Cold Fire [SAMPLE]

[17]

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I step out into the hallway and find my parent's rooms easily. It seems someone thought to be nice and put me in a room near them.

I decide not to see my mother first, just in case I have another blackout and start seeing things, and so I push open the door to my father's room. He's sitting up in his white hospital bed, reading a book but upon hearing the sound of the opening door, he looks up and places the book in his lap, smiling when he sees my face.

I nearly burst into tears. Here he is, in a hospital, covered in bruises and cuts, and it's all my fault. If he knew that the car crash had happened because of me, would he be smiling right now?

I take a seat on the grey-blue chair beside him and ask, "How are you?"

"I've been better," he says, his voice croaky. He coughs and continues. "But I don't have any broken bones, which is a miracle considering the scale of the crash."

The scale of the crash. I shiver.

A minute or so later, I recover from the overwhelming feeling of guilt, which squeezes at my heat, and breach the silence that has fallen upon us. "How did it happen?" I know the answer already, of course, but I have to ask. Maybe it wasn't a vision I had, but a strange dream. Maybe it's not my fault after all.

The moment he speaks, I know that my vision was, in fact, a vision, and my heart drops a thousand metres in my chest, plummeting to the unforgiving ground.

"I don't really know," he says, frowning. "One second I was driving, the next, the steering wheel started spinning out of control and the car increased in speed without me having to touch the accelerator. Before I knew it we had flipped and then I got hit on the head and was knocked unconscious. I think our car might have malfunctioned, either that or I did it myself by accident and the knock to the head has made my memory fuzzy."

I have to bite my tongue from telling him that it wasn't his fault or the cars. It hurts to see him like this, but what can I say? That this man used his magical powers to cause the accident because he wanted to kill me? That he wants to kill me because of my ability to see the past, present and future? While I'm at it, why don't I just throw in that my disease is slowly killing me, I'm trapped in the wrong body and that I'm not really his daughter?

I don't know how, but he must see something in my face, because the next thing he says freezes me to the core.

"You know what happened, don't you?"

My heart rate spikes. When did he become so observant?

"Were you there?"

It takes me a while to remember how to move, and slowly I start to shake my head.

My father notices, yet again, that something's up. "What happened?" he presses.

"Nothing," I say, a little too quickly. Then I realise it was the wrong thing to say, and I quickly cover it up. "I mean, I don't know what happened."

My father stares me in the eye and I do my best to hold his gaze. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Because I can't," I blurt out and then clamp my mouth shut. Great work, Melissa. You've really done it, now. I stand.

"I should probably go. I need to see mum." My voice shakes despite my efforts to keep it steady.

"You know, you can tell me anything, Melissa. I'm your father."

I swallow. I know perfectly well that he's not my father. "I'm sorry, dad. I have to go." I'm out the door before he can say another word.

I lean against the wall of my father's room for a while, taking deep breaths until my heart beat begins to even out. How did I get so close to spilling everything? Is it really that hard to keep my mouth shut?