Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] St. Vincent's Hospital smelled antiseptic and death. The kind of chemical clean that tried to mask decay but just mixed with it instead. Creating something worse than either smell alone. I sat in the car staring at the entrance and couldn't make my body move. Couldn't make my legs work. Couldn't force myself to walk through those doors and face the woman who'd chosen drugs over her children fifteen years ago and now wanted absolution before dying. Leo sat beside me in silence. His own demons resurrected by this visit.

His own damage surfacing in the tight set of his jaw and the way his hands clenched and unclenched on his thighs like he was fighting the urge to run. Behind us, Liam waited. He'd insisted on coming even though this was family business. "For moral support," he'd said. Like my dying mother was something I needed backup for. Which I did. Desperately. And the fact that he'd known that without me asking made my throat tight. "We don't have to do this," Liam said quietly from the backseat. "We can leave right now." "No." I forced the word out. "We came. Might as well see it through." Room 347.

Private. Someone had paid for it. I didn't want to know who. Maybe social services. Maybe my mother had somehow found money between chemotherapy and dying. Maybe it didn't matter because the room number was burned into my brain now alongside all the other numbers that marked trauma. The address where social services took us. The amount I'd sold my virginity for. The weeks of pregnancy currently growing inside me. I pushed the door open, heart hammering against ribs that felt too tight. The woman in the bed was unrecognizable.

Fifteen years ago my mother had been beautiful despite the ravages of addiction. Dark hair and clear eyes and bone structure that photographs well. Now she was a skeleton wrapped in gray skin. Sunken eyes. Oxygen tubes snaking into her nose. Forty-eight years old but looking seventy. Cancer eating her from the inside out the way drugs had tried to and finally succeeded through different means. "Jasmine?" Her voice was rasp. Broken by smoking and sickness and too many years of damage. "You came. I didn't think you'd come." I stood frozen in the doorway. Couldn't move forward. Couldn't retreat.

Just paralyzed by the sight of her. Leo pushed me gently. We entered together. Liam stayed by the door like a sentinel. Silent presence giving me strength just by existing in the same space. "What do you want?" My voice came out colder than I'd intended. Harsh enough that Leo flinched beside me. She coughed. Painful. Wet. The kind that sounded like organs liquefying. A nurse had told me she had weeks. Maybe days. Cancer everywhere. Lungs. Liver. Bones. A body giving up after forty-eight years of abuse. "Wanted to see you. Both of you." Her eyes found Leo. "My children.

Before the end." "Fifteen years." The words came out before I could stop them. All the pain and rage I'd been swallowing erupting. "Fifteen years you didn't give a shit whether we lived or died. And now that you're dying you want what? Forgiveness? Redemption?" "I wanted to apologize." Barely a whisper. "For everything. For choosing drugs over you. For not fighting when they took you. For-" Coughing cut her off. Deep. Wracking. Her whole body convulsing with it. I felt tears building but refused to let them fall. Refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing me break.

"Where was Dad in all this?" "Dead." Simple. Clinical. "Overdose two years ago. Seeing him like that scared me straight." "Two years?" Leo's voice shook with something between rage and devastation. "You've been clean two years and didn't contact us?" "I tried!" More energy now. Defensive. "Leo, I called you. You helped me. Money every month-" The world tilted. I turned to my brother. "What?" Leo went pale. Bloodless. "I... she said it was for rehab. For medicine. I thought-" "You thought she'd changed." My voice was bitter. Acidic. "Like you always think.

Like you always want to believe despite fifteen years of evidence that she won't." "The money went to treatment!" Our mother's voice cracked. "Cancer treatment. Leo just stopped answering three months ago. When your scandal happened." She looked at me. Accusation in those sunken eyes. "I thought he cut me off because of you." "I cut you off because Jasmine opened my eyes!" Leo exploded. Years of suppressed rage finally finding outlet. "Because I realized I was just enabling you to-" "Enough." I raised my hand. Looked at this dying stranger who'd once held me. Fed me.

Loved me before drugs took everything including her capacity for maternal feeling. "You want an apology? Fine. Here it is: You were a terrible mother. You chose drugs over us again and again. You left us in homes where people hurt us. You never fought. Never showed up. Never tried hard enough." She cried quietly. Tears tracking down gray cheeks. "I know. I know all of it." "Good." My voice broke finally. The armor cracking. "Because I can't forgive you. I can't. Maybe someday. But not today. Not here.

Not when you're asking for absolution so you can die feeling better about abandoning us." I turned toward the door. Had to leave before I said something worse. Something that couldn't be taken back. "You're pregnant." The words stopped me cold. I turned slowly. "How did you-" "I see it. Maternal instinct I guess. Ironic." A weak smile. "Be better than me. Promise me that." My hand went to my stomach instinctively and protective. The gesture I couldn't stop making even when I wanted to hide the pregnancy from the world.

"That's the only promise I'll give you." My voice was steady despite the tears threatening. "I'll be a better mother. I'll show up. I'll choose them every single day. I'll break the cycle you started and couldn't stop." "Good." Her eyes were already closing. Exhaustion taking her under. "Good." In the hallway, I collapsed into Liam's arms. Just folded into him like my bones had stopped working. Leo stood beside us, and for the first time since the farm, he was present. Really present. The three of us holding each other while processing what we'd just witnessed.

"She's dying," I whispered against Liam's chest. "And I don't feel anything. Does that make me a monster?" "It makes you human." His voice was firm against my hair. "It makes you someone who survived her abandonment and learned to protect yourself." Leo's voice came quiet. Broken. "She doesn't deserve our tears. Not now. Maybe later, but not now." And we walked away. Left her dying alone in that private room someone had paid for. Left her the same way she'd left us living alone for fifteen years. With social workers and foster families and strangers who didn't know how to love damaged kids.

The symmetry felt deliberate. The kind of poetic justice that should have felt satisfying but just felt empty. In the car, I pressed my hand against my stomach. Against the life growing inside me that would never know its grandmother. That would grow up with three fathers and no maternal grandmother because she'd died before making amends. Before earning forgiveness she'd never really tried to deserve. "I'm going to be different," I said to the windshield. To myself. To the cluster of cells that would become a person. "I'm going to show up. Choose you. Fight for you.

Be everything she wasn't." Liam's hand covered mine on my stomach. Leo's hand joined from the backseat. Three hands. Three people who understood abandonment and were choosing to create something different. "You already are," Liam said quietly. And for the first time since walking into that hospital, I let myself cry. Not for my mother. Not for the relationship we'd never had. But for the child growing inside me who would never know what it felt like to be abandoned by the person who gave them life. That was the promise I could keep. The cycle I could break.

The one thing I could control in a life that felt increasingly out of control. I would show up. Every single day, no matter what. That was the only redemption that mattered. Virgin Dot Com