Chapter Fifty-Five
The rest of the weekend went by rather smoothly with Lorna's spending the night at Nicky's Saturday and the two spending all of Sunday together. It saddened her for it to come to an end. That meant she had to come back to reality where she was living with a foster family and had to prepare herself for another week of hell at school, starting with tomorrow morning. As soon as she arrived back at the Chapman house, she spent the entire evening—and into the wee hours of the night—scrambling to finish the assignment for her science class. The threat of Annalisa's words looming through her previously frantic mind.
It wasn't until Lorna had entered through the door of the girls' bathroom the very next morning at school that she realized she hadn't waited up for Nicky. Or even seen her at all. The fact alone was sufficient to confirm her decision to stop in there in the first place. Guilt ate through every inch of her skin. Why was she the way she was? A query that ran through her mind at least once a day. She swallowed hard and ran into one of the empty stalls, locking it shut behind her.
After triple checking that the door was latched securely, Lorna knelt down in front of the toilet and reached in her purse for her beloved toothbrush. Grateful to have it with her this time. She never wanted to end up in the situation she was in on Saturday again; she'd have to make certain not to forget to pack the small object in her purse. Or maybe it'd be best if she just left it in there when she wasn't using it, the thought pondered through her mind.
It took only a few minutes of going through the cycle for the toilet bowl in front of her to fill up with the miniscule remnants of Lorna's stomach—mostly coffee and the small bowl of fruit and yogurt that she forced herself to have that morning as to not anger Mrs. Chapman once more. Each purge felt like that first sip of coffee she'd have every morning. Or waking up on Christmas as a little girl. It truly washed her with a sensation she couldn't figure out a proper descriptor for. She flushed the toilet, wiped her mouth quickly with her hand, and went out to the sink to wash up.
While she stood scrubbing her hands and face with soap, her eyes peered straight ahead at the mirror. Yet, she wasn't paying much attention to her reflection at that moment. She was too engulfed in her thoughts. Thoughts of what the hell she was feeling when it came to purging. Was she feeling the same way Nicky felt when she was using heroin? Is that what description she was looking for that she couldn't quite put a word to? Was purging her form of heroin? Lorna shuddered immediately upon such a questioning thought whirling about her head. That couldn't be true. It wasn't like she had a problem or anything. She could stop purging whenever she wanted. Hell, she'd gone a whole week—okay, more like five days—without purging. Certainly, she didn't have a purging problem. No, no, of course not. Lorna was perfectly fine.
After sufficiently washing herself off and having one final glance in the mirror, she reluctantly made the decision to head to her first period class. From the time it took her to exit the restroom through the hallways towards the room for her science class, it was nearing eight o'clock when she'd sat down in her assigned desk. The bell rang upon her entrance. For once she made it before the bell, she thought as she set her notebook and binder on the surface in front of her.
Her hands rummaged through the binder for the papers she printed out the evening prior. Annalisa already seemed to have a hit out on her, she'd rather be prepared before the very girl walked in through that damn door and acted on the unrelenting hatred she had for her. Lorna was in enough of a grave, she certainly didn't need Annalisa digging it any deeper for her.
Moments passed until the sound of footsteps approaching unnervingly caught Lorna's attention. With caution and timidity, she gradually lifted her head from the assignment her eyes were glancing over and found the culprit to be the blonde she so desperately wished wasn't her damn partner for the project. A large breath of air inhaled sharply through her mouth. She bit down on her lip and gave a thorough glance over the other.
Annalisa forcibly sat down in the desk directly across from the noticeably tremoring Lorna and let out a menacing snicker. The shiner she'd given her the past Friday still lie beneath her eye albeit slightly faded. She nodded and shifted her eyes onto the papers spread across the surface of Lorna's desk. Hands roughly snatched them, bringing them closer to her face so she could properly read over them. The forced nature of her actions caused the desk to wobble on its legs.
