THE MOTHER AT THE DOOR

The ceiling was the safest place to look.

White tiles. Soft flickering lights. Cracks forming shapes only the sleep-deprived or spiritually cursed could interpret an angel here, a snarling dog there, a weird blob that looked suspiciously like Danny DeVito. Up there, nothing asked questions. Nothing remembered the gunshot. Nothing replayed Noah’s face in those final seconds before everything shattered like a cheap prop in a low-budget action movie.

My thoughts weren’t that kind. They dragged me back every time I blinked. The sound of the shot sharp and metallic. Julian’s eyes widening, the fear in them bright as a burning match. The weight of the gun in my shaking hands, too heavy to hold, too light to stop what came after.

And Noah…. 

falling.

Even if it was self-defense, even if the alternative was Julian bleeding out. Guilt didn’t care. Guilt had the personality of a tyrant and the loyalty of a tax collector. 

Pain pulsed beneath the bandages around my abdomen. Not a dull ache no, that would’ve been merciful. This was a dragging, surgical kind of pain. The kind that felt like someone had rearranged my insides alphabetically without permission. A reminder of where the bullet entered: right upper abdomen, just beneath the ribs. Torn muscle. Skin split. It missed my liver by millimeters something every doctor called a miracle. Personally, I thought God might’ve just been distracted for a second. They’d opened me up with an exploratory laparotomy, slicing from ribcage toward waist to check for internal bleeding. Now a thick dressing and abdominal binder held me together more stubbornly than my family ever had. Sometimes it felt like the wound was still open. Sometimes I wasn’t sure it wasn’t.I reached toward the bandage, fingers trembling, wanting to feel something that wasn’t guilt or fear or the memory of Noah hitting the ground-

The door swung open.

“Don’t.” The nurse snapped the word gently, which should’ve been impossible, but nurses are built different. Hands on her hips, gaze sharper than a thousand scalpels. “We don’t need you undoing our hard work just so you can poke at it like a science fair project.”

I sighed. “You’re psychic?”

“No,” she said, walking in with queen-like authority. “I’m a nurse. Same thing.”

Her assistant rolled in a tray of supplies; gauze, saline, gloves, a fresh binder like they were about to perform a sacred ritual instead of a dressing change.

“It’s time,” she said.

I nodded, bracing myself the way soldiers in war movies brace before the medic rips the bullet out. She lifted the gown, peeled the tape with practiced gentleness, layer by layer, like unwrapping a very cursed Christmas present. Then the gauze. Then the last layer. The incision stared back at me, six inches of angry red flesh, swollen edges, stitches like tiny black soldiers biting their way into my skin. Bruising bloomed across my ribs in deep purples and blues, spreading like watercolor in slow motion.

“That’s… mine?” My voice cracked like it had been dropped on the floor.

“It kept you alive,” she said softly, her voice lowering into something kind. “Wounds do that sometimes.”

She cleaned the wound with warm saline. Each stroke was a line of fire, tracing up my nerves into my chest. Tears gathered not dramatic, not cinematic just quiet, exhausted, unwanted.

“This part might burn,” she warned.

It did.

It burned like the gates of Mordor. But I stayed silent, not because I was brave, but because I was too tired to produce a sound that wasn’t a groan or a prayer. When she finished wrapping fresh gauze and tightening the binder, she placed a warm hand over mine.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she whispered. “You don’t have to pretend you’re made of steel.”

I didn’t answer.

She didn’t push.

She left with a soft click of the door. Silence flooded the room in heavy waves.

Then footsteps. Fast an urgent.

The sound of a storm wearing shoes. My chest tightened. Not now. Please not-

The door burst open.

My mother stood there. But not the version I stored in my memory like an artifact. This one was smaller. Thinner. Hair wild, brown streaked with gray like someone had dragged worry through it with both hands. Her dark eyes were haunted they used to be sharp; now they were eroded. Her skin looked stretched over new, unkind wrinkles.

But the way she looked at me like she owned my pain, like she’d paid for it and wanted a refund. She hadn’t changed at all.

“Oh, Ava…” she breathed, hand trembling against her mouth. “My God.”

I blinked. “You look… different.” Her expression flickered, wounded pride flaring up the way some people get offended by a sneeze.

“So do you,” she said. “But I see you found a more dramatic way to get my attention.”

“Mom really?” I exhaled sharply. “Don’t start.”

She pressed a hand to her heart like she was auditioning for Les Mis.

“I almost lost you. When Claire called, I thought after everything I can’t bury my only child.” Her voice cracked. Mine stayed still.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I murmured.

“No.” She snapped the word like a twig. “You don’t get to say that. Not after cutting me out for years.”

“You left me first.”  A stab hit under my ribs, emotional, not surgical.

Her jaw worked, muscles twitching like she was chewing the past.

“I left because you made the whole world think I didn’t protect you.”

“You didn’t.”

A beat. A fragile, dangerous beat.

She stepped closer, lowering her voice like we were co-conspirators in some awful secret.

“You wrote that book. You told people what you thought he did.”

“You defended him.”  The rage came back like it had been waiting outside the door for years.

“By the way, do you still work for him?”

She flinched but only for a second before her spine snapped straight.

“Yes,” she said, her voice deadly calm. “We all need to work, don’t we?” She took another step toward me.

“Ava, everything I did, I did for you. You may not see it now, but you’ll thank me one day.” Her tone tightened.

“I had to protect what little family we had left.”

“You’re unbelievable.”  My voice broke open. Not fragile but furious.

“You defended that man. You work for him. You chose him over me. Your own daughter.”

Silence cracked between us like ice splintering on a frozen river. She leaned in, eyes sharp enough to cut.

