Read Online Some Kind of Normal by Heidi Willis - Free Book Online

nicer than I would be. I can
feel my teeth grinding. "I think we'll just get to bed. Long day,
you know?" He presses my back with his hand and fairly pushes me
out of the room before I can open my big mouth. Logan mutters
goodnight and trudges behind us. I'm sure as sugar we've
embarrassed him beyond belief but I don't care much.
    Thankfully, upstairs our room is self-sufficient,
with its own bathroom and necessities. I shut the door behind us
with a distinct satisfaction hearing the bolt click shut.
    "I'm not staying with these people here. There's no
privacy. And can you believe how they looked down on us 'cause
Ashley don't need a heart transplant?"
    "I'm sure it just came out wrong," Travis says. "And
anyway, we aren't going to be here long. I'll have to take Logan
back to school in a day or two--he can't miss the whole week--and
then you can stay in the room with Ashley."
    "I'm not going to sit around with those pompous folks
all week listening to how their kids are all worse off than ours,
that's for sure."
    "Wow, Mom. Pompous. That's a pretty big word."
    "Oh, shush!" I throw my bag on the bed and rifle
through it to find my nightgown. "It's past midnight. Can we all
just go to sleep?"
    Travis and Logan exchange looks that I pretend to
ignore. Looking for my toothbrush, I pull every crumpled item out
of my bag and throw it on the bed.
    Travis takes his shaving kit out of his bag and hands
it to me. "The toothbrushes are in there."
    I grab it out of his hands without thanking him and
slam the bathroom door behind me. I hear them talking through the
door, their voices so low I can't make them out. I drop my
nightgown on the floor and screw the cap off the toothpaste and
proceed to scrub the enamel clean off my teeth.
     
    ~~~~
     
    We take up just one room because in a day or two
Travis will have to head back for work and Logan will have to go
back to school, but even for one night it feels crowded in the
room. Logan points out that we're living in a home sponsored by a
restaurant whose food we are no longer supposed to eat. He calls it
irony. There's a lot of iron in the burgers, but I think that's
supposed to be a good thing, if I remember yesterday's lesson in
nutrition right, so I'm not sure why Logan thinks this is bad. I
checked the nutrition book for McDonald's for the fries and nearly
apoplected over the carbs. Apoplexy is in Logan's vocabulary book:
SAT list, week 3.
    Ashley is asleep when we arrive back at the hospital,
and the nurse tells us it may be days before she is back to her
self. I don't know which self that is because I don't know anymore
if she seemed different than usual because of puberty, or because
of the diabetes.
    We eat breakfast in the cafeteria. I notice smugly
they serve bagels and orange juice and cereal and eggs. I'm not the
only one killing people.
    Afterwards, Travis gets a paper and disappears behind
the sports section, and Logan sees a pretty girl he slyly follows
into an arcade room. I spread out the pamphlets and charts we were
given across the table and go through them again. I shuffle the
papers mindlessly, the words on the pages confusing and without
meaning. Words like glycated hemoglobin, basals and boluses,
hypoglycemia, ultralene, and neuropathy. There are lists. Lists of
possible complications. Lists of tests and medications. Lists of
foods with numbers after them. And graphs and math way past the
algebra I struggled through in high school before I dropped
out.
    I'm stupid about school things. I know this. And now
I'm afraid it's going to kill my daughter.
    I put my head in my hands, blocking out the quiet
commotion of the cafeteria, and try to pray. I think I might've
fallen asleep because when a warm hand falls on my shoulder, I look
up, expecting Travis to be there, but he's gone. The woman standing
over me is Betsy, the nurse on duty when Ashley was admitted. She's
dressed in cheerful pink scrubs with Betty Boop bee-bopping around
them, but her face is drawn and