"Hmm," she breathed out, turning through stapled pages of their science project. Head nodded robotically as her eyes mentally read the words on each piece of paper. When she finished, she threw them harshly back onto Lorna's desk and stared her over unreadably. "You're lucky ya got this done today, Morello. I'll spare ya another black eye…this time, anyway."
The brunette nodded copiously while drawing in a relieving breath of air. That was a surprising reaction, she acknowledged—she was more than expecting Annalisa to threaten her or have a rage-filled outburst at her as she almost always appeared to do. But this, she swallowed uneasily, this was rather tame. Verging on the realm of normalcy. Either that was a good thing or was only the calm before the storm. Lorna didn't know which one was worse.
Clearing her throat, Annalisa slammed a hand on the metal of the desk to get the other girl's attention. Eyes peered darkly over her. She felt her lips form into a smirk. Even when she was on the nicer side she still managed to make Lorna uneasy and on edge. There was no greater feeling than that, she thought. As long as Lorna remained uncomfortable all was right in the world for Annalisa. Of course, having numerous options for harassing the girl certainly made it much more entertaining, she deemed with the smirk on her face intensifying.
"You better just hope Mrs. Bell gives us an A on this or else. Ya got that, Morello?"
Lorna gave a timid nod in response and Annalisa let out another snicker.
The rest of class Lorna sat uneasily in her seat, waiting for Annalisa to go off on her. Fortunately, nothing further happened and she was grateful for the bell to ring once more to signify the end of the period.
The school day flew by, much to Lorna's fortune, and it hadn't been long until she was arriving back on the front porch of her foster family's house. Sunlight poured over her from the rays' beaming their lights heavily from the sky above. She wasn't even halfway to the end of the sidewalk leading to the door when her ears caught the sound of a car horn loudly honking. Naturally, Lorna turned towards it and eyes quickly widened to see Franny's car sitting on the curb of the house.
Her eyes squinted, however, her feet turned direction and she made her way over to the car. Once she'd gotten in and fastened herself in the passenger's seat, she twisted her head to stare the older girl over puzzlingly. "What are ya doin' here, Fran? Where are we going? I thought my therapy appointment wasn't til' Wednesday?"
Franny pulled the lever to reverse and carefully backed her way out of the driveway. Making her way out of the rather confusing neighborhood, she finally peeked a glance at her sister. The lump that had been sitting in the back of her throat tightened. Having received a phone call from the hospital their father was a patient of, just hours earlier, she loathed the thought of shattering Lorna's world yet again. Especially so soon after the passing of their mother. Sure, it wasn't like Mr. Morello was dead—but according to the Doctor she spoke with he might as well be.
She opened her mouth to respond, however, was interrupted by a kick to the back of her seat. Eyes rapidly shifted onto the rearview mirror catching her son's behavior red-handed. "Marco, why are ya kicking mommy's seat?"
The little boy looked up from his toy truck he'd been playing with and he gave his mother a cheeky grin. "Bumpy school bus," he muttered, lifting the truck his hands gripped onto and shook it for her to see.
Coming to a stoplight, Franny brought a hand up to her temple and rubbed at it meticulously. Despite the news weighing on her mind she forced a smile to her face and nodded at her son. At least Marco was too young to understand anything that had been going on the past several months of their lives. She sighed. Marco was the only one who didn't have to suffer through grief and heartache at his young age—something, deep down, she was grateful for.
"Bumpy school bus? But that's a truck you're holding, hon." She curved an eyebrow at him.
Marco giggled, nodding his head rather enthusiastically. "I like my truck," he looked down at it and tapped his fingers against the wheels on the bottom of it. "I like my truck a lot, mama. It cool and it goes bump bump." To emphasize the latter, he placed the object so the wheels were touching the top of the drink holder that separated his seat from the empty one on the other side and moved it around, shaking it as he did so. A proud smile on his face while he looked up into the eyes of his mother from her reflection in the mirror.
