It wasn’t normal to contemplate self-induced brain surgery to relieve a headache.
With her help, I managed to get up, dressed, and in her car. Although, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out I was unconscious most of that time. I certainly couldn’t recall the drive to the clinic or somehow making it inside. I was shivering under my covers one minute, and sitting in the waiting room of a very noisy clinic the next—still shivering, except without a blanket, and even more miserable than I’d been at home.
Christine sat in a chair next to me, her foot bouncing and her fingers twisting in her lap. She seemed jittery and anxious, and I wasn’t sure why. The only thing I knew was when I focused on her, I felt a little bit better. Just enough to hold a conversation without crying.
“What’s wrong?” My voice cracked and the words scratched their way out.
She turned to me with a knitted brow and darkened eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t sit still, like this is the last place on Earth you want to be. Which I totally get, by the way. I don’t particularly care to be here, either. It’s like an open invitation to get sick with all the germs just hanging out, waiting for a host to grab onto.” As if my head and throat weren’t bad enough, I was about to tack on a weak stomach. “If you have other things to do, you’re more than welcome to leave and take care of them. I can just wait when I’m done for you to pick me up, or I’ll call my mom to come get me. Or I could just curl up in the morgue and take a nap there…and hope the Grim Reaper takes pity on me and claims my spirit.”
The worry lining her face began to lessen and morph into more of a sympathetic concern. “Hush. It’s a clinic, not a hospital. There’s no morgue here for you to go die in. You’ll live, I promise.” She paused and inhaled deeply. “And I don’t have anything else to do. It’s not that at all. I just don’t like doctors’ offices. They make me nervous…remind me of horribly sad moments in my life. It’s rather depressing.”
I reached over the armrest and took her hand in mine. “You’re right. This place is horrible. You can totally take me back home now and let me sleep this plague off. I feel very confident that it’ll kill me shortly, so there won’t be much suffering.”
“We’re not going anywhere. Hopefully, they’ll call you back soon.”
The more I sat there with my hand in hers, watching her fidget, I couldn’t help but think about her reason for disliking clinics. And not believing it for one second. There was something she wasn’t telling me, something she kept to herself, and I felt compelled to get her to open up to me.
“No one likes to see the doctor, Christine. But unless it’s a child afraid to get a shot, no one freaks out—especially if they aren’t the one waiting to be seen. So really, what’s going on?” I couldn’t talk too loudly, but I knew she heard me.
She squeezed my hand and turned to offer me the saddest smile I’d ever seen her give. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. You’re sick, which is why we’re here, so let’s focus on that.”
“You wanna focus on me being sick?” Had I not felt like I was teetering on the edge of hell, I would’ve scoffed. “Okay, let’s do that. I have a fever, and I’m freezing cold. It’s probably hot outside, it’s summer, and I’m wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, yet I’m shivering and can’t get warm. My throat is on fire, and at some point in my sleep last night, I snacked on broken glass because even swallowing my spit hurts. And I’m pretty sure my brain is turning into mush because it’s swollen and has nowhere to go.”
She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead and apologized with a sympathetic glance.
“There…we’ve focused on me. Now it’s time for you to talk.”
“It’s nothing, Janelle. Really. I’ll be okay. This isn’t the first time I’ve been here and it won’t be the last, so there’s no point in obsessing over it. Let’s just worry about getting you well so we can get you home and in bed.”
I curled into the uncomfortable seat and closed my eyes, but not before uttering, “That’s okay. I’ll just ask Matthew. I’m sure he’ll tell me what’s going on.”
My eyes may have been closed, but I could still hear her strangled breathing, as if I’d pushed her to the verge of breaking, and as much as I hated it, I knew she needed to talk. Christine and I had always been close ever since she first started dating my brother. We may not have been best friends or even spoken all the time, but we always seemed to have the kind of relationship that time couldn’t affect. No matter how long we went without talking, as soon as we picked up the phone, it was like it’d been no time at all. So to know she suffered from something and I didn’t know about it, even though I’d been in town for over a month and had seen her on many occasions, I couldn’t help but feel crushed that she didn’t feel like she could confide in me.
Unless…it had to do with Matthew.
My eyes snapped open in fear. I couldn’t help but think about Holden saying my family needed me. I thought it had to do with Stacey, but as I sat here with Christine, my gut twisted, and I couldn’t ignore the panic settling into my chest. “Is…is my brother okay?”
She turned to face me, sorrow deep in her eyes. “Yeah, he’s okay.”
“But whatever your issue is has to do with him, doesn’t it?”
With a deep breath, she shifted in her seat like I had and curled into it while facing me, making our conversation as private as possible while being in the middle of a waiting room. “Do you really want to know? You want me to tell you here, at the doctor’s office instead of at home?”
Home—or hell, even in the car when we leave here—would’ve probably made more sense. The most sense. But I couldn’t wait, not now that I knew there was an issue, and whatever it was, I realized it had to have been serious with the way she looked at me.
“If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. If you want to, but not here, then wait. You have me really worried, I can’t lie about that. But I understand if you don’t want to tell me now. Just know that I’m always here for you. Always, Christine. For you and Matt. Just because I’m younger, not in the same place in life that you two are, and haven’t been around much over the years, doesn’t mean I don’t care or want to know what’s going on with my family. At the end of the day, you’re my sister-in-law. He’s my brother. And whatever you’re going through affects me, too.”
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but they didn’t fall. Instead, she took a moment to gather herself before taking my hand again in hers. “We got pregnant a couple of years ago. After a few months of trying, the test had a plus sign, and we were beyond excited. So we told my parents, your parents, and our close friends, because even though they say to not tell anyone, we couldn’t keep it a secret.”
My stomach flipped and knotted, knowing her next words even though I’d never heard them.