Twelve-year-old Daphne glanced over at her littlest sister, Viola, rolling around on their parent’s bed. Daphne couldn’t hold back a scowl. Viola was talking happily to herself with one of her dolls, but it was hard for Daphne to focus on the movie she was watching with all of the noise Viola was making.
“Would you shut up?” Daphne growled at her sister. Viola continued her babbling and Daphne wasn’t sure if she continued because she didn’t know what the words meant, or didn’t care.
Why did Mom and Dad leave me to babysit? Daphne grimaced at the television in front of her. Though Daphne had seen the movie, one of her favorites, probably fifty times or so, her favorite part was coming up, and she didn’t want to be straining her ears to hear over her sister’s babbling.
I miss when Oliver was the youngest. Daphne grabbed the remote and turning the volume up to fifty.
“What do you say, your highness?” the male lead of the story was asking. “Do you want to go for a ride?”
The screen panned over to the heroine’s face. She smiled, clearly beginning to fall in love with the handsome non-prince. “I’d love to,” she said.
As the woman in the show stepped up to get into the carriage, Daphne heard a metallic thunk, and Viola’s screams.
Growling, Daphne paused the show. I’ll have to rewind.
She turned to look at where Viola had been laying on their parent’s bed, only moments earlier, and her heart dropped. Viola wasn’t there.
The screams from the floor continued. “What are you yelling about?” Daphne shouted back at her sister. She crawled across the bed, and her stomach dropped at the sight of all of the blood on the floor.
“Viola?” she asked, quickly climbing off the bed, leaning over her sister, and picking the child up into lap. Blood, sticky, metallic, and sweet, coated her hands as she pulled her sister into her lap.
Viola’s shrieks continued. “Viola,” Daphne said again, her breath starting to get panicky, as blood continued to pool into Viola’s dark hair. “Where does it hurt?” she asked.
Viola didn’t seem to hear her, as the wailing continued. It’s at least a wound somewhere on her head. Daphne began to search the girl’s hair. “Oliver?” she screamed for her little brother.
“Yeah?” she heard him reply. He seemed to be standing nearby, and Daphne wondered if he had been coming to see what had happened.
“Bring me the house phone,” Daphne demanded, still peeling through Viola’s sticky hair.
Finally, Daphne laid her eyes on the source of the bleeding. It had only been days prior that Daphne had learned at school to stop the bleeding, a wound needed to be compressed. She grabbed a corner of her parent’s blankets, and pressed it into Viola’s skull, causing the girl’s shriek to go up a notch.
“Ssh,” Daphne said, trying to comfort her sister, that only moments before, she’d been wishing didn’t exist. “I know it hurts.”
Viola’s cries were beginning to calm down, and she was starting to hiccup instead.
Oliver came back in and threw the house phone across the bed to Daphne. “What happened?” he asked as she reached for it, causing Viola to whine with pain again.
“I’m not really sure,” Daphne admitted. “One second she was on the bed, the next she was on the floor crying and bleeding.”
She hit the talk button of the cordless home phone, the dial sound loud enough for her to hear. She dialed the numbers of their parents single cell phone, a number that their mother had drilled into all of their heads, save for Viola’s. It had always been just in case for emergencies. Daphne had never imagined having to actually use it.
Oliver came around to the side of the bed with a roll of paper towels to start mopping up the blood. “It looks like she may have hit her head on the corner of this vent,” Oliver said, pointing at the heating unit by their parent’s bed.
Leave it to Oliver to appear to be the most responsible. She watched him mop up the blood, the phone ringing in her ear.
“Hello?” her father’s voice said on the other side of the receiver.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“There’s an emergency!” Daphne exclaimed, thankful that it was her father who picked up the phone, and not her mother.
She heard him inhale sharply. “Daphne, is that you?” he asked. “What happened?” He was talking quickly, as if the words were jumbling out of his mouth without much thought.
“Yes, it’s me,” she replied. “Viola fell off your guy’s bed and her head is bleeding.”
Her father’s inhaled sharply again. “How bad is she bleeding?” he asked.
Daphne quickly pulled away the blanket from her sister’s head to assess the flow. “It’s not too bad anymore,” she replied, sighing a bit with relief. Daphne knew that her mother would still make her pay, as the responsible party, but she was at least relieved that the wound wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
If Viola had died on her watch, her mother would have killed Daphne with her own two hands.
“But it was pretty bad?” he asked, his voice breathy.
“I think so,” Daphne replied, her voice shaking a little.
“Are you putting pressure on it?” he asked.
