I think I'm trying to commit to a record this week for most chapters put up in a seven day stretch hahaha... Here's the deal, my midterms are this week and I am the absolute queen of procrastination hence the copious amounts of updates. The good news for me (which might be bad news for you) is that my spring break officially begins on Friday and I am getting the hell out of freezing cold Boston, to go to freezing cold Colorado for some skiing but I'll try to get at least one more chapter in there before I leave (my biggest two midterms aren't until Friday so there is still plenty of procrastination time).
As per usual, thank you all for your amazingness and for sticking with me and for continuing to come back for more, you all keep me going! The real angst starts in this chapter so I hope you all still like me after the next couple of chapters get posted :)
Shelby Corcoran – February 2001
(Part I)
There is a portrait of the small, four-person family mounted precariously on the living room wall that in the past two months, Shelby had since learned to avoid making direct eye contact with at all costs.
Rachel couldn't have been much older than two years at the time that it was taken, and although Shelby hadn't allowed herself to glance across the image in weeks, she can still picture the outline of her young daughter's expression, dreary and distracted from her position sitting atop Shelby's lap every time she closes her eyes…
"Sit with your look-alikes." The photographer had joked with the parents as he'd strategically positioned Noah inside of Hiram's arms and nodded in his approval towards Shelby clutching Rachel tightly into her chest.
Shelby could remember beaming towards this man's, this stranger's recognition of the idea that Shelby and Hiram had been saying for years; that the two had cloned each other off in the form of their children; Rachel had always been Shelby's mini-me, and Noah, Hiram's.
Shelby had spent the years since Rachel's birth in a constant wonderment of who a third child could possibly come out resembling, but it was an idea that tortured her; her options of having children had ended the day that Rachel was born…
Hell, she had thought that her options of having children had ended with Noah… Her son had been a month old when the pain had begun.
It had started as minimal cramping, a natural reaction, she had initially believed, to her body still adhering to the idea that it was no longer supporting a child within it.
But as time progressed, it had only gotten worse, and it was only after it had finally radiated into her lower back and down the entirety of the length of her legs to the point that she could no longer so much as stand that she had ultimately been forced to bring herself back to her doctor.
It had been weeks until her OB/GYN had confirmed what had been her initial suspicions all along; stage three endometriosis.
The lesions had been so prominent that they'd had no choice but to surgically remove one ovary, the second having barely been saved by the use of hormone therapy.
Every doctor, every fertility expert in the Metropolitan area had told her that she would never conceive another child again, and that even if she did, it would never withstand development beyond the blastocyst stage…
And then, a year and a half following her initial surgery, her doctor had informed her that she had been six weeks pregnant.
And despite the fact that she'd tried desperately not to hold her hopes too high, par to the request of both her doctors as well as her husband, the weeks had passed, eventually turning into months until finally, her little girl had been born in an array of emotions at a mere twenty seven weeks; two pounds and eleven ounces of pure hope.
Rachel, for all intents and purposes had been their miracle child from the beginning; Shelby could only pray that she would be able to live up to her title for just a little bit longer.
When the family had moved from Manhattan into Lima just over a year ago now, they had mounted their proud family portrait just beyond the doorway leading into their living room, subconsciously placing it in a position where, no matter where you were within the home's first floor landing, you could always see it.
At the time, Shelby had loved the idea; she'd seen it as a means by which she could be constantly watching over her children, and them her, but now it merely taunted her, mocked her, screamed at her in its picture of perfection; a portrait that they hadn't seen, hadn't known for some time, and certainly would never know again.
She has been pacing up and down the length of her kitchen for nearly half of an hour, bowl strategically positioned beneath her left arm as she utilizes her right trying to mash the boiled potatoes beneath her strictly by hand; their mixer having been broken for weeks now, and a new one simply not fitting within their recently constrained budget any longer.
But Shelby doesn't mind; instead, she pretends that these skinned, boiled and helpless potatoes are her own mortal enemy, the root of all of her problems… And although her muscles burn and she's well aware that she must look thoroughly insane, every time she glances down upon the defenseless spuds, she sees instead, the small cancer cells running rampant through Rachel's veins, the look of disappointed confusion on Noah's face every time he must make a sacrifice for the name of his sister, or the empty eyes of her husband; a look that ensures that the wedded couple has since become strangers in their grief, and she only works harder.
