Lakeside Cottage (19 page)

“I
’m not staying here.” Trapped like a thief in the stark glare of fluorescent lights, Callie felt a cold fist of panic knocking in her chest. “You can’t make me stay,” she said to the doctor or nurse or whoever the woman in blue scrubs was. Despite her insistence on escaping from the narrow, scary room and eluding the strangers poking and prodding her, Callie didn’t really know what her rights were. Would she be classified as a runaway? Turned over to authorities? Sent up to juvy? There were no good options for her, none, except to run…again.

“We’re going to take good care of you,” the woman said.

“You can’t make me stay. I’m eighteen years old.”

“No, you’re not.” The woman spoke quietly but distinctly.

Callie felt icy dread prickling over her scalp. At first she couldn’t speak. She felt trapped. She wanted to scream that she was, too, eighteen. Old enough to vote. Old enough to pluck the clear plastic clips off her finger
tips, pull out the IV and walk away from the noise and light of this strange, intimidating place.

But somehow, the woman in the scrubs had figured out her secret.

“What do you mean?” Callie said. “I know how old I am.”

“So do I.”

She narrowed her eyes in resentment. “How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor. It’s my job to know. My name is Dr. Randall, ER doc and total wizard when it comes to accessing patient records.”

Callie shuddered. She needed to get out of here,
now.
Yet truthfully, she was terrified to pull out the IV. It was ironic, given everything she’d survived in the past, but she couldn’t bring herself to rip out the white tapes, the tube and the needle buried deep in her arm. She’d endured pain others inflicted on her, but had a deep and probably healthy reluctance to hurt herself. She’d seen IVs torn out in movies with a brave, dramatic flourish. Now, confronted with actually doing it, she balked. What if it hurt? What if the hole in her arm spewed blood? And even if she did manage to free herself from the IV, then what? She couldn’t just walk away; she was wearing a blue paper smock. She had no idea what they’d done with her clothes. Oh, man. They took her clothes. How humiliating was that?

Luke, she thought. Luke would rescue her. Yet she realized she didn’t want him to. If he saw her now, he’d run screaming to the next town, probably.

She tried a different tack with Dr. Randall. “I don’t have any money. I won’t be able to pay my hospital bill.”

“That’s been taken care of.”

“By Mr. Harris?” She didn’t even have to think about it.

“I don’t know. That’s not my department.”

Callie knew. It had to be JD. Of course it was him. She was grateful to know he was taking care of her to be sure, but frustrated, too. She didn’t want to be treated like some kind of charity case, even though that’s exactly what she was. And whether he liked it or not, JD was Daddy Warbucks. But he didn’t owe her a thing and there was no reason for him to take care of her except that he was a good guy. Well, she didn’t need any freaking hero. She just needed to get the hell out of here.

“Undo me,” she said to the woman, indicating the tubes. “And give me back my clothes. I’m leaving.”

“Before you make any decision, you need to understand your condition.” The woman spoke so calmly it was annoying. She offered a quick, I’m-a-professional smile. “You were brought in because you collapsed. That’s worrisome in and of itself, even more so because of your condition.”

“My condition?” Callie eyed her with suspicion. Her condition was obvious—she was a fat, homeless loser, but staying in the hospital wasn’t going to fix that. “Oh, God…” Her teeth started to chatter. She tried to remember the last time she had her period. “Oh, God,” she said again.

“When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

“What makes you think I’ve ever seen one?” Callie tried to sound tough, uncaring. Never having seen a doctor was a badge of honor, really. Her caseworkers made sure she had a record of immunization, but no one had ever taken her for a checkup or anything.

Dr. Randall’s response was a simple nod. It was kind of a relief that she didn’t act all indignant or self
righteous. The first family Callie had been placed with had had that reaction. The mother was all like,
How dare they neglect this poor child, it’s abuse, I tell you, pure and simple….

“Callie? Can I call you Callie?” The doctor broke in on her thoughts.

