Kindred

by J. A. Redmerski

  “And how do you feel right now?” she says.

  “Aside from being nervous,” I answer, “I’m okay. At least until that nurse comes back in here with the needles and ruins my day. Oh, and she pinched my arm with that blood pressure cuff, so that hurts a little, too.”

  I catch another faint smile tug the corners of her lips, but she looks down at the chart again to covertly conceal it.

  I do feel like a bratty child, and I’m trying my hardest not to be, but my defensives are way up and when I’m scared like this, I tend to become bolder rather than curl up in a ball and beg for my life.

  “You’ll be fine,” she says looking back up at me a few inches higher than she sits. “Can you recall what happened, or what was said shortly before any of your dizzy spells?” She crosses one leg over the other, one arm over her stomach and fits the tip of her chin in her upraised hand. “Any of that stress related to any incidents in particular?”

  Looking away from her and up at the ceiling tiles, I muse over the question for a moment. I thought when Uncle Carl came home it was a pretty un-stressful event, but I guess maybe I was a little stressed out, worrying about the house and if Uncle Carl will feel comfortable, oh and my heart-to-heart with Beverlee about Isaac. And then the day after in the restaurant…that probably just carried over from front row seats at the friendly neighborhood werewolf challenge. Now, at Isaac’s house when Nataša was there and I actually did black out, I can definitely put that whole scenario in the stressful category. The same in the library yesterday with Genna.

  Okay, so maybe they are related.

  And both times I blacked out, Genna had been there—I think—telling me to ‘calm down’.

  Maybe there really is a logical diagnosis.

  Except for Genna. She’s still on my crazy list.

  I’m looking at this doctor with a bit more appreciation now, as if she has all the answers and can ease my mind about the Blood Bond possibility.

  “Yeah, I guess I have been more stressed out than usual,” I say, but again, there’s no way I can go into details.

  She smiles more warmly, detecting my slightly diminished resistance towards her and says, “We’ll run a few tests of course to rule some things out, but at your age, being in High School and dealing with so many things at once, it sounds like you might be having some anxiety. All of your symptoms are classic signs of an anxiety attack, and though fainting doesn’t normally occur, it has and does happen at times with some people.”

  I’ve been wincing since before she even finished the sentence about running tests and already my heart is starting to pound wildly in my chest.

  “What kind of tests?” I say, but I know full well what kind and I’m sure the doctor already knows that my question really translates: Please tell me these tests don’t involve needles, which might result in me fainting right here on this table?

  “We’ll draw some blood…” I DON’T REALLY HEAR HER ANYMORE; her voice sounds really far off, or muffled behind a door. “…but I promise that Nurse Jillian will be very gentle.”

  Oh, is that her name? Well, I might not be awake by the time she rolls in here with the Tray of Doom anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

  After the doctor goes into all of the more uncomfortable questions about my bathroom habits and menstrual cycle (this is also why I hate hospitals—I’d rather drink spoiled milk than answer these kinds of questions) and jots down several more notes, she stands up and places the clipboard on the counter behind her and then squirts some foamy antibacterial stuff from a can mounted on the wall into her hand. First she looks at my pupils and then in my ears and throat and then moves her fingertips around my neck and under my jaw to check for swollen lymph nodes. I’m guided to lay back flat on the table and she pushes around on my stomach.

  When she’s done I lift back up and wait for phase three.

  “The nurse will be in shortly,” she says so casually, without any regard for my feelings at all (I know I’m being ridiculous), “so just sit tight and we’ll get you all wrapped up and out of here in no time.” She washes her hands thoroughly in the sink right next to a cartoonish print-out of a pair of hands covered in a mound of frothy soap that reads: DID YOU WASH THEM? She walks casually out the door with the clipboard pressed gently against her side.

  I need to breathe. Deep, calm breaths.