Rachel is laying on the couch directly beyond the living room entranceway, semi-entranced by a movie on the television although Shelby can tell that her eyelids are beginning to grow heavy from all the way across the length of the house…
She had been released from the hospital for the first time following her initial admittance mere days ago, finally deemed healthy enough to recover from a particularly strenuous induction round at home before she'd only have to return to begin the cycle once more…
Every time that Shelby finds herself glancing upwards from her savage dinner making process to check on her daughter, she manages to catch a glimpse of that little girl in the picture, hovering tauntingly directly above the one sitting on the couch, and she can't bring herself to believe the idea that it's the same girl…
Much like she can't bring herself to believe that she is the same woman that is holding her.
The television is blaring; the weeks of chemotherapy having lined Rachel's nose and throat with a thick layer of mucus that has since built up inside of her sinus cavities, placing a pressure against her delicate eardrums that has rendered her temporarily hard of hearing…
The cheerful music of some obnoxious children's program is ringing through Shelby's brain, practically forcing her to listen along as some animated, unidentifiable creature from another dimension attempts to teach her four year old the basics of the alphabet… But Rachel is finally fast asleep; curled into a tight ball against the couch in a manner that makes the child look even smaller than she already was in her impossible sickness.
She is distracted only by the angry hissing of boiling water as the pot cooking the asparagus that she has damn near forgotten about in her assault on the potatoes bubbles over and drenches the stovetop as well as the floor below.
Reluctantly, Shelby pulls her eyes away from the sleeping child before her and turns towards the spitting stove, mentally cursing her distraction in the acknowledgment that the only vegetables that she could ever seem to get Noah to eat would now be burned away from his liking… Maybe she would have time to cook another batch before he and Hiram returned from their daylong outing to the batting cages… Shelby could only hope.
She flips at the nozzle, stifling the flaming gas beneath the scalding pot so that the boiling water retreats immediately, leaving her free to clutch at the warm handles with her bare hands so that she can transfer its contents to the strainer awaiting her from inside of the sink.
She is halfway to her destination when she hears it.
It begins as a strangled cry that appears almost muffled; the smallest of noises that quickly escalates into an almighty crash, emphasized by the dramatic tinkering of shattering glass coming from the direction of the living room.
Her heart freezes, but at the same time, the rest of her body doubles into overdrive. Her adrenaline pinpoints the exact task at hand; she's unbearably focused, any muscles that aren't directed towards getting her from the kitchen to her daughter's side as quickly as humanly possible fall instantly limp in an effort to make room for the energy requirements of those that are.
The pot slips steadily from beneath her nimble fingers, its boiling contents tilting thankfully away from her although splashes of the scalding water still leap outwards and pepper against the exposed skin of her arms. She recognizes that she has been burned, but she barely notices; the pain is nothing compared to that by which she is currently experiencing in the panicked constriction of her chest.
She is running as quickly as her feet can possibly carry her but for her, not even that seems to be enough… Her mind is spinning, the trip that cannot be more than ten feet in length seems to be taking hours as her mind races with the thought that Rachel had been feeling ill all day; that Shelby had simply ignored it.
Rachel had informed Shelby earlier that morning that she had been feeling more tired than usual, that her head had been hurting… But when Shelby had placed an impromptu phone call to Dr. McCarthy, and informed him that she hadn't been running a fever, he'd convinced her to hold off bringing Rachel straight into the emergency room despite everything that her motherly instinct had been screaming at her…
Shelby had never hated herself more.
The first thing that the woman notices upon rounding into the living room is that Rachel is no longer on the couch where Shelby has last seen her mere moments ago… the second is that the glass table strategically positioned just beyond the loveseat is shattered…
And finally, directly between the two is Rachel; impossibly stuck, wedged between the two fixtures and shuddering so violently that her mere twenty five pound, rail thin frame has single handedly pressed the sofa so harshly against the wall that the vibrations of its motions has sent that damn picture freefalling from its resting place straight onto the ground below where its frame rests cracked in two against the floor.
How symbolic.
Rachel's limbs are flailing frantically, seizing with no particular pattern to her motions. Her back is arched into a perfect semi-circle, toes curling beneath her as her teeth grit so hard against each other, that it forces the prominent veins in her neck to pop proudly outwards.
Rachel's eyes are open as she produces practically inhuman sounds straight from the very base of her throat but Shelby can tell that her daughter is not conscious… She allows herself to think briefly that maybe, this idea might be for the best before she is throwing herself onto her knees at her daughter's side, the glass shards piercing at her legs through her jeans a mere addition to her list of injuries; ranked just below the second degree burns already blistering against her hands and wrists.
