The doctor's office consisted of a germ infested waiting room, a screaming toddler, and an over eager receptionist.
"Not feeling so well, dearie?" She simpered at Manny, who was ashen faced and holding unto her stomach as though she was about to vomit. Of course not, she thought with supreme sarcasm, I come here all the time- get my kicks…
Instead, her mother placed her hand on her upper arm and squeezed reassuringly. "I think the stress of the start of her junior year has gotten to my Manuela. She just isn't herself." Manny's mother squeezed her shoulder again, and the receptionist clucked reassuringly and adjusted her over large glasses.
"Well, m'dear, Dr. Andrews will be with you in just one moment." She grinned widely, and Manny noticed how uneven her teeth were. "Not to fret!"
Manny nodded at her, and glanced at the clock on the wall. If she were not here, in this dim doctor's office, she would be in English. And that really cute new kid sat a row to the left of her, when she turned just the right way, and tilted her head right, she could spend the whole hour staring at his jet black hair, and Kwan would never know…
"Santos, Manny?" A raven haired attendant called from the hallway that led to the examining rooms. Mrs. Santos smiled at the woman behind the counter and pushed at bit against her daughter's arm. As she began to walk, Mrs. Santos did not remove her hand. Manny found this a bit comforting, and she followed vaguely along behind the girl in front of her.
"Well, let's just weigh you and check your height." She smiled at Manny, and Manny found the young woman's smile reassuring. Mrs. Santos smiled too, and Manny clenched her jaw. She wanted to smile, but she was afraid that if she relaxed her facial muscles, she would vomit all over the pale green industrial carpet of the hallway.
"I'm Annette, by the way." The raven haired woman said softly. Manny nodded and slowly stepped unto the scale. She welt weary- her very bones were tired.
"O-o-o-o-k!" Annette breathed out and adjusted the weights at the top of the bar. She looked at the number, looked at the chart, looked at the number, and then looked at Manny, before glancing back at the chart and recording the newest weight. She read Manny's height off quickly and then ushered the women into a small examining room.
"I just need your temperature." She smiled at Manny and walked over to the wall, where she pulled down a thermometer that took its readings via ears, and walked comfortingly over to Manny.
"100.7" She said softly and scribbled that number unto the chart in her arm. Manny started at the temperature, but Annette placed her hand on her arm. "Nothing to worry about, it's just a fever." Manny relaxed a bit and Annette walked over to the cabinet in the far side of the room. "Ok, so I'm just going to go let Dr. Andrews know you're ready to see him." She smiled again and headed out the door. "It'll be just a moment!" She called over her shoulder.
She closed the door behind her, but it didn't latch and a few moments after she had left, the Santos women heard a whispered conversation take place between the doctor and Annette.
"She's lost fifteen pounds since her check up three months ago- she's down to 105." Manny looked down at her taught stomach and tried to decide if that was bad news. "And she's running a bit of a fever."
"Thanks, Annette." Dr. Andrew's deep voice rumbled, and Manny tensed up. The door opened, and he cheerfully said: "Hello there, Miss Santos. I hear you're feeling a bit under the weather."
"Ye-ss." She stuttered a bit. She was nervous about speaking with him. Though she had indeed had a checkup only three months ago, he had been out of town. She had seen his assistant, and now, this was the first time she had seen him sense he had confirmed her pregnancy.
He smiled benignly and began to wash his hands in the sink, talking all the while. "So, I see you've lost a bit of weight?" He asked casually. He turned to face her and picked up a paper towel from the stack next to the sink. "Was it intentional?" He continued with the casual tone as he tossed the used towel into the trash and leaned back against the cabinet.
Manny looked at her stomach and then at the doctor. "N-no." She stuttered honestly and angrily told herself to pull it together. She had no reason to be frightened by him, and her stuttering made her sound dishonest. He looked at her penetratingly, and she coughed.
"Really." She promised with a sigh. "I guess it's just that I've been working so hard with cheerleading." He looked at her again, but this time he nodded.
"Ok, so, what are your symptoms?" He asked and walked toward her, motioning for her to sit up straight.
"Nauseous, weak, always tired, and I guess I've got this fever." She bit her lip. "And my stomach hurts." He nodded and pressed his stethoscope against her back. She winced against the cold, but did as she was instructed and took three deep breaths.
He motioned for her to lie back down, and again in a completely casual voice asked: "And your periods? Are they still regular?" She looked away from him and bit her lip again.
"Well, actually." She said slowly, thinking about it for the first time, "I haven't had one in a while." She continued to look away from him, and focused on a spot on the wall. "I guess…I've been training really hard with cheerleading." She ended.
She remembered the hell that had followed that excuse last time, and thought with dread that she'd already used it twice today.
