I have an electrolyte sucker in my hand and a warm cardigan over my far-too-light summer dress. My favourite brown Doc Martens. I'm holding the rope of the swing with one hand and Caleb frowns at my rings. Wearing the whole stack. Heart diamond, simple white gold band, Ben's skull ring (I stole it years ago) and my Claddagh. I can never bend this finger. The sucker is wild orange. It's kind of chemically-tasting and not sugary but it works great and is far better than the IV I had yesterday. My skin is so bruised from it. The younger Russian doctor came by, left a trunk full of pills and checked my vitals as I slept for three days under duress, drugged up the wazoo but also I didn't share before that, at some point late Saturday afternoon I went outside to fuck around in the garden and managed to faint, face-first in the dirt.
That was not a popular move and they had already booked him to come see me yesterday and so the visit was appreciated. He drew some blood, which I'll have the results for tomorrow, but predicted I am anemic, dehydrated and exhausted. Everett's sheets are barely laundered and I never did get a chance to demonstrate exactly how awful things can get for me even though we got pretty darn close.
How is your sucker? Caleb is trying to wear me down. More words. More pills. More doctors, a better plan than talking to ghosts after breakfast and the dirt by dinner. He's so desperate to cover this up and somehow redeem himself he doesn't even listen anymore. We've had this talk a million times. I have it with someone just about every week. Am I getting worse? No, I'm the same. Always the same.
It's okay.
You get so rundown so fast.
I shrug. A hundred pounds doesn't give one a lot of leeway to bounce back.
Tell me what to do because what I want to do is find a way to keep you from reverting over and over again.
You know why and you know what my prognosis is.
So we find a different doctor.
We've already tried dozens. They all say the same thing, the romantic definition being that I am a hopeless case if every there was one.
I wish I had never touched you.
But you did and now this is what's left of her. I bite the sucker in half, put the stick in his hand as I jump off the swing and head back through the orchard to the house. The whole way back toward the moon and away from the sun his shadow towers over me. Fitting, in a way.