Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) by Bartsch Carina

Author:Bartsch, Carina [Bartsch, Carina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2014-06-24T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

NEUSTADT

I lay on my bed gazing around me at my old bedroom. Nothing had changed. The same desk, the same two-door wardrobe, the same dark-red daybed. During half my childhood and all my teen years, I’d spent so much time within these four walls, which held both good and bad memories. It all felt so far away now, and my room strangely felt less a part of my present than a part of my past.

I had been home for three weeks. Neustadt was a one-stoplight town—a village, really, even though Stadt means “city”—with five thousand inhabitants and one grocery store, which had items a year past their expiration dates.

It was surprisingly difficult readjusting to this environment, and I didn’t know if I even wanted to. Before college, I often felt that people were really living everywhere else in the world—just not here. I always knew I wanted to move away—that was clear to me, even as a child—and at nineteen that’s exactly what I had done.

The whole time I had been home, I’d missed my life in Berlin. But I was glad to be here to support my parents. I wasn’t a natural nurse—I was usually the one who needed medical care—but I did my best.

My father had been discharged from the hospital five days after the accident. He would probably have gone to seed had I not been around to take care of him. My father wasn’t used to taking care of himself, and certainly not with his foot in a cast. He could be a trying patient, but he was also kind and charming, so I enjoyed looking after him.

My mother hadn’t been discharged until a week ago. I visited her every day for two weeks. The visits were necessary, too, because three days after the accident, the staff started having trouble keeping her there. It took me hours to persuade her not to break out.

When she was finally “sprung from jail,” as she put it, Ingo ordered her to take it easy. But my mother refused to understand the expression. (Unmarried and single were also foreign words to her.) Her first day home, she and I had a heated battle over the vacuum cleaner. I wouldn’t have thought it possible someone could cling to a metal tube so tightly using just her fingernails, but my mother quickly set me straight on that point.

From that incident onward, I was busy from morning to night scrambling to finish all the household chores before she discovered something to do. No matter what anyone directed, she just couldn’t stay off her feet. At one point I asked Ingo if he had any of the straps used to tie down patients who pose a danger to themselves or others. He smiled as though I were joking—but I was completely serious!

Despite all the hardships, I was still thankful to spend time with my parents. The accident had made it all too clear how little time we have.

Whenever I wasn’t keeping my mother

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