There wasn't enough coffee in the world to help Franny understand her son's response to the question she had seconds earlier asked him. A hand she used to slick back her hair, giving a soft smile to the little boy despite not being able to make sense of his words. "I see, Marco. It is a nice truck. But why'd ya call it bumpy school bus?"
The brunette boy shook his head, curls bouncing along with such movement. "I dindtn't, mama. This," he held up the toy, "this my truck. It bumpy like bumpy school bus. I kick chair to make bumpy like bumpy school bus, too."
"Ah, I see now," Franny gave an intent nod before turning the car back onto the freeway. She returned her eyes onto the windshield ahead of her to focus on driving. "You're a smart little boy, Marco. But ya gotta be more specific when telling me things or anyone else. Otherwise we don't know what you're sayin'."
Marco scrunched his nose up—almost in the same way his aunt Lorna did. He squinted his eyes, trying to figure out what his mom was telling him. The hand with the truck in it was brought back to lay in his lap. "What does pspefic mean, mom?"
Having sat silently the whole drive thus far, listening attentively to the conversation between her sister and nephew, Lorna couldn't resist the chuckle that escaped her. The innocence of her little nephew warmed her heart tremendously. His little questions and comments were the perfect combination to lighten her mood after a long, hard, week adjusting to a new—temporary—living situation.
Swallowing down a gob of saliva, the oldest Morello in the car inhaled a sharp breath and tried to keep her eyes on the road ahead. "Specific means ya gotta tell mommy exactly what ya wanna say, hon."
"What does essactly mean?"
"Exactly means no more questions. Mommy is driving and needs to pay attention to where she's going. We can talk about all the words ya want later, okay buddy?"
"Mmkay," the boy mumbled, lower lip slightly tremoring as he bent his head down.
Franny sighed, heart heavy with guilt. She shifted her eyes onto her sister and naturally reached a free hand over to place on one of hers. "He gets that from you, Lorn," her voice loud enough so that only Lorna could hear her. Her head tilted in direction of the pouting three-year-old in the backseat. "He's gonna be a sensitive teenager, I can already see it."
The rest of the drive was filled with silence. An eerie silence, Lorna felt as she still sat clueless as to where the hell Franny was taking them to. When the car came to a stop—a rather jolting stop Lorna acknowledged at the sensation of her body slightly leaning forward in synchrony with the car's halting into a parking spot—her eyes were effortlessly able to piece together where they happened to be by the surroundings out through the windshield in front of her.
Before even moving a fraction of an inch, her brown eyes shifted rapidly over towards her sister. She peered at her with heavily widened eyes—taking in how suddenly apprehensive and uneasy Franny appeared. "Why, why are we in the parking garage of the hospital? Did, did something happen to dad? Is he dead?" A hand instantly covered up her mouth when she realized the last question that slipped out of it. The inflection of her voice wasn't even as frantic as it had been when her mother had passed in the hospital, she guiltily realized.
Having her toddler son sitting in the back, Franny had to bite down on her tongue and make sure she was careful with the words she chose to respond with. Gradually she turned her head to properly return the younger girl's gaze. A knot melded into the pit of her stomach when she noticed the unusually bewildered look on her face. She distracted herself momentarily by turning the key in the ignition and taking it out of the hole to place in her handbag which sat on the compartment separating her seat from Lorna's.
"No, hon, dad's not dead," the statement came out in a slightly bitter tone. A tone not directed at Lorna but their father.
Everything that was going on right now led right back to him. She shook her head at the sick reality of it. He got to lay in the hospital drugged out of his gore so he couldn't feel pain while she and Lorna were left to deal with the aftermath of his stupidity. It angered her. It angered her tremendously. But she did her best to keep it from showing. She had her little boy in the car and Lorna was in no condition to witness such a rage. Her eyes closed and she gritted her teeth.
