“Liam, please don’t stress over this.” It was afternoon and her brother had stopped by for a visit.
“I’m not.” Liam’s face reddened to match his hair. “I’m…fine with it. I just didn’t expect them to put you on medication for…you know.”
“Schizophrenia?” she offered. “Is that a dirty word?”
“Ooh, naughty!” Isabella plonked herself next to Liam and giggled.
“No, it’s not a dirty word,” Liam said, “it’s just…”
“You weren’t expecting it?”
“I guess not.”
“I struck a plea deal, Liam. I don’t have a choice,” Moira said. “Anything to get me out of here.”
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed. “You know I’d do anything for you, right? You and me, sis.”
“I know.” Moira and Liam’s parents had died when they were little. They had no other family, which meant they had been shuttled from foster home to foster home. At one point, it looked like they were going to be split up because of an incident at one. But thankfully, they ended up at Mom Adel’s and stayed until both went off to college. Mom Adel had been a godsend.
“How long?”
“How long what?” Moira replied, pulling herself back in the moment.
“How long do you have to be on medication? I know how you feel about that stuff.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I didn’t ask. They were going to draw blood this morning, but the nurse found food by my bed.” She gave Jack a glare. “I was supposed to fast twelve hours. They’ll have to take my blood tomorrow.”
Liam wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Crybaby,” Isabella remarked.
Moira steeled herself to keep from turning on Isabella. A part of her wished she could tell Liam about Jack and Isabella, but a larger part of her didn’t want to freak him out. Liam was trying so hard to be supportive. “It’s going to be okay.” She gave him a hug.
“I don’t like you being in here.” His hands clenched into tight fists at her back. “I’m trying to get you out, sis. I swear.”
“I know you are. This is on me, though. Not you.” Moira sat back and forced a brave smile. “I’m going to be the model patient, I promise. They’ll get my blood tomorrow morning, I’ll start my medication, and it will all be fine.”
Liam nodded and cleared his throat, turning his attention to her tray. “You didn’t touch your lunch.” He picked up a slice of bread from her plate and offered it.
“It’s gross. White bread.” She watched him take a bite.
“School cafeteria food is worse,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining; it’s cheap.”
“Why don’t you pick up lunch at the sandwich shop?”
“I’m lazy.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m used to you picking up lunch.”
“Oh, Liam.” She rolled her eyes. Several times a week, they’d meet for lunch in his classroom or outside. Moira missed that routine. As soon as I get out, everything will go back to the way it was, she thought.
Pulling the foil off a little tub of margarine, Liam smeared it onto the other slice of bread and folded the mess in half. “When they let you out, you can stay with me. I’ve already cleared out the spare bedroom.”
“That has all your band stuff in it.”
“I’ll move it into the living room.”
“There’s no space in your living room.”
“I’ll make space,” he said, mouth full of bread. “Hey, my apartment is way bigger than yours was. Especially my bathroom. You had to practically stand on the toilet to close your bathroom door.”
“Well…” Moira shrugged, avoiding Jack’s icy stare. “That’s how I liked it.”
“I have space,” Liam continued. “I’ll pull your stuff out of storage and we’ll figure it out.”
“I can take the couch until…” Her future was so up in the air, she was afraid to consider it at this point. “I don’t even know if Studio will hire me back after all of this. My guess is no, I’m probably a liability.” Studio was the architectural firm she worked for; she’d spent three years building a reputation as a solid architect. That’s probably blown to crap now. Moira sighed inwardly. “God only knows how long I’ll be in here. Forty-five days for sure, but...”
“Don’t worry about it. Teachers should get a pay raise next year,” Liam said. “We’ll manage like we always do until you get on your feet again. It’ll be like when we were at Mom Adel’s. Except we’ll have separate bedrooms and I won’t have to see all your girl stuff.”
“You’re twenty-five years old, Liam. If you can’t deal with girl stuff by now, there’s no hope for you.” She ruffled his unruly, red hair.
“Oh, I brought you your sketch books.” He pulled three, thick books from his backpack. “I figured you’d want them. Your pencils and stuff too.”
“I’m surprised they let you bring in pencils.” She took them with a smile. “Thanks, Liam.”
“Maybe you can draw yourself out of here, Moira,” said Jack.
Her smile died.
Oblivious to Jack’s comment, Liam dusted the crumbs from his jeans. “I have to go.”
“Thanks for everything.” She set the sketchbooks and pencils on her bedside table with a sigh.
“Are you sure you don’t want your friends to drop by? Colleen, Stan, and them? They’ve been asking about you.”
“No. They’ll just feel sorry for me. I don’t need that right now.” Moira straightened. “Just tell them I’ll see them when I get out. That…I’m getting better.”
“Okay, I’ll tell them,” Liam replied. “I got your back, sis.” Light from the window hit his face, illuminating the faded freckles left over from childhood. “I do.”
“I got yours too.”
“Just be careful she doesn’t push you when you’re not looking,” Isabella chimed in. “It’s a long way down.”
A large woman wearing jeans and a crisp, button-up shirt walked in the door. The woman’s face broke into a wide smile when she saw Liam. “Long time, no see, sugar-bug!”
He chuckled. “Hi, Mom Adel. I’m going grocery shopping after work today, I promise.”
“Silly boy. You know you’re always welcome for dinner.” She gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek before turning her attention to Moira. “How are you doing, my red-haired sweetness?”
Moira stood and accepted Mom Adel’s bear hug. Her coffee-colored skin smelled like cocoa butter. Moira loved that about her. “I’m fine.”
“I have to go,” Liam said. “‘Bye, sis. See you next week.”
“What on earth are they feeding you in here?” Mom Adel inspected Moira’s breakfast tray. “No wonder you’re wasting away to nothing, not that you were very big to begin with.”
