Oh, Lucy

Chapter Three: 217 Tiles

217 tiles.

I had counted and recounted them while I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the middle of the waiting room, my usual nurse still nowhere to be found.

I was about to start my third round of ceiling tile counting when he speaks up. "What are you doing?"

The deep voice catches me by surprise, making me lose my place. I peel my eyes away from the ceiling and am met by a pair of green-brown orbs.

"Well I was counting before you interrupted me." I reply before looking back up at the ceiling.

"Did you forget your phone or something?"

I sigh, realizing the stranger isn't going to let me get back to tile counting any time soon and reposition myself to meet his curious stare.

"It died." I admit, getting a better look at the person before me. I had seen him around my school before and it only takes a second for me to put a name to the face. Vincent Dumont.

"Well I'm sure I can offer you a better form of entertainment than counting ceiling tiles." He states slyly, leaning forward in his seat.

"I don't know, I mean this is pretty entertaining." I reply, smirking at him.

He returns my smirk with one of his own. "Come on, talk to me. It's not every day class president Lucy Mason blesses someone with her presence and I wanna milk it for all it's worth."

"I could say the same about you, Dumont." The lead singer of Lackluster Heart, St. Ita's very own grunge band comprised of gritty-pretty boys with big bank accounts and even bigger daddy issues, Vince was a local celebrity by most anyone's standards. "What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?" I ask, though it's no surprise to see his type, the "broken angel boy", around here trying to score extra-potent anti-depressants and high-end cough syrup every once in a while.

"My mom." He confesses and I can tell how hard it is for him to even say those two words. "She's got HD, uh Huntington's Disease-"

I nod in understanding. "Say no more." I reply, suddenly feeling embarrassed for having asked at all and guilty for making assumptions about him.

"What about you?" He asks, holding my gaze, his hazel eyes searching my own.

For a split second, I go rigid and it's not a result of the HD.

"My- my aunt." I force the words out, looking away and hoping that he interprets it as a sign of a painful truth and not of an utter lie.

From the corner of my eye, I see my nurse making her way to the waiting room door through the strip of window on the door's center.

"Oh god." I mutter, putting on a mask of worry.

"Something wrong?" Vince questions, noticing my change of expression.

"That's my aunt's nurse, she told me she'd come to get me if they were having any issues." I lie, standing up just as the nurse opens the door.

"Lucia Mason." She calls, holding the door open expectantly.

"I'm sorry, I-I've got to go." I hurriedly apologize, glancing wearily at the nurse. "I'm here." I call back anxiously, rushing over to the door to make my performance even more convincing.

"Why were you running, Lucy? Is something wrong?" The nurse asks confusedly after she's closed the door. My expression immediately returns to its typical state of forced happiness.

"No reason." I answer as cheerfully as I can. "Say how's your baby, Celia?"

"Natalia's great, thank you were asking. She turns 9 months this coming Saturday..."

I tune out her rambling, nodding my head along to pretend I'm interested as she leads me to my room. She starts me on the so-called miracle in an IV bag and I sit back and close my eyes, attempting to take advantage of the hour of nothingness to catch some much-needed sleep.

I've been attending these trials for a course of 2 months and the only changes I'd noticed were an ever-growing sensitivity to light accompanied by the occasional mind-numbing headache.

Still, I felt I owed it to my mother to at least get through the full trial period, especially after she worked so hard to have them accept me into the study despite my age and my marginally increasing symptoms.

"How are you feeling?" Celia asks about an hour later, coming to remove the IV and fill out her weekly survey.

I answer all of her questions but stop her before she exits the room.

"Celia, do you think it'd be possible for me to be moved to the afternoon sessions? I know it's really late into the trial, but with school starting up again soon and all, I thought it'd be worth a shot to ask." I try, placing a pathetically sad expression on for good measure.

"Oh, honey. Of course you can. I'll let the nurse in charge of scheduling know. Now you know people usually feel a bit of fatigue after their sessions so just sit tight for ten minutes or so and then feel free to leave. Make sure to grab the card for your new appointment time out front okay?"

I nod gratefully at her words and then lay back as soon as she exits the room, trying to get my thoughts in order and keep the nausea in check.

Ten minutes later I was out the door with a brand new appointment time. I knew that I could've just let the school know of my "impairment" and they would've easily let me get a free period in the morning to go to the hospital, but that was exactly what I was trying to avoid.

I would do anything and everything in my power to ascertain that as few people as possible caught wind about my Huntington's and that included the administration at St. Ita. I didn't want them dedicating sermons to me and giving me a page in the yearbook talking about how "special" I was in God's eyes.

I wasn't special-I was damaged.

And no amount of euphemisms would ever change be able to change that truth, no matter how much I wished it could be so.