Battling the Loss You Live For.

Her eyes drained of all emotions. She just sat there, with no expression on her face or emotions in her eyes; just there.
“…Sazzy?” I whispered, placing a hand on her cheek. …Nothing.
“Sazzy? Say something, babe,” I said, looking into her shallow, closed-up and emotionless brown eyes. Shy looked at us in worry. I ignored her as best as I could – Sazzy was my priority.
“Sazzy-”
“You knew?” her voice was small, quiet and chaste.
“No, of course I didn’t, I-”
“You said that you always thought…” she mumbled, her eyes welling up in tears, her features crumpling.
“No! No! I just… I knew you were different, not like anyone else, not like your sisters-”
“And you couldn’t tell me this?! We-”
“How could I? I assumed. How can I make assumptions on stuff like this?! You said you looked like your grandmother, I’ve never seen her, and maybe you were-”
“Enough.”
I spun my head around to Shy, who was sitting almost peacefully adjacent to us, watching.
“It’s not the way you think it all is, Sazzy, not at all. I, for a while, thought you were mine,” She explained, her eyes still wet and rimmed red.
“You were born on the 24th of October, 1981, at 1:34pm. …Like you always knew. But so was another girl, a tiny little thing,” she sniffed, dabbing at her eyes.
“In Harrow, London-”
“Get to the point,” Sazzy said, emotionless, still. I held her hand.
“You were swapped at birth. I – we – didn’t know until you came home,” Shy explained, looking down at her hands.
“My… child was still-born. I didn’t know until you were here with me. The other family-”
“My family…” Sazzy mumbled, her eyes closing as her bottom lip trembled, and she sniffed.
“Y-yes. They grieved over my baby. When it came to sight that you were theirs, they… well; they thought it best for you to stay with us. It was all registered with the papers, and we were about to name you. They had held onto my baby… buried her and named her before.”
“What did they name her?”
“…Marilyn. After Marilyn Monroe, I believe…” she said, a slight sigh to her tone.
“That’s why we named you Sarah. We were going to call you Ayishah, but when we found out you were not truly ours… we thought that an Arabic and English name, like Sarah would be more fitting,” she explained, looking over at Sazzy. She was still facing me, her eyes closed and her hands shaking in mine. Her eyes cracked open, not looking at me, but at our entwined hands.
“Where are they? My birth… parents?”
“They live in America. I haven’t heard from them in 10 years.”
My head snapped up. America. Why does everything tie up there? Sazzy looked at me, her eyes showing me… something. Asking, wanting.
“Why were they here? Why was I born here?” Sazzy asked, not breaking our gaze.
“They were here on holiday. You were early for them… three weeks. They had only spent the day in London, and she was in labour. Their flight home was a week after you were born, on the 1st of November. You were originally due during the first week of November. You were a good baby during pregnancy, that’s why it was okay for her to fly; she had permission from the GP. She-”
“What was her name… my mother?” Sazzy asked a cold edge to her voice.
“I… can’t remember now. We never really spoke much after, and it was almost 19 years ago-”
“Any names, surnames, father, siblings…? Do I have any siblings?”
“Sazzy… please, calm down, I can’t-”
“But you must remember something! My family! I-”
She burst into sobs, her frail, small body rocking and moving dangerously. I held her to me gently, resting her head in the crook of my neck.
“I don’t know who I am,” she sobbed into my neck, clinging desperately onto my shirt tightly. I didn’t know what to say. All I did was hold her tighter to me, my lips pressing against the top of her head.