“You look like him, you know.” Her tone went cold, surgical and precise.

“As you get older. The jaw. The eyes. Even the way you shut people out. You took the worst of him.” Her gaze pierced straight through me.

“You’re just like your father.” Her voice lowered into a whisper sharp enough to draw blood.

“He left me. And so did you.”

The words hit like a punch fast, unfair and unearned. Not because they were true. But because she believed them so completely it felt like a curse.

“I didn’t leave you,” I whispered. “You pushed me away.” 

She blinked rapidly, anger and grief swirling like a bad storm.

“You’re still my child,” she said fiercely. “Whether you like it or not.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“That’s what terrifies me,” she breathed. “You grew into a woman I don’t recognize.”

“Well,” I said hoarsely, “maybe if you’d stayed, you would.” Her face twisted a mosaic of pain, pride, resentment, and something brittle underneath.

“I came because I thought you were dying,” she said. “And even then, you still manage to make me the villain.”

“Don’t make me say it,” I whispered.

Her lips trembled not in guilt but in frustration. She reached out, touching my cheek like it belonged to her, like she was checking if I was still made of the pieces she’d left behind.

“You’ll always be mine, my daughter,” she murmured. “Even when you try to run from me.”

And that was when the door opened again.

I didn’t hear him.

I felt him like a shift in the air, pressure change, heartbeat magnetized toward mine.

Julian.

He froze in the doorway.

Eyes wide.

Jaw tight.

Color draining from his face. His gaze flicked to my mother’s hand on my cheek, to the fresh bandage wrapped around my abdomen, to the pain I was trying so hard to swallow.

Then back to me.

And the hurt in his expression was almost enough to reopen the stitches. My mother turned toward him slowly, her face sharpening into something predatory.

Like she’d just found a new target. A new battlefield. A new person to blame.

And I lay there heart pounding, stitches burning, caught between the man I saved and the woman who never saved me. And I lay there, heart pounding, stitched skin burning, caught between the man I saved and the woman who never saved me. Wondering which one would hurt me next.

Which one will hurt me next?

Julian didn’t speak he couldn’t.

He just stood there in the doorway, chest rising too fast, eyes flicking between us like he’d walked into the scene of a crime and hadn’t figured out where to put his hands.

My mother turned toward him, slow, deliberate, measuring him the way generals evaluate terrain before a battle.

He swallowed. Hard.

“Ava,” he murmured, voice raw. “I didn’t know she was-”

“Of course you didn’t,” my mother cut in smoothly, icy politeness sliding over her like armor. “No one tells me anything until it’s too late.”

Julian’s jaw clenched. “With respect… maybe there’s a reason for that.”

Her gaze snapped to him sharp, slicing. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, voice dangerously soft, “but unless you’re a surgeon or a miracle worker, I don’t recall asking you for commentary.”

“Mom,” I warned.

She ignored me. She always did.

Julian stood straighter, shoulders tightening as if bracing for impact. “I care about her.”

“Care?” My mother let out a brittle laugh. “Everyone cares about her once she’s bleeding. That’s always been her magic trick.”

I winced.

Julian looked like he wanted to throw a chair.

My mother stepped closer to him not too close, just enough to make him uncomfortable like a lion testing whether the antelope would run.

“And you,” she said, eyes gleaming with accusation, “you’re the reason she was even in that place. Don’t fool yourself. Caring doesn’t erase consequences.”

Julian froze.

A shadow crossed his face, something heavy and self-punishing, and my stomach twisted.

“Stop,” I whispered.

She didn’t.

“She wouldn’t be in this bed,” my mother continued, “if it weren’t for the men she surrounds herself with. All the others. Now you.”

“That’s enough!” The pain in my abdomen spiked from the shout, but I didn’t care.

“I’m not doing this. Not with you blaming everyone but yourself.”

Her jaw twitched just once but it was enough to show I’d hit something she didn’t want touched.

Julian moved toward my bedside, slow, cautious, as if making sure I wouldn’t break. His hand hovered over mine before he pulled back, unsure whether he was allowed. My mother watched that hesitation. Watched me. Watched the space between us. And something shifted in her something small, sharp, and ugly.

“You really will let anyone close, won’t you?” she whispered. “Anyone except the person who actually raised you.”

I stared at her. Exhaustion settled in my bones like sandbags. I didn’t have the strength to fight the old wars anymore.

“Get out,” I whispered.

She blinked, stunned, as if she genuinely believed she had immunity in this room.

“Ava!” She barked 

“Get. Out.” 

She didn’t move. Not at first. Her throat bobbed, eyes flashing between rage and heartbreak like lightning behind storm clouds. She smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, trying to gather the scraps of dignity that were always more important to her than love. She turned toward the door, steps slow, almost regal, the exit of a woman who wanted the last word but hadn’t found one dagger-sharp enough. At the doorway, she paused.

Julian shifted protectively, instinctively placing himself between us and her gaze.

She looked at him, then at me. Her voice dropped, soft, controlled, dangerously calm.

“I came here terrified you were dying.”

A long beat.

“And now I see… maybe losing you happened long before this hospital.”

My breath hitched. She stepped into the hall one foot over the threshold, one still in the room, like she wanted the moment to linger just long enough to hurt. Then she delivered the line.

Quiet. Precise.

A blade wrapped in velvet.

“You didn’t cut me out, Ava. You just finally became him.”

And she walked away. The door closed behind her with the gentlest click soft, almost loving the kind of sound that hurts worse than a slam. Julian exhaled shakily beside me, but I couldn’t look at him. Because for the first time since waking up in this hospital bed, the wound in my abdomen wasn’t the one bleeding.