They said she was already too far gone—that there was nothing left to save when she arrived at the emergency wing.
The call came from her frantic mother, who wept into the receiver as she begged them to save her daughter. The paramedics hacked at the heavy curtain of vines preventing them from entering the girl’s room, cutting the roots that held her body in place and struggling to place the mass of flowers and leaves onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. Her father stayed with her, stone-faced but trembling by her side, her brother trailing behind the ambulance in his beat-up car with their mother in the backseat, still crying into her hands.
When they wheeled her into the operating room, the girl who was nothing but petals and thorns, ready to cut her open down to her roots, the surgeons could only stand in disbelief. Some had to excuse themselves from the strong fragrance mixed with the rusty smell of blood, others couldn’t stomach the sight on the operating table. Only the few who could handle seeing it for longer than a few seconds stayed, but still hesitated when they, to their horror, saw the girl take a few rattling breaths, the flowers shaking in the movement.
Hyacinth had grown from the sockets of her eyes, destroying the organs beyond recognition. Petals dotted around her open lips, falling from the yellow tulip that rooted itself in her trachea. They tried to cut small slits in her throat to try and extract the flower, but when their scalpels cut one root, it seemed another grew in its place.
Allium had sprouted from her pores, bright purple puffs contrast against her ashy skin. Lilies had stabbed through her ribcage, leaving a gaping wound where cyclamen thrived in her tissue, feeding on what was left of her life. Her lungs were filled with a garden of yellows, purples, and whites, though they were all tinted red when the doctors’ scalpels finally found what was left of her skin.
One hand tightly clutched a heart-shaped card, the ribbon that once held it shut laid limp, hanging onto the foliage that grew from her fingernails. Small, cursive writing filled the page—a confession that would never reach its recipient. The blood and dew dripping from the small leaves trailed like tears, staining the red a deeper crimson.
The few surgeons that remained slowly whittled away the longer the operation continued. One could no longer stand the sight, tears in his eyes as he put down his bloodstained tools and walked away. Another had pricked herself on the thorns that grew beneath the greenery, and fearful that the condition was contagious, excused herself to be treated.
The operation only lasted three hours before they eventually all gave up, conceding that the girl was beyond saving. They noted down the time of death and walked away, leaving her body on the operating table, the flowers and their spores bulging through the white sheet.
The doctors could salvage only one thing from her body before she was taken away—her heart, shattered by a yellow carnation stained with red, blooming with the fervor of a parasite.
Her death was announced to her family in the early hours of the morning. Cause of death: asphyxiation and strong hemorrhaging. They were not allowed to see her corpse—they couldn’t inflict that trauma onto them too.
That morning, her family drove home but could not bring themselves to step inside the house. Their next door neighbors stepped out of theirs, a man and his wife slowly approaching the three to give their condolences.
But the moment they stepped into her father’s periphery, he flew into a rage, slamming his fist into the other man’s jaw. The pair quickly stepped back into their own house, the man cradling his face as his wife quickly locked the door behind them.
Her brother held him back from stomping over to their house, the man yelling and screaming at its facade, demanding the family bring out their son so that he may experience the same pain his daughter had suffered in her last moments. Her mother had begun screaming as well, throwing seeds from over their shared fence, screaming for the boy to take back the seeds he gave her and bring back her daughter.
The pair began tearing up her garden, stomping on the roses she grew with him, tearing the tulips he nurtured with her. Her brother took the ax from the shed and began tearing down the garden that had grown in her room, sobbing and asking himself how he could not have noticed the signs earlier— the bloody petals in the toilet, the limp in her walk, the pallor of her face.
The family rampaged throughout the morning, they made sure no proof of her affections for him would ever be left in their homes. They gathered everything into the destroyed garden, her brother fetching the gas canister while her mother threw stuffed toys, birthday cards, and accessories into the pile. Her father lit the match and watched it burn before tossing it into the pile, the flames erupting immediately, licking at the windows of the boy’s room, right across her’s.
Flowers would not be allowed at her funeral.
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