"Very well." He smiled at her. "Did they ever become regular after the abortion?" He asked gently and she nodded, mute.
"It's just the last few months they've been off." She said in a barely audible voice. He nodded and ran the stethoscope under her blouse. After three deep breaths, he nodded again.
"Ok, tell me if this hurts." He looked her in the eye and she nodded. He pressed at her abdomen and she winced.
"That hurts." She whispered, and he nodded, but this time a frown line crossed his brow. He continued to place pressure on her abdomen until at last she shrieked.
"Oww!" She let out a noise at the pain in her stomach. Dr. Andrews looked at her stomach for just a second longer than seemed normal, and walked back over to the cabinet. Manny sat up.
"Ok. Well, I'm not completely satisfied that I know what's going on. So…" he shuffled the papers around in his hand. "I want you to come in here in the next day or so…." He peered at the paper in his hand, "and I want to get an ultrasound done."
Manny glanced at her mother with panic apparent in her face. The doctor noticed this and smiled reassuringly. "I'm sure it's nothing serious, dear." He said confidently. "I just want to rule out a remote possibility…" He again glanced at the paper.
"What's remote?" Mrs. Santos said sharply. Dr. Andrews smiled mockingly at himself and sighed.
"Seeing as how I'm about 99 sure that it's not the case, I'd rather not go into it." He smiled surely at them. "Not to worry! I'm sure it's only a case of the flu. A bit of over cautiousness is prudent, now and again." Mrs. Santos seemed satisfied by this, but Manny was trembling.
"Set up an appointment with the receptionist on your way out!" Dr. Andrews called as he ushered the two women out back into the hallway, and turned to enter another room a little further down the hall.
Manny glanced down at her stomach, and irrationally she felt like crying.
OoO
"The Ancient Egyptians were one of the most developed cultures of their period. They had one of the most influential societies on the planet, and their Pharoenic system was one of the more advanced forms of government of the time." Mr. Garson droned in a bored voice.
Craig tuned him out and went back to staring at Ashley. What the hell is wrong with her? Craig asked himself, and clenched his fist, promptly breaking his newly sharpened pencil in two.
He continued to hold the piece with the sharpened end, and began to doodle on his paper. What were supposed to be notes ended up as stick figures with little triangle dresses being thrust into odd, and mostly dangerous, situations.
I mean, where does she get off? What, am I just...a toy? Like she can just pick me up or throw me away whenever she wants to?
You cheated on her. That's not really treating her very well. And maybe you deserve to be dumped, a treacherous part of his mind declared. He had to admit it did make sense.
She could have given me a reason, he thought bitterly and subtly decapitated one of his stick figures.
Yeh, but what if you don't want to know? And could you ever give her a reason about Manny?
That's different!
How?
She knows about Manny!
You didn't tell her.
Yeh, she found out by herself…
…
Craig stared moodily at the notebook in front of him. He counted the stick figures, and noted that there were twelve. In a fit of childish anger, he scrawled across the top of the paper: The Twelve Torments of The Traitor, and at the bottom he scrawled: You Know Who You Are.
With a grim look he turned to Ashley, who was seated two rows to the right, and one seat up. She was staring out a window, and couldn't have been paying less attention to the boring old man at the front of the room.
Craig noticed that she seemed more than bored. Her fingers were twitching rapidly against the desk, and she would glance every once in a while behind her, as though she expected someone to jump her.
And who knows? Maybe they would. She had, after all, confirmed every one in the school that she was indeed nothing more that a pathetic poser.
Craig, glanced back down at the paper, and folded it into fourths. He hastily scribbled: "POSER" across the front, and darkened the letters. When the teacher wasn't looking, he turned to the person next to him on the right.
"Pass it on." He whispered. The girl looked at the front of the paper, stifled a laugh, and passed it to the boy in front of her. The same reaction took place four times, before it ended up in Ashley's hands. The girl looked frightened at first, but, because no one had whispered: "Pass it on." She knew it was meant for her.
She slowly opened the paper, and all the color ran out of her face. She turned back to Craig who was watching her intently, and intense fear flitted through her eyes. She quickly broke the eye contact between them, and in one movement crumbled the paper and stood up.
"I have to go to the bathroom!" She said loudly, and ran out of the room, a few tears falling down her reddened cheeks.
Craig watched her leave, and guilt began to eat at his insides.
That was cruel.
He pushed the thought and the guilt away and tried to focus back on the teacher, but couldn't because the whole class was roaring with laughter at Ashley's hasty departure. Ellie was sitting right in front of Craig.
He saw her grip her head with her hands, and heard her faint whisper of: "You've got to tell me, Ash…"
Craig bit the inside of his lip. If Ellie didn't even know…
Then it'll be even harder for you to find out…
But I will.
