Chapter 12 Going Home (Lotus)
Three weeks in the hospital. Three weeks of white walls, restless nights, and the hum of machines keeping score of her breath. Lotus still had the damn wristband on, plastic tight against her skin, marking her as a patient even though they’d just cut her loose.
She was discharged, sitting in a wheelchair by the rotating doors with Nurse Cathy hovering close. The world outside looked too loud, too fast people
moving like they had somewhere certain to be, while she sat there feeling unmoored. Thirty minutes ticked by slow, every second stretching against her nerves until finally, her mother’s car pulled into view.
Ms. Carole and Cam pulled up in the family’s old Mazda mini-van, white with peeling paint and one door that wouldn’t shut right unless you slammed it twice. He jumped out quick, gray hoodie half-zipped, Nikes sneakers, and came straight to the entrance like he was rescuing her from war.
Her mama, Carole, stayed in the front seat phone glued to her ear, voice trembling and dramatic like she was on stage.
“Y’all -y’all, she is Comin’ home! My baby made it, thank you Jesus!” Carole was already halfway to tears, talking loud enough for the next parking lot over to hear. “Yes, the doctors am not know if she was gon’ pull through, but the prayers worked. I told them! I told them God got the final say!”
Lotus shuffled forward, pale and limping, hospital bag dragging behind her. The world felt louder. Brighter. Rawer. Each step was a fight.
Carole didn't move. Didn’t even open the door. Just hit the speakerphone and yelled, “Let me call you back I gotta tell Sister Brenda next!”
Click.
Then instantly: “BRENDA! Girl, guess who I just picked up? Yes! Uh-huh! She in the car right now alive and walkin’!”
Cam wordlessly grabbed Lotus’ bag, then looped his arm around her back, easing her into the passenger seat. She flinched when the seatbelt clicked. Her chest started that tight, creeping thing again like her lungs forgot how to breathe.
First intersection, her body went stiff.
Second one, her ears rang.
By the third, she couldn’t see straight. The flash of the crash kept flickering in her head like a broken film reel. Tires screeching. Glass raining. Sirens.
The panic crept up fast, crawling under her skin until her chest felt too tight. Her anxiety was shooting through the roof first time back in a car since the accident, and every second was a trigger.
She tried to ground herself, clutching the armrest like it could anchor her, eyes shut against the spin of it all. “Ma…” she whispered, soft, almost pleading. But her mother didn’t hear. Too caught up in the drama spilling through her phone, her voice rising, performing for someone else while her daughter unraveled inches away.
Carole kept driving, one hand on the wheel, the other preaching to her Bluetooth like it was Sunday service.
Lotus realized quick there was no point trying to get her mother’s attention. Her mom was locked in performance mode on the phone, voice loud, polished, like the world on the other end mattered more than the daughter in the chair. So Lotus fell back on what Nurse Cathy had drilled into her before discharge: the breathing exercise.
Cathy had leaned close, right before she left, saying how most patients catch anxiety the moment they slide back into a car. “Breathe through it, baby. Slow. In and out. Don’t fight it.” That stuck. So Lotus closed her eyes, pulled air in deep, let it out steady.
She whispered to herself, barely audible, self-teaching like a kid learning to walk: “Lotus, you got this. Everything’s fine. Just breathe.”
And that’s when Cam, half-lost in his phone, happened to glance up. For a second, he caught her no mask, no shield just his sister holding herself together with breath and a whisper.
Cam glanced over, clocked the way her breath hitched, the slight shake in her hand. He leaned in, quiet but sure, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m here. You are safe, sis. Just breathe, alright? We almost home,” he said, his voice warm, encouraging the kind of tone a little brother saves only for his big sister.
Lotus didn’t speak. She just gave a small nod, grateful, holding on to his words like they were oxygen.