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Six Weeks Earlier…
I wake to hear Adeline,my roommate, best friend, and the closest thing I’ll ever have to a sister or family, moving around in our cramped kitchen. I’ve known Adeline since we were kids and she was placed in the same foster home as me. I had been in the home since birth when my parents gave me up, but Adeline only came to the group home after her parents were killed in a home robbery when she was seven. She had been spending the night at a friend’s house when they were killed. The police had found her there the next morning and told her what happened. They asked if she had any other family but she didn’t know of anyone. Child Protective Services couldn’t find any other family either and so she was placed in the system.
I still remember when they brought her to the foster home. She was holding this pink backpack and staring at her feet. We had gotten other kids at the home who had lost their parents and it was easy to recognize her as one of those kids. They always had this look in their eyes, unimaginable grief or some deep sadness, that the kids who had been in the system since birth never had. The kids who were born into the foster system never had a family and so they never knew what they were missing.
We shared a room at the home and we were inseparable from the start, even though we couldn’t be more different. Adeline is all sweetness and rainbows. The ever-optimistic dreamer. She spends her life trying to see the best in everyone and nothing can ever get her down. She’s got a soft heart. She works at the local animal shelter and is always trying to bring strays home.
Me? I’m more the cautious realist of the two of us. I spend my nights cleaning offices and my mornings working at the corner coffee shop. Afternoons are spent running Adeline to her doctor appointments.
I’ve never had the same sunny outlook that Addy does. I know how terrible people can be and I spend most of my time trying to avoid everyone. Well, everyone except Adeline. I try to spend as much time as I can with her.
See, Adeline? She’s sick. Like really sick. She has a tumor in her brain and needs a craniotomy. Unfortunately, our insurance sucks and between her measly salary from the animal shelter and both of mine, we could never afford to pay for it out of pocket.
We’ve known her diagnosis for almost a year now and most days we just pretend that she’s not sick, but lately, that’s been getting harder and harder to do. Her headaches have been getting worse and she’s fainted twice now in the last six weeks. I know it’s scary to think about her dying because if she dies, I’ll be all alone. Even though I hate to admit it, I’m terrified of being alone, so we really need to come up with some kind of plan.
I hate that this is happening to her and that there’s nothing I can do to help her. She’s had too much pain in her life already and it’s not fair that this is happening to her too.
I reach over and grab my phone off the ground next to the mattress that we share. I only have five minutes before my alarm will go off and I’ll have to get up and go to my shift at the coffee shop.
I push myself up and off the old mattress and stretch as I pad over to the kitchen. Our apartment is just one big room with the living room doubling as our bedroom. Our bedroom/living room runs right into the tiny kitchenette and the only room with a door is the bathroom. Everything is so tight in the space that the two of us can barely stand in the same section at once but it’s been our home for the last four years and I’d rather live in this cramped room with Adeline, than a slightly bigger apartment with four more roommates.
“Morning.” I say with my gravelly morning voice as I make my way over to the coffee pot.
“Morning.” Adeline says as she offers me a cup of coffee.
She smiles at me over the rim of her cup as I thank her and take a sip. I watch her over my own rim and I don’t miss the wince or the flash of pain that shows in her eyes before she tries to hide it. I need to figure out a way for her to get that surgery, I think for the millionth time in the last year.
I watch as she moves around the room, opening our frayed curtains to let some light in and turning on the junky television that we pulled from the trash. She adjusts the rabbit ear antenna until the cartoon channel comes on.
“Did you take your medicine already?” I ask as I make my way over to her pillbox.
When she doesn’t answer, I turn and look at her over my shoulder. She’s staring at the ground and my stomach sinks as I turn back to the pillbox, opening the lid for today. It’s empty and I try the rest of the week to see that they’re all empty too.
“Addy, where are your pills?” I ask as I turn around to face her.
“We wouldn’t have enough for rent if I got them this week. I was going to wait until I got paid on Friday and then go get them.” She says quietly.
I blink, trying to clear the tears from my eyes.
“You need your medicine, Addy.”
“I know, but it’s just a couple of days. I’ll be fine.” She says as she puts her cup in the sink and goes to get dressed.
I want to argue with her but she interrupts me before I can.
“You need to get in the shower or you’ll be late!” She calls from over her shoulder.
My phone alarm goes off as soon as she says that and she laughs as I chug the rest of my coffee and head for the bathroom. I have to step in and turn around in order to close the door and I grumble as I bang my elbow off the wall, trying to get my shirt off. I hear Adeline laugh as I curse and wiggle, finally freeing myself from the shirt and sleep shorts. We do this every morning and once I get into the shower, I reach over and open the door so that Adeline can get in to brush her teeth and do her makeup.
I shower quickly and wrap a towel around my body and another around my hair before squeezing past Adeline and over to the little dresser in the corner of the room. Like everything else in this apartment, we found this dresser and pulled it off of the curb and hauled it home. One of the drawers is broken but even with that, it’s still probably the nicest thing we own.
Our income means that we never quite get enough to eat and with Adeline’s illness, we both have pretty slim frames. Adeline and I are both small, with her standing at only 5’2” and me at 5’4”. Our similar size has one good outcome though and that’s that we can wear the same clothes. Our limited income thanks us for that and it comes in handy when I don’t have time to do laundry one week.
I tug on a pair of her black skinny jeans, black t-shirt with the coffee shop logo, and my black Chuck Taylor’s before I head back to the kitchen. I put two slices of bread into the toaster and pour myself another cup of coffee as I wait for it to pop.
Adeline comes out of the bathroom, smoothing out her brown hair. She smiles up at me with her pretty purple eyes as she sits down on the mattress to tug her shoes on. Other than our similar size, Addy and I both look a little alike too. We both have brown hair and round faces with high cheekbones, but where she has the most amazing purple eyes, I have the palest blue.
