Sydney
Chapter One
Sydney
The rain batters the windows of my apartment, the hail bouncing off the panes feel as though they’re hitting me and not the windows. I’ve never been a fan of harsh weather, Summers and Winters drain me until I have nothing at all whereas the mellow calm from Spring and Fall recharge everything that I lost.
According to the forecast, it’s not supposed to let up any time soon which makes me even more anxious. The other thing I’m not a fan of is flying, so making it to my best friend’s wedding in Houston requires getting on a flight to Houston in a Maine-style storm.
Absolutely freaking perfect conditions for flying a metal cylinder of potential fiery death. At least the rain might stop me from burning alive in the wreckage. This has always been my way of thinking, I call it pragmatic whereas Belle Reed, the one getting married, refers to it as pessimistic - we agree to disagree, of course.
I wrap myself up in my blanket even tighter as the storm continues its assault on Earth outside, going as far to consider whether another blanket wrapped around me would make me feel better. If it was for anything else besides Belle’s wedding, I’d have bailed on the event and done so, hard; but there is no way I am missing her wedding. Come rain or shine, preferably a little mix of them both… I will be there.
Belle and Mav met by chance in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Belle had dragged me there one Wednesday in between college classes; while I found a quiet bench and the solitude of my noise cancelling headphones, she was meeting her match. After that, as they say, it’s history.
Once we graduated, I moved to Portland for a job and Belle stayed put with Mav. It was hard adjusting to adult life without Belle compared to the one I’d built with her. We lived together in college and made many questionable mistakes around men, alcohol, and everything else adulthood has to offer. We’d graduated in 2022, the same year that she met Mav and fell hopelessly in love. Now it’s 2026 and we’re full-steam ahead into the daily grind of life. Belle works in Houston at NASA as a data scientist and I’m here in Portland as a medical student. Although, hopefully not as a medical student much longer… I’ve taken my finals and I’m in that horrible limbo period while waiting for the results that will decide the fate of my entire future. I’d been working clinically for the last couple of years, granted it was brutal. I’d found a particular passion in emergency medicine, especially on specialised rotations in the Emergency Room and Intensive Care Units. Those roles are insanely hard work and you’ve got to have pretty strong shoulders to be able to process some of the things that come through those doors. Luckily, I’m a vet in that department. I learned very early on in my life that it is and always will be solely my responsibility to pick myself and dust myself off. Unconditional parental love was not something I could lean back on when life threw curveballs at me, I was a cash cow to my parents living off the State; I was immediately made the provider, protector and ATM as soon as I was able to work.
They’d made me get a morning paper round in school which was daily apart from holidays, then I’d go to school but immediately after being expected at my cash-in-hand job at a local launderette. My parents would farm me out for babysitting jobs without telling me and tell me that it was a favour, then promptly cash the money I’d earned and I’d never see a cent of it. Any homework assignments I was given were of the lowest priority to my parents, they cited that I was learning in school so homework is optional and can be done by those that needed it. I’d end up staying up until the sun began to peek over the horizon in order to get it all done, it was only when I kept falling asleep in classes and vomiting from exhaustion that the school noticed something was wrong. After all, I’d been turning in my homework and doing well enough on my tests that I flew under the radar for the majority of the time.
