Ascension

Chapter 12

Routine

Leda drummed her fingers along the steering wheel impatiently. This was taking way too long. She glanced at the clock on the radio and saw it had been a full four and a half minutes since she had sent Marli in to the drugstore.

After another agonizing two minutes, Marli walked through the automatic doors and opened the door to her aunt's jeep.

"What took so long?" The redhead asked as soon as the young girl was situated.

"I had to find the best kind." Marli reached into the bag and pulled out the three small boxes, "They have, like, a million types of pregnancy tests, you know?"

"Let's just get back to my place." Leda started the car and pulled it out of the space.

"So remind me again why I needed to be the one to buy these?" Marli asked.

"Because I read somewhere that its bad luck for a woman to buy her own pregnancy tests."

Marli rolled her eyes, "Right; women have been getting pregnant since the dawn of time because they bought their own pregnancy tests."

"Don't give me that. I got you out of family therapy, didn't I?" She asked. Marli slumped back against the seat.

"Yeah but…"

"No buts."

Marli was silent for a moment, fingering the clear wrapping on one of the tests. "So do you think you're…?"

"I'm not sure," Leda said after a moment, "I mean… I'm late and I've been nauseas and… God."

"What are you gonna do if you are?"

"I… I don't know. Right now, I just want to know if there is anything to worry about," Leda said.

Leda stopped the car in front of the apartment building and took a deep breath. She may have appeared strong, but on the inside she was either screaming or sobbing.

As the two Pascal women headed up to her apartment, Leda toyed with the handle of the plastic shopping bag holding the pregnancy tests.

Please, please don't let this end badly.

"So I've been struggling with my weight for about… two years?" Tabitha screwed her face up a little as she thought of the right number.

"And how did that start?" Their counselor, Carla Kientzle, asked. Carla was a beautiful woman. She looked to be in her late twenties/early thirties. She had dark hair that hung down her back in a long ponytail.

"There… um, was this guy. His name was Keith," Tabitha said.

Squeezed between Ryan and Faith, Mira looked up. They were in their group therapy, and so far it was pretty miserable.

This was Mira's forth day there, and she hated it. She had gotten all her stuff back yesterday, now that the seventy-two hour watch was over. She hadn't seen Lucy since she had said goodbye; four days ago.

Mira tilted her head back on the chair and held back a sigh. Group therapy was so boring.

"And what happened with Keith?" Carla asked patiently.

Tabitha chewed on the side of her thumbnail and looked away to the side. "We… um, we dated for a while, then he suddenly broke up with me for someone else."

Call her selfish, but Mira just could not make herself care about what was going on. She'd fallen into a routine the last few days. She would wake up, forcefully eat breakfast, therapy, eat lunch, group therapy, free time, dinner, more free time, and then go to sleep.

Faith, Ryan, and Tabitha were nice, but Mira still remained a bit distant from them. Still convinced that she wouldn't be there that long, she refused to contribute to most of their conversations.

For the most part, she kept to herself. After what had happened at home with her secret, she had been having a hard time trusting people.

Faith and Tabitha were pretty open during group therapy. They shared their stories and thoughts and feelings. It was Ryan and Mira who were the closed off ones.

Ryan's story was pretty basic. He had a bad experience at his old school when he came out, stopped eating, started fighting his parents, and here he was.

Mira knew that there had to be more to it than that. But she didn't pry. Her story was that she had had a baby and became desperate to lose the baby weight. No one needed to know the whole truth.

"-after my parents died," Tabitha's voice cut her out of her thoughts, "I… just couldn't do it anymore. I had been struggling for a couple years-and trying to get better- but I just… stopped. I-I didn't care anymore."

Carla nodded and crossed her legs, never taking her eyes off the speaking teen. From beside her, Faith placed a hand on Tabitha's arm in silent support.

"It took a lot of courage to share that today. Thank you, Tabitha," Carla said. Tabitha just nodded her head.

"Ryan?" Carla asked. The boy lifted his head a little, looking at her through his dark curls.

"What?"

"Would you like to talk today?"

"No," He said simply. Mira looked at him in surprise.

Carla didn't even look phased by Ryan's refusal. "That's fine, maybe tomorrow."

"Odio questo posto," Ryan muttered under his breath. Mira frowned. Was that Spanish or Italian? Sara had been trying to teach her Spanish for years and that kind of sounded Spanish.

"Mira?"

Her head shot up, "Yeah?"

"Would you like to speak today?" Carla asked kindly.

Mira toyed with the bulge of her cell phone in her pocket nervously, "Um… I guess so."

"Jamie, when you invited me over to get sweaty and dirty… this isn't what I had in mind!"

Jamie looked up from the large cardboard box she was digging in to give her boyfriend a glare. She had invited Matt to help her sort through some old boxes she kept in storage. Lately, things had been a bit tight with money, so she decided to sell some of her old things to try and bring in some extra cash.

