The Shocking Truth

"Mom?!" Chang cried out seeing her mom hit the floor. She struggled to get up to go help her mom, gasping at the sharp stabbing pain in her left ribs. Jian instantly put a hand to her chest restraining her.

He tried to tell her something but it just sounded like white noise.

She had just been coming to accept that this was reality, but it actually seemed to be just one long nightmare.

She screamed while being held down by Jian as doctors came and picked her mother of the floor, very carefully, as they took her away.

One of the nurses came by and injected a liquid into her IV tube. The last thing she remembered was struggling, then nothing.

----

Liang Jian Amal stood over Chang as she lay in her drug induced slumber.

"We knew this day would come." Hao Jin Ying stood beside him, preparing for Chang to wake.

"I know, and I ran this scenario through my head thousands of times yet I still have no idea what to say to her." Liang Jian Amal ran his hands through his hair, agitated, he was never at a loss for words when it came to business. Yet with her, always her, he found himself so unsure.

"There's only one thing we can tell her at this point."

"What is that?" He looked to Hao Jin Ying hoping she might have further insight.

"The truth." She looked back into his eyes seriously.

There was no avoiding this or delaying anymore. It was time for the truth to live in the light.

Liang Jian Amal waited by Chang's side for the anasthetic to wear out of her system. Hao Jin Ying was in the adjoining room, where Li Hua was housed and was monitoring her.

Chang opened her eyes blearily, trying to rise out of the thick stupor she was mired in. When he saw that she awoke he immediately clasped her hand tighter.

"Chang you have to move carefully, you're very hurt right now."

She looked at him blankly before anger colored her features and she ripped her hand from his.

"Where is my mom?"

"She's in the next room over, resting right now."

"What happened earlier? And don't give me the everything is just fine bullshit! You all have been hiding something from me and I'm fucking sick of it! Just be honest with me!" Chang vented all her hurt, confusion, and frustration onto the man who sat beside her. Her red rimmed eyes bored holes into his as she stared at him.

Liang Jian Amal gave her a pained expression trying to find the words.

"Your mother is very sick..."

"How sick?" She demanded to know immediately as he started to trail off.

"The kind of sick you don't get better from. I'm so sorry Chang, I didn't know how to tell you."

"I want to see her now!" Chang demanded after hearing the first part.

He saw that she was unwilling to hear anything else and so he had a wheel chair brought in. After situating her as comfortably as could be, he wheeled her into the next room.

Hao Jin Ying was talking with Li Hua as they rolled in. Both women ceased their terse whispering as Chang came in and looked hard at the both of them.

"I want the truth. Now." In her chair Chang sat straight with her arms folded one over another, unwilling to be lied to any longer.

The two women looked at each other before turning to her and explaining, showing her charts as needed.

As Chang listened and heard it all it felt like the floor was giving way under her, pulling her down into a deep abyss from which there was no return.