My favourite teacher, Mr Jones, sat me down after class one day and told me to spill it. The dam broke and I told him everything about home, my jobs, my lack of sleep… just, all of it. I’ve never seen him so angry as he was when he responded by taking me to the principal’s office and recounted my story to her. She was horrified and immediately called social, they removed me from home and placed me into the foster system which angered my parents to no end. They blamed me for it, saying that if I’d just kept my mouth shut then everything would be fine. For a while, I kept begging my social worker to drop it and let me go home; it would be easier that way. I now know that I was sacrificing myself to make everyone else around me happy, but back then - that was all teenage me knew how to do. I wasn’t in the foster home young, I was hyped up to potential foster parents as a prodigy… a truly gifted child. They made me seem desirable for a kid in a foster home, and I wasn’t there long. A lot of the other kids there were understandably envious that I was seemingly a fleeting housemate to them, so I didn’t make many allies there, naturally. I was fostered by Lesley and Kim Wilks pretty much immediately, they were a slightly older couple physiologically but psychologically? They were only just getting started. They’d been set on being DINKS since the day they met, double income, no kids. They wanted to spend their lives for themselves and if the tides changed, they would look into fostering and adoption. They were 44 and 46 years old when I was introduced to them, but life had made me understandably cautious. They did everything they could to chip away at the fortress I’d put around my heart but I’d defend it almost every time. It took them around six months to get me to even talk to them past pleasantries. It was only when they showed up to the mathlete club event that I realised what they were doing, the lengths that they were willing to go to for me. I didn’t, and still don’t, think that I was worth it, but my walls crumbled seeing them in the audience. Kim’s home-made cheer sign and Lesley holding his phone up to take photos was the final grenade to my reservations, and that night, I apologised profusely for the vow of silence I’d put them through. I cried, they cried, we hugged and they told me that none of it was my fault. It’s taken me a while to accept that, but I think Lesley and Kim’s voice is now louder in my head than my biological parents ever were. The adoption procedure was started from then and with my new found willingness, the procedure was as quick as it could be. The same day that the adoption went through, I applied to change my surname to Wilks. Lesley and Kim held me through that and I remember crying when I saw my first letter with my new name on it. I was lucky to land up where I did, but I will never forget what it took from me to get there. My biological parents reach out on occasion, usually under the pretense of wishing me a happy birthday but immediately then asking for money. As far as I know, they still live in my home town in Wyoming; they have no idea where I am, and with my best efforts, it’ll stay that way. Lesley and Kim lived in Wyoming too, but on the other side of the State. Given my biological parents’ insistence to get me back by citing that it was a mistake, social services had been all the more certain that my removal from them was exactly the right decision. They moved me far enough that any effects from my previous life would be minimal, yet close enough that things didn’t feel too different for me. I’m sure they probably knew but a whole new door was opened up for me the day they removed me from them.
Once I’d opened up to Lesley and Kim, I told them that I wanted to be a doctor. I’m sure every kid says that they want to be a doctor at some point but Lesley and Kim took that and ran with it. Lesley made me a wooden name tag with my name and future doctor carved into it, Kim sat with me and we made an inspiration board together of how I wanted things to look. It’s one of the earliest memories I have where I felt like what I was, a kid.
When it came time to view prospective Universities, Lesley and Kim were by my side at every single open day. Back home, we had a board of my top five choices and for a while, I was scared to tell them that Baylor was my top choice given how far away it was. I eventually told them over dinner one night, and both of them just beamed at me. I was confused until Kim took my hand and said “You lit up the second you stepped onto campus. We knew”.
Kim and I made another vision board specifically for Baylor and Lesley carved it into the name tag for me. The day I received my acceptance letter was the first time I ever called them Mom and Dad. They had always been my parents, in truth. When I moved out to Houston for college, my heart broke leaving them. They cried just about as many tears as I did before committing to a weekly virtual dinner together. We still keep that tradition now, it doesn’t matter what day of the week it happens, just as long as it happens. I’ve done many hospital break room dinners with them but my heart warms whenever their faces pop up on my phone.
Houston is where Belle and I met. Both of us were standing in the corner of a room in a house where the music was quite literally shaking the walls. We’d been dragged there by other friends but we didn’t know anyone but those friends, so we faded into the walls before accidentally bumping into one another. Both of us had the awkward stance to begin with but we bonded over knowing less than 99% of the house, we soon agreed that we’d rather leave and be anywhere but there. We left and found a 24-hour diner and just chatted for hours. We’re both introverted which was great when we moved in together after first year, our little place was a sanctuary for us both like-minded individuals. But ultimately, she is just my soul-mate. Sure, Mav is the love of her life or whatever, but Belle and I? Soulmates.
It was a total no-brainer when she asked me to be her maid-of-honour. Mav and I snuck around for months trying to get her ring sized on the sly and work out her dream ring. Luckily for me and Mav, Belle was very set on an oval white gold ring and I knew that because she told me the night that we’d met. Belle video-called me after it happened screaming about how Mav knew the exact ring that she wanted, I think she knows that I had some input into it but she was just so damn happy in that moment that I just revelled in it with her.
So, in one week, Belle gets married to Mav in Houston, Texas where they met. Belle pulled some strings at work to try and reserve the exact exhibit where they met, the planetarium. Luckily for her, Mav works as a curator at the museum so it was all pretty in-house. I’m due to fly out tomorrow morning to help Belle prepare for the big day, maid of honour duties and all, but the storm outside only seems to be picking up speed and strength. Lightning flashes across the room before the booming roll of thunder follows behind it. I chew at my lower lip anxiously as I search for the forecasts again on my phone, hoping for some miraculous change.
