"Mama, are we gonna go somewhere?"
Inigo sat fully dressed on the edge of the double bed - he'd had to share it with his mother, as there was nowhere else for him to sleep - clutching a wooden toy plane in his hand, waving it around in the air to pretend it was flying around him. His little feet, already in his socks and shoes, kicked shallowly back and forth, gently bouncing off the bed's base. Olivia stood up from her previous position, having finished twisting her freshly-washed hair up into a towel to prevent it dampening her blouse, and looked over at her son. He looked back at her, rounded brown eyes watching her with measured curiousity as he waited for her to answer his question.
"Yes honey, we have to go out today," she began cautiously. If she was too blase, he would likely have a tantrum - he was at that difficult age, and not really interested in doing things he didn't like. She turned back away, pushing open the sliding door to the wardrobe to retrieve the skirt she had decided on wearing at the last minute. Everything else had been planned out beforehand - she had deliberated on whether to wear that, or a pantsuit, as she had wound her hair up into a towel. "Mama has an appointment to go to. We need to go see a man to try and get a new job, or we won't have any money." A pause, just as she began to put her right leg into the newly unfolded skirt. It occurred to her that she still had to replace and reaffix her insulin. "You should go get some breakfast, or you'll be hungry when it's time to leave. Try and eat something this time, baby, okay?"
He grumbled in concession, dropping the plane in favor of his threadbare seal as he left the bedroom. She knew he would likely end up only drinking a carton of apple juice; he was nauseous most mornings, and unable to eat solid food, but Olivia knew better than most that any food was nothing but good news when blood sugar was involved. She also knew that his annoyance would pass. It wasn't an outright tantrum, and he would likely forget why he was upset in the first place once she gave him the coloring book and crayons she had purchased specifically for him to play with during the interview. She sucked her stomach in as she squirmed into the skirt and zipped it up. In the end, it was a size or so too small, and it constricted the smallest part of her waist uncomfortably - you're getting fat, echoed her brain, you need to adjust your meds, you need to stop eating so much ready made food, you're a mess - but it looked presentable, at least, which is what she was aiming for.
Olivia hitched the pencil skirt up as far as she could, contemplating whether the infusion pump would fit discreetly enough under such a tight garment. It was an unwieldy black box, about the size of a retro cassette player, and even when placed strategically could be hard to hide. It sat on the bedside table, the cannula and other assorted equipment still in its sterile packaging underneath it. She'd removed it before her shower, since it was time to remove her cannula anyway - they only really lasted between two to three days to begin with - and it was the perfect situation to change all the necessary pieces. It had already been rewound to the beginning of the administration cycle, ready to receive the insulin cartridge whenever she was ready to insert it.
Half of the reason she had shooed her son out so quickly was that she was not comfortable changing her diabetic control equipment around him - she did not want him too close to the cannula once opened, and there was a chance that if she placed the cartridge down once it had been drawn from the vial that he could knock it off the table and break it.
She ripped the package open, assembling the makeshift syringe. The little glass vial of insulin was already on the counter alongside the rest of the equipment, taken out of the fridge just before the shower in preperation for changing the reserve cartridge.
Drawing the insulin had always been a problem - it took a lot of concentration and patience to draw up the liquid without any air bubbles, and sometimes up to five draws were needed until she could get the right amount of medication into the cartridge. Luckily, she'd managed to draw up the correct amount with no air bubbles on only the second attempt, and she pulled the plunger and needle out of the syringe, leaving only the insulin-filled cartridge.
The rest of the process was much simpler. Open the packaging that the cannula and tubing were inside, uncoil the tubing, take away the greaseproof paper over the bandage surrounding the cannula, and set the needlepiece into the piercing gun. She pressed the plastic circle against her skin, where the cannula would be ejected into, and pressed the sides, firing it into her arm. She had gotten used to the sensation of the cannula years ago. While the pain was much more pronounced when she began taking insulin, by that point it was barely noticeable unless she hit a particularly disagreeable spot of skin, or caught her muscle with the needle.