She has never been so unsure of what it is that she should do in regards to her children's wellbeing and suddenly, she is feeling impossibly helpless, worthless… Her eyes are burning with the desire to produce tears but the adrenaline is running so rampant inside of her system that they can't seem to find the means by which to fall.
Shelby lifts a gently hand upwards, wiping it carefully across Rachel's forehead, bleeding prominently from a laceration directly above her right eyebrow; an injury that Shelby can only assume is a direct result of having fallen straight through a pure glass table…
Her heart is beating in overtime against her ribcage; thumping prominently in a manner that makes her feel as if it might physically explode as she is reminded that Rachel's latest blood work had shown a particularly depleted platelet count… It means that – as if Shelby didn't have enough concerns – now that Rachel has begun to bleed, they would be hard pressed to make her stop.
Her eyes search frantically for the first garment that she can find; ripping at the makeshift gauze pad in the form of a cloth blanket from atop the couch before pressing it firmly into Rachel's forehead in an effort to do what she could to staunch the flow.
She makes a mental note to apologize to Noah later for simultaneously ruining his favorite blanket in the process; she hopes that he would understand, but something inside of her tells her that he won't.
Shelby notices quickly that her daughter is burning up; the fever so prominent that Shelby can feel the heat radiating outwards and into her palm even from through the fabric that is currently separating their skin.
She knows that she should have been expecting this - pancytopenia – Rachel's doctors had called it. Basically, in lamens terms, in a combination of disease as well as the treatments currently acting to reverse it, Rachel's blood counts have fallen so low, that she has subsequently lost all of her body's natural defenses.
It means that for Rachel, infection isn't a risk, but a given.
The doctors had called it a miracle that Rachel had continued thus far without seeing its effects rearing its ugly head, and for the briefest moments of time, Shelby had actually allowed herself to believe that her daughter had finally broken through the cracks for once.
If anything, her blissful ignorance was only making things worse now that she starts to realize just how wrong she has been all along.
She forces herself to pause briefly, forces herself to take a deep breath; she is prepared for this moment, she makes herself believe. She has listened to all of the doctor's warnings, studied diligently the preparations that the nurses had instructed her on, read all of the pamphlets… She was prepared for this moment, Rachel needs her to be prepared for this moment…
Call 911
Somewhere deep inside the root of Shelby's subconscious, the voice rings out from the heavy fog that has since clouded her brain and she finds herself silently thanking God towards the idea that at least a part of her was coherent enough to make an informed decision.
Call 911, the doctors can help her more than you can.
She tries desperately to push this self-degradation aside; she knows that she is not trying to make herself feel worse, but trying to do what is best for her daughter at the moment.
She struggles to her feet, head turning in any and all directions as she searches for the portable phone and her heart sinks the instant she realizes that she has left it upstairs following an impromptu telephone call from her mother rather than on its charger directly adjacent to her as it is supposed to be.
But as much as Shelby doesn't want to leave her daughter's side in this moment, she has to… She knows that she has to.
Shelby is mere steps away from the girl when she recognizes that even in her unconscious, Rachel can identify her mother's absence, and the young child begins immediately, to vie for the older woman's attention, calling her back towards her in the form of a steady gurgling; a choking cry that has Shelby turning back around just in time to watch as a steady stream of clear vomit escapes along the corners of Rachel's downturned mouth…
She's back against Rachel's side in a single, swift leap, turning the girl onto her side in a desperate attempt to keep her from choking while she simultaneously attempts not to grip her too tightly in an effort to allow her steadying convulsions to ride themselves out.
She tries propping Rachel's limp body against the couch, tries gathering a fortress of pillows and blankets, tries to find any means by which to keep Rachel on her side in order to prevent her from aspirating long enough for Shelby to rush into the bedroom and collect the phone, but Rachel's frame is just too tiny, her convulsions too strong to be stabilized by any outside object without rendering her dangerously on her back once more.
Shelby's entire body is trembling as her legs finally give out from underneath her, forcing her to collapse into a seated position besides her daughter… Her terror wells deep within the center of her chest, her uncertainty sending her body into violent tremors as she hold tighter and tighter onto her daughter…
'Is this it?' She can't help but to think; 'Is this how she is going to go?'
