And seriously? That s the photo you want to see of me? That s the first look you really want? Sigh...

Transcription

1 Alex, January 2 Happy 2017! Unfortunately, I did not get your letter in time to deliver your messages in person to my cousins. The girls headed out this morning to catch their plane home. But I did text your final messages to them before they boarded. Allie sent back a smiley face and a Thank you!, Cate hasn t replied yet, which isn t unusual, and Gina says Tell the dude we re cool! I wasn t upset! To each their own! :) And re: the photo I. Am, ON IT! And I think she honestly wasn t upset. That s just Gina. She s very blunt and pushy intense. You get used to her, but she s a bit overwhelming until you do. And seriously? That s the photo you want to see of me? That s the first look you really want? Sigh... So, yeah, the girls are gone, and the house is oddly silent without them. Like, I know it isn t any different than any other point in the year, but it seems like it. - So I There s a Shel Silverstein poem that starts, I m writing this poem from inside a lion, and it s rather dark in here. Do you know it? Those words have been marching through my head over and over again for the last hour, and I don t know why. I can t remember any more of the poem than that. I keep getting it mixed up with I m being eaten by a boa constrictor, oh gee, it s up to my knee, etc, etc. You know those poems? I can t get those lines out of my head. Because I feel like I m being eaten alive? Because I feel like I m trapped in the dark?

2 I m writing these lines from inside a hospital ward, and it s rather... something in here. Sorry, It s been a very surreal day, and I am here in the very last place I wanted to end up. I m in a waiting room at the Hoag Hospital of Irvine, and no, I hadn t exactly pictured this as the place I least desired to visit, but here we are. I m aware that I m not making any sense. Life doesn t make much sense at the moment. I mean, I m under the same roof right now as my half-sister and technical step-mother, so I d say we re pretty far from the sense-making. Shit, I should have reassured you, right? That I m fine, and Mom and Joe are fine, and the girls are fine? Sorry, I m not thinking straight. Lissa showed up at my house today. That s why I left off so abruptly. Joe was calling me. Because Lissa was standing on our porch. She looks just like me, Alex. Same hair, same face shape, just smaller. I opened the door to talk to her, and a thousand different questions were swimming through my mind, like why are you here and what s going on and what are you doing here, and I honestly don t remember which one ended up coming out of my mouth. She tried to say something like her dad wanted to know if she could stay with us for a few days, but she hasn t mastered the art of lying, not the delivery or imagining circumstances, because whatever I think or believe about Thom, I know he wouldn t just send his kid to our house with no warning. I called her out on it. I was furious. I pressed her, to get her to admit that Thom didn t know she was there. I just wanted to know what the hell she was thinking. I pushed too hard, though. I made her cry.

3 Joe invited her inside, and Mom brought her a glass of water, and I tried to keep my temper down. I asked her what happened. I was right, Alex. Her mom, Michelle, got sick. I mean, she s been getting sicker, but it got really bad on New Year s Eve. She couldn t breathe. They had to take her to the ER, and they didn t know if she was going to last the night. She did, but she s in an ICU now, and they don t know how much longer she has left, and Lissa ran away. I think that s what got me the most, you know? She ran away. I don t want her to be that person, and I think I was harsh on her because I was so angry with her for abandoning her mother. She wanted to stay with us, until school started and her mom was released and her parents came home. Joe and Mom said no, though, that she had to go back to her parents, who were probably worried sick about where she was on top of worrying about everything else. Mom called Thom while Lissa and Joe and I were talking, to let him know where Lissa was. I caught part of Mom s half of the conversation. She kept saying things like, It s all right, don t worry about it, it s not your fault. I think at one point, he offered to come get Lissa, but Mom vetoed that pretty quickly. And she offered to drive Lissa up to Irvine, but I said I d do it. Because Lissa s my sister, and I m the one she came to, and I wanted just last letter to find a way to help. So this is my way. Even if it is a way that will probably end with me meeting my biological father. Yeah. I m trying not to think about it. That s a lie. It s all I can think about. Like, this isn t in any way how I pictured this moment happening you know, on the rare occasions I did

