When My Adoptive Sister Came Back

Chapter 5 — The Line He Drew

The room did not change when the call ended. Beeps kept time. The IV tugged. The window held its square of gray. Jacob stayed where he was, at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets like a man guarding a door only he could see.

“I won't go," I said. The words were quiet and plain.

“You will," he answered. His voice had the hard shine he saved for councils. “This is not a debate, Olivia. It's your duty."

He had a way of saying duty that stripped it of people. He was angry, but this was not the kind that threw things. It was cleaner than that. His anger was a straight line he meant to make me walk. I watched him look past the IV, past the sheet, past my face to the picture in his head where all of this was logistics and not a life.

In his thoughts, everything was simple. Camila was my sister; sisters did not nurse grudges. A welcome was a form. A Luna showed up and bent the weather toward grace. He told himself I made storms where a light rain would do. He told himself I liked the sound of thunder.

“You'll dress," he said. “You'll sit. You'll say welcome. It takes an hour. People will know we are strong." He said we the way a man says we when what he means is I.

“I am bleeding," I said. “I'm not going."

He swallowed impatience and made it look like patience. “Lyle will help. You can be carried in if you must." He thought that was kindness. I saw the shape of it and could not call it by his name for it.

“You don't hear me," I said.

He did not hear me because he was listening to an old script that had never made room for my voice. In his head, Camila had been wrong once but was delicate always. In his head, delicacy excused more than harm. In his head, I was the strong one, so strong I didn't need taking care of, so strong I could be carried into a room that would clap for the very girl whose voice had risen sweet from his phone while I bled in an alley.

“You are Luna," he said. “You must be better than your feelings. Camila is your sister. You owe her courtesy." He believed that. He believed that real love looked like forgiveness that never asked anything back.

“I owe my body rest," I said. “I owe myself the truth."

He stepped to the side of the bed. “You owe the pack."

I looked at the IV pole and the clamp and the bag and thought of the list of things I had owed and paid. “I have paid the pack every day."

He flinched, barely. The line he had drawn for himself wavered, then hardened again. He thought of his parents. He thought of elders waiting in chairs polished for guests. He thought of the way people talk when something small goes wrong and of the way they smell fear when something large does. He could not give them that smell. He would rather give them me.

“You will not make me ask again," he said.

I didn't answer. He looked at my face for a long time, searching for a soft place he remembered. He did not find it, and the lack made him angrier than any word I could have said. He took his phone out and called. “Lyle," he said. “Come to the room. Bring a wheelchair."

I closed my eyes. The machines kept their count. My breath tried to even out and failed. Footsteps moved toward us from the hall—quick, careful, trained to enter quietly.

Lyle came in with two guards. They stopped just inside the door, eyes measuring the space, then slid to Jacob for orders. Lyle's face held apology before he spoke.

“Sir?" he asked.

“Help her dress," Jacob said. “We leave in twenty minutes."

“Dr. Chen ordered bed rest," Lyle said. “No movement." His voice was level, but the warning lived inside it.

“I overrule it," Jacob said. “I will answer to the doctor. I will answer to everyone. Do it."

He meant it. He would answer to everyone but me.

“Don't touch me," I said to Lyle. I didn't make it a plea. I made it a rule.

He hesitated. The guards did not. One reached for the IV pole; the other reached for the sheet.

Pain came like lightning, white and exact, when I pushed up on my elbow too fast. The room tilted. The IV line tugged. The monitor spiked and shouted. Heat flooded low, sudden and wrong.

“Stop," I said. The word came out thin, but it meant what it meant.

“Up," Jacob said. “Enough drama. We're late." He told himself he was being steady. He told himself I needed his steady hand. He told himself that if he yielded now, I would learn to use tears like a weapon. He did not see that I had none left.

Lyle moved between us fast and held up both hands. “Sir, we should wait for the physician." His eyes flicked to the sheet where the stain spread like a map drawn in a shaking hand.

Jacob saw it then, the red growing out from me the way a shadow grows when a cloud takes the sun. He saw it and still his mind tried to fit it into a box he knew. “It's a scare," he said. “She can walk." He had told himself Camila needed help and that I needed rules. He had lived on those two sentences long enough that they felt like truth.

My knees found the floor. The tile was cold and hard and sure of itself. I tried to stand and the world made no room for the attempt. The guard's hand came toward my shoulder. I lifted my palm and struck his cheek. The sound was small and bright.

