Jessica narrows her eyes on me. “Are we playing the State the Obvious Game? If so, you smell weird – like toilet cleaner – and you really have no understanding of what privacy means.”
I ignore her digs, make a mental note never to use the gym shower gel again, and inch a little closer to her now she’s finally sitting up in bed, her back leaning against her pillows.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She blinks, her pupils fixed on me. “Is that a trick question?”
My eyes search around her as if to find more information because I’m confused. Very confused.
“It’s not a trick question. You’ve been crying. I’m asking what’s wrong.”
“Everything!” Jessica says loudly, or as loudly as she can. She coughs after the exertion and I wait, watching to see if it getsworse, but after clearing her throat a few times, she’s talking again. “Look at me, Loncey. Look at me. I’m twenty-six and I live at home with my mother and my brother. I don’t have any friends apart from Taylor, who I’m fairly certain only hangs around with me because of guilt or pity or because it gives her good karma or something. Most of my CF friends are now all living busy lives because of their modulators, working, getting married, starting families. And the others like me who can’t take modulators, we can never hang out together in person because it’s too fucking risky. I don’t work. I still haven’t finished school. All I do is sit at home all day, every day. And when I do try and go out and do something a bit different, or rather a bit morenormal, I get sick. Really sick.”
“Jess—” I say when I think she’s finished, but I quickly learn she hasn’t.
“Tell me honestly, can you imagine being my age and living the life I lead? I know that when you were twenty-six you were taking care of me a lot of the time, and helping Mom pay the bills and working your ass off, but don’t you see how I wish, wish so fucking hard that that was my reality over… this.” She gestures at her small frame tucked under the covers. “Don’t you see that?”
I nod. I see it.
“Jessica, I’m sorry, I wish it was different. Every day, I wish it was different. That’s why I try to help you as much as I can. I try to make life as easy as possible for you—”
“I don’t want easy!” Jessica practically yells, her voice going hoarse on the final syllable. “I’m not afraid of hard things. Lord knows I’ve lived a life of hard things. I’m used to dealing with difficult shit. I just wish some of those hard things would get me more than… this.”
A little stunned by her outburst and this direction of the conversation, I pull my shoulders back. I recall my therapist telling me about how most fights between loved ones happenbecause someone tries to offer a solution to somebody’s problem, when in reality they just want to be listened to. “Like… like what, Jessica?”
My question makes her face soften, the frown that was fixed on her forehead melting a little. “Like my own place,” she says, and a small smile appears on her lips but disappears as new tears come to her eyes. “Like a job. Like a social life. Like a… like a relationship. You know, someone to love. Somebody who I can take care of just as much as they take care of me.”
I nod at my sister. I can see just how much she wants all those things in her misty dark eyes and her clenched jaw and the tight fist of one of her hands. It takes great effort, but I manage to ignore the crack splitting my heart open and I school my own disappointment so it doesn’t show in my face. It’s not the first time Jessica has expressed how fed up with her situation she is, but it is the first time I’ve heard her talk about specific things like a relationship, like having someone to love. Because I’d resigned myself to a life of being single, had I assumed my sister was just as comfortable with the same reality?
“Jessica, I’m so sorry,” I say again.
“Stop saying that!” she shouts again, the words still wheezy and weak. “Stop saying you’re sorry. I don’t want your pity. I don’t want anybody’s pity. I just want to be able to… live my life!”
I reach for her hand and I expect her to pull away or not let me take it in my palm and cradle her fingers with mine, but she does. She lets me hold her hand, even loosening the ball her fingers are curled up in.
“Do you feel like this a lot?”
“All the time,” Jessica says on a sigh, “but it doesn’t always get the better of me like this. A lot of the time I can ignore it or distract myself, and then other days, I’m just too tired to care but recently, since the festival, that latest infection, and, well, otherstuff, I can’t help but feel so fucking sad. And I don’t want to feel like that, you know. I don’t want to be miserable.”
“You’re not miserable,” I say firmly with a hand squeeze. “When I came home yesterday you and Taylor were cackling like witches up here and I daren’t think of the moves she was trying to show you when I heard all that godawful European dance music.”
“It’s not awful!” Jessica uses our joined hands to nudge my thigh and the relief I feel at having distracted her from her thoughts for just a few seconds is visceral.
“It sounds like a car alarm going off. Several car alarms.”
“Shit, Loncey, do you know how old you sound?”
“I am old!”
A thoughtful expression lands on Jessica’s face, squinting her eyes and pushing her lips together. I expect her to say something, but she doesn’t and instead her gaze drops to our hands.
“It’s okay to feel sad about your illness, Jessica. We’ve talked about that, with Mom too. And didn’t your therapist also say it was healthy for you to grieve what you feel you’re missing out on?” I clear my throat. “Do you want to try therapy again? Maybe it would help to talk about some of these things.”
“I just talked to you,” Jessica says in a small voice, her gaze still fixed down.
“But I’m your annoying older brother.”
“Emphasis on the old,” she says with a half-smile, looking up at me, and I have to bite back my grin at hearing her crack a joke.