OoO
Ashley sat sobbing in the stall in the bathroom, trying her hardest to be silent about it. She clenched her fists and uncrumpled the paper in her hand, trying her best to read through her tears.
Even if he hadn't been staring at her, she would have known it was Craig's. She knew his handwriting. She was scared.
And it wasn't because of the stuff that was happening to the stick figures. She knew that Craig would never do anything like that. She knew that it was just his anger from her simply ending things with him.
No, she was scared because she just didn't want him to know any of the things she would have to tell him if they were together. And, hard as it was being without Craig, telling him those things would be much, much harder.
She wished she had a reason to give him, but she couldn't even bear to admit it to herself most of the time. How could she tell him?
Staring through her tears at the paper in front of her, an unwanted memory came to the surface:
"Ashley Tadem Kerwin!" Her father shouted as she ran out of the room, sobbing. "Get back here!" Her hands shook as she slammed the door behind her, and she heard her father's husband's muffled: "Just let her cool off, ok?"
Ashley's tears ran like rivers down her reddened cheeks and she hurried out into the cool London street.
She had come to London this summer to spend time with her father, as well as maintain a internship. She had come to see him and live with him like she didn't get to do during the school year.
But he didn't have enough time for anyone but his new husband, and Ashley's jealousy swelled with each passing moment.
She turned quickly at the corner, and barreled into the late-night coffee shop that she knew was there from previous escapes. She couldn't bear to sit, alone and unwanted, in a barren guest bedroom in London while her father and his new love cannoodled on the couch. So she had snuck out many times, but tonight was different.
Tonight was a betrayal. Her father's and her own. Her father had promised that tonight was just for he and Ashley. That the two of them would spend the night together, eat dinner, see a movie, and maybe go out for coffee and talk. Just the two of them. Some real quality time.
Bu,t at the last minute, it was determined that her step father would have to come too, as it wasn't fair to just leave him at home, while the whole family went out and had a good time.
And Ashley had let it slide, because, at that point any time with her father was golden. So she went with them to dinner, and she watched as the were insufferably cute to each other, and she bit her tongue while they had what seemed like hours of conversation that didn't include her.
When they finally made it to the movie, Ashley watched in disappointment as the foreign film she had so carefully picked out of the local newspaper, and circled so that her father could see it with her and discuss the political implications, was scraped in favor of what could only be described as a pointless 'chick flick'.
The main plot included a beautiful women who woke up one day without any memories at all in a sociopaths house, and was told she was his live in girlfriend. Threw many trials and tribulations, in which the lady lost a hand, and the sociopath was thrown off a high cliff, the women fell in love with the gardener, who happened to be her long lost estranged husband, who magically forgave her for her misinformed passionate affair with the mad man, and helped her regained her lost memories. Cue sex scene.
And after that barf-fest, the three of them had traveled back to their apartment, and the two lovebirds had started to putter around the kitchen together, taking almost forty-five minutes to make coffee. Ashley had walked from her room to find the two of them sharing a rather un-chaste kiss.
After that she couldn't take it anymore, she blew up. Her words were basically unrecognizable through her shrieks, and she finally turned purple and began to sob.
As her father moved towards her, a stricken look on his face, and a guilty tilt of his head, she recoiled.
"Don't you dare touch me, you…ass!" She brought a shaky hand up to her face and pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
His hand fell from it's intention of comforting her. His eyes were blank, and she could tell that she had not greatly affected him. She searched for something she could hurl at him, anything that would make him feel as horrible as his unintentional neglect had hurt her.
Her eyes snapped and without thought, or consent of her mind, her mouth opened and the words: "Stay away from me, you fag!" spilled out.
He looked as shocked as she felt at her words, but at that point she was past the point of caring. Her sobs were shaking her loose, and she ran past him at a full tilt. She had to get away from him, and she wanted desperately to get away from herself.
Now, Ashley found herself in front of the coffee shop she knew to be open late. She squeezed herself through the heavy door, and scurried to the back, where she quickly hid herself behind a display of some stupid romance novel.
Her tears came so fast and so hard that she couldn't remember if she had drawn breath during those moments.
"Well, you look like your life sucks." Ashley's startled eyes flickered across the face of the blonde haired youth standing in front of her. She sniffed, and put her head on her knees. "Name's Ryan." He promptly sat down on the floor next to her, and Ashley stared at him apprehensively.
He looked at her expectantly for a moment, but when she didn't say anything he sighed. "You've got one, haven't you?" She looked confused and he clarified with an exasperated tone. "A name, dearie?" she looked annoyed by his pet name. She didn't want to tell him what her name was, but she really didn't want him to call her 'dearie'.
