Sister Mother

Chapter 2

Addie

My parents always encouraged me to reach for the stars, even if I was too short to reach the kitchen counter without a stepping stool. I decided to become a doctor for their sakes as much as my own. Every surgery I recovered from, every painful step that I've taken, every milestone that I've reached is because of them.

I was five-years-old when my parents were told that I had a condition so rare that I didn't even have a life expectancy. That doctor wasn't sure if I'd reach puberty. Granted, that doctor knew as much about my condition as he did about life on Mars. When I turned eighteen, I found that quack's email and sent him a strongly worded letter and a picture of my adult-self flipping him off.

When Uncle Jason drove my siblings and I to see our comatose parents in the hospital, hours after they left the house to go out to dinner, my entire world shook. Doctors were allowed to be baffled by my condition, but my parents were healthy, young, and only carriers of bad luck. It didn't make sense for them to have gotten hit by a teenage drunk driver.

Weeks later in court, we watched a traffic cam recorded video of the accident. They were at a stoplight, when a speeding car with a drunk teenager behind the wheel and in the wrong lane crashed into them, Dad hurtling through the windshield onto the pavement, Mom's body banging on the steering wheel. The airbags didn't go off because of a sensor glitch. Mom's car had an inspection scheduled for the following week.

Bad luck, we're the McKenna's. We've met before.

Uncle Jason was their medical proxy. Surgeries, medications, four different neurosurgeons and countless prayers after the accident, he still believed in miracles. He refused to sign the papers to take them off life support.

I dragged him to Mom and Dad's lawyer's office to take away his medical proxy powers. I wanted my parents to wake up more than anything, but I also knew they wouldn't want this. But Mom and Dad's signatures proved that they trusted Uncle Jason to make medical decisions for them.

Then the lawyer showed us their wills.

If they died, I'd get everything, including guardianship of my siblings, Gabe and Beatrice. My entire life changed in an instant.

That night, peering at my newly earned medical school acceptance letter, I said goodbye to my Future Doctor plans, and hello to motherhood.

As if that wasn't enough, my hips needed to be reconstructed. My hip socket essentially became worn out, and I could feel the bones grinding against each other whenever I walked. Occasionally I felt my hip literally pop out of the socket. I'd been scheduled for a bilateral reconstruction but had to cancel it. Dad's insurance company sent a letter explaining that since he hadn't worked in eight months, we no longer had access to his benefits.

My disability was called Morquio (pronounced "More-Key-Oh") A Syndrome. My body lacked an enzyme that broke down cellular waste. Since I couldn't break down the waste, it built up in my bone, cartilage and ligament cells. It caused a variety of symptoms, such as short stature, abnormal bone development, difficulty walking, hearing and vision loss and fatigue. Treatment consisted of a weekly enzyme replacement called Vimizim. My brother and I relied on Vimzim for the sakes of pain management and enough energy to get us through the week.

My hips needed to be reconstructed because the femoral heads were flattened and widened. I'd gotten them fixed years ago when I was a kid, but Morquio didn't like to obey the rules my surgeon tried to make for my body. My hips frequently dislocated and were causing me osteoarthritis.

To sum up my life at the young age of twenty-three, I was a struggling single parent with financial problems and the hips of an eighty year old.

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