The hospital days blurred. Each one bled into the next routine checkups, nurses adjusting wires, the scent of antiseptic that clung to my hair like smoke. But no matter how still I was forced to be, my mind kept running.
I kept digging. Searching. Questioning.
I didn't tell my parents I'd been in an accident. Not even my mother. Not yet. Not after what my father told me. Not after that night. Maybe I was punishing them, or maybe I just couldn't bear to look them in the eye knowing everything they'd hidden from me.
So I kept them out.
And I searched.
I tried everything search engines, old news archives, and reverse image lookups using the blurry dream-vision of the fire that lived in my head. I even tried digging through public records for anyone named Selena who might have died in a fire, just to prove to myself this was real.
But there was nothing. No proof. No closure. No, Selena, that linked back to me.
It was like chasing smoke.
