"Jujubee's Friends" had turned out to be a dead end.
"Why would she lie to me like that?" Edward demands of Lee one morning at breakfast.
"I don't think she lied."
"What are you talking about? I did some asking around. Jujubee HAS no friends. She's as lonely as Dini."
"Hmm. Must be why neither of them caught TB despite both of them not exactly being examples of what I would call robust health," Lee muses.
"That's beside the point," Edward says impatiently.
"I'm sorry, what was the point?"
"Are you hungover again?"
"Yes, sorry." Lee takes another sip of her coffee. She hasn't touched her food yet.
"It's not your fault," Edward says angrily. "It's hers."
With a flinch, she comes to the surface. The Doc.
"If you have something to say, Edward, say it to me."
"I do. For one, you might try laying off the booze when there's kids around."
"I resent that. I didn't touch a drop until Dini went to sleep last night."
"Yeah, and then you hit the bottle so hard you didn't even rouse when there was a potential emergency."
"What are you talking about?"
Of course she doesn't remember. Edward frowns. "Dini had a nightmare that night she was here. She was screaming and everything."
"That isn't an emergency situation."
"No, but what if it was? We supposedly had her here overnight under observation in case her insulin pump's tubing became detached again. What if some serious complication had developed?"
The Doc frowns and looks down, picking at something along the handle of her coffee mug that isn't really there.
"You know what I think?" Edward says.
"What?"
"That in a way, she wasn't here for medical reasons at all! In a way, you really DID kidnap her. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"She needed to be here!" The Doc screams at him.
"What good would it have done her? You were passed out, Doc. PASSED OUT. I don't have a medical degree. What could I have done?"
"Called the paramedics!" she shouts back.
"The orphanage could have done that!"
"Fine. I'll cut back," she says, almost quietly.
"On your drinking?"
"Yeah. But first I need a little something for this hangover."
Edward watches incredulously as she walks over to the liquor cabinet and pours a little something into her coffee. He tilts back in his chair in lets out a loud groan of frustration. His fingers jam deep into his hair and pull it tight past his temples.
Unbelievable.
