EMILY

Nicole emerges from the shower, wrapping the robe tightly around her. The bedroom is still dark. She stops short, watching Rachel turn Alex over on the king size bed, with the expertise of a seasoned nurse. She straightens the sheets, one side at a time. The covers are then pulled over him like a mother would over her child. Things are increasingly not adding up for Nicole as she watches Rachel take one of the extra pillows on the couch. She is hugging it tight as Nicole sits down next to her.

“I didn’t get to thank you, Rachel, for everything with Alex. It was so crazy yesterday, getting him discharged, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s always like that, they tell you you’re being discharged tomorrow, and it will take all day before you can actually leave.”

“You did great. Extraordinary, actually. I’m so grateful. If you weren’t there making sure, you never know if they would take care of him as soon as possible.” She gives Rachel a big squeeze.

Rachel shrugs a little. “Yeah, I have to be in their faces; otherwise, you’d be lost in the system.”

“You really DO know your way around the system,” Nicole pauses, “and around patients too, it seems.”

Rachel shrugs again. “My sister had CP. Before college, I took care of her on weekends. Then on breaks and in the summer.” She pauses, “My parents, mainly my mother, took care of her the rest of the time, with some outside help here and there.”

Nicole cannot see Rachel’s face, with her head practically buried in the pillow. But she recognizes that tone. The kind of tone, practiced over time, to convey information without losing control to the depth of pain and gruel of sleep deprivation. The avoidance of the terrifying discomfort of people’s ignorance. The clipped articulation of facts.

“Motor and neurological deficits?”

Rachel nods, “Yeah, both upper and lower body but upper more functional, wheelchair bound since nine. Seizures, three to four times a year, despite medication. Learning disability.”

“Her name?” she is scared to ask with a verb.

“Emily.”

“Older or younger?”

“Younger….. by forty-seven minutes.”

Nicole reacts as if she’d stepped on raw nail, recoiling, “dear God!”

Pulling the pillow away slowly, she hugs Rachel tightly; her hands move firmly up and down her back. Nicole’s throat chokes yet she has no words to utter.