"Ashley." She wiped her hand across her puffy wet eyes, and looked with disgust upon the smeared mascara stains. He grinned at traced a finger along the black lines. She shivered at the touch of this complete stranger.
"They look like skid-marks, you know." He said in a cheery voice. "Ashley's a horrible name." She glanced at him. This remark was almost more startling than his sudden plopping down next to her. This Ryan seemed to have no manners at all. "If you're going to hang with me and my crew, you're going to need a better name than Ashley." He stared into the distance for a moment, and Ashley looked at him closely, trying to decide if he was mentally ill.
"Hmmm…" He exhaled slowly. Then he laughed. His laugh's very nice, Ashley thought absently. "We'll call you Skid. I like it."
She stared at him a moment more and he locked eyes with her. "That won't do, dearie." He said softly. She couldn't find anything appropriate to say as he swiftly wiped his thumb under each of her eyes. "There you go." She didn't know what appropriate was in this situation. What was the appropriate way to respond to someone that crossed every line you had ever known? "You're really quite beautiful." He said with a smile, and he stood up with a bounce.
Not really understanding why, perhaps it was his fascinatingly strange personality, or the depression that was eating at her insides, she stood up.
"Smashing, dahling." He said with a wide grin. He grabbed her hand, and she forgot to feel awkward. "Let's go get you hammered."
OoO
Paige's feet brushed back and forth over the water in the bathtub she was staring at. She just wanted to be relaxed for fifteen minutes. She only wanted to relax and not have to think about the fact that her mother was a raving lunatic who had tried to have the love of her life locked up for statutory rape.
She dipped a toe into the scalding water and sighed. Just thinking of that made her want to cry, but sadly, she had no tears left. She took a deep breathe and slid into the soothingly hot water.
After bathing for enough time to turn her skin a nice wrinkled texture, she stood up and wrapped her fuzzy pink robe about her person and scurried across the hall to her bedroom. Once inside she slipped into some old sweatpants and the baggiest t-shirt in her closet, left her hair in it's towel wrap, and slid between the sheets of her green bed.
She grabbed the bag of candy pieces from the nightstand next to her bed and pushed the PLAY button on her stereo remote. As a wash of completely non-Paige like music hit her ears, tears seared cheeks that had convinced themselves that they were done with that.
She had palmed this CD from Matt, and the emo music fit her mood exactly. She cranked the stereo up to the point that the base was messing with her heart beat, and she closed her eyes.
But the song held too many memories for her to just sit here and stew- she turned it off and reached over to the nightstand and pulled her cell phone to her ear. "Matt." She said clearly and the auto-dialer did the rest.
He picked up after the fourth ring. "Hello?" He asked cautiously and a few more tears slid down her cheeks.
"It's me." She whispered in a pitifully small voice.
"I know." He said softly, and there was an emotion in his voice that bordered on outright fear.
"I told the truth." He sighed. "She didn't believe me." He sighed again. "She pressed statutory rape charges." Her voice caught and more tears fell down her cheeks.
"I know." She drew her breathe in sharply. "They came to my house to charge me with it."
"What-" she began in a strained voice.
"I don't want to talk about it." He said shortly, and with an edge to his voice. Paige felt the accusatory air that had passed over the phone, and she openly began to cry.
"Paige-" he sputtered weakly. "I didn't mean-"
"I know." She stumbled through her tears. "I get it. I hate her, Matt. I hate her so much." She hiccupped.
"I'm starting to." He said with a catch in his voice. Paige opened her mouth when she heard her mother calling her downstairs, saying that it was important.
"I-love you." She said with a voice that cracked several times.
"I love you, too." He said sadly and hung up the phone. She stifled a sob and closed her phone reluctantly.
She walked slowly down the stairs, and into the foyer. Her mother was standing there with two rather official looking men and a police officer.
"Paige Michalchuk?" one of the official looking men said solemnly. She nodded. "We're here to notify you that your presence is required at a preliminary hearing in the rape suit you filed against a Dean Porter."
OoOoO
I apologize for the fact that only four characters where centered on. I dunno what's with this chapter in that sense, but other than that: I rather enjoy it.
Thanks to everyone who mentioned the 'Mija' thing. I did know that Manny was Filipino, but I did a bit of research (and I mean a SMALL amount) and the Philippines were a Spanish colony, and a lot of the Spanish culture rubbed off. The Santos' could very well speak Spanish. But, I don't really think it matters. Thanks so much for the CC!
Oh, and another thing I was thinking of. The chapter titles are the names of songs whose lyrics I would like to use at the beginning of each chapter to set it up. However, that's not allowed, so I settled for chapter titles.
And, another thing, I promised you wonderful reviewers mentions by name, but I'm really too tired right now.
Just know that I love you guys with all my heart, and hopefully next time, I'll show you properly.
Thanks for reading!