"But the doctor called and said dad's in real bad shape." Franny watched closely over her sister once she'd opened her eyes back up. Hoping she'd be able to decipher some of the emotions that might be running through her mind.
A large breath of air expelled from Lorna's lungs. She opened her mouth and swallowed. Eyes averted away from the older brunette, landing on the window right beside her. Watching intently as a few people walked down along the cement ground, farther and farther away until they disappeared into the abyss. "What does that mean? Is he gonna die?" She didn't look back at her. Too disgruntled to do so.
On a sick, twisted, level Lorna hoped that's exactly what the doctor's revelation meant. Mr. Morello had made their lives near hell the past several years and if he ended up dying at least they'd be guaranteed peace of mind from his abuse. She wouldn't ever have to worry about the state putting her back in the home with her abusive father, she knew. Not like they could dig him out of his grave and make him come back to life so he could have custody of her.
Franny sighed and reached a hand over to place over top of her sister's. "His liver's failing is what they told me. If he don't get a donated one soon he'll probably die. And I guess cause' he done been drinkin' himself sick the last few years they won't put him on the transplant list," she spoke in a monotonous voice, eyes peering out of the same window the younger brunette was. Her head shook at the recollection of the phone call from earlier. Anger boiled at the fact that after all the pain their father had caused the two of them that he had the fucking audacity to ask—rather demand—for both she and Lorna to be tested to see if either were possible candidates.
A lump formed in the back of her throat and no matter how many times Lorna swallowed it hadn't gone away. Despite her thoughts from seconds earlier, hearing what she longed for out loud caused an intense bout of nausea to come over. Maybe she didn't truly want her father to die. Or maybe she felt disgusted with herself for wishing death on her own dad. She couldn't figure out which one was truer. Could contradicting desires possibly be true at once? A hand was brought up to her forehead and she used it to rub at her temples.
The starting of a headache was easily picked up on, Lorna shut her eyes but to no avail. The sensation only grew stronger. She sighed solemnly and finally deterred her eyes off the window and back onto her sister. "Are we here to give him a liver?" A heavy breath heaved from her chest. Lorna shook her head and brought her knees up to tuck under her chin. "Dad drank himself to this point and he can get a liver to save his life. But mom didn't have any fault in her sickness and she never got a liver to save her life, Fran. That's not fair."
Stroking pale knuckles comfortingly with her thumb, Franny nodded sadly. Nothing about this was fair, she deemed. Mr. Morello got off on watching everyone around him suffer while he gorged himself in alcohol. So much alcohol that now he'd been on the cusp of dying from a failing liver and he knew his daughters were the only two who had the possibility of stopping that from happening. Evil wasn't enough of a word to describe him, Franny mentally affirmed.
A sigh escaped her and she returned her attention onto the smaller brunette across from her. "I know it's not fair, hon. Mom shoulda been the one saved by a new liver, not dad. We're not giving him anything, Lorn. We're just having a stupid blood test to shut dad up. No matter what the results dad ain't gettin' either of our livers, okay?"
Lorna's eyes slightly squinted after hearing that. She swallowed thickly and pondered on whether or not she'd be a match for her father. Knowing her shitty luck she would be. Such a thought only tightened her chest. If she ended up being a match, she wouldn't feel comfortable refusing to donate to their sickly father. Even though she so desperately wanted to be rid of him for good. Wanted out of his abusive clutches.
She exhaled deeply, resting her head on the rim of the window beside her. Eyes stared out of it but didn't focus on anything in particular. Let the sight of the dark, gray, parking garage mesmerize them as they gazed. "What if I'm a match, Fran? I-I couldn't just not give dad my—"
"No, Lorn, even if ya happen to be a match you're not giving dad shit. He don't deserve it not after all he's done to us. And we haven't even taken the test yet so don't go jumping ahead, okay? Let's just go in and get the damn thing taken."
