Chapter Nine

I don't know how, but I actually managed to fall asleep. An insistent knocking on the door wakes me up. I try to believe that everything that I know happened really didn't happen, but I can't delude myself like that. I've never had that good of an imagination. I've always been too technical, have always had too much of a scientific brain. I probably understood the Scientific Method before I could even speak.

I swing my legs off the bed and make an effort to stand up. My body aches. I feel like I've just come out of an intense three hour workout. There's no reason why I should be this sore, but then again there's no reason why any of this should be happening.

Eventually I make my way over to the door and unlock it. I swing it open and am only mildly surprised to see Catherine standing across from me. I expected her to show up eventually. She's probably going to yell at me for something. She yells at me a lot and seems to really like telling me what to do.

I turn away from her and lay back down on the bed. If she's going to start nagging at me then I'm going to get comfortable first.

Catherine walks into the room and shuts the door softly behind her. She comes and sits next to me on the bed. "So how are you doing?"

"Did you know?" I ask. "Did you know that she was my mother?"

"Yes. I knew."

That's not really surprising. Catherine probably knows everything about Sara. She certainly knows more about my own mother than I do. I just found out a couple of hours ago that Sara was even my mother.

"Do you think she should have told me?"

"That's a really hard question to answer."

"It is. I can't even answer it."

"So how are you doing?" Catherine asks me again. "Sara said you've been locked up in this room for six hours."

"Six hours?" I lift my head and look around for the nearest clock. I'm really surprised I was able to sleep for that long.

"That's a long time to be alone." Catherine replies.

I shrug. "I was sleeping."

"You actually fell asleep?" She seems surprised. I guess people in her world don't sleep.

"That's what I said I was going to do."

"Okay. So how are you doing?"

She's really not going to let this question go is she? "I don't know." I say honestly.

"Well what do you think about what Sara told you?"

"Did Sara send you in here?" I slide away from her.

"She's worried about you."

That's certainly something new. "If Sara wants to know how I'm doing, she can talk to me herself." I turn my back on Catherine hoping she gets my message and goes away.

"If that's what you want." I feel the bed shift and hear the door opening. I think Catherine may actually be going to get Sara. I'm not ready to talk to Sara yet. I'm not really ready to talk to anyone yet. I'd rather just be left alone. I feel like I could fall asleep for another six hours.

I hear someone at the doorway and when I turn around Sara is standing in there looking no more ready to talk than I am. Catherine is standing behind her. This time I manage to not be surprised by Sara's lurking behavior. I sit up on the bed and Sara comes fully into the room. She takes a seat at the computer chair across from me. Catherine doesn't move.

"Are you going to play moderator?" I ask Catherine. I'm still not sure why she's even here, although I logically know why she's here. This doesn't really involve her. Well unless of course there's another big secret about how Catherine is my uncle or something.

"I want to make sure things don't get too out of hand." She replies.

"I'm not going to attack her or anything." I say defensively. "I haven't quite managed to get that trait from my parents yet."

I see Sara flinch in the corner of my eye. I wasn't talking about her. I was actually talking about the people who raised me… but I don't think that would make things better for her.

"Words can hurt just as badly as fists." Catherine spares a quick look towards Sara, but for the most part her attention is on me.

Who is this woman? She sounds like an after-school special. Worse yet, she sounds like a parent, a parent that actually gives a damn and wants to be involved and want to limit my freedom. "So when did you decide you wanted to be my new mom?"

I think the question throws her off. It's not something I even expected to say, but it's not really something I can avoid asking about forever. Catherine has been giving me the parental treatment basically ever since I've met her. She's actually acted more like a mom than the woman who raised me ever acted.

"I'm not trying to be your mom, Melinda." Catherine steps into the room and takes a seat on the bed. I guess she has decided to be a part of this conversation. "I'm trying to show you that I care."

Again with the caring business. That line is starting to get old. But hey, if she thinks it's working for her then who am I to tell her otherwise? She can play that same line all night long if she really wants to.

"So how are you doing?" Sara seems to still have the ability to speak.

"I feel like I'm a really big worthless unwanted stain in this world." I'm not going to lie about anything. There's no point in it really. Sara knows that I tried to get run over by a car, despite how pathetic the attempt truly was. I'm sure she's realized that I'm definitely not okay.

