adult now. They were no longer legally responsible for me. I owed them nothing. I would never go back.
No matter what they said, I remained silent. No response, no agreement, nothing
I stayed quiet until Dad completed Grandma’s admission. Once the paperwork was done, not one of them volunteered to stay and care for her
So I asked for leave from school and took the night stuft by her bedside.
They always called me ungrateful, but if anyone was truly teartless, it was them.
Days passed. I went to schood during the day and studied at bospital at night. Perched on a narrow plaat stel,
1 fipped high my textends I was using weight
A nurse noticed. She handed over lip balm “Here Put se on Your tips are trapped
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Chapter 5
I thanked her and obediently applied it. It had color. A little tint, and suddenly, I didn’t look so pale.
When I walked into the ward, Grandma’s eyes lit up. Seeing me with some color made her happy. But she was still worried.
“Jolene, you need to focus on school. And rest. You don’t have to stay with me all the time.”
“Okay,” I promised easily.
But there was no one else to care for her. So I stayed.
It took several rounds of urging before my parents finally showed up. They paid the hospital fees with sour expressions. Mom spotted me and, as if she had been waiting for an excuse, grabbed my wrist. Her nails scraped against my lips, rubbing hard.
“You little brat,” she snapped. “Your father and I are working ourselves to the bone for your grandma, and your sister is so upset she can’t even eat. And here you are, dolling yourself up?”
She rubbed until my lip split. Blood smeared across her hand.
Disgusted, she shoved me away.
Then, with a voice that cut through the ward like shattered glass, she yelled, “A girl your age wearing makeup? Are you even studying anymore? Do you want to be a prostitute?”
Chapter 6
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