Chapter Eighty

The room was bright with sunlight pouring in through one of the windows a few feet away from the back of her bed. Lorna squinted her eyes immediately upon opening them from the pain such brightness caused them. They quickly deterred off of the sunlight and over onto the clock, reading the time was nearing seven thirty in the morning. With her focus still on said clock, she noticed out of the corner of her eye a silhouette of a human shadow seemingly sitting in a chair nearby.

Her entire head shifted in position of where she caught a glimpse of the figure and once she'd gotten a better view of who's shadow it was, her face scrunched up slightly to see that it was not only Mrs. Chapman but Mr. Chapman as well. Both occupying the chairs directly across from where her bed resided. The wife looked her over with her usual displeased mien while Mr. Chapman stared in concern. Lorna cleared her throat and sat herself up more in the bed. Arms crossing naturally over her chest, unsure of why the two of them were there now. After three days of not even calling to see if she was alive.

"How did ya know I was here? Neither a ya called me or nothin' to ask what was going on so I'm curious how ya found where I am," Lorna coldly interrogated, a frown melding onto her face as she retained her stare between the two adults. Most of her bitterness was meant for Mrs. Chapman, really. Mrs. Chapman was fake with her since the day she was brought to their house. And the way she sat in that chair, lackadaisically, boiled the blood underneath her skin.

Carol gritted her teeth at the tone in the teenager's voice. Neither of her children ever spoke to her in a tone as icy as the one she just listened Lorna speak to her in. Which only made her loathe the fact that she and her husband were fostering her. How could they open their beautiful home to someone as bratty as Lorna? She grinded harder on her teeth and crossed a leg over her other. "You think it's our fault we didn't know where you were?" The tone inflected through her voice matched that of the younger girl's.

Swallowing thickly, Mr. Chapman turned his head momentarily away to roll his eyes without anyone witnessing. Sometimes he questioned why he married a person so high-strung like his wife was. She always had to make things about her when it came to other people's problems. He shook his head, took in a breath, and returned his awareness back onto the young brunette lying in the hospital bed across from where he sat. A hard nudge was given to his wife, silently telling her to cool it.

"No, Carol, Lorna's right. We are legally responsible for her and we should have been the ones to find out what was going on. She's a child," Bill sternly stated to his wife, looking at her with a serious expression etched upon his face.

A scoff was heard coming from Carol's throat. She shook her head spitefully as she met her husband's stare with her own blue eyes. It was his fault they were in the current predicament they were in, she deemed. If he hadn't have had his holier-than-thou mid-life epiphany crisis of wanting to take in some poor, sorry excuse of a child, child, they wouldn't be standing in this damn hospital with an ungrateful teenager staring them down like they were the spawn of Satan.

"Regardless of that," the blonde woman chimed, teeth still tightly gritted together, "You could have easily called us, Lorna. You're lucky I have all your shoes laced with a chip. Otherwise Bill and I would still be sitting at home wondering where the hell our foster child is." She drew in a dramatic breath of air, tilting her head back and gazing up at the ceiling.

Sickened with his wife's behavior, Bill brought a hand up to his forehead and rubbed vigorously at one of his temples. He settled on ignoring her altogether and instead turned his attention onto the brunette sat-up in the bed ahead. A sympathetic frown formed on his face as he looked the young girl over in a methodic manner. Despite how his wife felt, he truly wanted to foster children and teenagers who needed it. He wanted to help, to give back. And Lorna, clearly, was in a place where she needed help. Figuratively and literally.

He slowly exhaled out a breath and folded his hands neatly together atop his lap. "Don't mind Carol," he stated, wagging a hand away from his wife. "Are you okay, Lorna? How come you're in the hospital?"

Don't mind Carol. Don't mind Carol. If Carol weren't sitting directly in front of her with that dark look on her face, Lorna would have broken into laughter right then and there. She didn't need to be told twice not to mind Carol. She wouldn't mind Carol regardless of if she was told to or not. Carol was nothing to her. Carol was a sad excuse for a mother—not even a quarter of the mother that Stansie was. No one could compare to Stansie but Carol couldn't compare to even a fraction of her. Not even a damn fucking fraction, Lorna thought with the shake of her head.

Lorna swallowed down her emotions the best she could and fixed her eyes away from fucking Carol, onto Bill. The harder she glanced at him the more she realized how different he was from the blonde woman beside him. She could see that he did actually care for her well-being, that he was genuinely concerned. Unlike Mrs. fucking Chapman. Who's stare was enough to patronize her without the words that always followed.

