Chapter Text
"Nicky, you're gonna wear a hole in the floor."
The young blond whipped around and Milo flinched away from her burning glare. "We can't all be icy calm."
"I'm not calm," Milo retorted, "Just… pacing isn't helping either of us..."
Nicky glared at him for a few more seconds before groaning and slumping into the chair beside him. "I wish there was something I could do that could…"
“Don’t we all,” Milo mumbled, “But we, as one might say, made this bed. So now we must lie in it. Though I gotta be honest with you, this bed we made feels less like a bed and more like lying on a bunch of nails.”
“Actually, a properly made bed of nails wouldn’t hurt to lie on, due to your weight being evenly distributed between… oh, bad timing for a science lesson.”
Milo rolled his eyes, but Nicky saw the fear lurking behind them. “I’d say what we really need right now is a way out of this mess. But I’m starting to think that there isn’t one; just a choice that isn’t up to us to make. Either a certain someone walks out of here alive, healthy, and more importantly, alive, or they don’t walk out of here at all.”
“Would you rather Pepper Ann come out of here still sick as a dog?”
“Uh, yeah!”
Nicky sighed. “Milo, the surgery’s outcome is going to leave Pepper Ann in some sort of poor condition even if it goes well.”
“Well, that stinks…”
“I concur but it is what it is.”
“Wish it was something else,” Milo muttered, eyes falling to the floor.
“As you said before, don’t we all?”
The pair lapsed into an uncomfortable silence until… “You kids hungry? We brought back some stuff from the cafeteria.”
The two kids looked up to see Lydia Pearson carrying a couple of trays of assorted finger foods, Moose trailing behind her and nibbling morosely on an apple.
“Kinda. Thanks, Lydia.”
Milo and Nicky grabbed some of the offered food and several moments of uneasy silence passed.
Then Lydia spoke up. “So, how badly are you two blaming yourselves for this whole mess?”
Both kids winced.
Lydia sighed. “Look… I know you two spend lots of time with my Peppy, but you shouldn’t have to keep an eye on her health. After all, I was the one who let her convince me that she was fine.”
“But she wasn’t,” Milo answered.
“Right. And before you say anything, I’m her mother! I should be able to tell when she’s sick! It shouldn’t occur to me that something might be wrong when she’s nearly five minutes away from dying of meningitis!”
“Uh, what’s that?” Moose asked.
“Don’t worry about it, Moose,” Lydia said, “Your sister may have gotten sick from it, but she’ll get better. She has to.”
“You promise that she’ll get better? Like really promise?”
Tense glances were shared between Lydia, Nicky, and Milo, which led Moose to cast her gaze down to the ground.
“You can’t actually promise that, can you?” she asked, “I figured not. Children like me are led to believe that adults have all the answers and can make everything better, but I know that’s not true. If people like Mom had that kind of power, then none of us would be in the hospital right now. Especially not Peppy.”
“Moosie, sweetie,” Lydia consoled as she wrapped an arm around her youngest, “I might not be able to promise that Peppy will get better, but I can promise that the nurses and doctors are doing everything in their power to help her. They don’t go to medical school for several long, strenuous years for nothing, you know.”
“What if it’s not enough? What’ll we do then?”
Lydia’s hold on Moose tightened at the thought. “I don’t know. But all we can do right now is hope that it is.”
XXX
“Excuse me? Are you here for Pepper Ann Pearson?”
The unfamiliar voice stirred the fitfully sleeping group who all slowly came awake.
Lydia answered first. “Yes, yes! How is she? Is she going to live?! Please tell me she’s going to live! I can’t bear the thought of losing my Peppy! I swear on this life and any that might come after it, I will sue this entire hospital to the highest degree possible if something were to happen to-”
“She’s going to live, alright?!” the doctor blurted out, his voice cutting through Lydia’s panicked rambling.
The group let out a collective sigh of relief, and Lydia stumbled backward into the chair she had been sitting in.
“However…”
“However what?!” Nicky growled.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t… able to save her eyes. The combination of the high fever and the infection…”
“No… NO! This can’t be right!”
Everyone’s gaze snapped to a shaking Moose.
“You… you were supposed to fix her!” she cried out, “Mom said that you’d make her all better, but you didn’t! I don’t know what you did to her, but it doesn’t matter because she still isn’t better!”
The doctor sighed. “Listen, we did the best we could with what we had, alright? Do you know how unusual it is for a person with meningitis to recover without any sort of complication or disability? What happened with her isn’t exactly common, but there’s around a hundred-percent chance that Pepper Ann would have died if she was brought here even a couple of minutes later.”
“It still isn’t fair!”
“Hey, Lydia said that the doctors would try to make P.A. better, not that they would actually succeed in doing so.”
“MILO!”
“What, Nicky? I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that our best friend is going to… to be…”
“Blind,” the doctor said, “I apologize but I refuse to sugar-coat this. I believe that it’s best to clear the air right now so that there’s no room for misinformation or confusion. Now, Miss. Pearson, do you have any questions or concerns about anything I’ve said so far? Miss. Pearson? Are you with us?”
“You good?”
But Lydia wasn’t listening to the doctor or Milo…
“Peppy? You feeling okay?”
“Y…Yeah, Mom. Just… Just tired. I’m… I’m gonna… gonna turn in early tonight…”
Lydia frowned. “You don’t sound ‘just tired’. You’re looking awfully sweaty, are you sure you aren’t running a fever?”