It seems barbaric; a devastating means to an end unworthy of her daughter who deserves so much more than what a mere four years on this planet can offer her. She can feel her flagrant emotions bubbling against her stomach until the feeling manifests as physical pain, and in an effort to achieve more space, expands upwards, straight into her lungs and out of her mouth in a cry that not even she is expecting.
"HELP!"
Her mouth formulates the plea before her brain can process it; she finds herself jumping at the mere shock of her own voice.
"Somebody please help me!"
Tears well behind her voice as she yells once more, and although this time, she is prepared for the sudden outburst of noise, she finds herself unsure of who it is that she is hoping to reach… But whether it be a nearby neighbor or whether it be God herself beckoning to her call, she can only hope that somebody, anybody would hear her…
And that they would hear her soon.
While Shelby had been pregnant with Noah, the only thing that she could think about for the months leading up to his birth was all of the things that could have possibly gone wrong.
She had begun to baby proof their towering Manhattan apartment the day that she had found out that she was pregnant, and by the time that she was four months along, she'd deemed it impossible to so much as scrape yourself within the confines of the home, it had been so protected.
When Rachel had come around, if anything, her worry had only grew… Through extenuating circumstances and the idea that this child might just be her and Hiram's last chance to expand their small family, her senses had only grown more acute towards the plethora of plagues that could befall either of her children.
There was the risk of falls, of choking, poisoning… hell, simply positioning the car seat in the improper position could lead your child to an untimely demise and you, a guilt that would crush you for the rest of your natural born existence and beyond.
Shelby had declared herself ready for it all but for six steady years, cancer had been a concern in regards to her children that had barely, if ever so much as crossed her mind…
Before Rachel had fallen ill, Shelby had found herself foolishly believing that there wasn't a threat in the world that couldn't be fixed with a kiss and a Band Aid.
She'd never considered all of the things that she couldn't physically see, the things that she couldn't prevent against, no matter how hard she tried… Ultimately, she'd found herself realizing that while she'd made the entirety of her outside existence all but impossible to emit harm on either of her two children, in Rachel's case, it wasn't what was on the outside that mattered… For Rachel, the issue was inside of her, inscribed deep within her very genes.
She has been waiting inside of the emergency room of Lima Memorial Hospital for an hour.
"Hey sweetie…" There has been a homeless man sitting beside her for the major part of said hour, leering for her attention as he leaned over her with a gauze bandage wrapped around his bloody hand. "You're looking upset darling, let me make it better."
Her feet are tapping at double time against the tile floor; she ignores him. She has to.
"Sweetheart, I'll make you forget all about your problems, come on." If anything, she is grateful for this man's presence; as long as he is seated before her, she refuses to become a blubbering fool… She briefly wonders whether or not his method of picking up grieving mothers in an emergency room triage unit ever works before she immediately pushes the thought from her mind; she has more important things to worry herself over right now besides this man.
She wishes that he was her biggest problem.
Her eyes dart quickly upwards towards the clock hanging tauntingly above her head for what seems like the millionth time since her arrival… Now, she has officially been waiting inside of the emergency room of Lima Memorial Hospital for one hour and one minute.
She busies herself with the feeling of wonderment towards the idea that time can run so quickly, yet so slow at the same time… She stares at the clock and it stands still, but she blinks and an hour has passed.
Time was a concept that she simply did not understand anymore as of late… It was too broad, too complex for her to wrap her head around the idea of why days continue to come and go, why seasons continue to change, days to pass no matter whether or not you're actually ready for them to do so.
She has already tried everything in her power to control the relentless clock in this past one hour and one minute; she has tried sleeping, she has tried speaking to herself, she has even tried pacing simply to keep herself sane; but still, she just couldn't seem to shake the feeling that she was positively losing her mind…
Suddenly pacing was just making everything worse, and when the only thing that was worse than thinking was physically feeling; an overwhelming pain that originated deep within her very gut and spread like a spider web crack in a windshield, she knew that it was time to sit.
Her cell phone goes off like a gunshot; it's suddenness practically forcing her to jump as she fumbles briefly with the pocketbook in her lap, its contents previously disorganized from her frantic search for the paperwork containing Rachel's medical information that she always carried with her; the paperwork that she had given to the admittance secretary one hour and two minutes ago now…
The dishevelment is making things impossibly difficult; her phone rings for a second time, a third… she just manages to wrap her fingers on it on the fourth.
