Chapter 26
26
“ I 'm pretty sure the kitten is a girl,” Carlisle told him as she turned the tiny creature back and forth in her hands before setting him—or her—back down.
Simon shrugged. He hadn't looked. But together they watched as the little one attempted to get into the litter box, the side of which seemed too high, or else Kitten wasn't nourished enough yet to make the leap.
It was Carlisle who figured out how to do the flea bath without hurting the baby. She was the one who'd given it the entire tiny can of kitten food. The little orange poof had gobbled it fiercely and only then had Simon questioned how much it should eat.
Carlisle looked up how much cat food per cat per day. “It says one can—so three-point-five ounces—per three and a half pounds of kitten.”
“I don't think there's that much kitten there.” Simon had frowned and tipped his head watching as Kitten ate the whole thing.
It was Carlisle who called Keith and let him reassure her that it was fine if the kitten ate a little more the first few days. “He was probably really hungry, and it will take a while before he’s eating normally.”
Carlisle reassured him Kitten would be fine. And she was the one who brought him her kitchen scale and a little tiny plastic container so they could check the weight. They’d discovered that the kitten was a mere one-and-a-half pounds. She’d looked up how to check his tiny teeth and figured out he should be five weeks and didn't need a bottle. She also talked Simon through mixing the wet food with the kibble to make it soft.
“Do you want the cat?” Simon had asked, seeing her dote on the tiny thing like a baby.
“Oh no.” Carlisle instantly and emphatically refused. “The universal cat distribution system chose you .”
Despite her insistence, he was just fostering it until it found a home.
It was Carlisle who'd gone around the house looking for things that might be dangerous. Then they’d realized that Kitten couldn't get into the litter box, so she’d found old cardboard and constructed tiny steps up to the edge. He'd helped, sure but clearly, she was on her A game.
“You're very good at this,” he told her as she announced that Kitten was a girl.
“Oh no, I don't know anything. I'm just using the internet.”
“That's what I mean though. You're good at thinking on your feet. I can see why you made a fantastic ER nurse.” He almost added I can see why you survived an event that would have killed anyone else . But she was so happy and content with the tiny kitten that he didn’t bring it up.
He’d pulled the articles he found about her and read them again. Now that he knew her, the numbers sank in deeper. She'd been underwater for almost fifteen minutes and she'd kept herself alive. She hadn't been able to escape on her own, but she’d fashioned a way to breathe. She’d saved herself, stuck underwater in a murky lake, trapped in her car until Ever Halifax had made it down to pull her up.
Simon thought she was going to sell a metric ton of those kits. He wanted to tell her so, but talking about the accident put the glaze back in her eyes. It took the lilt out of her voice. So he didn’t. “I’m starving. I’m going to order a pizza.”
She nodded at him as if to say it was his house and he could do what he wanted. He’d meant for the both of them. She deserved a pizza just for showing up and making everything work. He didn’t know what to do with a kitten! They’d never had pets growing up. His Mom had been a single mother most of the time and he’d not ever wanted to bother her by asking.
He pushed Carlisle now. “What do you want on it?”
“Cheese?” she barely looked up, but then asked, “Where are you ordering it from?”
“Where should I?” She’d lived here most of her life, she would have the inside scoop.
She wound up telling him about a local place and then changing her order to spinach and green olives. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“You don't have to get it,” she backed down. “I’m fine with cheese.”
He’d ordered it for her even if he wasn’t going to touch it. He ordered his own choices for his side.
Little Kitten was starting to get droopy eyed by the time the pizza arrived. She'd run all over the house, exploring things and smelling them, trying to get on them or in them. The sound of tiny paws pattering on carpet or on the linoleum in the kitchen was concerningly heart-warming.
But he looked at Carlisle. “Are you going to stay over?”
“I don't think so.” She shook her head at him. “You have a new baby in the house.”
He hadn’t tried to change her mind then . . . So they’d watched a TV show together with Kitten falling asleep on his lap and Carlisle commenting. “See, she chose you.”
She’d been sitting in a lump on the side of the road, and he’d pulled over. Hardly the cat choosing him. But he didn't correct her, she’d been amazing.
He was going to try to convince her again to stay over when the show ended. But, with four minutes left, his phone rang. Grabbing for it, he saw the screen. “Shit. I've got to take this.”