“Do not lay hands on your Luna," I said. It came out clean. It came out like something I had carried for years and finally set down in the right place.

The door hit the wall. Dr. Chen came in with the weather at her back. “Out," she said. “All of you, out." She crossed to me and the room changed around her, as if everything finally remembered what it was for.

“She's fine," Jacob said. “We only need—"

“You need to listen," Dr. Chen said, already gloving, already pressing pads, already putting her hands where the blood said they belonged. “Nurse!" She didn't raise her voice; she bent the air until it obeyed. “Clamp the line. CBC. Crossmatch."

The nurse slid in on quiet shoes, eyes wide but hands sure. Lyle stayed where he was, at the foot of the bed, face white as new paper. The guards took a step back and another.

“She fell," one mumbled.

“She was dragged," Dr. Chen said without looking up. “By stupidity." She glanced at the IV, at the red, at the monitor's frantic climb. “Breathe with me," she told me. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth." Her voice made a ledge in a fast river. I held to it.

Jacob's jaw worked. He looked at the stain, at my face, at the pads Dr. Chen pressed down with careful force. He looked at the clock. He looked at the door. He tried to decide which way leadership lay.

“Step outside," Dr. Chen said to him. “Wait in the hall."

“This is my wife," he said, as if the word conferred rights beyond listening.

“This is my patient," she said. “Outside."

He stared at her as if she had spoken a new language. Then Lyle's “Please, sir," put a small crack in the wall. Jacob took a step back, then another. He stood in the doorway as if a string tied him to the frame.

“Olivia," he said.

I didn't turn. I breathed to Dr. Chen's count.

He lingered, and in his head the line he had drawn faltered. He saw the welcome dim. He saw the elders waiting. He saw Camila's face, the practiced tremble, the eyes that made everyone feel generous. He also saw the square of red growing across a sheet he had not changed and a floor he had not mopped. He had not imagined ever having to choose between cleaning up and being seen as clean.

“Outside," Dr. Chen said again.

He moved at last. The door shut on him and the air drew back like a throat after a cough.

“Better," the nurse said, more to herself than to anyone else, as the numbers edged down from chaos to fast.

“Keep pressure," Dr. Chen murmured. “Good. Good." Her hands did not tremble. Mine did, but less.

Lyle cleared his throat at the door. “Doctor, may I—"

“Stay if you are useful," she said. “Otherwise, wait."

“I'm sorry," he told me. He sounded like a man confessing to a small theft after witnessing a crime.

“You will be useful," Dr. Chen said for both of us. “You will keep anyone from coming through that door unless I call them."

“Yes, Doctor," he said, squaring himself to the hall like a guard who had remembered how to guard.

Time turned viscous. The work narrowed to pads and clamps and a beat that needed shepherding back to steady ground. The room smelled like antiseptic and iron. It sounded like gloves and breath. It felt like the kind of silence that belongs to people who are all doing the same necessary thing.

When the worst passed, the bright red slowed to a persistent seeping and then to a stubborn stain. Dr. Chen did not let up until the stain admitted it had told its piece. She eased her hands back the way a person eases back from a cliff's edge. She nodded to the nurse. “Hold here." She checked the line, checked the numbers, checked my eyes.

“You're all right," she said. “You're not all right, but you're here."

“I'm here," I said, and the words were a tired kind of relief.

Dr. Chen straightened and turned to Lyle. “Bring him in."

“No," I said. The word came out without heat. It did not need any.

She studied my face for a second that felt like a minute. “All right," she said. “Then I'll go to him."

She wiped her gloves on a pad, stripped them off, and smoothed her coat as if order were a thing you could put back on with buttons. She opened the door. Jacob stood there with his hands on his hips, the posture of a man who didn't know where else to put them.

He started to speak. Dr. Chen lifted a hand. “Listen instead," she said. She used the same tone she had used for me and for the bleeding—a tone that made room for exactly what was true and nothing extra. “Alpha Jacob, your wife has miscarried."

He did not bow his head. He did not curse. He did not ask a question. He went still in a way that made the hall seem louder for a breath, then very quiet. The line he had drawn for himself vanished like chalk in rain.

Inside the room, the beeps kept time. The IV tugged. I looked at the ceiling and let the word land without asking it to do anything it could not do.

And nothing more was said.