Chapter 6
Maddox
Afew months ago, when Javen and I were rewatching The Walking Dead, I looked up how long diabetics could go without insulin. Javen had dreamt up an elaborate zombie survival plan that involved chopping down hundreds of trees and building a fully functioning community within the timber walls.
But when he’d asked what I would do I’d answered, “Stake out in the biggest pharmacy I can find, I guess.” Because, in the case of zombies taking over, it’s likely my disease would kill me before any feet-dragging creature ate my brains. He looked down, ’cause the zombie game wasn’t fun now.
Right now, I’m not feeling so lucky.
I’ve missed both doses of long-acting insulin—the kind that lingers in your system, battling the body’s normal glucose production. Plus, there is dawn phenomenon to deal with—an early-morning rise in blood sugar that happens for seemingly no reason other than to piss diabetics the fuck off.
The longer I’m in this fanciful underground cell, the more quickly my breathing comes. My hands shake. My head pounds. It feels like a tree has fallen on my chest.
Sitting with my legs propped up on the leather chair at the base of the bed I refuse to sleep in out of spite, I curl forward into a ball, pressing my head between my knees, squeezing.
When I was younger, I had panic attacks all the time.
They were usually brought on when I felt out of control of my own body.
When my mom and my doctors insisted on controlling everything I ate, how much insulin I took, how much juice I needed to correct low blood sugars.
Everything was in their hands. Never mine.
There were instances in my childhood that I felt so out of control that I created a coping strategy I called “locking down.” My mom had a bit of a temper, and locking me in my room was the best way in her mind to shelter me from it.
Despite the comfort of my bed and toys and books, the feeling of being trapped was there all the same.
I would start to panic, to breathe so quickly I felt dizzy. So I found a way to soothe myself.
First, I’d make myself as small as I could.
A ball, like this, wrapping my arms around my legs like a roly-poly.
I’d picture myself as a house in a storm with doors and windows flung wide where anything and everything could get in.
Open and vulnerable. I’d picture this, then go around and mentally close every open place.
I would start with my sternum, a set of double doors.
I’d slam them closed and lock them. Twice.
My brain was an unlatched window. Pull it shut.
Lock it. The rest of me was more manageable.
My trembling hands. My shaking legs. My spine.
All windows and doors. I closed each one.
Locking and latching and bolting. Until all of me was secure and contained and safe from the outside.
I do this now. It takes longer to work than usual, but eventually it does.
My breathing slows.
My mind stops spinning.
My racing heart slows down to a steady thump…thump…thump.
But the longer I’m in here, locked down or not, the higher my blood sugar rises. If my body’s cells were a popular nightclub, glucose would be the clubbers waiting in a long line outside and insulin would be the bouncer at the door letting people in.
Only I have no bouncers. I have no doors. My clubbers have nowhere to go. So they crowd around the building and break away to cause mischief. A riot is breaking out in my body.
~
The next dryad to enter my prison is Atlas, the quiet one with the bone-white antlers. She brings with her a tray of food. When I refuse it, she frowns and crosses her arms sternly, though I catch a hint of warmth in her gaze. Worry.
Must be a trick of the light.
“I can’t eat without insulin,” I tell her plainly. “Let alone survive without it. That little black bag filled with needles and glass vials literally keeps me alive.”
The corners of Atlas’s mouth droop as she looks from me to the tray of food and back.
I’m about to say something shitty just to make myself feel better when I catch the smallest hint of empathy in the set of Atlas’s brows.
If any of these human-hating dryads are going to help me, it’s going to be this one.
I sit up. “Please, Atlas,” I whisper. “All I need is my insulin. I swear you can slit my throat if I do anything other than check my blood sugar and give myself an injection.”
Atlas remains mute, hovering and watching me for a few moments before leaving, not even bothering to take the breakfast tray with her.
Fuck.
Collapsing onto the base of my bed, I wonder absently how much longer I have left. Maybe I should’ve made a deal with Death instead. My eyes flutter closed.
The next thing I know, Atlas is looming over me. I scramble up, my heart flying to my throat. Then I register the little black bag in her hands. I freeze.
Atlas places my supplies on the bed like someone approaching a starved animal, and I snatch it up before she has a chance to change her mind. She backs away and leaves as quickly as she came.