She stared up at the ceiling tiles. “So I guess you think I need a doctor now.”

“Depends. We’ll need to do a number of tests.”

“What kind of tests?” She shuddered, wondering if they were going to make her tell who she’d done it with, and how often, and if she’d used protection. Oh, God.

“You’ve had a blood glucose reading of fifty, which confirms a condition known as hypoglycemia. That’s why you’re getting intravenous feedings.”

“Great, thanks.” Callie frowned, too cautious to feel relief just yet. She watched the long, slow drip of the IV apparatus. “I can use the calories.”

The doctor didn’t think that was funny. “What are your eating habits like?”

She looked in disgust at her pudgy hand. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“I need for you to be more specific. Are your eating habits irregular? Have you been skipping meals? Maybe fasting and then eating a lot?”

“Yeah. So?” Didn’t the doctor get it? Callie wondered. Before she moved in with Kate, she’d had little choice about where, when and what to eat. When you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from, you learned to stock up. “Not so much since I’ve been staying with…friends at the lake.”

“But you’ve still been skipping meals, sometimes overeating and fasting.”

“Big deal. It’s not like I’m some weirdo—”

“No one said that. In fact, your eating habits are probably typical of any teenager. However, in your case, it’s led to a dangerous condition.” She scribbled something down on the chart.

Callie felt a dark thrill of fear. “What kind of dangerous condition?”

“You’re going to need a full workup, but preliminary observations indicate insulin resistance. For you, that’s good news and bad news.”

“Give me the bad first.”

“This is likely to develop into type 2 diabetes. Do you know what that is?”

“Kind of. Like you can OD on sugar or something.”

“There’s a lot more to it, but we’ll take it one step at a time. After the tests show what we’re dealing with, you’re going to get a crash course in this disease.”

Disease, thought Callie. I have a disease. It wasn’t bad enough that she was fat. She had to have a disease on top of everything else. “Didn’t you say you had some good news for me?”

“If you manage to get this condition under control and keep it there, you’ll live a long and healthy life.”

“And if I don’t?”

“The health risks of ignoring this are enormous. Trust me, you want to take care of this now. You’ll learn all about it in class.”

“What class?”

“Several, actually. You’ll be joining a support group, a diabetes-awareness group, a lifestyle-management class—”

The idea of classes and support groups made her skin crawl. “Who says?”

“You just heard me say it, didn’t you?”

Callie expected to feel mutinous. Instead, the doctor’s
bossiness was weirdly gratifying. No one had ever bothered to lay down the law for her. Still, some devil of impulse compelled her to push back. “So who put you in charge?” she asked.

“No one. I simply took charge. There’s only so much I can do, though. Taking care of your health is going to be up to you. I can’t force you to cooperate. But you owe it to yourself to obtain a full and detailed diagnosis and learn exactly what you’re dealing with.”

“Isn’t there like a shot or something you can give me to make it go away?”

“Insulin resistance doesn’t work like that. The goal is to control this without medication for as long as possible.”

“Excuse me,” Callie snapped. “The goal is to get rid of it.”

“Once we have a diagnosis of diabetes, there’s no cure. It’s a chronic disease that will require lifelong management. But it does go away with weight loss, exercise and diet control.”

“You can’t cure it but I can make it go away?”

“If it turns out to be insulin resistance, you’re at high risk for developing diabetes. But this is a disease you don’t have to develop if you change your life now.” She glanced down at her clipboard. “Here’s a rundown on your condition.” She started explaining things slowly and clearly, showing Callie a brochure with simple diagrams.

Callie tuned the lecture out.
Chronic disease.
The words stabbed at her like an ice-cold knife—frightening, damaging, numbing.
Lifelong management.
She refused to let herself cry. Crying had never helped, and it sure as heck wouldn’t now. “And if I don’t see a doctor and
do the classes and stuff?” she demanded, interrupting the lecture.

“Then you’re taking your chances. It’s your choice.”

I don’t want any choices. Tell me what to do. I’m just a kid.

