“Alive.”
Reg interjected. “If the ambulance had arrived ten minutes later, she would have had been dead or brain-damaged!”
“Is that all?” her uncle asked, unimpressed. “Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Could have been ebola, eh? One of those flesh-eating bacterias.”
“Ebola’s not a flesh-eating bacteria,” Rainbow muttered, nose in a book.
Reg patted Nev’s shoulder. “This ugly piece of shit saved her life.”
Her aunt with the nose ring frowned at her across the white tablecloth. “Crikey, Brum… Can you still have children?”
Ronnie sighed. Coming here had been a mistake. “Yes, and no.”
“How likely is it to happen again?” her aunt with the nose ring asked.
She picked up a menu and pretended to read it. “More likely.”
“You’ll have to do IVF?”
Ronnie glanced down at the menu, hoping they would take the hint. “Not planning to have any more kids come out of me. What’s new with you?”
“You can’t wiggle off the hook that easy. You’re the news. Everyone wants to hear about your near-death experience. Did you see a white light?” her uncle asked.
Rainbow sucked loudly on her straw. She had already finished a glass of lemonade and the ice at the bottom rattled around under the suction from the straw. “They’re sleeping together.”
Ronnie’s aunts and uncles gasped. Nev blushed. Ronnie touched her arm so she wouldn’t run away.
“Rainbow…” Ronnie warned.
“Ron’s a nun,” Nev muttered. “There’s a kilometer of surgical thread holding her together. She’d ooze out like a bowl of spaghetti.”
“Yuck,” Rainbow said, making a face. “What’s a nun?”
“Me,” Ronnie said.
“A woman married to Jesus,” Reg said.
Rainbow frowned, skeptical. “You’re not married to Jesus.”
“I could be.”
“Don’t joke about that, you’ll offend someone,” Nev muttered.
Ronnie muttered under her breath. “You’re the one who said it!”
“Can’t distract us that easily,” the aunt with the purple hair said. “I need details, Rainbow, show us the receipts.”
“They slept in uncle Mattie’s bed with no clothes on.”
Ronnie shook her head. “Whoa, not true, big exaggeration—we both had underwear on, nothing happened, lot of people do that, it’s totally normal, let’s keep this rated G, please.”
Nev eyed the exits.
Reg touched his sister’s shoulder and shook his head.
“Have you ordered yet?” Ronnie asked, picking up the menu again.
Nev was beet red.
