Mei Ling didn't open her eyes when she woke up.
She lay there for a few seconds, her body weak, her thoughts lagging behind.
Her eyes opened and rested on the ceiling.
A long crack stretched across the ceiling above the light bulb, split slightly at one end. It was the same one she had noticed months ago but never fixed.
A dull ache spread along her side when she moved.
She waited for the pain to ease. The accident hadn't broken anything, but her body hadn't fully recovered.
She drew in a breath and pushed herself into a sitting position.
For a moment, she thought how simple it would be if someone else was there, someone to break the silence, to make the space feel less enclosed, someone who would have spoken by now even if it meant nothing, she craved for the kind of presence she had never kept. The feeling didn't stay long before fading.
Mei Ling exhaled and swung her legs off the bed, her feet touching the cold floor. The sensation grounded her.
She stood carefully and walked toward the kitchen.
She stared at the chair by the table, the untouched cup from the night before, her shoes near the couch where she had left them.
Her work bag on the couch was impossible to ignore.
She looked away.
It lasted all of three seconds. She knew she should leave it alone, at least for today. The doctor had said she should rest, her editor had said the same. However, rest was never something she understood.
Even when she tried, her mind rarely stayed still. There was always something unfinished, something waiting to be checked, verified, or followed up on. Sitting idle had never brought her any comfort. If anything, it only gave her more time to think.
She poured herself a glass of water and drank, leaning lightly against the counter. The cold water helped ease her a little, but her mind remained unsettled.
She looked at the bag again. Still indecisive, she walked to the couch, sat and pulled the bag closer. She didn't open it.
Not yet.
Instead, she placed her hands on it and stared ahead. Her mind gradually returned to that which she had tried to ignore.
It always began the same way, in silence, before the memory took hold. A large, bright house resurfaced in her memory.
She could almost hear it. Laughter in wide hallways, music in the background, the clink of glasses, and low voices talking.
She had been younger then.
Standing near the staircase, she watched everything quietly. The world felt safe, like it could never fall apart.
Her mother's voice was soft and warm when she called her name from across the room. Her father was different then, beaming with smiles, not yet lost to anger or problems.
That version of him felt far away now, like it belonged to someone else's life.
At first, nothing seemed wrong. The house was still full, still warm, still peaceful.
Her father sat at the dining table with printed betting slips and odds sheets spread out in front of him, treating it like something harmless.
He called it something simple at first, just a way to pass time, something that didn't matter much. He spoke with confidence, like he fully understood it.
Her mother didn't trust it from the beginning. She warned him and told him to be careful, to stop while it was still early.
But he only smiled and said she was worrying too much.
And at first, he seemed right.
As time went on, little things began to disappear. Monies deposited in the jointly family owned bank account, exhausted gradually. Conversations became shorter, and phone calls ended too quickly. Her father stayed out longer than usual, and when he returned, he was quieter, as if something in him was changing.
Then the losses grew.
At first, they were easy to hide. Then they weren't, as bills began to appear more often.
Mei Ling remembered hearing words she didn't fully understand then, about mortgage and bankruptcy. She only knew they made her mother tired in a way sleep couldn't fix.
Her father stopped being jovial, having meals with them, or giving heads up about where he had been. Some days, he just sat alone in silence, staring into space.
Gambling wasn't something he did just for fun, it became something he needed. He began taking loans, using their house as security.
The house that once felt stable began to feel uncertain. Not broken yet, but not safe like it used to.
Her mother began to cry quietly at night, thinking Mei Ling was asleep.
She wasn't. She heard it all, even when she could barely grasp what it all meant.
Along the way, things became worse. Alcohol came first.
Then drugs.
After that, her father turned into someone different. Sometimes his steps were unsteady, other times his voice was loud, then suddenly soft. The house lost it's serenity whenever he was around.
The man she knew had transformed into someone she couldn't recognize.
But the worst part wasn't the change itself. It was how normal it slowly began to feel. Like they were learning to live inside something breaking.
The memory deepened again. The night which marked the beginning of the end came back, clear and hard to forget.
It was raining heavily, blurring everything outside the windows.
She sat in the back seat of the car, watching her parents in front through the reflection. They were arguing again. It wasn't the kind that ended quickly, this one went on.
Her mother's voice was tired and frustrated. Her father's voice was sharp, defensive, and too loud.
Words filled the space between them, words that couldn't be taken back.
The car moved fast. Too fast.
Mei Ling remembered gripping the seat in front of her, her small hands tightening as something inside her told her evil was just about to befall them.
The windshield wipers couldn't keep up as the rain made everything difficult to see.
Her world changed in a single moment, not slowly or gradually, but completely.