Pepper Ann shook her head. “I’m fine, honest! Coach… Coach had us running a mara... marathon today. Okay, so it w…wasn't a marathon, but I swear I could...couldn't feel my legs af...after it. That’s why I’m… I’m going to bed early.”
“Without eating dinner first?” Lydia asked, “Why, you don’t even know what we’re having! If we were having liver and onions, that would be one thing, but I could have decided to order pizza or something!”
“You… You almost never order pizza, Mom. And to be honest, I… I feel like I’m about… about to drop dead. But in the extremely unlikely chance that you do order pizza, you… you can just save some in the fridge for me and I’ll… I’ll eat it in the morning.”
“Sure, honey.”
As she watched Pepper Ann drag herself up the stairs, Lydia mumbled nonsensically and turned over to the phonebook, looking up the number for that one pizza place Peppy and her friends always liked to hang out at. They did do delivery, right?
XXX
“Thanks for the pizza. Where’s Peppy?”
“She’s… She’s tired, Moose,” Lydia answered as she gazed at the empty seat that sat in front of her. This wasn’t the first time by far that her Peppy had skipped eating dinner with Moose and her, instead going to eat with her friends, but the empty seat haunted her today with a feeling she couldn’t quite put into words. “That’s all.”
Moose picked at the piece of pizza on her plate. “Tired? Too tired to eat pizza? Are you sure we’re not currently living in some unstable tangent universe? You see any weird bunnies hanging around here lately?
Lydia groaned. “I told your babysitter not to let you watch that movie! But no, we’re not in some strange parallel universe. Sometimes people don't feel like themselves, so it’s up to us to help them feel better. If Peppy wants to go to bed early tonight, we should show our support by letting her. Maybe she had a tough day at school, or maybe that one band she really likes won’t be touring in Hazelnut and she’s upset about that, we don’t know! Being a girl her age is hard sometimes! Which is something I keep forgetting.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Moose said with a shrug, “But if there’s something wrong with her, couldn’t we just ask her what it is? Isn’t that being supportive as well?”
“This is Pepper Ann we’re dealing with here, Moose. She’d rather let a problem destroy her from the inside out than admit she needs help. Unfortunately, the best thing we can do is to give her some space and hope she comes through on her own.”
Moose put her head in her hands. “Great. If this is what puberty does to my sister, what’ll it do to me?”
Lydia rolled her eyes, a small smile on her face. “Oh, I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about. Firstly, puberty affects everybody differently, and secondly, your sister was always a bit of a…”
Lydia's gaze fell on the empty chair again and she froze. Something… wasn’t sitting right with her, or rather, it was the fact that there wasn’t something sitting there in that chair that was the problem.
“Mom?”
Moose’s simple question snapped her out of her confusion. “I… I’m going to check on your sister.”
“I thought we were going to give her space.”
“I… I’m just going to check to make sure she doesn’t have a fever. And… And to make sure she’s still not hungry.”
“Oh… Didn’t you say she was tired?”
Lydia got up from her seat. “She is tired, that much is apparent! But why? Why did I let her go up to bed without seeing why she was tired? Sure, she could be tired because she’s upset or because she had a long day at school, but there are a billion other reasons why she could be tired! And I didn’t go through any of them! What was I thinking?! She could be running a fever! What if she’s starting her…”
Lydia’s eyes fell on Moose and she blushed.
“Starting what, Mom?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“But don’t you think you could be overreacting a little?” Moose asked, “I know it’s your job to look after us, but when have any of us actually gotten sick? Like… go to the hospital sick? I don’t know much about germs, but if Peppy only looked tired to you, then maybe that’s all she is.”
“She was also sweaty. But she also mentioned how she apparently ‘ran a marathon today’, so I don’t know! Maybe you’re right, Moose. Maybe I am too overbearing. But there’s also something with Pepper Ann that’s bugging me to no end and I can’t figure out what-”
A retching noise rang out from upstairs.
“That… That sounded bad,” Moose said quietly, staring in the direction of the noise with wide eyes. She turned to Lydia, “I don’t think she’s ‘just tired’, Mom.”
“Stay here, Moose. Actually, go by the phone and stay there in case I need you to call someone.”
“Call someone? You mean like… 9-1-1?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, Mom. I… I can do that.”
Lydia walked up the stairs and over to the bathroom. She gave the door a light knock. “Peppy? Are you still in the bathroom? Do you need anything? I could get you some water, maybe some Midol if you need it. Peppy? Pepper Ann? Come on, say something, you’re starting to scare me.”
No response.
“Honey? I hope you don’t mind, but I’m coming in.”
Thankfully, if that was even the proper word, the door was unlocked and opened when she pushed on it. Of course, that meant she found her eldest sprawled on the floor, white as a sheet and barely breathing.
“Peppy? Peppy, come on; this… if this is a joke, it’s not funny. Please wake up… Peppy? PEPPY!”
“Miss. Pearson?”
"Man, she's not looking so well."
The distant voices caught Lydia's attention, but only for a moment before a wave of dizziness and exhaustion hit her and she crumpled up onto the floor in a heap. The last thing she heard before darkness overtook her entirely was the sound of panicked voices, especially one painfully familiar one.
"MOM!"
Moosie…
Peppy…
All she can think is...
Sorry.