"I'm okay, Mr. Chapman. I, uh, I just I had a little incident the other day at an appointment and they just, erm, wanted to make sure I was fine."

"What kind of incident was it? And what kind of appointment?" Mr. Chapman gently questioned, eyebrows inquisitively arched above his eyes. It left an uneasy sensation over him knowing the teenager he and his wife were temporarily responsible for had appointments she was keeping hidden from them. Made him wonder if there was something seriously medically wrong with her that the social workers negated informing the two of them of.

The brunette sucked down on her bottom lip, unsure of how to respond to the questions being asked of her. She pulled the threaded blanket a little closer to her, mainly as a way to distract herself for a few extra seconds. A few extra seconds she hoped would somehow help her think of a way to answer but really only added to the confusion she was already experiencing.

Fingers brushed along the threaded fabric as she focused her eyes at the foot of the bed. "Uh, just uh, it was an appointment with a therapist. I got kinda dizzy when I was there and I guess she just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with me so that's why I'm here but I should be discharged soon," her voice grew faster with each word that came from her mouth. She refused to look at either adult, not comfortable seeing what either thought of her for sharing such a disclosure with them.

A therapist. Mrs. Chapman's eyes widened and sunk back to their original position right after. Head shook even more after hearing the reasoning for Lorna's being in the hospital. She wasn't even that shocked to hear Lorna was seeing a therapist. That girl had a lot of issues, she noted that the day the social worker dropped her off at their estate. Hearing it aloud was only confirmation of what she'd expected.

"You have a therapist and decided to keep this from my husband and I why? We're your foster parents and have the right to know these things, Lorna," Carol muttered, her voice becoming curter by the second. She shook her head harder. "You just prove more and more how much of a troubled teen you are, you know that? It's like you want us to send you back. Is that what you want? To go back to whatever broken home you came from?"

Loudly standing up from his chair, so loud and forcibly that it shook upon his release, Mr. Chapman turned and threw his hands exhaustively in the air right in front of his wife's face. "That's enough. That is just enough, Carol. If you don't want to be here and show compassion to Lorna then just leave. Okay? Just get up and leave, Carol. Your words and yelling aren't accomplishing anything here. Maybe the reason she kept this from us is because she didn't want to be looked at the way you're looking at her now. Or belittled like you've been doing to her since she came into our house," he shook his head as he spoke, motioning a hand in the air towards the door.

Getting up from her own chair—louder and rougher than her husband did his—Carol stomped her way nearer the door. However right as she reached her hand for the knob, she paused and shifted her head to look the two of them over with. "If you want to keep this problematic child then you better make the hell sure she's under control or else the next time something like this occurs I will make certain the social worker is called. And I will gladly tell her to come retrieve this delinquent. And make sure she tells any other foster parents how bad she is so they know what the hell they're getting themselves into taking a teen like her in," she muttered distastefully before finally pulling the knob of the door and exiting out of it much more dramatically than was truly needed.

With the door unnecessarily slammed shut, Mr. Chapman breathed in slowly and returned his attention back on the young teenager. He went back to sit in the chair, relieved that his wife was no longer there to spew out any more insensitive insults at the girl they were supposed to be providing a stable, caring, environment for. Something Carol ruined any time she opened her mouth to speak in Lorna's presence.

"I'm sorry about her," he started off, shamed of his own wife's behavior and actions.

They were supposed to be the adults here. The responsible guardians for Lorna and Carol's behavior depicted otherwise. Made her look like a child. An immature child who wasn't fit to foster even a cat or dog, he sadly came to realize. Maybe taking Lorna in wasn't the best idea. Hell, he thought, maybe fostering at all wasn't the best idea. They weren't cut out for fostering. At least Carol wasn't and he couldn't foster Lorna or any other child without Carol's cooperation. He couldn't allow any child to witness what behavior Carol had just displayed in front of their current foster child ever. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right.

Lorna shrugged her shoulders and retreated further into the pillows resting behind her. Carol's words weren't anything compared to the abuse she'd been dished out by her own father and uncle. She could handle being yelled at perfectly fine. If what Carol did could even be considered yelling, she thought. In comparison to Mr. Morello's yelling, what Carol did was merely a loud whisper. Hell, despite how much she didn't like Carol, Lorna would gladly choose spending three years putting up with her over three years back with her dad. Carol was a saint when being equated with Mr. Morello.

"It's fine. I've dealt with worse," she nonchalantly replied, shrugging her shoulders in concurrency.