The waiting room was cold making Lorna's shoulders shiver and her hands instantly pulled on the sleeves of her sweater, tugging it closer up on the caps of shoulders to stop the shivering. No one was in there but the two of them along with Franny's son, who sat on her lap too busy playing with his trucks to really notice where exactly they were. Silence loomed through the room—so much so that Lorna's ears easily picked up on even the faintest of sounds. Eyes shifted nervously around the area.
A nurse came over to them, not long after they'd sat down, a clipboard in her hand and called for the sisters to follow her. They were led down the hallway, a narrow one at that, until the nurse turned into an open door. The pair followed inside—Lorna behind Franny, who carried Marco in her arms. Both were directed to sit down in the adjacent chairs while the auburn haired woman turned to the counter on the other side of the room to gather what was needed for the blood draw.
Lorna was first and though it only took a matter of minutes for the needle to be injected through a vein, it felt more like an eternity. Her teeth dug into her tongue from the unexpected pain of the needle penetrating her skin. It shouldn't have hurt that bad, she thought, she'd cut her skin on purpose a few days prior and she barely flinched. How could this be more painful than that? The query pondered through her mind. When the nurse released the tourniquet from her arm and removed the needle, she closed her eyes in relief.
Only a minute it took for the process to be repeated with Franny and once that was completed, the nurse placed their tubes of blood in separate baggies. She grabbed a label for each with their names already printed on them, sticking them on the appropriate bags. Once that was done, she turned back to the brunettes. "I'll be taking this down to the lab now and it shouldn't be more than an hour or so before the results are in. You can go back to the waiting room or visit with your dad. I'll have the doctor find you once we get the results, okay?"
An hour. It was only supposed to be an hour long wait. Lorna averted her eyes onto the clock as she sat tapping her foot atop the tiled floor beneath. It would be an hour in, according to the clock, forty-five minutes. She turned her head away from it and focused her eyes down on her hands that rest in her lap. Only fifteen minutes had gone by since the blood was taken from her skin, she sighed. She could have sworn it was an hour. It felt closer to that than the measly fifteen minutes the time was trying to convince her of.
Forty-five minutes was going to drag. A breath inhaled sharply through her nose. What the hell was she supposed to do in the waiting room of a hospital for that length of time? Like fuck she was going to stop by her father's room. He was the whole fucking reason they were sitting here right now waiting for the results of that damned blood test. She swallowed a gob of saliva and crossed a leg over her other. The pocket of her jeans felt bulky against the hand she had laying atop it and she lightly chuckled when she remembered her phone was inside it.
Retrieving the phone from the pocket, she flipped open the top and browsed through it mindlessly. Eyes came over Nicky's contact and she hesitated for a second. Should she call her? What the hell would she say? A sigh came out. She certainly didn't want to discuss this with her, right now, and end up worrying her over it. Nicky already worried way too much for her. It wasn't until she heard the dial tone coming from the phone that she realized her thumb automatically clicked on the call button beside her name.
The phone was swiftly lifted up to her ear, listening through the numerous rings before the call finally picked up. Her mind ran a mile a minute as she tried to come up with a reason for calling Nicky. Or more a reason for why she had spent the school day avoiding her. She swallowed uneasily, eyes gazing down at the marble-tiled flooring. It hadn't been purposeful that Lorna avoided her through the day—she was just rushing around trying to make sure she didn't get on Annalisa's bad side, once again, with their science project.
Her eyes shut as a breath inhaled through the nostrils of her nose. At least busying herself with a phone conversation would make the forty-five minutes pass quicker, she thought. Hoped. "Hi, Nicky. It's me Lorna," the statement slipped out rather effortlessly. She wanted to face-palm herself for saying such an obvious thing but refrained from doing so.
"I know it's you, doll," a warm chuckle made its way from Nicky's throat. She sat out on the porch, a coffee in one hand while her other held the phone up to her ear. Quickly, however, the chuckle dissipated and in its wake a frown was left sitting on her face. Eyes looked out into the street where a few bunnies hopped about on the sidewalks. She watched intently until they faded into the void.