Daphne nodded, and then remembered her father couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she answered.
“Good,” her father said. “Keep doing that. We’re almost home so don’t call an ambulance. We can take her to the hospital ourselves, okay?” he asked.
Daphne felt her stomach twist around inside of her. Viola has to go to the hospital because of me. Mother is going to be beyond furious.
Daphne swallowed hard, knowing her mother would not treat her kindly for this accident. “Okay,” she said.
“I love you, Daphne,” her father said in a reassuring voice. Daphne’s fears couldn’t be assuaged. Her father was not the one she was afraid of.
“I love you, too, Dad,” she said.
“See you soon.”
“See you soon,” she replied, hanging up the phone.
“What did they say?” Oliver asked as Daphne put the wireless phone on the bed.
“They said they’ll be home soon to take her to the hospital,” she answered. “But it’s probably going to be okay for Viola.”
Oliver breathed out a sigh, his brown eyes meeting Daphne’s. “You know mom is going to be really angry,” he said.
Daphne grimaced. Her heart sunk low into her chest. “I’m just grateful Viola is okay,” she lied. She was grateful her sister was okay, but she wished that none of it had happened in the first place.
A few minutes later, Daphne heard the front door to their house opening. Her father’s and mother’s footsteps quickly echoed down the hallway. Her mother was the first one into the room, and she let out a scream when she saw all of the paper towel sopping with Viola’s blood.
“Daphne!” she exclaimed as Daphne’s father stepped into the room behind her. “You call this a small amount of blood?” Kimberly shrieked.
“I…I didn’t,” Daphne replied, surrendering Viola to her mother, who lifted the child onto the bed to assess the damage.
“You worthless and incompetent child!” Kimberly screeched while hugging Viola tightly. Daphne saw Oliver scurry out of the room. “What the hell were you doing that allowed this to happen?”
Daphne felt nauseated. “It was an accident,” she replied, meekly, feeling her body curl in on itself.
“An accident? So, you pushed her?” Kimberly accused her shrilly.
“Kimberly, stop,” Daphne’s father said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I doubt Daphne pushed her off herself.”
Kimberly shrugged off her husband’s hand. “She may as well have pushed Viola!” she accused Daphne, still staring at her middle child’s face. “She was in charge when this happened. That makes it her fault!”
Daphne had no rebuttal but instead continued to sink further into herself.
“Kimberly,” Ian said.
She ignored him. “I specifically asked you to watch Viola carefully because she’s still so fragile. Only someone who is jealous of their siblings would do something like this.” Kimberly let out a heavy breath.
Daphne’s heart panged. Despite her father’s attempt to defend her from her mother, her mother’s words rang true. She was jealous of Viola, just as she had been jealous of Oliver when he was born.
I’m just too greedy. My desire for attention is too much. She looked up at her mother’s red face, her tears twisting Daphne’s guts up even more. I’m smothering Mother.
“Kimberly!” Daphne’s father shouted, interrupting whatever she had been telling Daphne. “That’s enough! It was an accident. Daphne did not mean to hurt Viola. But we need to get her to the hospital, and you are wasting time berating our child instead!”
Daphne looked over at her father’s face as he snatched Viola out of Kimberly’s arms and into his own. Blood was beginning to trickle down into her hair again. I’m not sure if he’s angry for Viola’s sake, or mine.
“Accidents happen with kids all the time. But right now, we need to get Viola treated.”
“Fine,” Kimberly growled, her blue eyes ablaze with what could only be described as hatred. “Go get Viola to the car. I need to finish talking to Daphne first,” she commanded.
Her father sighed heavily. “Hurry up,” he murmured threateningly. “We do not have time to waste.” He turned and walked out of the room, trying to calm Viola who was starting to fuss again.
Kimberly turned back to Daphne, and for a brief moment, Daphne met her mother’s eyes and felt as though she was falling into an eternal pit of fire.
“I wish I had never given birth to such a worthless, incompetent being,” Kimberly snarled. “I should have aborted you when I had the chance.”
Daphne did not get a moment to reply before her mother spun on her heel and strode across the room, slamming the door loudly behind her.
Daphne curled up into the fetal position on the cold floor, not even bothering to climb back up into the warm bed. A sob choked out of her, and she cried out into the darkened room, the princess still paused on the TV, about to get into the carriage. Her whole body felt as though it had shattered into a million shards of glass, and if she tried to put it back together, she would end up cutting and breaking herself more than her mother’s words had.
Anywhere…anywhere else would be better than this house.
She cried out into the night, doing her best to muffle most of her cries. No one came to comfort her.