A big breath of air expelled through her windpipe. Eyes peeked a glance at the clock and she was saddened to see only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time she looked at it. The more time she spent in the damn hospital the slower it went. Fifteen minutes felt more like a century. Hours felt like a millennium and days felt like a goddamn eternity or two. It was fucking agonizing how slow time passed in there. She just wanted to be discharged. To go back to her mundane life.

Mr. Chapman fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat upon hearing such a comment from the young girl's mouth. He stared straight ahead at the wall, focusing on the minute splotches of off-colored white paint. "Has the doctor come by yet this morning?" The question easily slipped out, hoping the abrupt subject change would ease away the discomfort settling over him.

"No, I don't think so."

Nodding his head, Bill moved his stare onto Lorna once more and sighed. "Okay, good, I'll stay until the doctor comes by then. See what's going on with you and if we need to be checking on you more than we have been."

Lorna squinted her eyes unnervingly after hearing his revelation. Fingers played with the cotton of the blanket sprawled out upon her but her eyes remained straight ahead, peering directly back at the man who was watching her. But watching her in a way that wasn't menacing or sensually like either her dad or Uncle George always had. She swallowed and thought back to when her mom had taken her to a hospital right after she'd found out about the sexual assault situation. Maybe her mom was right when she told her that not all men were like those two who'd hurt her. Who scarred her so bad she thought it was abnormal to feel anything other than pain and agony.

Because the longer her stare lingered on the gentleman across the room the more she realized he wasn't there to hurt or take advantage of her. And it felt strange, abnormally strange. Other people likely wouldn't even contemplate half the thoughts plaguing her mind in that moment but—of course—those same people also probably hadn't been violated by their own relatives. Or beaten by their own fathers' day in and day out like she had.

However, all of those thoughts weren't enough to stop her from honing in on the last sentence spoken to her by Mr. Chapman. Her self-hatred always had to have the last word—or in this case, the last thought. She couldn't feel warm and fuzzy for too long, she didn't deserve to feel that way anyway. She was a bad fucking seed, after all. And bad seeds deserved no warm, fuzzy, sensations. No, bad seeds deserved agony. Pain. Mutilation of every last part of their bodies.

By the time she pushed herself from her mind, she had no time to respond as the door to her room swung open and revealed the doctor entering through with a clipboard in one hand and stack of papers in the other. Lorna let her head fall back against the pillow and hoped to god those papers in her doctor's hands were papers stating she was finally being discharged.

The doctor made her way over to the side of Lorna's bed, gazing down at her with a friendly smile before twisting her head around to look over at the unfamiliar man sitting in one of the chairs adjacent to the bed. "Hi, who are you? Are you Lorna's guardian?" She shuffled the papers in her hands, eyebrows arched above her eyes as she kept her gaze unnervingly on him.

Having her doctor interrogate her foster parent suddenly brought a small warmth over her. No adult in her life, aside from her mother, had ever done such a thing before. It made her feel like she was cared for. Even if by a stranger. That her life wasn't just for other people's bemusements. She looked between the two adults, not having moved from her recent position change.

"I'm Bill Chapman, one of Lorna's foster parents. Is everything okay with her? How long will she need to stay here?"

Nodding her head, the doctor shifted her eyes onto the clipboard for a second and tried to keep her emotions from displaying out either on her face or through her voice. It certainly wasn't her place to be speaking on emotions. Even if she found it rather absurd that the foster parents of her patient hadn't come by at all until this morning. No, she told herself, she had no right getting in any of their business. No matter how badly it perturbed her to think about.

"Good to meet ya, Mr. Chapman," the doctor greeted, pursing her lips back into a friendly smile. A slightly tighter friendly smile. "I'm Lorna's doctor, doctor Gonzales. Well, she's been in here since Wednesday and today's Saturday. That's what—four days almost. Did ya not know she was in the hospital? I'm confused. You claim to be her foster parent but yet this is my first time meeting you and I've been looking after Lorna the entire time."

Lorna should have felt bad for the way her doctor was interrogating Mr. Chapman. She should have felt guilty and shameful but she didn't. The whole ordeal made her feel a sense of relief. Like for once she wasn't the only person who found it utterly unfair that her own foster family hadn't reached out to her in those three days she'd been trapped there. She curled up onto her side and watched the interaction between them. For once she felt important. Important enough that a complete stranger felt inclined to fight for her.

