Dandelion in the Snow

[Carlisle]

-continued from Wilted Rose-

There were two parts of the journey that stood out most to Julia as especially difficult.

Firstly, the plane journey itself. It was proving more and more difficult to ignore her peers, Julia awkwardly catching eye contact with glances here and there. The hospital room was at the very least a cage built for isolation, the lone bed in the ward room giving her all safety by herself that she could. She had never been a social butterfly, but the scars of the paranoia she felt so deeply still lingered on the surface of her skin. Ultimately, it boiled down to feelings of safety. There was nothing that anybody, islander compatriot or normal person, could say that would help Julia to open up to the others. She didn't feel safe around them, and most importantly she didn't remotely trust them. The hopeful optimism that she felt whilst on the island, the fire in her belly that spurred her on to team up with Leslie, Aracelis and David before the rescue, had been dismantled. The endless time and space to think about what had actually happened left no cards on the table. The only way she was ever going to be okay again, and even then it was a stretch, was to not surround herself with any of the people, geographies, or audiences, that had been a part of her world-shattering experience.

The cognitive behavioural therapy had helped her to open up about her experience to the medical team and the Interpol agents, but Julia made a pact with herself that they were the only ones that she would discuss anything with. Nobody else needed to know. Mainly because nobody would understand and the stench of pity, dressed up as attempts at empathy, were too much for her to handle. As soon as she was off that plane, in the taxi to the place she once called home, Julia sincerely hoped that would be the last time she would ever lay eyes on any of her other survivors again. Perhaps they all felt the same guilt and shame, but Julia had always been one to bottle everything up and take on the world's problems on her own shoulders. Part of her wanted to speak to Evie, if only to acknowledge their past poolside friendship, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was so numb by this point that no more tears fell, and Julia couldn't think of any words to use to even start that conversation.

The second bit of difficulty, and perhaps the hardest for her to cope with, was returning home. They had already been informed that they no longer needed to go to school, that they would receive a graduating diploma later in the year like the seniors that had been left behind from the trip. That alone threw her in to a state of confusion, acknowledgement that her dreams of being a doctor were probably never going to come true. But more dastardly, the concept of home was supposed to be built on foundations of safety and reassurance. The one place in the world that, regardless of anything and everything external to it, you were able to feel that tenacious sense of fortitude. Julia hadn't arrived home yet, but she knew that feeling of safety and reassurance was dead in the water.

Landing at the airfield, the flashing lights of emergency service vehicles and the intrusive bright flashes of cameras pointed towards the plane by journalists were all she could see. Hordes of journalists looking to build a narrative for the rest of the country, although what that narrative was she wasn't sure. Either way, she didn't want to be known as a victim or a villain in this story. And she certainly wasn't a hero.

Eventually the team of agents that had escorted them were able to deliver them home; one by one. They escorted her to the front door of the Guercio household, where her parents, sisters, and some of her distant relatives, waited. Some were in tears, some had concerned smiles on their faces. She didn't want this confluence to be as frosty as the Christmas Day reunion, her eyes squinting and her lip trembling at the sight of them. Her younger sister Chiara, only ten years old, left the safety of their father's grip and sprinted down the paved approach to give Julia a hug. As soon as her arms wrapped around her waist, her head pressing tightly into her stomach as Chiara squeezed her as tightly as she could, the floodgates opened and tears started to fall. A torrential flood that she wasn't sure would ever be stopped.

Her other sister, Marina, and her parents both ran forward to join in the family hug.

The overpowering sense of reunion she felt cleared the fog from her vision like a ray of sunshine, her fears or resentment shattering on the spot. It was a beautiful moment, and Julia had truly believed for most of the past month that she would never have a moment like it ever again.

As the agents ushered her and her family in to the house, the door to the Guercio family home closed behind her.

It was going to be a long journey to recover from here, but she had all the people around her that she needed to get her through this.

She was weak still for now, but that fire in her belly had returned once again. She would recover. She wouldn't let this ruin her life.

Just as the story started, the story ends with Julia asking for nothing more than a seemingly normal life.