I inject myself with my long-acting insulin first, just in case she decides to dash back in here and steal the supplies away again. Then I test my blood sugar to see what I’m working with, hoping to see anything other than HI, which would mean it could be any number over six hundred.
The meter counts down from five, beeps, and then reads: HI.
Cute.
Loading up another syringe with short-acting insulin this time, I plunge the needle into the small pudge of my lower stomach and pray to the evil tree gods that this keeps me alive.
~
It takes hours for my sugar to drop into the 400s and even longer to lower to 298.
When I was first diagnosed, I had no idea what numbers were good and bad.
There’s a lot of information about this online, and it’s different for everyone.
But, for me, above 75 and below 150 is my comfort zone.
Anything above 150 makes my anxiety soar.
To avoid complete insanity, I force myself into a fitful slumber.
When I awaken, my blood sugar is 206. Better. Looks like I might not die…yet.
Without warning, the door slams open to reveal my favorite dryad. “Get up,” Drosera orders. “Queen Amanita has invited you to dine with her to discuss your terms.”
I sit up. “She decided what task she wants me to do?”
“Do I look like the queen’s number one confidante?” she returns. “I’m a protector, not a courtier. Now come on.”
I remember a small note scribbled in the corner of my dad’s journal. Protectors bound by the Myrtle Tree, not loyalty.
Sliding out of bed, I tug on my black combat boots, swipe my supplies from under the furs, and approach her side. I’m not making the same mistake twice.
She takes note of my bag, and I wait for her to snatch it from my hands. But then she steps aside, waving me through the door. “If you try anything with that, I will slit your throat.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I’m a bottomless pit of questions, but I don’t want to know the answer to any of them more than I want Drosera to keep her mouth shut.
The dim light of the throne room shines up ahead, but the dryad protector stops just before the entrance at a stone archway tucked into the shadows.
Inside is a long table covered in food and surrounded by dryads. At the head sits the Myrtle Queen.
I enter like a doe stepping into a clearing after hearing a twig snap.
This dining room is surprisingly quaint for a queen and morbidly decorated.
Lined on shelves along the walls, taper candles sit within what appear to be individual vertebrae plucked from a large animal’s spine.
A fireplace packed with purple pillar candles of varying size creates an ethereal lavender glow behind the queen, and a bone chandelier hangs above the table.
There’s something strikingly beautiful about it.
It’s cozy and whimsical, and if Javen were here, I just know he would say something like, Okay, but I’m fucking obsessed with this aesthetic.
Amused eyes watch me pass.
I sink into the seat beside the queen. Today she wears bloodred leathers with a silver leaf bodice, rubies that hang in ropes from her antlers, and a delicate circlet made from what looks like moonstone. I stare at it a long moment, wondering how she managed to get it over her multipronged horns.
“How have you enjoyed your stay?” she asks pleasantly.
“The room is nice. Not a huge fan of the locked door, though.”
She smiles with a little less than half her face now. “A precaution. You understand.”
“Do I?”
Her smile vanishes. “No, I don’t suppose you would.” She places a wooden goblet before me filled with deep green wine. “Care for a drink, Miss Sinclair?”
Don’t drink the wine.
This phrase was scribbled over and over in my dad’s journal. Enough for it to become a bit of a mantra. Until now, I’ve never been offered any wine.
“I don’t drink,” I lie.
A shadow shifts in her golden eyes. “Have some food, then. I hear you hardly ate anything.”
“As I told your protectors, I can’t eat without insulin.”
“Oh?” Something in the way she’s looking at me says she already knew this. Yet she left me in there anyway. “But you have it now.” She nods to my lap, and my hand tightens on my bag.
“Yes.” I resist the urge to glance Atlas’s way.
“So? Use it. Eat.”
Every single eye is on me as I pull my meter and bottle of test strips out.
My blood sugar has dropped to 138, and the slight tremor in my hands tells me it’s tumbling its way down.
I could probably just eat the meat and cheese and be fine without dosing, but there are plenty of carbs on the table that can balance out the extra insulin.
Dark breads slathered in honey, chocolate studded with dried fruits.
Plus, I don’t want them to think I was lying about needing it.