  Trying to find anything to keep my mind off what’s going to come through that door any moment, I stare off at a poster of the circulatory system, and then at one of a heart (with a smiling, happy face) and all its parts and chambers and functions displayed with tiny side notes. I see a blood red trash bag hanging over the sides of a short metal can covered by a lid that opens with the press of a foot. And on the wall to my left sits a tan-colored needle disposal container with a black and red symbol that looks like something you see on the cover of a heavy metal album.

  There’s not a single thing in this room that’s going to help ease my mind. I need a room with pictures of kittens and bulldog puppies.

  Knock. Knock. One-point-three-seconds after and the door comes open, but I refuse to look up at Nurse Jillian, or whatever her name is. Seeing the tray I know will be the final point which sets me right over the edge and my fairly composed time in the doctor’s office will take an unfortunate turn. I’ve never actually passed out at the sight of needles before, but considering my fainting track record as of late, if anything makes me faint it’s going to be this. I look away from the floor and in the opposite direction instead, while the nurse says something comforting that I can’t hear and gets her ‘tools’ ready.

  Another series of light knocks and the door barely cracks open. I hear Aunt Bev’s voice between the door and the wall: “Is it okay to come in?” Now that’s how it’s done.

  “Yes, Aunt Bev,” I say, still trying not to make any sort of eye contact with the nurse who wears a pink pastel scrub top with whimsical zoo animals printed all over it. But I do notice that she didn’t bring a tray, but rather a blood-red caddy filled with little vials and perfectly packaged butterfly needles and alcohol swabs and Band-Aids and gauze.

  The back of my neck is prickling with sweat….

  Beverlee cautiously slips the rest of the way inside and lets the door shut softly behind her. She and the nurse exchange smiles as Beverlee makes her way to the chair sitting near the end of the examination table.

  “They said you might need some company,” Beverlee says, placing her banana-shaped shiny black purse on the floor beside her feet.

  I start to politely protest, but then out of the corner of my eye, I see something move near the sink. For just a split second, it looked like the wall had moved, like a pebble had been dropped in a pond creating one brief series of ripples. I blink my eyes three times to adjust them more clearly, but there’s nothing there. Okay, I’m seeing things again, but something like this is easier to pass off as ‘seeing things’ than a full body apparition that breathes and talks and for some reason haunts a Geometry class.

  “All done,” the nurse says. “See, now that wasn’t so bad. You did great.”

  Huh? I blink awake…I think…and I stare up at the nurse, her hands covered by cream-colored latex gloves that I never saw her put on. Beverlee is standing up on the other side of me, but I never saw her stand. The nurse places three vials of freshly drawn blood into her caddy, blood that I never saw her draw. I look to and from her and Beverlee, back and forth dozens of times, my mouth hanging partially open, my memories rejecting me access.

  “Did I faint again?” I’m completely and utterly baffled.

  Beverlee’s comforting smile remains, but I notice a touch of question in her face, too. “No, honey, you did great.”

  I glance downward, afraid to look right at the bend of my arm because it does feel like a needle had just been in it, but I give in. A Band-Aid is stuck to my skin, a little bulging piece of gauze held in place underneath it. The harsh smell of alcohol rises up into my nostrils. I look back up and let my gaze scan
the room, looking for something out of place, something that could indicate that this is just a dream and I’m going to snap awake in a second and find out that I did black out after all.

  I swallow hard, realizing that I’m fully awake and that the past however many minutes have somehow been stripped from my mind.

  “You can go ahead and get dressed now,” the nurse says as she goes to leave, one hand on the door and the other holding the caddy at her side by its handle. “Just sit tight while the lab works its magic and the doctor will be in afterwards with the results,” she says to Beverlee.

  Thirty minutes in this tiny room feels like three hours, but I can’t be bothered by the long wait, or really even what the results might be. I think mostly about what happened to me in here, how it can be that I don’t remember, yet I didn’t black out, according to Beverlee. I sit quietly, staring at the wall near the sink where I think I saw something earlier, just before the nurse drew my blood. Beverlee tries to make conversation, probably just to get me talking because I’m sure I look a little traumatized, but I can hardly hear anything she says. I nod where I need to and shake my head at the appropriate time and even look at her a few times while she’s speaking, but all of this is the doing of my subconscious. If she were to ask me later what we ‘talked about’, I would have no idea what to tell her.

