The Trainee

I faded in and out a lot in that hospital bed. The pain meds made time slippery—some moments stretched forever while others blinked by like static on a broken tape. Sometimes I swore I dreamed entire conversations only to find out they were real later. Sometimes I was sure someone was talking to me, but I couldn’t respond, couldn’t even lift a finger.

Eventually, though, they cut the IV. Said I was stable. Said I was “well enough to go home.” I wasn’t sure if they were lying or if I just didn’t care anymore. My body still felt like it was stitched together with leftover thread and someone’s bad intentions. But I didn’t argue. I just wanted to sleep. Sleep somewhere that didn’t beep and hum and smell like disinfectant.

I didn’t have the energy to say anything about being released. I just followed instructions, signed what they told me to sign, and tried not to wince too much every time I moved.

Apparently, it had been nearly a month.

Cub had kept me updated in brief check-ins—never long enough to feel real, but enough to remind me the outside world hadn’t collapsed without me. He’d taken in my cats, Pearl and Maui, once it was safe, bringing them to the temporary permit office until we could get a new space properly set up.

The old office? Toast. Gone. Scorched bones of a building, condemned before the fire was even out. Everything smelled like ash and melted plastic and too much loss. And now… now I was being wheeled out of a hospital I didn’t want to be in into a world I didn’t recognize anymore.

Cub was waiting for me in the lobby, seated calmly with a coffee cup in one hand and a carrier at his feet. I could see Pearl’s green eyes blinking slowly through the grate, Maui curled up lazily beside her. The moment I saw them, my chest felt less hollow.

Cub stood up when he spotted me, eyes tired but warm. “Hey, kid,” he said softly. “Ready to go home?”

I nodded once. Not because I was ready. But because I was done.

"Let’s get you and the gremlins home," he added, gently taking the paperwork from the nurse.

Pearl meowed softly, like she knew. Like she was welcoming me back.
I ended up staring at Cub for a long second—too long, really—as something in my brain finally caught up with the rest of the world. My brows furrowed. Then lifted. Then furrowed again as the slow, creeping horror rolled through me.

“Hey, kid.”

Kid.

Kid.

Why was he calling me kid?

I blinked at him, my face slowly contorting from confusion into outright panic as the realization hit me like a brick wall. Oh no. Oh God. No. No no no—

I called him Mom.

In front of people.

In front of Scar.

In front of Skizz.

Oh my God, I called him Mom.

Out loud.

In a hospital.

I barely heard Cub continuing to talk—he was saying something about how the car wasn’t far and we could stop for something warm on the way home—but his voice turned to static as my ears filled with the sound of my own internal screaming.

“I… I called you Mom,” I finally croaked, voice thin and horrified.

Cub paused mid-sentence. “Huh?”

I stared at him like he’d grown another head. “I called you Mom when I was drugged out on the pain meds. Didn’t I?”

There was a short silence.