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Damn it. Why had Dawn kept this a secret?
Mason stiffened. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but I felt a blast of angry chill attack me from his direction, so I glanced over. He glared with so much pent-up anger I actually shrank back. But the meaning in his glower was clear. If I did anything to hurt his little sister, he would make me regret it.
I was tempted to hold my thumbs up in a message-received signal but restrained myself. Bad timing and all that.
“Sarah has CP,” Dawn told me.
“Oh.” I nodded as if I knew what that meant and unconsciously turned Mason’s way with a questioning wrinkle in my brows.
“That’s short for cerebral palsy,” he said, his voice damn near a challenge, daring me to run screaming from the house.
Except I wasn’t really the running and screaming type.
Again, I nodded as if I totally understood and had no problem with it. Really, though, what the hell was cerebral palsy? I’d heard the term plenty of times but had no idea what it actually entailed.
“It’s a muscle disorder,” Dawn answered my unspoken question. “Sarah was born premature, and it injured the motor part of her brain, affecting the muscles in her entire body, from her limbs to trunk to even her tongue and eye muscles. It takes an extreme effort for her just to talk, or chew, or even blink.”
Ohhh. Good to know. But poor Sarah. That kind of life had to suck monkey butt. I glanced at her with a commiserating grimace, which seemed to tick her big brother off something fierce.
“I need to get going,” he broke in, as if he couldn’t bear to stand in the same house with me a second longer.
Bending slightly to kiss Sarah’s cheek—and my, my, how nicely those pants fit his rear to perfection—he said, “Take care, kiddo,” before he stood and ruffled her oak-colored locks, which were the same shade as his own. Then he glanced at his mother and waved goodbye.
When he turned toward me, because he had to since I was standing right by the hallway entrance, his eyes were stormy and filled with silent warning. He didn’t even nod as he brushed past before disappearing down the hall. A second later, I heard the front door open and close. And he was gone.
I felt rattled after his departure, but his mother didn’t seem to notice anything strange at all.
“So this is Sarah’s picture board,” she told me. I jerked to attention, not daring to miss any vital piece of information. “If she has trouble understanding something you’re saying, you can always point at a picture to communicate. And likewise, she can do the same in order to speak to you.”
I nodded, soaking in as much as I could.
“Her supper’s already ready. I have her meal blended and sitting in the refrigerator. Just pop a straw in. We keep them in this cupboard.” Dawn paused to open a nearby cabinet door so she could point out their location. “And hold it to her mouth for her. She’ll probably try to talk you into letting her hold it on her own, but trust me, it’s always less messy if you do it. Make sure she eats in about half an hour. Her evening meal is at 8:30 every night.”
Another nod. Was I soaking this up well enough? I was still so freaked it felt like I was forgetting more directions than retaining. Half an hour suddenly didn’t seem like nearly enough time to learn how to care for Dawn’s daughter.
But she seemed to think I’d do just fine as she showed me Sarah’s bathing chair in the bathtub and explained the girl’s nightly routine.
“Cleaning her teeth is important. But we’ve been having trouble using a toothbrush. It used to be she’d let Mason brush them. But lately, he can’t even get her to open up. She just doesn’t like the bristles. So use a cotton swab and soak it in some toothpaste if you have to. Just do the best you can, and beware of these chompers.” With a grin she tapped Sarah’s chin. “She can bite.”
Oh, joy. I looked forward to the rest of this evening more and more. Not.
We moved through the house, Dawn talking in rapid-fire succession as she pushed the wheelchair ahead of her, making me forget more and more of what she said. As we entered the front room, Dawn stopped Sarah in front of the muted television and smiled at me.
“Oh, and if she has a seizure,” she added as she slipped on her café apron and picked her purse up off the coffee table, “don’t try to stop it, because you can’t. Just make sure she can’t do anything to harm herself and wait it out. Call 911 if she turns colors or if she has more than one.”
With that, she kissed Sarah’s cheek. “Take care, munchkin. I’ll be home by the time you’re awake in the morning.”
And she was out the door.
I panicked. Seizures should never be addressed in a parting comment, I decided. Seizures were scary. And serious. I’d just been left alone with a CP kid I had no idea how to even talk to who had seizures.
I turned slowly from the doorway, praying she wouldn’t fall into convulsions that very second.
“So…” My voice trembled as I clasped my hands together. I was afraid to step toward her, and I had no idea why. She didn’t smell bad or anything. I knew she wasn’t contagious. I was just…ignorant.
But I stretched out my arm as far as I could without moving close and tapped a picture on her board. “Do you want to watch some television?” I asked in a slow, drawling voice.
Sarah knocked the picture board off her lap with a flailing hand—I suspect she did it on purpose. Then, she moaned out the word, “no,” and despite all the bobbing her head did, I could tell she rolled her eyes at me.
