CHAPTER ONE:In the hospital

ATHENA’S POV

A needle jabbed my arm and my eyes snapped open to blinding white light. For a second I couldn’t remember how to make sense of anything — not the ceiling tiles swimming above me, not the steady, insistent beeping somewhere to my left, not the dry, papery feeling in my throat like I hadn’t used my voice in days. I pushed myself up slowly, taking in the room piece by piece: white walls, white sheets pulled tight across my legs, a metal stand beside the bed with two bags hanging from it, clear tubing running down into the crook of my arm. Everything smelled like rubbing alcohol and something floral underneath it, air freshener maybe, trying too hard to cover up what the room actually was.

A nurse stood at the foot of the bed, clipboard against her chest, smiling in that careful way people smile when they’re trying not to scare you. It was the kind of smile that told you more than words would have.

“How are you feeling this morning, dear?”

I blinked at her, still half asleep, my thoughts moving like they were wading through water. “Fine.”

The word wasn’t even all the way out before pain split through my skull, sharp and sudden, like something had cracked open behind my eyes. I reached up on instinct and my fingers hit gauze, wrapped thick around my head from temple to temple.

“Shit.” It came out louder than I meant it to, and it echoed a little in the quiet of the room.

She was at my side in a second, easing my hand back down onto the blanket like she’d done it a hundred times before. “You look pretty even with that on,” she said, and I almost laughed, except her eyes weren’t smiling anymore. Something sat behind them — careful, sad, bracing for something the way you brace right before you step off a curb you can’t quite see the bottom of.

I stared at her, trying to place the feeling crawling up my spine. My head was thick and slow, everything moving half a beat behind where it should have been, but underneath the fog I could feel it anyway — something wrong, something bad, waiting just past the edge of what I could remember.

She sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand in both of hers. Her skin was warm, dry, careful.

“This is going to be hard to hear,” she said quietly, her thumb tracing small circles against my knuckles. “You were in a car accident. With your parents.”

It hit me like a slap, and then it all came back at once, the way a wave doesn’t warn you before it breaks over your head — my parents fighting up front, same as always, the radio turned up too loud like that had ever once drowned them out. Me in the back with my arms around my old teddy bear, the one with the chewed ear I never admitted I still slept with. My mom’s voice climbing higher, my dad shouting over her, and then the car jerking hard to one side, headlights swinging wrong across the windshield, and that sound — metal folding in on itself, glass turning to sugar, a sound so loud it had no right being that quiet in my memory now.

After that, nothing. A door slamming somewhere far away. Darkness that didn’t feel like sleep.

My eyes went hot and blurry, the room swimming again, this time for a different reason. I pulled my knees up to my chest, wires be damned, and wrapped my arms around them.

“Are they okay?” My voice was already shaking, coming apart at the edges.

She didn’t answer. Just looked at me with that pity sitting behind her eyes, heavier now, and that silence told me everything her mouth wouldn’t.

My chest clamped down like a fist closing. “Are they okay?!” I was yanking at the wires now, screaming it at her, at the machines, at the ceiling, like volume alone could change the answer.

The door banged open — a doctor first, then two more nurses crowding in behind him, hands reaching to hold me still against the mattress. I fought them anyway, twisting, screaming, some animal part of me refusing to be pinned down and told the worst thing I would ever hear. Something bit into my arm, quick and cold, and the room went black before I could finish the thought I was screaming.

When I woke up again my head was dull and heavy, thoughts moving through molasses. Same nurse, sitting in the same chair by the window, though the light outside had shifted — later now, gold instead of white. She stood the second she saw my eyes open and busied herself with the machines, checking a line here, adjusting a dial there, the way people do when they need their hands occupied so their face doesn’t have to do anything.

I watched her for a minute before I trusted myself to speak.

“Miss?”

She turned, quick, like she’d been waiting for it. “Yes, dear?”

“Sorry about earlier.” I looked down at my hands, at the tape holding the IV in place, anywhere but her face. “I shouldn’t have screamed like that. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Her face went soft in a way that made my throat tighten all over again. She came back and sat, wrapping her hands around mine like she was afraid I’d float away otherwise.

“Don’t apologize. You handled that better than most people your age would’ve.” Her voice had a texture to it I hadn’t noticed before, warm, like something you could actually lean your weight against.

I swallowed hard, working up to the question I already knew the answer to. “So they’re really gone.”

She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. The silence sat between us, patient, final.

The tears came again, quieter this time, and she pulled me in without asking, one arm around my shoulders, rubbing slow circles on my back the way you’d soothe a much younger kid. I let her. I didn’t have the strength left to pretend I didn’t need it.

“Call me Divine,” she said quietly, near my ear.

“Divine.” I tried the name out loud, testing the shape of it in my mouth. It didn’t feel like a stranger’s name should have.

She pulled back just enough to look at me, brushing a piece of hair off my forehead with two fingers. “You’re stronger than you think you are, Athena. You’ll find it. I know you will.”

She stood, grabbed her notepad off the rolling table, and pointed at a red button clipped to the rail by the bed. “Press that if you need anything. I’ll bring your dinner later.”

Then she was gone, the door easing shut behind her with a soft click that somehow felt louder than the slam earlier had. I lay there staring at the ceiling, at a water stain shaped almost like a bird if you squinted, thumb picking at the edge of the gauze without me really deciding to do it. The ache underneath wasn’t as bad as it should’ve been, not this soon after whatever had happened to put stitches or staples or however many layers of gauze under there. I noticed it — filed it away the way I filed away everything I didn’t want to look at head-on — and then I was too tired to care why. Sleep pulled me back under before I could try to make sense of it.