"Oh come on I had a single beer." Amelia spit back at her brother.
"Amy, we care for you. And one beer turns into two then turns into drugs, and by how you've been acting that's what's going to happen." Derek calmly stated.
"Like you two haven't?!" Amelia pointed to her brother and her sister Lizzie.
"Well, were responsible. We're not going to go out and get a drug addiction."
"I didn't even take drugs!" Amelia sighed dramatically and threw herself down against the hospital bed.
"Amelia, your hanging you with a much older guy. He's kinda creepy, the drug addict kind of creepy. I don't know what college kid dates a high school student." Lizzie added, she had met him a couple of weeks ago and was embarrassed her sister was hanging out with him.
"Hey I'll be out of high school soon." The youngest shepherd quickly defended herself.
"Come on Lizzie, let's just leave her alone." Derek sighed, and directed her sister out of the room.
"Have you heard from mom?" Lizzie asked once her brother had closed the door.
"No, have you?"
"No, but I mean. She'll forgive her right?"
"Yeah moms are supposed to forgive, she's forgiven us for a lot." Derek defended their mother.
"Yeah, but we weren't as crazy as Amelia is."
"Hey, what happened? I just got out of surgery." Their sister Nancy greeted as she came down the hall. "Addie told me Amy was in the ER and you guys admitted her."
"It's nothing to bad. Her foot should heal up fine. I admitted her to try and come up with a plan. We gotta help her, or she's gonna go off the rails." Derek explained to his older sister.
"Okay, and where's mom?" Nancy asked looking into the room.
"Probably already at the store working. Last night she told Amy she wasn't helping her." Liz explained.
"Did you drug test her?" Nancy asked.
"Yeah, she's clean. Her blood alcohol level was high though." While the three siblings were talking Amelia was changing into her regular clothes, ready to leave.
"Where do you think your going?" Nancy asked once Amelia stepped out of the hospital room.
"Home." Amelia simply responded, walking away from the group.
________________________________________
"Hey, so the stores pretty busy. Im going to go help out mom, we could use the extra hands of you don't mind." Lizzie said popping her head into their room.
"I'm going to stay here." Amelia answered in a monotone voice staring up at the bunk above her.
"Okay, well we'll see you later." Liz concluded shutting the door.
Once she heard the front door slam signaling her sister had left, she reached for her boyfriends jacket and dug through the pockets looking for the pills she swiped from the nurses pill cart. She was already coming down pretty fast and only had four left. She settled on only taking one for now. As she felt the pill dissolve she felt okay, better than okay. It was like pain didn't exist, no sisters, no judgement, no school, no dead father. She just felt nothing. She didn't know how long she was sitting there but she could vaguely hear the phone ringing so she jumped up to go downstairs and answer it.
"Hey chase!" She answered with uncharacteristic perkiness.
"Hey what's happening?"
"Nothing much, want to come over? No ones gonna be home until later."