"Hello?" She breaths quickly into the receiver without first bothering to identify the caller; she's just praying to God that it is not somebody that she simply does not want to talk to at the moment.
"Shelby hey, sorry we're running late," Shelby recognizes her husband's voice, seemingly unnoticing of the shakiness behind Shelby's greeting and her heart immediately sinks… she had forgotten to call him; she had forgotten to call anybody. "Me and Noah are on our way home right now, we got a little bit caught up at the batting cages, he just didn't want to leave."
There's a hint of a laugh behind his voice, a happiness that Shelby hasn't heard emit from beyond his voice in a long time… It leaves her confounded in her desire not to tell him, not to single-handedly destroy his day with the news that she has, until now, been carrying the brunt of across the width of her very own shoulders.
For several exceedingly tense seconds, she's silent; it takes an excruciating amount of effort to release the breath that she hasn't even realized that she has been holding with an audible shakiness that is impossible to miss; even over the receiver of a phone.
"Hiram…" Her voice sounds galaxies away, not even she seems to recognize it as her words are clouded by the unmistakable sound of Hiram's breath hitching upwards in his throat.
"Shelby what is it, what's wrong?" He asks as if he doesn't already know the answer; it was Rachel, that much was obvious… it was always Rachel.
"Rachel is in the emergency room, Hiram…" Shelby whispers quietly, "I left her on the couch to watch TV while I was making dinner and she… she had a really high fever, and then she started to seize… Hiram, they haven't come out to talk to me yet, I don't know what's wrong… I don't know what's wrong with our baby, Hiram."
Her voice grows exponentially faster as the words are slowly emitted from the back of her throat; after wallowing in a stony silence for over an hour, now that she has finally opened her mouth to speak, the words don't seem to stop.
The tears begin to flow prominently with her mere recollection of events, echoing loudly through even the noisy clatter of a crowded community hospital triage unit…
Slowly, the heads begin turning towards her direction; waiting patients and concerned friends and family members alike sneaking but a quick glance before their heads snap back and away from her as if out of concern that grief was a contagious emotion.
The processing of a grieving mother was a movie that none of them wanted to watch… Not even the homeless man seated directly beside her had a word to say on the matter any longer.
"Shelby… how long have you been there?" Hiram's reaction was not what Shelby had been expecting; in fact, if anything, it had been the opposite… His voice drops suddenly, a hint of bitter annoyance gracing its tone that only seems to make Shelby feel, if possible, even worse. "Rachel is in the ER and you didn't even think to call me?"
His blame is wrongfully placed, and although Shelby knows that Hiram must know this, that his reaction was simply the manifestation of his deepest fears emitting onto her for the time being, Shelby's emotions are in no state to be toyed with at the moment; she's quickly offended.
"Hiram…" Her mere word professes her wonderment towards the idea that her husband is currently questioning her incentives; he knows just as well as she does how easy it was to become impossibly frazzled, tainted beyond the realm of conscious thought processing and seemingly simple problem solving skills.
"Forget it Shelby," His words are harsh, they burn like fire through Shelby's already aching heart in a manner that takes her aback; physically throwing her body against the waiting room chair that she is sitting in. "I'll be there in five minutes… Call me if you hear anything at all!"
His direction is specific, emphasized in an effort to make his case in point; as if Shelby would ever forget to call him in regards to their daughter ever again.
He's hung up the phone before she can even so much as process an appropriate response towards her husband, and in the wake of a dial tone, she is left confused.
There is a part of her that is exceptionally pissed that Hiram would ever even think to take such a tone with her in her fragile state, pissed that he would actually accuse her of withholding critical information regarding their daughter on purpose, pissed that he was right… just like he always was.
But on the other hand, there was still that other half that understood; understood the terror that comes hand-in-hand with being left in the dark, the terror of making a routine phone call, only to be overwhelmed by a tragedy.
Shelby's natural response to fear is a deafening silence; she'd always had a strong tendency to hoard her emotions deep within the very pit of her brain where they gathered where nobody could see them; fear, anger, overwhelming sadness…
While she was on Broadway, such negative emotions, her acting coach used to tell her, had no place in the real world. Channel your anger; he'd instruct her, save it for the stage.
By now, the process came naturally; she had since learned to do it without even realizing… Her mother used to scold her for it, tell her that it wasn't a healthy way to go about your life, that all of the things that she repressed were bound to catch up with her eventually, and that when they did it wasn't going to be pretty.