The cartridge was loaded into the pump, the tubing connected securely, and a protective cap screwed into place to prevent either the tubing or cartridge falling out. Next was to make sure the insulin traveled through the tubing properly - she set the pump to eject a small amount of insulin through the tube, held upwards above the pump, until a small amount dripped out of the end where it would soon be connected to the port. Then it was a simple case of securely connecting the tubing to the port in the cannula, and she was finally done. She breathed a sigh of relief - Inigo was still out of the bedroom, and her refill was finished. She gently pressed her fingers into the round bandage, making sure the adhesive was properly secured, before setting her basal insulin rate for the day and clipping the pump to the band of her bra, buttoning her blouse up and bundling the old, used pump pieces into her portable plastic sharps disposal bin to finish up the process. She checked over the contents of her purse again - mobile phone, keys, blood glucose monitor, continuous glucose monitor, a small bottle of water in case Inigo was thirsty, a few quick-access snacks for both of them, emergency insulin administration supplies, and a tiny wad of paper that important numbers and addresses were scribbled onto.
Her high heels, unworn for so long that they felt almost foreign to her feet, clacked uncomfortably loudly against the tiled floor of the hallway. Thank god Flavia already left for work. As she approached the doorway she peeked around the frame - as expected, her son was sat on the floor, cross-legged in front of the television with a box of apple juice. For a second after hearing the low drone of a program turned down low, Olivia questioned how he could have turned on the TV - there was no way he could have figured it out on his own, he was five for Gods' sake - before she recalled that Flavia had told her last night that it would be left on so the dog would have something to listen to and prevent any seperation anxiety.
"Are you ready to go, Inigo?" He jumped at the noise of his mother's voice. He hadn't caught her in his peripheral vision, and must have been too engrossed in whatever was on TV to have heard her approach.
"No," he responded quickly, pouting as he looked down at the plush seal in his lap, making an obvious point to not look at his mother. Olivia sighed, sitting down next to her son, her legs tucked under her thigh.
"I don't want to go either, baby," she said softly, gently reaching out to stroke her son's hair. "But this is important, and I promise we wouldn't be going out today if we didn't have to."
He grumbled unhappily as he leaned into his mother's touch. "But I don't like it. I want to be here instead."
"I know," she murmured, gently applying pressure to draw her son toward her. He allowed her to pull him in for a hug, pressing his face into her shoulder, with the same dour look on his face. "But sometimes we all need to do things we don't like. I'm sorry for making you do this, but it's really important."
The young boy sighed in concession, pushing himself away from his mother.
"Remember to throw your juice box away," she reminded him as he begrudgingly pulled himself up to his feet. She reminded herself that they would have to catch the bus into the town center; with the way Inigo had resisted the idea of having to leave the house, she knew he would have a large scale tantrum in public if she made him walk all the way into the town center for her interview, on top of it being cruel to have a five year old boy walk up to forty five minutes just to sit around for another thirty minutes so his mother could go to a job interview.
Thank the Gods for coloring books.
"So, Ms. Millar, you mentioned in your application that you previously had two years' total experience as a waitress at several seperate venues. Would you mind explaining why you haven't had stable employment in the past few years?"
Olivia swallowed, willing her hands to stay still in her lap instead of fiddling with her skirt, willing her eyes to stay affixed to the vicinity of the man behind the desk. Though his office was dismal and dark, her eyes were prone to wander in any direction when she was faced with this kind of situation. She knew from experience, though, that any sign of anxiety could possibly cause a future employer to reject her application. She had to appear confident and poised at all times.
She was sorely in need of a job, after all.
Unfortunately, with her medications working against her by kicking up her anxiety a notch, it was proving to be one hell of a challenge. It wasn't particularly helpful that her interviewer was about as interesting as a wet paper bag, with all the emotional range of a walnut, and the twenty-minute-long interview was mainly comprised at him staring intently at her.
"I work on a temporary basis, filling emergency vacancies like the ones made by maternity leave," she babbled out, a little too quick to defend herself. "The vacancies are usually only a few months of work, so I tend to have to have several workplaces per year."
The man interviewing heer - stout, with grease-shined black hair flattened against his skull, wearing a suit that was a size or so too small - raised an eyebrow with an uninterested noise. He looked from Olivia to Inigo, seated on a too-tall chair in the corner of the room, intently coloring. His eyes flicked back to the resume in his hands.
