Never too late: a lesson learns from a rejection.

Chapter 01: The Accident

Lucy’s P.O.V

"Hmm..."

A single tear escaped from the corner of my left eye. It had been six months, but I could still recall the day as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. The night that changed my life forever.

It was exactly a week after my high school graduation. My dad, Peter, and my mom, Olivia, had gone to collect my sister Lily from her tennis training, as they always did. They liked to be together and never tired of each other's company. They were always making mischievous memories together.

On the way home, their car was hit by a truck filled with big tree trunks. The driver had fallen asleep during his long journey back to the city. He survived without a single scratch, but my parents paid the ultimate price. My father, who was driving, died on the spot. My mother, who was in the passenger seat, suffered a spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the neck down. She couldn't move a single arm or leg, and no words came out of her mouth. She had become mute. Doctors said that she had no internal injuries in her brain nor any abnormalities in her vocal cord to make her mute. We were desperate to hear her voice. Doctors said that she would talk when she was ready. They could do nothing about her condition medically but asked me and Lily to encourage her on a personal level.

We tried physiotherapy to get at least a slight movement in her body, but she never responded. She was traumatized and heartbroken. Lily and I tried every possible way to make her talk, but she chose not to. Sometimes, I got really angry with her and wanted to scream, but I managed to hide the pain within me. No matter what happened in our lives, we always made time to talk to her, and told her everything as we used to do, hoping for at least a slight change in expression on her face, but she never showed any. We always saw tears in her eyes but never knew why. She could have been in constant physical pain due to injuries or in a mental breakdown thinking about my father, or it could have been both. We desperately wanted her to talk to us.

Her body was vulnerable to any infections. At first, we had to take her to the hospital almost every week. We spent almost all of our savings on her medical care, hoping that she might come back to us and talk like she always did. Sadly, the doctors told me that there is no surgical procedure that can fix spinal cord injuries, but both of us, Lily and I, wanted to keep her alive and safe as long as we could.

Our mom went into a coma right after the accident. We had to say our last goodbyes to our loving father's dead body while our mom was in the hospital. We had to hold the funeral without her presence. I was sure that it had largely affected her mental state. They had always been there for each other, from the day they met in college, for almost 20 years. She was his first, and he was her loving mate, husband, and an ever-kind father to us. He taught us everything we know to survive in this world.

My sister was in the back seat during the accident and got only a few bruises, which she recovered within a few days. She was only 12 years old. I was a mess and deadly busy arranging the funeral and taking care of them both my mom and my little sister. I never got the time to properly grieve for my loss, for my beloved father. It made a never-filling hole in my heart, wherein the place of my father. My sister was completely broken down and was in shock for many days. She cried continuously in those days, but at the end, she managed to put things together.

After the funeral, Lily got stronger than I ever imagined. She helped me a lot to take care of mom and did almost all household works. We were used to be as water and oil, never agreed on anything, and constantly arguing with each other, but time changed both of us. She became my best friend and my strength. We became compatible with each other, like water and milk, which are difficult to separate from one another.

After one month in a coma, my mother finally opened her eyes, but there were no emotions in them, but sadness and tears. We had to take her home because it was the only solution we could afford, due to our financial situation.

I was planning to go to a college to persuade my dream of becoming a medical doctor, but my dream disappeared into the thin air without my acknowledgment. I was taking two jobs to support my family. In the morning, I took care of our mother, while my sister was at her school. Meantime, I did some blog writings and online courses for some basic IT and account management, in order to strengthen my CV to find a better desk job in the near future. Once Lily was home from school, she took care of mom. I did evening shifts at a local gas station till 6.00 PM and night shifts at a local club till 11-12 PM.