Loving and Leaving Him

Chapter 16

Dedicated to the real Lacy on her 15th birthday!

I got better gradually. At first just the simple effort to let out a single breath was a huge accomplishment but now I was able to talk as I used to and walk with some help. Mother compared my recovery to as if she had another baby, this was one of her attempts to make me laugh. It wasn't until I was able to take my first step towards Independence did I notice that everyone in my family had become thinner and almost everyone had some sort of illness. They had all pretended to be okay while they were taking care of me feeding me their lies as well as the remainder of our food. No one wanted to go into the town in fear of being tortured or worst killed. 

Everyone was miserable but no one had it worst then Amelia. Since she was so young Amelia has contracted a infection based off of her malnutrition for the past few months this caused her to become extremely weak and immobile. I looked over at her in shock at first I thought a stranger or some sort of sick child had found herself in our home but that skinny tiny shell of a human was my baby sister. "How much water has she had?" my family answered my question with a series of confused looks. "If she doesn't have enough water she will dehydrate and that can only make her infection become worse or even, death." my statement startled everyone especially my mother who immediately ran for the bucket we had stored the already boiled water in with a cup. 

"Amelia, sweet heart you need to drink this... it will make you feel better." mother forced the cup into Amelia's mouth and tilted it so its contents would make it's way down her throat. "Three days." the deep male voice that sounded behind me startled me as it would anyone. "What?" I turned to face and ask my brother who had dark round shadows under his eyes and the beginnings of a beard coming in. "It's very hard to get anything in her and make it stay down Mother and Father have to force feed her and water is already a challenge to collect it then boil it to make sure it's drinkable. So Amelia hasn't had a drink in three days we didn't know it was going to effect her that badly." Timothy sat down on one of the makeshift chairs that we owned as he answered my question. "With both of being sick at the same time and yours seen more life threatening since about ninety-five percent of your life and Amelia's illness looked like the flu at first we gave you most of the water." it angered me that he looked like he didn't even care that his youngest sibling could be on the verge of death, that he blamed me for this mishap and that ever since we were thrown out Timothy had shunned himself away from us depressed with a reality we all had to face. Discussed by my brother's heartless tone towards the situation I focused on helping Amelia.

It took a few hours for everyone to calm down and finally I was left alone with Amelia after she had been moved to her room for the night. "Hey Mels I just want you to know that's its okay to be scared and that you're going to be alright." I stroked her hair if it wasn't for the visible movement of her abdomen then I would have mistaken her for dead, she was just so peaceful. "You know when I was about your age I got the stomach flu, I know it's not much to compare this to the flu but you don't really get deadly unknown diseases when you're living in luxury. Anyways what I was trying to get to is that when I got sick Gran used to play this game with me to pass time, now it doesn't take much effort to play, so here's the rules. I tell you two short stories and you need to guess which one is the truth and which one isn't. You don't have to say a word though just squeeze my hand once for story one and twice for the second one." I picked up Amelia's cold limp hand half expecting her not to respond and started the game. 

"When I was little Gran used to take me to the forest and we would play hide and seek in there. One day she took me there and I noticed a branch overhanging a river I thought if I hid high up she wouldn't notice me so I climbed the tree and perched myself on that branch. But what I didn't notice was the family of robins that lived in the tree and when that mother robin saw me near her eggs she started to attack me, like any protective mother would. I lost my footing and fell into the river luckily thought the river wasn't deep and the branch was not as high up as I expected so when Gran found me I was sitting in a river crying because the bird had messed up my hair." I looked at Amelia to see any emotion at all but she presented nothing. "Next one is that when mom was pregnant for you everyone was expecting you to be a boy so Mom and Dad had bought a bunch of boy clothes and toys just for you. But the night before Mother delivered you she had a dream that you were a girl and made dad give all the boys baby stuff to a orphanage and got him to buy all new girl stuff. No one believed her and everyone was expecting for a little baby boy to come out and for mom to demand all new stuff, but sure enough you were a girl and up until you were five mom would always brag about how she was right."

I held onto her hand waiting for an answer but the only thing I felt was the faint beating of her pulse. Just as I was about to give up I felt a single squeeze on my hand. "Correct." I whispered before I kissed her head and left her to rest.