  I don’t even hear the customary knock this time when the doctor comes back in, but I do manage to pull myself out of my deep thoughts so that I can hear what she has to say about the results.

  Logical diagnosis. Please, let there be one.

  “Looks like you are anemic,” she says, standing in the center of the room with my medical sheet pressed to her side in the clipboard, “but so far we aren’t seeing anything to indicate that it’s caused by anything serious. Other than low iron, blood count looks good and your urine came back fine, but I’m going to put you on an iron supplement for now and see how well you do. In the meantime, we’ll refer you to another clinic for further tests to rule out some things.”

  I’m still too stunned by the events to complain about her mention of ‘further tests’. I just let her and Beverlee do all the talking.

  “Also, I would like to try Adria out on a low dose anxiety medication.” She pulls two small square sheets of paper from the clipboard and hands them to Beverlee. “This one is for generalized anxiety and panic attacks. It’s the lowest dose possible, but if it doesn’t help in twelve to fourteen days then call back and a nurse can phone-in a higher dose for you at your pharmacy—I’ll note that in Adria’s chart.”

  They talk for a minute more before the doctor leaves and another nurse comes in afterwards to discharge us.

  Before we walk through the double glass doors past the nurse’s station, I see the doctor standing there with her back to me, writing something in a thick file at a counter.

  “Ummm,” I mumble and she turns around to face me, but I feel really uncomfortable, “sorry about my craziness back there.”

  Like I said, I have a submissive relationship with guilt. NBC could make a show based on me—My Name is Adria—though it wouldn’t be as funny as Earl’s.

  The doctor smiles, reaches over to the sticker roll hanging on the wall and tears one off.

  “No worries,” she says and puts the sticker in my hand.

  I glance down awkwardly at Dora the Explorer and even more awkwardly back up at her.

  She winks, but everything about the gesture is her way of clever payback and I can’t help but laugh inside about it. I think I love that doctor now. Too bad she can’t be my doctor in the future. This is just a child and adolescent clinic—Beverlee couldn’t get me in to see her ‘grown-up’ doctor until next week.

  14

  SCHOOL IS FINALLY OUT and summer vacation has officially begun. It used to be that every year Alex and I would sleep until two o’clock the first day of summer vacation, and then we’d pack up our tents and head to Lake Sinclair with Alex’s friends, Liz and Brandon.

  I do miss her. I miss her a lot. But I’m making new memories and I can’t think of anyone better to make them with than Isaac.

  I spent the last days of school going on with my life, the one I enjoyed before these fainting spells started. The only thing that’s had me stressed out lately is anticipating Portland. But that’s a good kind of stress. And since the day I went to the clinic and found out that there was a perfectly logical explanation for what’s been going on with me, I’ve been on air happy about it.

  That little skeptic voice in the back of my mind is still taking up residence, but I don’t hear it as much anymore.

  And Harry likes to keep reminding me how right he was (though the iron pills were a lucky coincidence!) and how I should just let him make all of my decisions for me in the future. He’s so full of it, but he’s the best.

  I’m thinking maybe the anxiety medication has helped, too. I hope so, because I’m going to need it this weekend.

  I’m ready to give myself to Isaac, ready to try again, anyway.

  I haven’t seen or heard from Genna Bishop since that day in the library. It’s like she just disappeared, no trace of her left anywhere. But that would’ve been an easy thing to do, considering I seem to be the only person who had ever seen her.

