The Initiative (A Sleeping Beauty Remix)

BONUS - Marlee

Marlee Jacobs (Age: 14)

My mother died at 4:27pm on a Sunday in the dead of winter. She'd been in the Intensive Care Unit for two weeks after her attempted suicide. It put her in a coma--one that she'd never gotten out of.

I spent those two weeks wandering the halls, feeling numb. Despite my anger at the situation, when the doctors finally took her off life support I felt nothing but...relief.

Who feels relief when their last living parent dies?

My father left my mother shortly after I was born--they weren't Destined. There wasn't anything keeping them together. No soulmate bond. Not even love.

I'd been conceived on a rainy Tuesday. My mom's car had broken down right outside a town south of Medloy village. Instead of walking to a bus stop or a mechanic, she'd stepped into a bar and had one too many drinks.

My parents hit it off in that bar, which is the only reason they started dating. Well, that and...me. Once my mother found out she was pregnant, my father had stepped up. But only long enough to see my birth. Afterward, he was gone.

Mom never recovered. She never found her mate, and after having me at 39, she decided to give up on the hope of a happily ever after.

I don't know what made her want to commit suicide. If I'm honest, mom had always been a pessimist. Nothing was ever good enough. There was no such thing as beauty for her. Depression wasn't just a state of being for her. She was depression.

I told myself never to be like that. I refused to see the bad in situations--I'd been surrounded by pessimism for fourteen years of my life.

I should've watched her closer. Should've seen some difference. A tell.

Nothing.

The heart machine flatlined. I would never forget that sound.

"Time of death, 4:27 pm."

I couldn't be here in this room. Couldn't stare at the remnants of the only family I'd ever known.

So I wandered the hospital.

For the two weeks when I visited my mom, I often meandered through the hospital. Looking for a distraction and only finding mirroring wells of sadness.

There was a floor under the Intensive Care Unit that was lively. I never cared to read the signs. Sometimes knowing what people had was too much. I liked to take in the sounds, the smells, the feeling. This floor wasn't a bundle of joy--the only floor close to joyful was the maternity ward--but it did what it could.

The day my mother died, there was someone new in the room below her.

One of the nurses gave me a half smile as I passed and squeezed my shoulder. Did they know everything around here?

I peeked through the crack in the new patient's door. It was a boy who couldn't have been more than eighteen. He had rather long arms and was nodding his head as someone else in the corner picked at guitar strings.

He had no hair.

And then he started to sing.

His voice was...

The coldness in my chest disappeared. What filled its place was a lightness, a warmth. It was beauty and hope. It was optimism.

My Acemark, the tiny lavender wildflower that curved along my ear cartilage, burned.

And I knew.

"Excuse me," I asked a nurse as she passed by, "what floor is this?"

"This is the fifth floor."

I blinked then laughed at myself. "Sorry, I meant what wing? What unit?"

The nurse's expression dropped. "Oh. It's hospice."

Hospice.