Her mother… Shelby sighs aloud at the mere thought of the woman… She has been calling Shelby for weeks now, badgering her to find the time to travel back to her east coast home, to place a visit to her and her father, her brother and his brand new son…
Crystal Berry has been fawning over her latest grandchild for weeks; it had after all, been four years since she had been graced with a new grandchild in the form of Rachel… "Now we just have to find your sister a proper husband," She'd told Shelby over the phone just last week, and Shelby had simply nodded and agreed, deciding that straying from detail would make it easier to keep her mother in the dark.
Shelby has been making excuses for weeks now… Her mother didn't know about Rachel, nobody did.
It wasn't as if she wasn't particularly close to her family, nor because she didn't believe that their comfort and support would be helpful; her parents had given her absolutely everything that she had ever dreamed of, her older brother annoyed the hell out of her but she still loved him, and although she hadn't spoken to her little sister since before Hanukkah, that was only because the youngest Berry sibling had just begun law school at the University of Ohio and barely had time to so much as breathe let alone worry herself over this mess…
No, by this point it seemed, that Shelby's withholding of information regarding her family stemmed from the idea that still, nearly two months later, Shelby has still not processed the proper means by which to go about informing her family that she had been spending the past several weeks simply making plans not to make plans.
But now that Rachel has taken such a sudden, unexpected turn for the worse, Shelby can't help but wonder whether or not maybe, it's time.
Her phone is pressed up into her ear once more without her even realizing that her fingers had dialed so that she is not prepared for the response of the soft, familiar voice at the other end.
"Hello?"
She's embraced by a sudden, sweeping warmth; a comfort that floods across the entirety of the length of her body. She's suddenly feeling as if she were a child all over again, running home from school in tears because Stacy Grammar had made fun of the dress that she had worn, or the way that her hair had looked in the pigtails that her mother used to braid for her every morning.
Shelby swallows the lump in her throat as she prepares herself for a reaction that not even she can anticipate. She takes a deep breath, stuttering only briefly as the words catch temporarily within the center of her throat before emitting as more of a choking drawl than she had originally intended upon…
"Mom?"
Anon – I am flattered, thank you! My midterms week was this week which meant plenty of time for procrastination that basically equals me spending all of my time writing hahaha. Sorry the time lapses are a bit confusing, basically anything that is in italics is a flashback but I'll try to throw in a little more context clues to help people figure out exactly what the time frame is. I'm honestly not sure how long this is going to be, so far I have my ideas separated into four main parts and these last two chapters are the very beginning of the second part if that clears it up. I'd like to have it finished by September because I am backpacking across Europe with a few friends and will be gone for about two months and wouldn't want to keep anybody waiting that long. Also, I'm pretty sure that you can get notifications for new chapters but I'm not exactly sure how to do that sorry. Thanks again for all your kindness!
PeggyJane – Wow, I'm beyond flattered by this beautiful review. Really, thank you isn't enough. I'm generally more used to the idea of Puck and Rachel as a couple as well and this story started out like that in its rough stages and then I came across a story where they were siblings and tested it out and it made more sense to go in that direction in the long run so I'm really, really glad you enjoyed it. (And also, the way they developed Rachel and Shelby's relationship on the show frustrated me too which is a huge reason I started this story to begin with). I'm also glad it's making sense medically, especially to somebody with experience in the field, I'm a first year med student and my focus is on pediatric OncHem but I'm a ways away from actually studying my focus and definitely have a long way as far as learning goes so it's always nice to hear that I'm on a semi-right path.
Thank you once more, I really am absolutely honored by all of your kind words!
Readerforlife – Thank you again muchos! It's greatly, greatly appreciated.
Crazy-Wee-Cat – Thank you! I'll try to sneak some extra Puck and Rachel moments in there just for you now :)
TommyH – Thanks for the review! And I'm glad their relationship is realistic to you. I try to base their relationship as much as I can against me and by older brother who I love and also love to hate on most days :)
CloudGazer15 – Ah, no, don't feel bad! No need to apologize, no harm no foul; I still love all of your reviews! I'm glad you liked the chapter, you're definitely headed in the right direction, some major stuff is going to go down on the day of Regionals. I've got a little bit of drama for everybody.
NinjaGleek21 – Aha, then I guess I'm gonna have to extend this story and keep adding more chapters! Glad you liked this one!
Marinka4 – No, don't cry then I'll feel bad! I am glad you enjoyed though!