Emily was silently fuming.
She sat in the backseat of her mother's towncar as some nameless faceless driver chauffeured them towards the stately mansion Elizabeth had rented to be closer to the Training Centre. She was less than thrilled to be staying with her mother, but it was the only way Elizabeth had agreed to sign the discharge papers and Emily was willing to do anything to get out of the hospital...
"I can't believe you'd do something so stupid," Elizabeth ranted. She'd been ranting for at least ten minutes, but Emily had a long history of tuning her out that was coming in rather handy right now. "How could you put our future at risk like that?"
"Our future?" Emily repeated incredulously. "Our future? How is any of this your future?"
"This has everything to do with me, Emily," Elizabeth repeated with simpering condescension. "It's naive of you to think this little stunt of yours only affects you."
She scowled, arms crossed firmly over her chest. "You're right, Mother, I really should have thought of you while I was lying there thinking I was about the spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair."
"Don't be smart, Emily."
"No, you're right," she said snidely. "This is absolutely about you – it was selfish of me to think of myself."
"I don't understand why you're acting like such a brat," Elizabeth snapped.
"Oh, I don't know...maybe because my neck is fucking broken!" she hissed.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the teenage histrionics. "Watch your language."
"Yeah, that should really be my primary concern right now," she said under her breath, but loud enough that her mother could still hear her.
For her part, Elizabeth chose to ignore her sarcasm. "I think there's still a way we can salvage this..." she said, more to herself than to her daughter. "We make you the poster child for athletic safety. You'll go on talk shows, do a speaking tour of schools, maybe even write a memoir..." she listed.
"Like hell I will! I'm only going to be in this stupid brace for a month, six weeks maybe and then I'll be back in the gym, training. I'll still be on the Olympic team."
Elizabeth heaved a weary sigh. "While your determination is admirable, I think it's time you face the facts. Gymnastics is far too dangerous for you to compete in any longer. I won't have you paralyzed or, God forbid, killed because you don't know your limits."
"First you push me into gymnastics, even though I didn't want to do it and now that the thing you've been pushing me to achieve since I could walk is within my reach, you're forbidding me from doing it!?" Emily exclaimed.
By the time the towncar pulled up outside the house, Emily had the door flung open before the car had even pulled to a compete stop. She couldn't get out of the car fast enough – one more second in close proximity to her mother and she was certain she would have strangled her. (She would have deserved it too.)
Emily stalked through the front door, into the foyer where she found a small florist's shop had cropped up – no doubt sent by her mother's important friends and companies looking to get in her mother's good books. She sighed internally, knowing her mother would make her write a personal thank you to every single person that had sent her flowers (even though none of them actually cared about her or her recovery...it was all business and they cared whether she was useful to them or not).
She approached the nearest bouquet – a delicate bundle of Freesia and Baby's Breath – and reached for the card. Freesia was her favourite flower and, as far as she knew, Ian was the only one who knew that. She wasn't certain whether she hoped it was from him or whether she was still pissed off and hoped it wasn't...
Before she could read the card, though, her mother informed her matter-of-factly, "That's from that nice young man you filmed the commercial with. He wrote you a very thoughtful note – clearly he was raised well."
Emily couldn't decide if that was meant to be a jab at her, choosing to ignore it in favour of the more immediate anger. "You read a card meant for me?" she snapped, suddenly very grateful it hadn't been from Ian.
"I was merely..." Elizabeth started to explain, perhaps a little patronizingly.
"No, I don't know why I'm surprised," she interrupted, throwing her hands in the air. "You obviously have no respect for me or my privacy. And you wonder why I don't trust you... This is exactly why I didn't want to stay with you! I can't wait to get out of this house and away from you!"
She scowled. "Emily, I've been tolerating your poor attitude because you've just undergone a great hardship, but I will not tolerate this kind of disrespect. I suggest you go upstairs and adjust your attitude."
"Fine," she said, stomping up the stairs, muttering darkly to herself.
"The nurse will be by shortly to administer your medication," Elizabeth called after her. Of course, rather than actually take care of her herself, Elizabeth had hired a home nurse to look after Emily's needs – largely, Emily was certain, because she didn't trust Emily to take the medication responsibly herself.
Emily slammed the bedroom door behind her, resisting the urge to scream out all the frustrations of the last several days. Settling gingerly on the bed, (annoyed that she couldn't dramatically fling herself because of her neck) she lay back with a moody groan.
Sighing, she reached for her phone. "Thanks for the flowers," she texted Derek. She thought about adding that at least someone had, but decided it probably wasn't the best idea to air her dirty laundry with Ian to him... Instead, she said, "Freesia is my favourite...how did u know?"
When he didn't immediately respond, she sent another text, "I'm going to murder my mother if I have to stay here much longer..."
Fingers poised to send yet another text, she was saved from embarrassing herself further by the nurse knocking on her door.
