Page 11 of The Burning
“I can’t even afford a ticket home. God, what am I going to do? They are so angry and now they are making me doubt everything,” she cried. A few seconds went by before she added, panicked, “I’m so scared.”
She was full-on sobbing, choking into a heavy fit of coughing. I grabbed her a cup of water as quickly as I could and watched her gulp down the entire thing. She patted her chest.
“My chest hurts. My head feels like it’s going to explode. I—”
The tears stopped falling from her eyes, but her body was still reacting as if she were hysterically crying. Her shoulders shook with dry sobs. Within a few seconds, her panic took over, and I watched her shift into worried-mom mode. Her hand flew to her stomach again and I tried to reach for her to offer her more water. She shook her head, taking deep breaths, hysterically, tearlessly sobbing.
Her sobs were almost loud enough to drown out the noise of the back door opening and Austin strolling through like we were even on speaking terms.
I got a little dizzy as I took the two of them in.
Chapter Seven
My brother looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. And he also looked like a porcupine with his blond hair sticking up in the front and around the sides but soaked and dripping down his forehead.
There he was, in a blue T-shirt and black jeans ripped at the knees, looking dazed and confused.
His appearance made my anger toward him bite even more. His black sneakers squeaked across my clean kitchen floor.
I moved toward him, speaking in a low voice. “Why thehellare you here?”
“Kare, come on . . .” His tired eyes went from me to where Elodie was at the table, and he immediately rushed to her.
“What the hell? Are you okay?” he shouted, then turned to me. “Is she okay?”
My heart was racing and my chest lit up with borderline rage. I couldn’t believe his audacity! He had our mother’s nerve.
And our father’s, too—this was insane.
Right then, he looked years younger than he was. He was never the kind of boy who was in control of his emotions—we were twins in so many ways, but that wasn’t one of them. The way he was looking at Elodie reminded me of the little blue-eyed boy who cried when his dad’s deployment orders got moved up by six months. He used to cry every time our dad would deploy. The opposite of me. As we got older, I felt relief when they came, even though I’d never admit that to anyone.
“Are you okay?” Austin asked Elodie again, as she doubled over as far as she could go. Her body was shaking, her arms wrapped around her stomach.
“My . . . my stomach, feels weird. The baby . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be dramatic if this isn’t something serious.”
“You’re pregnant and don’t seem fine. Let’s just call your doctor or someone?” my brother insisted.
I tried to think of who to call to help us. It’s not like I could call my mom and ask her what to do. Or Estelle.
“We need to take her to Martin right now,” he said impatiently.
“What—” I started, then stopped.
“The hospital,” he clarified as I nodded. Duh, my brother was talking about the hospital on Fort Benning with the same name as Kael.
“On a scale from one to ten, what’s your—” Austin mocked in a voice that was supposed to mimic a doctor.
“Was that your doctor impression?” she asked him through labored breaths.
“Yep. Sorry I’m no Doctor Stewart or whatever the hell Patrick Dempsey’s name is on that doctor show.” Austin made Elodie smile, though the color of her face was getting more and more transparent as we all sort of laughed.
Inside I was panicking, but I was also trying to be outwardly calm by laughing with them. And it was genuine laughter. I felt empty and whole and concerned and like everything was fine. Emotions are funny like that, how we can feel so many things at once. The human power to be all the things at the same time, the pure weight of so many different things piling onto my chest, felt like an ancient and heavy punishment from a very unsympathetic and callous god. Feeling too much led to pain and problems and trauma and unrequited love and loss of control, all in one person, and then there was the fact that Elodie was possibly going into early labor in my kitchen.
My brain was all over the damn place and we were laughing aboutGrey’s Anatomy?
“I’m more of a Doug Ross kind of girl, anyway,” Elodie told him through heavy breaths.
Her hand held her stomach and she arched her back.
