~Malia~
I had woken up in a hospital plenty of times before, but never had I awoken with my body in such complete and utter shambles, the life almost completely drained out of me.
I opened my eyes to see a familiar looking woman sitting in the corner of my hospital room, her eyes closed and weary looking for some reason. She looked almost exactly like my mom, and that made me want to cry even more.
"Ouch," I stuttered out trying to sit up, which set off a little beeping alarm causing my visitor to sit upright in her seat and her eyes to grow wide with fear.
"Oh, no no no you don't," she said with a thick British accent that puzzled me. How could she look like my family but have an accent from another country? As far as I knew the only relatives I had resided in the US.
She had the same dark brown hair as mine that was naturally curly, fair skin with a light dusting of freckles, same bright blue eyes. She was my mother's spitting image, which made her my spitting image as well.
I was more than confused when she started talking.
"I know you must be really scared right now but don't worry, Mr. Carmichael was detained and he won't bother you ever again."
I heard the words coming out of her mouth but I couldn't comprehend what they meant.
I looked down at my pale skin encased in casts and gauze and the cuts slashed across my body from the previous lashes and beatings I'd sustained from my step father over the past few months.
"How?" I asked her, skeptical about how some woman who looked like my family but didn't sound like us, would be the answer to my prayers.
"Department of Human Services caught wind that you were being abused, one of your teachers at school notified them and when they called Mr. Carmichael and he said no one lived there, they got suspicious. They sent a unit with two police officers to your house and found him beating you almost to death and they told him to get off of you but he wouldn't so they tasered him and then when he still wouldn't stop they had to use lethal force on him..." she trailed off and I knew where she was going with this.
"So he's dead? Good riddance," I said, the emotions not daring leave my voice.
"Not exactly, he is in critical condition in the ICU, they shot him right above his heart and there is a small chance he might not make it but the doctors are hopeful that he will survive."
"Pity."
She looked at me incredulously. Surely she didn't expect me to feel sorry for the bastard who used and abused me for almost an entire year?
"What? Do you see these scars, these bruises? They are all from him. Not to mention the ones you can't see. Don't judge me for how I react to his pain. If anything he deserves it a million times over."
That shut her up real quick. There was a pressure in my throat that felt thick and heavy, like I was about to cry but I refused to. I sucked it up and swallowed down my grief and my pain, the force of doing so almost making me pass out.
"I wasn't judging, I was just surprised, that's all. I didn't think all of this was from him..." she trailed off.
"Who else would have done it?"
"I don't know I just prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, which you aren't necessarily doing for me."
I snorted.
"Well maybe I would if you told me who you were, or maybe even your first name?"
"I'm sorry, forgive me it's been a long day and a long flight. I'm Marissa Echols, your mother's sister."
I gaped at her in awe, surprised at what she had just told me. I had never known that my mother even had a sister.
"What do you mean, you're my aunt?"
She nodded her head solemnly.
"I assume your mum never told you about me, or her family overseas, did she?"
I shook my head in response to her question, my mind still reeling from what she had told me. How could I have an entire family that I had never met, let alone heard of?!
"Well that's understandable. We had a...falling out, you could say. Our mother didn't want her marrying someone who wasn't of noble blood and when she fell for your father, well, that was it for her. I stayed in the UK with mum and dad and she disowned me from her life after that, thinking I took their side instead of hers. The truth was, I was never a free spirit like she was, I was too afraid to take risks and get out from underneath their thumb. I never married, which they obviously hated, and eventually we had a falling out as well and now I'm on my own, until they heard about you, that is."
My ears perked up at the mention of my nonexistent grandparents.
"They know about me?"
She nodded then continued.
"They want to meet you so badly, and once I told them about your circumstances they offered something to you. They want you to come to the UK and live with us on our estate."
My eyes bugged out of my head.
"Estate? Just how rich are you people?"
She smiled a bit, although it was weary and tired.
"Rich enough. I've lived with it my whole life, but to someone who wasn't born into it, it can all be a bit overwhelming."
My mind was reeling and my heart beat started picking up on the monitor, causing a nurse to come in to check my vitals again, and told me that she was going to call the doctor in to check on me since I was awake.
When she left, we finished our conversation.
"So why do you want me to go live with you if you've never even met me before today, if you don't know anything about me?"
"Well, for one, we are your only living relatives. No one knows where your biological father is, and no one wants you going to your step father's next of kin. Your only other option besides going with us is going into the foster care system. Which would you prefer, living a life of luxury and wanting for nothing with your actual flesh and blood, or going into foster care and probably never going back to this place again regardless?"
She made a valid point.
"Say I do go with you, how do I know you guys aren't the worst people in the whole world, how do I know you won't like enslave me to be your maid forever or something?"
You could tell I wasn't a very trusting person.
"We already have you enrolled in the best school in the country, you'll receive top of the line education for the last bit of your junior year and your following senior year, although over there we call it college. You'll notice everything is slightly different over there as well. We also have one of our own systems of child care over in the UK who will check up on you regularly, and they are far more vigilant than the system over here. I have the paperwork for your school as well as receipts of things recently bought for your new room, clothes, shoes, a television, a computer. Would we buy you all of these things if we were going to force you into a life of servitude?"
I started deep into her blue orbs, the veins a bit more prominent in them and they were slightly yellowing with her older age with laugh lines framing her face and I noticed soft wrinkles encased her delicate features.
She looked like my mother's twin. A sharp shot of pain ricocheted across my chest and I almost cried out from the force of it.
"I know, I miss her too."
The fact that she knew exactly what I was thinking about and when completely blew my mind. Perhaps we were more connected than I thought.
Just then, a social worker came into the room.
"I see you've met your aunt Marissa. I've met her and we've done thorough checks of her home overseas, as well as background checks on her and the people who you will be living with. We greatly approve of the school choice and we think you'll thrive in England. What do you say?" she asked me softly, the all black of her ensemble showing that she meant business.
I sighed, closing my swollen eyes both from crying and from the black eyes.
"When do I leave?"