The Sister Who Shot Me Got Everything I Had Chapter 10
The Wind Down South
Savannah is dry and warm and slow.
The day I landed, the tear in my old surgical scar was still weeping through the bandage.
My advisor at the foundation had a doctor waiting for me at Memorial Health. He looked at the wound and frowned.
“Why did you wait this long?”
I said, “Traffic on the road.”
It wasn’t traffic. I’d just decided I wasn’t waiting for anyone else, ever again.
The fusion hardware in my lumbar spine had shifted a millimeter. Not catastrophic.
He got me under an MRI, put me in a rigid brace for six weeks, and told me I got lucky.
I nodded.
I didn’t cry. I’d already cried enough for that spine seven years ago.
…
My placement was at a shelter and rehabilitation center for kids caught in the crossfire of what my father would call the Life.
Some of them had a father in a federal cell. Some of them had a mother who never came home. Some of them, like me, had a bullet somewhere in their body that a family member had put there.
Some couldn’t walk. Some couldn’t hear. Some flinched every time a door slammed.
I ran the legal aid intake desk from my chair.
The first morning, a little boy with a leg brace stared at my wheels.
“Miss. You can’t walk either?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Not really. My little sister did it.”
He thought about that a while. “Does it still hurt?”
I thought about that too.
“It used to. Then I stopped waiting for her to come fix it. It got a lot easier after that.”
He nodded, very serious. Then he put his palm on my armrest, and rolled beside me all the way to the intake room.
…
Two weeks later, Luca showed up at the foundation gate.
I’d just finished a case review. He stood in the sun. Hair a mess. Eyes red-rimmed.
He saw me and started walking fast. “Sienna.”
I stopped my chair. “You need something?”
His eyes filled. “I know all of it now.”
“The surgery. Gia.—” he caught himself. “Everything.”
“I’m sorry.”
I looked up at him.
I’d waited for that apology for a long time.
He was finally here—only for me to realize I didn’t need him anymore.
Luca pulled a folder out of his bag.
“I talked to a specialist in Zurich. The nerve-regeneration trial we heard about—they have new protocols. Different from seven years ago. There’s still a small window.”
“Sienna. Come home with me.”
“I’ll be there this time. Every appointment. Every scan. Every surgery.”
I laughed once. Soft. “Luca. The reconstruction window closed seven years ago.”
“What you’re holding isn’t hope. It’s your guilt showing up late.”
His face went white. “I know I was wrong.”
“I shouldn’t have gone to see her. Shouldn’t have signed the postponement. Shouldn’t have shielded her when you were bleeding on the floor.”
“But baby, all these years—”
I cut him off. “Luca.”
“You told me you’d be my legs.”
His tears finally fell.
I looked at him. Calm. “Turns out you used them to run to her instead.”
He stood there like the sentence had gone through him.
The security guard came over, asked if I needed help.
I shook my head, turned my chair and rolled back through the gate.
Behind me, Luca’s voice cracked. “Sienna. I’ll wait for you.”
I didn’t turn around.
Whether he waited or not was no longer my business.