Breathless

Chapter 12: Hindell

Emily and I went to  Dr. Hindell's office the next morning. My mom didn't come since she had a class to teach at the university. Luckily, Dad didn't teach on Mondays, so he was able to take us.

My sister sat comfortably on the weird couch-thing that all doctors had in their rooms. She had kicked her blue running shoes off, and told me about the webbing between her toes. It just wasn't right.

Dr. Hindell came in and two nurses, both middle-aged blondes, followed behind him. They each held a tray full of sharp equipment. A shiver went through my body as I eyed the needles. 

The doctor started talking, but I couldn't take my eyes off of the trays. One of the nurses gave me a kind smile, but I didn't buy it for one minute. She was going to try and poke me with sharp objects in a few minutes. I turned away from her.

"Alright?" Dr. Hindell asked with his bushy eyebrows raised. What had he been saying? It was something about a lab... I tried to remember, but the trays were too distracting.

Emily and Dad nodded. My sister looked to be fine, but Dad had his nose crinkled like he always did when he was worried. That was a bad sign. I didn't move.

One of the nurses grabbed a syringe and filled it up with some clear liquid from a small bottle. My heart started to beat a little faster. Yes, Emily and I had been to countless dermatologists, but we'd never gotten this far with any of them. I froze up as he made his way towards the both of us.

"Who first?" she asked.

"Me." Emily volunteered before I could say anything. Maybe, as the oldest, I should have gone first, but I was glad that I didn't have to. The needle looked to be five inches long.

My sister took off the grey jacket that I had practically forced her to wear, revealing her fish-like arms. I had noticed that there were a considerable amount of scales on her face now, but she wouldn't let me put any makeup over them. My sister was hopeless.

She held her arm out and watched as the nurse inserted part of the needle into her. Emily's face didn't show any signs of pain, even as the nurse pushed down on the top of the syringe, sending the liquid into her.

"You ready?" the other one asked me. She looked a little older than the nurse that was with Emily. Grey roots were coming out of her scalp, revealing that her blonde hair was dyed that way.

I nodded. This was not because I was ready; it was because I didn't have another choice. After I took off the hoodie I had gotten on a vacation in the mountains, the nurse filled up the syringe. I looked away as she stuck me. The pain wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, but it still hurt. I bit my lip and held back a squeal.

Then, my arm started to tingle, and it became very numb. I rubbed it, but all that I could feel were tingles where my hand touched. If I was numb, they were going to do something to me that would be very painful.

I looked over at Emily, and the nurse started scraping her arm with some weird appliance. Emily whimpered slightly as the woman tried to get ahold of one scale. My eyes went wide.

My nurse started to do the same to me. Even though my arm was nummbed, I could still feel the cold metal try to pry a scale from my arm. I hollered out, but the nurse didn't care. She kept scraping, kept prying.

My eyes found Dr. Hindell somehow. He was leaned against the beige counter in the corner of the room. His face was all twisted up in an expression that I couldn't even begin to describe, but he didn't stop the nurses.

Finally, Emily couldn't take it anymore and she let out a loud scream. Both of the nurses stopped for a moment, but when they started to go back, Emily pulled her arm back.

"You can't take our scales!" she hollered at them. She looked like she was about to cry, and I couldn't tell if it was from the pain or not.

"It's alright, Emily," her nurse said. She put a hand on Emily's shoulder to try and soothe her, but it didn't help.

My sister shook her head rapidly. "No. These are ours, and you can't take them from us."

Dr. Hindell tried to understand what she was saying. "We're going to find a cure, and then it will all be okay."

Emily buried her head in her hands. "I don't want you to find a cure!" she said through tears. 

She wasn't making any sense. All the doctors were doing was trying to make us normal again. Why wouldn't she want that? I was too shocked to speak, and everyone else seemed to feel the same way. There was a silence in the room.

She picked her head up and then stared at me with blue eyes full of pain. "This is who we are, Terra. We are mermaids, and no one should be able to change that!"

I shook my head. "No," I choked out. "We're not."

We weren't mermaids, or at least we weren't supposed to be. It was all just one big mistake that no one seemed to be able to comprehend except for Anna, a girl who would forever be seven years old. Dr. Hindell was right; we needed a cure to make everything okay. 

Emily glared at me and a tear fell onto her cheek. She stormed out of the doctor's office, and Dad followed after her. The rest of us sat in silence, unsure of how to proceed for a few moments. We had beem temporarily frozen due to Emily's meltdown.

"If we get the samples from you," Dr. Hindell started. "the lab can still create a cure that will work for both you and your little sister."

I nodded and let them procceed with pulling scales, which ended up leading to other sorts of tests that I could not begin to describe. After all, what else was I supposed to do?