4 picture it. It s all I can think about, Alex, and I have no idea what I m going to do. He s not here right now, though. Lissa and I came in, to the reception desk, and they called up to the room, but no one answered. And the nurse said that because it was an ICU, she could only let family up. So I said we were family, that Lissa was her daughter, and I was her step-daughter. Like, it s not a lie, but I still feel weird about it. We went up, and I sat in the room with her because I wasn t going to leave her on her own. And her mom doesn t look good. Like, I know next to nothing about Wegener s, but she s on a breathing machine and Alex, I ve never been around anyone this sick. I get why Lissa wanted to leave, I really do. This is scary for me, and I don t even know this woman. She was awake when we came in, and she said Thom had gone to get her mother and bring her back to the hospital, and I think he left for me. I think he timed when I would be arriving, and left so I wouldn t have to cross paths with him. And I m so muddled, I have no idea what to think about that. I m out in the waiting room, giving Lissa and her mom some time. I don t want to leave until someone else is here, but all I have with me is your letter, so I m gonna keep answering it to keep my mind off things, until something happens one way or another. You and Gabe becoming secret penpal best friends behind my back never even occurred to me. Tell you what, though, play that game at your own risk, because his current best friend, well, she s been known to get super possessive (I can t even write that with a straight face. :P) I feel the same way about resolutions as you do. Like, I think we should constantly be making goals to better ourselves, not just at the

5 beginning of January. So, currently, I am working on trying to look out for myself and what s best for me a little better, and to communicate better. And right now, I really want to find a way to help Lissa. She and I talked in the car on the way up I mean, it s a two hour drive, so if we hadn t, it would have been awkward. But we talked about important stuff, not just filling the space. And she s so lonely, Alex. She doesn t have anyone to talk to. She s an only child, kind of a loner at school, and since her mom got sick, she s feeling really overlooked. Her dad s not running away, which is an improvement for him, but he s struggling, too, and she doesn t know how to talk to him about this stuff, and God knows I don t have any advice on that front. She needs a friend. She needs someone who s caring more about her than anyone else in all of this, and I guess I m in as good a position for that as anyone she is my sister, and I don t care that much about her dad, and I don t really know her mom. I think I know what you re going to say, but this is something I have to do. That s where I am. So the bulk of the drama seems to have shifted to me, huh? I m glad you re going to call your mom. You don t have to share how it goes, unless you want to. That s private and personal, I totally get it. And yeah, it s probably going to be rocky and awkward at first. You don t know each other anymore. But I think you ll get there. That s my hope for you, at any rate. Alex, you can t do things like call me your best friend when I m already an emotional wreck. Seriously, you re gonna make me cry. Thank you. It means a hell of a lot to hear you say that. You know I m here for you, no matter what, right? And a question you don t have to answer: is everything okay with Emma? You just haven t mentioned her in forever.

6 Back home. I didn t meet I didn t have to meet Thom. When he brought Michelle s mother, Betsy, to the hospital, he sent her up to the ICU while he waited down in the cafeteria so I could leave without having to see him. But I talked to Betsy for a bit and learned what the plan is. Michelle is terminal. There s no getting around it. They ve drained a ton of fluid from her lungs that is only going to come back, and she s getting dialysis three times a week. Joe says without knowing her case, he can t really give a prognosis, but just from the general symptoms, he says she has a couple months left, probably. So they re moving her to a Hospice Care center in San Diego. Lissa lives in Carlsbad, about 20 minutes away from me, and I ve arranged to pick her up from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and take her to the Hospice Center. It lets me check in on her and be there for her and help her through all this. And I want to. Before you ask, no, I m not just doing this out of a sense of obligation, not anymore. And I know it s going to mean meeting Thom eventually, but that can happen on my terms. After today, I m convinced he ll let that happen. So. There we are. Yours, Zoe