Mr. Chapman looked down at the ground where his shoes planted into below. Doctor Gonzales made a valid point, he noted. Lorna was his and Carol's responsibility and they failed her by not reaching out to her in the four days they hadn't heard or seen from her. She was a child, who was under their care. They were terrible people to not even call her. He shook his head at himself. There were no words he could say that would excuse the actions he and Carol took or rather, lack thereof.

"My wife and I were unaware of Lorna's whereabouts. My wife just assumed she was out at her friend's house and I blindly assumed that too. There had been a prior instance where Lorna spent an entire weekend at her friend's house without ever telling either of us so it kind of made sense to me. But by last night, after not hearing from her at all, I started to realize how dumb Carol and I had been for not doing anything sooner."

Sharing a momentary look at her patient, Doctor Gonzales swallowed and flipped the page on her clipboard without even glancing it over. It was a gesture more to distract herself than anything else. The words she heard spewing from the man's mouth were ones she had a challenging time believing. She did her best to ignore her flaring emotions but she grew close to Lorna in the time she'd been overseeing her care. There was a sense of protectiveness she felt towards her, especially after the other night with having found out about the situation with her actual father. The reason she was in the foster system to begin with.

She knew as a pediatric doctor in a town like this it was normal to see patients who were in the system like Lorna. And that her emotions needed to come second to her job but god dammit she was a human being. Emotions and being human didn't come with a damn manual. She drew in a deep breath and handed a consent form to Mr. Chapman. Despite the reluctance she had towards it. "Lorna will be discharged this afternoon but I still think it would be wise for her to come to my office for a check-up in a week. Her bloodwork is better but not where I would like it to be. I have an outpatient clinic a couple of miles from here and the address is listed on the top of that sheet I just handed you. I have an appointment date and time written on there as well," she spoke in a professional tone, trying to keep it matter-of-fact to cover up the whirling emotions.

Mr. Chapman used his thumb to push his glasses to the back of the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes as they peered through the lenses down onto the paper he was holding out in front of them. "Eating disorder?" He muttered to himself, shifting his head up from the document so that he could stare back at the doctor with a puzzled mien upon his face. "What's this about an eating disorder? I thought Lorna was just here because of some dizziness she was experiencing?" He switched his gaze over onto the girl in the bed, waving a hand at her to get her attention, "Didn't you say you had a dizzy spell or something while you were at therapy the other day?"

Swallowing a thick ball of saliva that nestled at the bottom of her closed mouth, Lorna squeezed her eyes shut and tried to steady her breathing with her mind. This couldn't be real, she said to herself, this had to be some big, horrible, nightmare. It certainly didn't feel real. She swallowed a second time and noticed how dry her throat seemed. Another swallow, no improvement. She brought the cover further up to her body as if hiding herself would somehow make this entire situation all better.

As if things couldn't get more awkward, they did. Doctor Gonzales fixed her eyes on the clipboard so that neither her patient nor her patient's foster parent had the ability to see what expression was held upon her face at that particular moment. She couldn't wrap her mind around how clueless this Mr. Chapman appeared to be. Teeth grinded over teeth as she breathed in a few, long, breaths.

After a few seconds longer, she lifted her eyes up from the object held out in front of them and averted them back towards Mr. Chapman. Unsure what to make of the man. "How long have you and your wife been fostering Lorna for?"

Puzzlement etching on his face, Bill scrunched his nose slightly while returning the doctor's gaze. What the hell did that have to do with anything? The query popped through his mind. Shoulders, however, innately recoiled upwards in a shrug. "It's been maybe two weeks now. Why? I don't see how that's relevant to what I asked," he spoke in an even, calm, voice. Unclear of what this person was trying to get at.

"Okay, so you've had Lorna living in your house…under your roof…for two weeks?" The dark-haired doctor repeated in the form of a question, an eyebrow curved up as she retained her stare on Mr. Chapman.

She shouldn't be doing this, she thought, it wasn't her place to interrogate anyone. Yet, it utterly baffled her how this man and whoever the hell his wife was had a foster child for a mere two weeks and were somehow unaware she had an eating disorder. When it was clear just by a quick glance over the girl that something wasn't right. And not only that but the fact their foster child happened to be away from their house for four days and, yet, neither parent found it worth looking into until now?

Her head shook. Something about the whole thing seemed fishy. She sighed, watching as the man uneasily nodded his head. Her head mirrored his movement with a nod of her own. "Okay. Lorna's been staying with you and your wife for two weeks and neither one of you noticed how frail she appeared?"

"Look, I don't know what you're doing here but I don't think it's fair for you to talk to me like I'm some criminal. I know I should have done something before today to get in contact with her but that doesn't mean I wasn't worried or that I'm evil."