Simon grabbed the remote, paused the show and answered. He started to stand but couldn’t. Kitten was asleep in his lap and the one-and-a-half pounds of kitten was holding him down like a full planet's gravity. “Hi, Mom.”
Carlisle turned to look at him and mouthed the words, “Do I need to leave?”
He didn't know. Was his mother just saying hi and had bad timing? Or was something wrong?
He had to get up, so he scooped up the tiny kitten and handed it off to Carlisle. Already tense, he headed into the kitchen even though that wouldn't stop Carlisle from hearing. “What do you need Mom?”
The kitchen was open on both ends. The dining room and living room weren’t separate rooms but one big area, open to the front door and down the short hall to the back deck. All he’d done was move out of sight.
His mother's voice hitched, and she apologized. It was how this always went. Not a good sign. “You don't have to apologize mom. It's okay. What do you need?”
He should have said, How much do you need?
The number she rattled off made him rethink the pizza he’d just bought. He might have jumped the gun telling Carlisle he could take her to mini golf. Maybe she could take him to the new hotdog place on the other side of town instead. But he didn't say any of that to his mother. “Don't worry about it. I'll get it to you. ”
He could hear her breathe easier, she’d been worried he wouldn’t have it. He didn’t really, but he could make it work. They talked for a few more minutes. “How's Darcy?”
“She's good,” his mom said. But there was something about the way the word was bitten off. When his mom said Darcy was good, it wasn't reassuring. It usually meant something was wrong, even if Mom hadn’t figured out what yet.
“Is she taking her meds?”
There was a pause—which usually meant no .
Darcy was an adult. She didn't have to take her meds if she didn't want to, but that was a problem unto itself. “Are you okay?”
“You know how she gets,” his mother said. It was meant to just brush the situation off as no big deal. But he did know. She got the way people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia got when they went off their meds.
In Darcy’s case, the medications sometimes made it easier to function, but harder for Darcy to just be Darcy. In addition to that bullshit, the management of taking the medications at their particular times and taking all the additional medications to manage the side effects was a full time job in itself.
Sometimes they just slowly quit working. Then Darcy would have to get back on the merry-go-round and try new things until something new worked. Simon asked his mother, “Are they not doing it anymore?”
He could hear her sucking in a breath. “I think maybe they worked a little too well.”
He knew what that meant, too. Another unintended side effect: the medications worked well enough that eventually Darcy believed she didn't need them.
Fuck . But he only mouthed the word. He knew his mother was doing her best even though he wanted to say, you have to keep her on her meds . It wouldn’t help. He knew. Darcy wasn't always easy to convince and he had a hard time forcing her to do it, because he understood. At least looking from the outside, he saw some of it. He would never know what it was like to be in Darcy’s head.
“She’s not taking her meds?”
Carlisle’s voice came from behind him, soft and almost heartbroken.
His hand was in his hair as if he could tear it out. There were no good answers here, just management as things came up. He turned around and saw Carlisle leaning in the open archway, her arms crossed and her head tilted to one side. Her expression clearly showed concern.
She was an ER nurse. She had to have at least a basic understanding of what it meant when someone like Darcy wasn't on their meds.
“Her art is amazing though!” his mother was declaring through the line.
That was another problem. She didn’t paint as much when she was on her meds and she often scrapped the work. Darcy was like the opposite of the rock stars who felt they needed drugs to create all those great hits. He glanced back through the opening and looked at his sister’s painting he’d hung on the wall. It was amazing.
Unfortunately, that only encouraged Darcy to stay off her meds when she was on a productivity binge. It would burn out, he knew. She would peak then sink, and at some point, she would let his mother scrape her up and take her back to the doctors.
He’d moved out here because his mother had assured him she could handle it herself. Simon knew she could, he just didn’t like that she had to. They’d known this would happen eventually, but “eventually” was starting to look like now.
“She's okay, though?” he asked.
No hesitation from his mother. “Oh yes. You know how she gets. She's in her studio. She's there all day. I make her eat. ”
His mother might not be going to work. She'd have to watch over Darcy more. Might be the reason for the hit to his bank account tonight. Or maybe it was medical bills. He asked a few more questions then promised to get the money to her tonight.
When he hung up, he looked up to see Carlisle, still standing there, silently listening in. He couldn’t fault her.
“Your sister's off her meds?”
For a moment, irritation flared, and he almost spat back. “It's not any of your business.”