It wasn't the best sign in the world at that moment.
"Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Millar," he began, his previously honeylike voice turning nasal and grating, seeming to bounce off the walls to fill the entire room. "Your application looks stellar. We'll get back to you in a few weeks to tell you if you got the job."
It was a few hours shy of early noon (and what felt like hours of street navigation) by the time Olivia had made it home, and despite the fact that in all she had probably only walked for a total of forty-five minutes, her shoes were killing her.
She made a beeline to the bedroom, unceremoniously dumping her shoes and interview gear onto the bed as she changed into a miles more comfortable jumper and denim shorts. Yes, it was a mess and something she very often scolded her son about, but it would be cleared later, once the throbbing and burning in the balls of her heels cleared up. She slipped her feet into a pair of gray slippers Inigo had pointed out to her last mothers' day. It had only been a few months ago, and she had been hesitant to allow him to buy them himself. Olivia had ended up buying them herself, allowing her son to present them to her as a mothers' day gift later in the week.
She smiled at the memory as she padded back down the hallway, slipping her pump's clip over the pocket lining of her shorts, preventing them sliding out of the pocket at any point.
As she retrieved her bag, previously simply dropped on the hallway floor, she looked through the doorway to see her son on his stomach on the floor in front of the television, seal pulled close to his side, as he focused deeply on the coloring he was working on. A rush of love burst up through her heart as she watched him. He had inherited his father's pale blonde hair and golden-brown skin - he had even inherited his father's tendency to poke the tip of his tongue out whenever he concentrated particularly hard. Even if he was not her biological son she would not have been able to stop the rush of affection whenever she looked at him. He looked so much like Robin, she would be hard-pressed to not want to look after him. She had loved Robin, deeply, and though seeing her son look so much like his father hurt - a reminder of the love she had lost - she would treasure the fact that Inigo looked so much like his father, as though the Gods had given her a piece of him to remember him by.
It took a few seconds of watching her son color before Olivia realised that she had sunk to the floor, bag forgotten as tears streamed down her face. She took in a deep, shaky breath as she used the inside of her wrist to dry her cheeks, hoping that she was quiet enough to not be noticed.
She quickly dug out her continuous monitor and manual monitor before fleeing back to the bedroom to take her blood glucose measurements. It had been a few hours since her set had been started, and her continuous monitor would most likely need calibrating, but more than that, she wanted to compose herself before facing her son again.
Without thinking twice, she pricked her finger with the lancet, pressing the bloodied wound into the manual monitor's blood testing stick. As the monitor worked to figure out the measurement she checked her continuous monitor - it read at 90, which was not a bad measurement at all, considering the amount of exercise she had done, and the single slice of toast she had eaten at breakfast. Her eyes, still a little watery, flicked back to the manual monitor - it read at 88, still good, not different enough from the continuous monitor to require recalibration.
She used her other hand to apply pressure to the lancet wound as she bumped the bathroom door open with her hip to grab a tissue to stem the bleeding with. She had always been a little prone to bleeding, which was more of a problem than it would be in most due to the nature of diabetes. With the tissue pressed firmly into the lancet wound by her thumb, Olivia returned to her manual monitor to tug the testing stick out of its port, to be dropped into the resealable bag of other used sticks, left in the hallway in the rush.
Lunch would come soon - while she did have to make sure she ate, it was more of a worry about whether her toddler was eating at the right times. It had been repeatedly drilled into her head by the older mothers at her prenatal care groups that if she did not have her son eating acceptable amounts at acceptable times, then she was a failure as a mother. The nagging feeling stayed in her head for the rest of her pregnancy, all the way along her baby's development into a toddler.
While her blood glucose was not always of concern, the source of food always was - Flavia was kind enough to have offered Olivia free use of the food stores in her house for the first day or two while she settled in, she would soon have to go grocery shopping to prevent making herself and her son a burden on the household. Going this evening would be best, she thought as she reshuffled her bag contents to fit the two monitors back in, except that Flavia might not be able to care for Inigo for a while... In that case, maybe tomorrow morning-
She was drawn out of her thoughts by her son sitting down directly in front of her, looking up into her eyes curiously.
He was finally ready for food.