"Mel, you're not a stain," Sara says strongly. "You're a really good kid, and you're not worthless."

Kid? Lindsey's a kid. I'm not a kid. "Sara, you didn't want me. Mom and Dad didn't want me. I'm pretty sure that my biological father doesn't want me. I can't even figure out why you decided to have me."

"I had you because I couldn't kill the life inside me. I knew it would turn out to be a very special person." Sara reaches out for me and takes my hand. She's shaking. "I wanted you to have a good life that didn't involve a messed up parent."

"But I got stuck with your parents."

"I couldn't do anything about that, and I think a part of me really wanted you to be a part of my life."

"You just didn't want me to be your daughter." I try to not sound mean, but I can't really help it. It hurts when your mother tells you she didn't want you.

Sara squeezes my hand. "I couldn't be your mother."

"Melinda, she was sixteen," Catherine says gently from beside me.

"I know you probably can't understand that," Sara moves from the chair so that she is sitting next to me.

I probably understand more about making hard decisions at the age of sixteen than she realizes. I've been making hard decisions ever since I was left alone with my grandparents. I've been put in a position of hard decisions for a while now.

As long as we're being honest with each other, "Do you want to know what happened to your parents?" I ask. "Do you want to know the full story? I don't think you've heard it yet."

Sara gives me an odd look but nods like she doesn't know how to do anything else. I bet that if she opened her mouth she'd tell me to keep the story to myself.

"You know about the accident. I won't talk about that, but you don't know about the hospital." I pull my hand from hers. I don't feel like human contact right now. "When Dad got to the hospital he died almost immediately, but they were able to stabilize Mom. It took them about a day to figure out that she was brain dead. They told me I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to keep her on life support. They gave me all this stuff to read that was supposed to help me with my decision. They had all these statistics on the probability that Mom would wake up and be a person. I read the information and then I signed the papers for them to take her off life support."

I hear Catherine gasp, but keep my eyes focused on Sara. She looks like I've just punched her in the stomach. "I had to make the decision to kill who I thought was my Mom, because you couldn't handle being around me. I get shipped off to this new place and I see that you have a pretty good life. I don't think we had any kind of fair tradeoff."

Tears start to fall from Sara's eyes. I can't stand looking at them so I look to the floor. "I'm really sorry that things turned out like they did," she says. "I'm sorry."

There are a couple of things I thought that I'd never do in this life. One of them was accepting an apology from Sara, but life changes rapidly and what I expect seems to change with it. I've been angry at Sara for a really long time. I think I may actually have good reason to be angry too, but I think that anger just might be killing me a little bit.

"I accept your apology." I try something really new to me. I open up my arms and wrap them around Sara. It's not a very comfortable hug, but it's a start. It's the very best I think either of us can do at the moment.

I don't know how long Catherine and Sara stay in my room. It's longer than any of us thought it would actually be. Somehow, we've all started crying and it has started to feel way too much like a deep heart-to-heart for me. I'm not used to exposing myself this much in one sitting.

"So what are we going to do next?" I venture to ask.

"Well we're definitely going to start getting you help. We can't have you getting in the way of cars intentionally." Catherine says as she wipes the tears from her eyes.

"So you know about that?" I ask Catherine but am looking at Sara.

"Of course I know." Catherine brushes some of my hair out of my face. "I know everything."

Her comment really isn't that funny, but I laugh anyway. I kind of feel the need to laugh.

"We'll go somewhere together," Sara adds.

Family therapy? I guess that could work.

"And we'll take things one day at a time." Catherine places her hand on my thigh.

"Sounds like you both have a game plan," I look suspiciously at both of them. "I'm guessing you've talked about this before."

"We have." They both reply.

Team work, I do understand how important that is.

"So what should I call you now?" I ask Sara tentatively.

"What do you want to call me?"

"I'm not sure," I may need some time to think about this. "You're not really my sister and I don't think either one of us is ready for the big M' word. Why don't I just call you Legal Guardian Sara?"

Sara smiles, "I think that will work."

I don't know if I'll ever be able to call her Mom. Right now it certainly doesn't feel right. We've got a lot still to talk about and even more to work out, but maybe this family thing won't turn out to be so bad. If it is, I can still hold onto the fact that I've only got two more years left before I can legally run away.