  Maybe she wasn’t real after all. Or, maybe I should just accept it and leave it alone. I keep trying to make myself believe that because what else can I do, really? I can either worry about it constantly, eventually driving myself into a nuthouse, or I can accept that maybe she is real, maybe there’s nothing wrong with me at all and she’s just a ghost, or…I don’t know. Something like this isn’t easy to resolve when you’re only trying to make rational excuses to explain it. But werewolves are real. And were it not for that extraordinary fact, then I might be inclined to think more on the impractical side and make Harry right also about needing medication for schizophrenia.

  ~~~

  I’ve been getting ready at home for about an hour now. My stuff has been packed for two days, but I have some things to do around the house before I go. I’m glad to have my aunt as my boss, too. Otherwise, I might not have been able to take off the whole weekend and tonight (I only work at Finch’s on Tuesday and Friday nights and every other weekend) to go on a vacation. Apparently, teenagers don’t get vacations, so I’m lucky in this way.

  I practically dance down the stairs, not realizing how obvious I am, but Uncle Carl points it out to me.

  “Excited much?” he says from his permanent residence in the chair in the den. “Portland’s nice—was there last summer with Beverlee at Old Orchard Beach.”

  I just smile at him because right now I’m kind of stuck thinking I should be careful how I word things, just in case I say something that will remind him he can’t go back to Old Orchard Beach and enjoy things the same way.

  Beverlee comes around the corner near the stairs from the dining room. She’s carrying her old, beat-up red wallet so packed full of photographs, cards and coupons that I imagine she must have to sit on it to get it to close all the way.

  “I got you a pre-paid credit card,” she says, slipping her finger behind one stack of cards in search of the right one.

  “Aunt Bev, I really—.”

  “Now, don’t waste your breath,” she says, finding the right card and sliding it out from between the others. “There’s two hundred dollars on here, just in case.”

  “Two hun—in case of what?” I say, objectionably, “That I might want to put a down payment on a car while I’m there?”

  Beverlee shoves the card in my hand.

  “Just have a good time,” she says, smiling. “Besides, you’d need more than two hundred dollars for a down payment on a decent car anyway.”

  I smirk and reluctantly put the credit card in the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Put it in your purse though,” she says, objecting to the unsafe back pocket idea before my hand even falls away from my butt. “Lose it and anyone can swipe it wherever they want.”
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br />   “I’ll put it in my purse as soon as I go back upstairs.”

  She smiles and makes her way into the kitchen and I follow. She opens the cabinet over the toaster and starts taking down a few random things: a variety box of Nabisco snack packs, two packages of beef flavored Ramen Noodles (the only flavor I will touch), among other things. “For the ride and in case you get stuck on the freeway—don’t want you starving to death.”

  I don’t say how she’s exaggerating a bit, or ask about how I’d cook Ramen Noodles on the side of the freeway, but instead smile and help her bag the items in a plastic grocery store sack. Lastly, she bends over underneath the bar counter and lifts out a six-pack of bottled water. “And being without water is worse than being without food.”

  “She’s just going to Portland!” Uncle Carl says from the den. “She’s not driving all the way to Mexico!”

  I lower my gaze and smile inwardly.

  Beverlee holds the noodles just over the sack and says in a low voice, “It’s casual-thinking like that, that ends up with a flat tire in a monsoon on a stretch of freeway an hour’s walk from the closest convenience store.” She drops the noodles in the sack and points at me as if underlining the fact.

  I laugh softly under my breath and shake my head.

  I do the dishes for Aunt Bev, check with Uncle Carl in case he needs anything—he doesn’t, of course; well, he says he doesn’t anyway—and straighten up my room while I wait on Isaac to pick me up. And I make sure to put that credit card in my purse, too. I move over to the dresser mirror and touch up my makeup one more time; a few dabs of powder on my forehead where my skin is beginning to shine and then with a big blush brush, I outline my cheekbones with the soft pink glittery blush that Zia gave to me. She’s always trying to get me to ‘glamour up’ and I admit that sometimes I give in to her a little. Daisy does it too, but Zia likes to ‘hog me’, as Daisy calls it. I love Zia to death, but I have to admit that I like Daisy’s soft, laid-back style better than Zia’s ‘glamoured-up’ beauty; for me anyway. The last time Zia made me over, she did that smoky-eye thing and I hated it. I looked like a raccoon.