“Awful stuff,” she replied, tugging up her loose jeans. “You would hate it.”
“Well, I’ve got nothing left to hug!” Mom Adel complained. She hugged her again. “I’ll have to smuggle in some cookies or something.”
“Jack says they’re sneaking pills into her food!” Isabella said dramatically.
“They sure are,” Jack replied. He gave Moira a sly smile.
She can’t hear either one of you, Moira thought with an annoyed frown. In the past, she hadn’t wanted to blow the one and only foster home that worked out for both Liam and her, so she never mentioned Isabella. And since she hadn’t with her, it made sense to keep her mouth shut when Jack showed up fifteen years later.
Mom Adel smoothed Moira’s hair back. “Let me braid this for you.” She sat her down and picked up a brush. “I see what passes for lunch around here, what about dinner?”
“Last night, they served meatloaf.” Moira’s tension melted away with each brush stroke. “At least, I think that what it was. It definitely wasn’t like yours.”
Mom Adel tsk’d as she separated her long, red hair into three sections. “Nobody knows how to cook good food except Mom Adel.”
“I’ll bet you’re cooking around the clock lately,” she said wistfully. “How’s your new foster daughter working out?”
“Suzie-Q doesn’t get along with Janine too well, but give it time.” She finished with Moira’s hair and settled her bulk into the one chair the room boasted. “They’ll both come around. At Mom Adel’s, we all get along—”
“—through thick and through thin,” she finished.
“Yeah, right,” muttered Isabella.
A ghostly feeling of guilt nagged at her and she stuffed it down.
“So,” Mom Adel continued, “they told me that you stole a bag of potato chips from the nurse’s station last night.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’d like to know where the nurses were at the time, but that’s not like you.”
“I honestly don’t remember doing that.”
“I know you don’t like medication, but—”
“Jack said they use big needles here!” Isabella shuddered dramatically. “Scary!”
“Tomorrow, Mom Adel,” Moira assured her. “I promise they’ll get my blood. I must have been…sleepwalking or something.” She shot Jack a look.
“Good.” Mom Adel nodded definitively. “You have to do what you have to do. And Liam needs you as much as you need him.” She sighed. “He’s a worry right now.”
Moira’s stomach fell. “He is?”
“He wants you out of here. You’re like a mom to him, even more than I am.” She saw Moira’s face and continued. “He’ll be okay, sweetness. You just take care of your business. We all want you out of here.”
“I want out of here too.” Her gaze slid over to Jack, who stood by the window. Framed in waning sunlight, he looked almost translucent. She fervently wished he would just disappear. Moira shivered as Isabella laid a small hand on her shoulder.
“Have you talked to your friends?” Mom Adel asked.
“I will…once I get out,” Moira said. “I don’t want them to feel like they have to visit. This place is kind of depressing.”
“That’s what friends are for, to support you through times like this.”
“I know but…” She left the sentence unfinished.
Mom Adel shook her head. “You’re such an independent little thing. It’s okay to ask for help, though. Remember that time you had a fight with that date of yours? Oh, what was his name…” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Byron. That was it. And he left you at the other end of town? You’re lucky one of your friends saw you walking home, that would have been a long walk back to your apartment.”
Moira did remember. It had been a year-and-a-half ago. And it hadn’t been a fight with Byron, it had been a fight with Jack. She convinced Byron to drop her off at the end of town, saying that she needed the walk. It had been easier than the drive home would have been. That was the last time she’d attempted dating with Jack around, not that it had been any easier with just Isabella in tow.
“Enough nagging from me. Now, do you need me to bring anything for you next time I come? Some sweaters and long-sleeved shirts? It’s chilly in here, why is it so chilly?” Mom Adel rubbed her ample arms and shivered.
“It’s always cold in here,” Moira said. “I think it’s just this room.”
“Do you want me to speak to the nurse about it?”
“No, Mom Adel, I’m fine.”
“I’ll bring you some extra socks.”
“If it will make you feel better,” Moira replied with a smile.
Mom Adel left with a promise to visit the following weekend. Her adherence to that schedule was comforting.
Several moments of silence ticked by before Moira spoke. “I need that blood test, Jack.”
“I’m not stopping you from getting a blood test.”
“Yes, you are!” She faced him, hands on hips.
Isabella gave a shriek of laughter and began skipping around them in a circle.
He crossed his arms. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You made me steal food from the nurse’s station. I don’t like it when you make me do stuff like that! And you did it just to be a pain in the ass.” She knew that Jack must have been inside her body for longer than several seconds to steal the chips. The thought scared her.
“I’m looking out for you,” he continued. “You don’t need to be on pills. Your doctor is trying to drug you so he can do whatever he wants.” He narrowed his eyes. “I see the way you look at him. I don’t like it.”
“I’m so sick of you!” she said. “I was sick of you before, and I’m sick of you now.”
“What about me, Moira? Are you sick of me?” Isabella danced around them, bobbing up and down like some lost thing floating in the water.
“Just leave me alone.” She broke out of Isabella’s circle and threw herself onto the bed.
“Moira—”
“No, Jack,” she said. “I need to take the medication so they can tell me I’m all better and let me go. I don’t want to be in here for the rest of my life.” Jack settled beside her and she edged away, not wanting to feel his icy touch. “And don’t talk to me while Mom Adel is here either. It’s distracting.”
“It’s not like you’re living with her anymore.”
“I don’t care. If you keep doing that, I won’t ever speak to you again.”
He sat back and rubbed his wrists. “Okay. You have my word.”
“And that means so much,” she muttered.
“Can I? Can I talk while she’s here?” Isabella fell next to her and lay still.
“No,” she said quickly. “Especially not you.”
“Darn,” Isabella pouted. “I miss her.”