Chapter 3
My eyes are already beginning to itch when Megan walks into my hospital room carrying a large bouquet of white lilies.
She clearly does not notice.
Diane follows behind her with a thermal bag of soup she made that morning.
Caleb comes in last, looks at me, then at the flowers, and says nothing.
He knows I am allergic to lilies.
I pull a tissue from the box.
Megan sets the bouquet beside my bed, and her voice starts breaking almost immediately.
"Audrey, I really didn't know it was your only inhaler."
She sits down, twisting her hands together as she tells me she truly thought she was dying yesterday.
Her chest hurt, her fingers went numb, and she could barely hear what anyone around her was saying.
She speaks quickly, as though she is afraid I will stop her before she finishes.
I don't.
I believe she was frightened.
But my chest still aches when I breathe deeply, and I do not have much left in me to comfort her.
Diane puts down the soup and pats Megan's shoulder.
"Anyone would have panicked. Thank God Caleb was there."
The tissue stops halfway to my nose.
Caleb hears it too.
"Mom."
"What?"
Diane looks at him.
"He helped the person who looked more in danger."
I wipe my nose, already irritated by the pollen.
Megan quickly says she does not want to keep talking about yesterday.
She only wants to know that I am not angry with her.
"I'm not angry with you."
That part is true.
At least, most of what I feel is not about her.
Caleb's shoulders loosen slightly.
Less than two minutes later, Diane changes the subject to Thursday.
Megan's car is still near the mountain hotel, and she has a respiratory follow-up appointment.
Diane has plans that morning, while Caleb has to meet a client before ten.
They discuss the problem for a while.
Then Diane looks at me.
"Audrey, you can pick Megan up Thursday and take her to the appointment, right?"
I stare at her.
"Pick her up?"
"She's nervous about driving."
Megan immediately says, "Mom, I can get a ride."
Diane waves the suggestion away.
"You just went through a wildfire. Audrey is supposed to be resting for a few days anyway."
Caleb checks the calendar on his phone.
"You can get her in the morning. She can make her own way back afterward."
He says it so naturally that, for one second, I actually begin calculating the drive.
Forty minutes to Megan's house.
Another twenty-five to the clinic.
If I leave before nine...
I stop.
"No."
Diane blinks.
"What?"
"I'm not picking her up Thursday."
Megan immediately says she can get a ride, but the softness has already left Diane's face.
"She's your sister. We're asking you to drive her to one doctor's appointment."
"She's not my sister."
Diane straightens.
"She's Caleb's sister, which makes her your family. After everything that happened yesterday, she still came here to see you, and now you can't do one small thing for her?"
Caleb finally puts his phone away.
"Audrey, enough."
I look at him.
That familiar impatience is already on his face, as though my refusal is the difficult part of the situation.
"It's one follow-up appointment."
He says.
"You're supposed to be resting at home anyway."
Diane's voice turns colder.
"Someone who actually cared about Megan would not make driving her to a doctor into this kind of problem."
Megan murmurs, "Mom."
Diane keeps going.
"I understand that you're angry Caleb helped her first yesterday. But she needs a little help now, and you're still refusing. Audrey, this isn't about being angry with Caleb anymore. You simply don't care about Megan."
Caleb does not defend me.
Instead, he watches me as if he is waiting for me to take back the word no.
My nose is almost completely blocked now, my eyes red and burning.
I wipe the corner of one eye and look past Caleb at the white lilies sitting less than three feet from my bed.
"I'm allergic to lilies."
Diane stops.
Megan turns sharply toward the flowers.
Caleb does not move.
The impatience on his face seems to catch.
His lips press together as his eyes move from my reddened eyes to the bouquet.
He knows.
He has always known.
It just isn't important to him.