“Your friends are outside,” the doctor said. “I know they’re anxious to see you.”

No.
She tried to say it but her head nodded against the pillow:
Yes.

A few minutes later Kate and JD stood next to her bed. She looked at them both and her heart recognized the emotions emanating from them. She had never felt this before and there was no reason she should be able to identify the sentiment, but there it was. Kate and JD were not here out of duty or guilt or because the state sent them a check every month. They were here out of love and compassion, and the truth of it broke over her like the rising sun.

Once again, Callie told herself not to cry. She repeated the instructions like a mantra in her head:
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
There was no point. Yesterday, she couldn’t help herself when she saw what they’d done for her. A birthday party. A real party, with games and gifts picked out just for her. A celebration, just because she had been born. No wonder she broke down and cried.

You’d think one day of bawling was enough, but now it happened again. Tormented by the kindness and concern on their faces, she lost it even worse than before.

Kate’s arms went around her and she stroked Callie’s hair, and somehow that tender, affectionate touch made things worse. Callie cried because she was scared and her life was a mess, because she didn’t know how to save herself. She cried because she had made terrible mistakes and there was no way to fix them. She sobbed
until she was wrung out like a dishrag that had seen better days. She barely had the strength to look up at Kate. Then when she did, she was shocked to see that Kate was crying, too.

“I’m sorry,” Callie managed to choke out. It hurts, she thought. Love hurts. Can that be right?

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

JD offered a box of Kleenex and they both took some and wiped their faces. He seemed remarkably calm. Probably in his other life he saw stuff like this all the time—people falling apart, looking for somebody to lean on, hoping for support from their family, freaking out when they figured out they were on their own. He had a terrible job, Callie thought, struggling to get a grip. And she was so freaking lucky he’d been around when she collapsed last night.

“I wish you’d told me you weren’t feeling well,” Kate said.

“I wanted to say something but I was afraid. And…I guess confused. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to complain, or worry you.”

“Oh, honey, that’s what I’m here for.”

Callie felt drained, as though she’d run out of tears. “I’m supposed to get all these tests done. That doctor— Randall—says after a complete workup, I have to do all this other stuff. Classes and tests and checkups.”

“We want to do everything possible to help.” She glanced at JD. “I do, anyway.”

“We both want to help,” he said.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Callie said. She knew she sounded like an idiot, but it was safe to sound like an idiot around them now, considering everything that happened and all they knew about her. Still, she was
terrified. There was one more thing, a major thing, she hadn’t told them. “Both of you.”

Kate touched her hand. “We’re listening.”

She didn’t know where to begin. “Remember that first day we met?” she asked Kate. “After I scared the crap out of you and you invited me to stay?”

“Sure,” Kate said.

“Remember you told me I was safe with you, and I kind of laughed? Well, I wasn’t laughing at you. It was because you had no idea what you were inviting into your house.”

“I certainly did.” Kate smoothed out the woven blanket that covered Callie. “And I don’t regret it for a single second.”

“You can’t be safe from something inside yourself,” Callie said, her voice breaking.

“I don’t understand,” Kate said.

Callie glanced at JD, who looked really patient but not confused, like Kate. Why would he be? Like Dr. Randall, he was in the business, and she now realized she hadn’t fooled him for a single minute.

“Go ahead, sweetie. What is it you wanted to tell us?” Kate gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Callie nearly choked, trying to bring up the words. “I lied about my age,” she said, her voice shaking. “I won’t blame you if you want me to hit the road.”

She heard Kate catch her breath. “No way,” she said. “What do you mean, you lied?”

Trying to numb herself to feeling, she made herself continue. “I wanted to be on my own and so I lied. Yesterday wasn’t my eighteenth birthday.”

Kate smiled. “We don’t care about getting the day right,” she said.

“No, you don’t understand,” Callie said. “That’s not
what I lied about. I’m not eighteen yet.” She stared down at her swollen hands, the absurdly clothespinned fingertips. “I just turned fifteen.”