Sister Mother

Chapter 6

Addie

"Yes!" I shouted, punching the air after reading an email.

"What happened?" Beatrice asked from across the kitchen table.

"We got the grant," I said proudly as I turned my laptop around. "The National Organization for Rare Diseases gave us enough money for Gabe and I to get our infusions for a whole year. Weeks of emails, phone calls, mind-numbing questions and—" I stop speaking when I saw the look on her face. Her gray eyes were already glossing over with boredom. I cleared my throat and shrugged. "We got money. Lots and lots of money."

Beatrice peered at my laptop, knitting her eyebrows together. She tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. "That's a lot. Is that just for your drugs?"

I bit my lip, having fantasized about using the money for other purposes. Paying off the mortgage on the house. Buying another adapted car so that I could drive when Gabe was at school. Heck, with this money I could pay for medical school.

"It's only for the infusions, yeah. I had to sign something promising I wouldn't buy a yacht or anything like that."

Or groceries. Or water and electricity. Or anything that Beatrice needed.

"Can you use it for your surgery?" Beatrice asked.

Touched that's where her mind had gone, I did my best to keep a straight face. "It all goes directly to the specialty pharmacy. They only give out so much money per patient, so I wasn't able to get enough for the surgery. This'll help keep Gabe and I going until I figure something else out."

Something else? Like what? Winning the lottery?

Even if money dropped from the sky, a major surgery like this would take at least six weeks to recover from. Six weeks of excruciating pain, slow rehabilitation and physical therapy. Beatrice had lost two parents already, so she wasn't going to partially lose another for a month.

Mom and Dad artificially conceived Beatrice so that she wouldn't have the same challenges that Gabe and I do, yet these last several months have made her childhood bleaker than ours was. There had to be something I could do to make her life better.

"It's good news, Bea," I said as I shut my laptop. "I'll call Gabe as soon as he's out of class." I loaded our plates in the dishwasher. For lunch, I'd made turkey sandwiches, which was about the one thing that I could make. The kitchen and I were rivals, and Beatrice was a picky eater.

It had been three weeks since Leo visited. Right after he left, I called Mags and recapped everything to her. Occasionally I made her retell me what had happened just so I knew it wasn't a dream. I reread his cheesy list of compliments almost every night and traced my fingers over his number which I had saved into my phone shortly after he left the house.

I missed him. A lot more than I thought I would, but not enough to call him. I had to better myself and my situation before I could set aside time for myself and Leo.

On another note, the NORD grant wasn't my only recent triumph. I got the job at the bookstore. The shop was called Turning the Page. It was run by an old man named Jesse Lennon, who was a miracle in disguise.

My interview was an emotional disaster. Beatrice's school nurse called me in the middle of it, informing that she had skipped lunch to cry privately in the office again. Grief was contagious, and so of course I broke down too. After apologizing to Jesse and telling him that I had a family emergency, he told me that he'd email me my contract and that I was expected back Monday morning.

I'd only just gotten home from the bookstore, and wasn't in as much pain as I usually was after work. Jesse made a habit of assigning me the least physical of tasks—such as manning the cash register and updating the inventory. Duties such as restocking the shelves were assigned to my coworkers. Jesse surprised me by asking me which tasks were doable or not, and he never once penalized me for something I wasn't able to do.