"I overstepped my boundaries, I'm sorry. But I'm also not sorry because my patient, here, has been through a lot and I just am looking out for her well-being," Doctor Gonzales responded, apologizing while at the same time not apologizing. A breath of air escaped through her windpipe as her ears absorbed what was said to them. "Just make sure to bring her by my office next week for the appointment listed on that paper I gave you, okay? And if she looks pale or faint any time before, bring her back here."

Before turning to head back out the door, she stopped and shifted her position so she could give one final sympathetic glance towards Lorna. A small smile was given, "Take care of yourself, will ya? I'll see you in a week and please keep up with your therapy—I spoke with Doctor Washington yesterday and she let me know you have your next appointment with her next Tuesday. That's good."


It was early afternoon when Lorna finally arrived back at the Chapman's house. Not exactly where she wanted to go but it was definitely better than being trapped in that god-forsaken hospital any longer. Directed to situate herself on the couch in the less formal living room, Lorna abided and placed her shoes on the shoe-rack before making her way over to sit down on the sofa. A throw blanket rested on the back of the vertical cushion behind where her spine was touching and so she carefully pulled it out, wrapping it around her legs and waist.

She leaned slightly onto the arm of the couch, legs curled up underneath her and stared ahead at the blank television screen. Her eyes drifted between open and shut the longer she lounged in her spot. They only remained open when they caught sight of Mr. Chapman approaching nearer to her with a cup of tea and small plate of food in his hands. Discomfort instantly settled into the pit of her stomach in the form of a tightly tied knot.

Setting the plate down on the end-table right near the sofa Lorna was seated on, Bill gestured his hand towards it while looking the young brunette wearily over. "That's a turkey and cheese sandwich with tomato, lettuce, and mayo on it," he carefully told her and then reached out to hand her the cup of tea he'd still been holding onto. "This is lemon ginger tea. I used to make this meal for Piper and Cal when they were younger and home sick from school. Figured it might do you some good, now. I hope that's okay, it's been a while since I've made any sandwiches for anyone. Now that those two are older, they don't like my cooking as much."

Gratefully taking the warm cup of delightfully smelling tea, Lorna gave a small nod of her head. She cradled her hand around the mug, letting its fumes rise up into the nostrils of her nose. The scent soothed her rather quickly. She lifted it to her mouth and took a long, drawn out, sip of the warm liquid. Which warmed her throat the entire trip down. After, she set it on one of the coasters on the end-table beside where she sat.

Eyes apprehensively stared between the plate of sandwich and up towards Mr. Chapman. The gesture was kind and appreciated but she couldn't even remember the last time she consumed an entire sandwich. And the one on the plate next to her tea appeared rather large than what she would consider a normal sized sandwich. "Erm, thank you. I'm not real hungry but it looks nice."

"That's okay, you can pick at it. You don't have to eat it all once if you don't want but you do need to eat some."

Lorna sighed, nodding her head slowly. Then her eyes grew a tad bit. "Would it be okay if I have my friend over? I forgot to tell her I'm outta the hospital and she was gonna drop by to see me."

Curving an eyebrow, Mr. Chapman stared her over but waved a hand and bobbed his head. "Your girlfriend, Nicky? Sure, as long as you let me know if you end up going to her house or anything."

Once he'd left the room a second time and Lorna was left alone with her thoughts, she reached for her phone in her pocket and scrolled through the contact list until she came to Nicky's number. A few rings sounded through her ear until the lined picked up and Nicky's voice huskily greeted her on the other side of the phone. "Hi, Nicky. I'm outta the hospital and back at the Chapman's house. Do ya wanna come over? I, uh, I could use the company. Mr. Chapman made me a sandwich and kinda expects me to eat it at some point," she asked, looking over her shoulder at the untouched plate.

"Of course, babe, of course I'll come over. Thank god you're finally outta that place. Now we don't have to worry about your dad tryna do anything. You must be so relieved, yeah?"

A thick swallow was had and an unnerved smile spread upon her face. He may have not been in the same vicinity as her anymore but that didn't mean she was entirely off his radar. However, she refrained from saying anything further on that and instead rested her head onto the arm of the sofa. "Yeah, hon, I'm real relieved. And very glad to not be attached to an IV anymore. My hand is still sore from how hard the nurse pulled it outta me."

Nicky frowned, stroking the edge of her phone. "Aw, poor doll. I'll be over in about fifteen minutes and I'll make your hand feel all better, baby."