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"No, I want to puke every five minutes." But she allowed me to help her to her feet. "Can you tranq me first? I don't think I could survive a car ride."
It took ten or so minutes to get to the family care clinic. We had to go to the one that offered public assistance because Ivy didn’t have insurance. After we arrived, we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Thankfully, Ivy's stomach settled, and we didn't have to clean any unpleasant fluids out of the car seats.
"Tucker asked me about apprenticing again. What do you think?"
"Only if you want to do it." She leaned back, stretched her legs out, and rubbed her stomach. "You could work at Riskie's. Jimmy is always looking for new talent. You and Rosie could do some kind of Asian fan dance for the boys with yellow fever. Soon you too can be humping the dance floor in a G-string while college boys and old men stuff rolled-up one dollar bills in your crack."
"That's…a disturbing and very detailed picture."
Ivy grunted. "Happened to one girl
I knew. Rachel Neuron. I think her stage name was Neon Neuron, and she wore this bra that had LED lights in it."
"Would I be the Ice Queen? Maybe I could make up this persona where I was chilly and disdainful, and I wouldn't take off my clothes, but I'd let them pay to touch my high heeled white boots."
Ivy nodded approvingly. "I like that. I like that a lot. Too bad Jimmy would require you to take off the clothes and let them touch your bare booty."
I shook my head and laughed. "I think my chest is too small. They might think I'm a boy."
Ivy and I both looked down at my chest and cracked up. "Jimmy is probably looking to expand to the gay market anyway!"
"Ivy Donovan!" the nurse called out.
"Finally. I felt like I was fossilizing,” Ivy muttered.
"I promise if that happens, I'll keep you forever."
"In your bedroom, bitch. I better be right by the bed at all times." She waggled her eyebrows.
"You are so creepy."
"I'm your older sister." She slung her arm around me, leaning onto my shoulder. "I get to keep watch over you all the time."
"What are your symptoms?" the nurse asked us impatiently.
"She's been vomiting on and off for the last couple of weeks," I jumped in.
The nurse swiveled in her chair, looking up from the computer where she'd been entering information. "Vomiting, huh? How about fatigue, mood changes, and breast soreness?”
Ivy and I exchanged wide-eyed looks. This nurse knew exactly what the problem was.
Walking over to the cupboard, she pulled out a cup. "Why don't you go pee. Down the hall and to the right. First door." With that, she left.
Ivy shrugged, picked up the plastic cup, and left. She was back in another five minutes. Shut up in the small room, Ivy began pacing. Twelve paces to the left. Pivot. Twelve paces to the right. "I hate hospitals."
I refrained from correcting her since we weren’t in a hospital. More importantly I agreed with her. Our experience with hospitals had to do with death or rehab, neither welcome subjects.
Impatient, Ivy started jumping on a step stool in the room. Off and on. On and off. Her frenetic behavior was going to drive me mad soon. She'd always been active, but her drug habit only fueled her inability to sit still. She'd taken meth, mostly. At one time, she admitted the sex when she'd been on meth was so fantastic that she couldn't have it without. Part of why she was addicted, she explained.
"I know."
Ivy had been involuntarily committed once due to her addiction. She’d spent a week hospitalized before they sent her to a local rehabilitation joint. It didn't take. None of them had. The longest she'd been clean was when she was down at the Northville Correctional Facility for six months.
Ivy said prison was fine, and she didn't look worse for wear. It was a minimum security place where she got to take classes in art, knitting, basket weaving, and even accounting.
She said it was like an all-girls camp with all the attendant girl problems. Lots of drama and fighting over the guards, who weren't supposed to sleep with the prisoners but apparently did—all the time.
I was about to haul Ivy to the chair beside me—for my own sanity—when the nurse came back.