Air was inhaled through her mouth. Worry lines had creased onto the flesh of her forehead the second she noticed Lorna's number light-up the screen of her phone. They hadn't seen each other since Sunday afternoon right before Lorna left to head home. Uneasiness loomed over her, mind pondering over what could possibly be the culprit of such thing.
"That's the point of caller ID, yeah? To know who's calling," an innate laugh left the both of them at the comment Nicky made. She opened her mouth and sucked in a deep breath of the fresh spring air. "I didn't see ya at school at all, Lorna. You doing okay?"
Lorna tapped the tips of her shoes against the ground beneath where they rested. Her head nodded in acknowledgment to the words her girlfriend had just commented on through the receiver of the phone. Though she knew Nicky couldn't see the nod, it was a natural response for her to do so regardless. "I know, hon, I'm sorry. I wasn't tryna avoid ya or nothin', I just I had to rush to make sure I got my science project done in time. If I get an A on it then I won't fail the class," she spoke softly into the phone, cupping her hand around the bottom of it so that no one else was able to eavesdrop.
Despite having some reservations on whether she truly believed her girlfriend's explanation, Nicky chose to not confront her further on the matter. At least not right now. Instead, she shifted the positioning of her legs and took a long sip of her coffee. There was a rather faint uneasiness inflected in the other's voice which Nicky quickly picked up on. The lines on her forehead only strengthened with the growing concern consuming her. "Yeah? That project with Annalisa? Please tell me she helped with it. You didn't do all the work, did you babe?"
"Course' she helped, she, uh, she picked the topic and, erm, researched it." Lorna felt a random itch on her arm and swiftly lifted her free hand to scratch it away. The words came out of her in such a fumbled fashion that it certainly wouldn't surprise her if Nicky wasn't convinced by them. Even she had a hard time believing what she said. Clearly, Annalisa did nothing to assist with the assignment. That was all on Lorna to complete.
"Yeah?" Nicky's head shook, however, at her girlfriend's answer. The many uhs and erms that spilled from her mouth swayed Nicky to suppose none of what Lorna had said was the truth. She bit down on her lower lip and turned head to peer out into Red's newly started garden. Well, rather, her cleaned and prepped garden area since the weather was still too cold to grow anything. "What part of the project did she do, doll? Not just research, either, like actual work—what did she do?"
The query had a knot meld into Lorna's stomach and a gulp swallowed down. She busied her free hand with the strap of her purse, nervously twisting and untwisting it. Nicky knew exactly the questions to stumble her with, she acknowledged. "Erm, she's gonna give the presentation in fronta the class on Friday, hon. With, um, the PowerPoint she made," head bobbed up and down with everything that she said. Eyes focused on the twist she was doing to the brown purse straps around her fingers.
Drawing in a breath, Nicky gave a slow nod and finished off of her coffee with a vastly huge mouthful. The statement wasn't completely buying her persuasion, yet, it was sufficient that she didn't find the need to dawdle further on it. "Good. She better be putting effort in too, kid. You're too much of a people pleaser sometimes but I'm just glad the bitch is at least doing the hard part. I know how anxiety inducing talking in front of a big crowd is for you, baby, so at least ya don't have to deal with that."
Lorna bounced her head up, the corners of her lips forming into a small smile. Thankful Nicky didn't interrogate her any farther. She sighed, though, remembering where she was when the sound of a nurse on the loud speaker paging a doctor caught the attention of her ears. It was quite boisterous and she hoped Nicky hadn't been able to hear it, too. That would only lead to another round of questioning.
Eyes squinted inquisitively on Nicky's face; ears clearly made out the word doctor coming through the receiver of the phone. Where the hell was Lorna? The worry intensified. "Where ya at, kid? I heard some strange voice mumble out doctor in the background—are you at the hospital? Are you okay, baby? What's going on?"
Lorna swallowed a lump.
