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She clicked her tongue. “Your makeup makes you look like a streetwalker.”
“That’s not nice.”
Considering my mother dropped out of college to live in Austin with my father out of wedlock, she was three thousand times less Catholic than most Puerto Rican mothers, but she still had a mean streak.
She tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “You’re making yourself sick. You need a stable job.”
“I want music to be my job. That’s why I invited you.”
“Oh, boy. Cass. Come on. You should have been in bed,” she said, shaking her head. “Not out in the middle of the night. It’s ten thirty.”
“That’s all you have to say?” Any good feeling I had gotten from the crowd, from Toby’s surprising attentiveness, had faded. “I poured my heart out onstage and that’s all you have to say.”
“Ch, ch, ch. Don’t get riled.”
A nurse walked by. We both looked up. She passed. Not for us.
“Your drummer was nice to call,” Mom said, a tone in her voice.
“Yeah,” I said, and stopped myself before saying more. It wasn’t worth the hassle. She was already on my case about the band. Might as well save what “friends with benefits” meant for another time. Toby and I had a history of landing in all sorts of situations, many of them involving a bed, but fainting was a first. He was probably freaking out. Nora, too.
“You’ve got to take it easy.” She took my hand, stroking my forearm. “You’ve got a brain. This is a good hobby. You haven’t signed up for the LSAT course, you haven’t dropped by to pick up the prep books that I bought for you. Instead you’re doing this, passing out all over the place. I can’t help but wonder why, Cass.”
I pulled away and bit my thumbnail, because if I didn’t, I’d start yelling at her. Finally, I muttered, “I’m trying to show you why.”
“Sorry.” She sighed. “I just don’t see why you can’t do a good job singing and go to law school at the same time.”
I was forming a retort, but a doctor in a white coat entered.
Mom took a breath and pursed her lips. I took her hand again. We weren’t stay mad people, Mom and I, we were just get mad people. We learned this as we grew up together—it’s hard to stay angry at the person who is also your only entertainment.
“Cassandra?” the doctor asked, adjusting her glasses as she looked at a clipboard.
“Cassie,” I corrected.
“I’m Dr. Mangigian. So we’re here today because you lost consciousness?”
“Yeah. I got all shivery and blacked out.”
“Mm. Yeah. I’m looking at your chart here...” She paused and looked at me. “Do you find yourself having to frequently urinate?”
I thought of moments in traffic, or at band practice, when I would have to leave in the middle of a conversation, practically sprinting up Nora’s stairs. “Yes. I’ve always had a small bladder.”
“Do you experience thirst and hunger at a high degree?” I recalled chugging two Gatorades the other night, craving a third.
“Sometimes.” What was she getting at?
“Do you have a history of diabetes in your family?”
Mom and I looked at each other. I didn’t know. She rubbed my back. Her father had it, she told the doctor. And his sister.
“Well, we’re still waiting for the full workup to come back.” The doctor looked at both of us from behind her glasses. “But I believe we’re looking at a diagnosis of type two diabetes.”
Diabetes. The messages from my gut. I looked at the ceiling. “Okay. What does that mean?” I asked, trying to keep back whatever was snaking up my chest, the tears burning at the back of my eyes.
“Well, basically your pancreas doesn’t know how to break down sugar in your blood, so you might need to take insulin to help you do that. But insulin can also work too well. So you watch what you eat so you don’t get hypoglycemic. Or, like you might have done tonight, pass out from low blood sugar.”
“Is this—?” I blew out breath, trying to slow my speeding pulse. “Is this what it’s going to be like all the time now?” I thought of smiling at Nora, banging on the keys with everything I had. How I finally thought I’d had it, and it was being taken away.