"Will you stop whining and help me lift this?" She tugged at the flaps of the heavy box helplessly. Matt smirked.

"You need a big strong man to help you, little girl?" his tone was condescending and playful.

"Yeah, but I guess you'll do."

Matt's smirk dropped and he bent down, easily picking up the box. Jamie grinned sweetly and kissed his cheek.

"Thanks babe."

"Yeah, yeah," He grumbled. "I find one spider, and you're on your own."

Jamie and Matt carried the boxes up to her apartment and set them in the middle of the living room. Jamie's neighbor was watching Luke for the afternoon. The teen mother tore the tape off a box and began going through it.

"Never really took you as the teddy bear type," Matt commented. Jamie frowned and looked up to see Matt holding the little brown teddy bear holding a heart in its hands. She stood up and snatched the bear out of his hands.

"That was a present," Jamie said quietly, brushing the dust off the stuffed animal.

"Secret admirer?"

"Ross."

Matt's playful manner dropped. His blue eyes glared at the stuffed animal. She smiled a little at him and placed the bear on the floor.

"Let's see what else I have in here." She dug into the box.

"You were a cheerleader?" Matt asked, holding up the sequined gold and blue uniform. Jamie groaned.

"Oh god, I still have that thing?" she stood up and held it in front of her body. "I couldn't fit into this thing even if I wanted to."

Matt shook it, making the sequins rattle, "You must have looked hot," He remarked, leaning down to kiss her. After a few seconds she pulled away.

"We need to finish going through all this stuff."

Matt huffed, then reached into a box and pulled out the matching pom-poms.

"Any chance of you doing a strip tease with these?"

Jamie picked up one and knocked him in the head with it.

"You need to calm down before you hyperventilate," Carolyn Ramsey said calmly.

Audrey wiped her eyes and ran a hand through her hair tiredly. Lucy was sleeping in her arms. The mother had almost forgotten how tiring it was to take care of a baby.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "I was up half the night with Lucy."

"Doesn't Seth help out?" Carolyn asked. There was a certain accusatory tone in her voice aimed at her absent son.

"He does what he can, but he's been working a lot and I insisted that I take her last night." She shifted the sleeping infant so her head was resting on her shoulder. "I think she's teething because she would not stop crying."

"Could it be colic?" Carolyn questioned. "Seth had horrible colic when he was a baby. I didn't sleep for weeks."

Audrey smiled a little. In the brief time she and Carolyn had been friends, she very rarely shared stories or experiences of her son and life before Dave.

Both mothers looked up when the bottle warmer dinged from the kitchen.

"Would you take her?" Audrey asked, shifting closer to Carolyn, who nodded and took her granddaughter into her arms.

Audrey padded into the kitchen and took the bottle out of the device. She tested a few drops on her wrist and headed back into the living room.

"You wanna feed her?" Audrey offered, holding out the bottle. Carolyn's smile brightened and she took the bottle, teasing Lucy's bottom lip with the teat.

As the baby nursed peacefully, Carolyn looked at Audrey.

"Do you think she misses Mira?" She asked. Audrey shrugged.

"Maybe. She's only four months old."

"Four month olds know who their mothers are. She would recognize Mira if she saw her right now," Carolyn said reasonably. "I think this little girl just misses her mama."

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

Audrey sighed and slumped against the couch. "I hope we did the right thing; sending her to that clinic."

"You did what you had to do. She needed help that you couldn't give her." Carolyn looked down as the baby moved a little in her arms, but remained sleeping.

They sat in silence for a minute while their granddaughter finished her bottle. Then Carolyn raised her up to burp her. Bringing her back down, she and Audrey just looked at her tiny, angelic face.

"She looks so much like them," Audrey whispered. "I didn't think it was possible for a child to look so much like both her parents."

"I know," Carolyn agreed, "Seth looks almost identical to his… to Joseph. And Julie looks like Dave, but there are traces of me in there."

"All three of my kids look like Adam and me, but not like Lucy looks like Seth and Mira." Audrey reached out and picked up the baby, holding her close. "It's funny; I used to hold Mira like this. I used to look at all three of them and hope that they would turn out alright. I wanted them to have it better than I had. I never thought that little tiny baby would grow up to be a mother so young, and be in so much pain."

Carolyn ran a hand down her friend's back. Audrey gave her a small grateful smile.

"I know exactly how you feel," the brunette said. "I never thought that the man I was once married to would attack and abuse Seth like he did. Bad things happen to the people we love. The hard part is not being able to do anything about it."

Marli blew out a breath of air and looked at her frigid-looking aunt, whose eyes remained glued to the three plastic sticks on the coffee table.

"So…" The teen asked after a moment, "Who's the father?"

Leda groaned and buried her face in her hands, "Oh god."

"Hey, it's… okay?" Marli wasn't good at comforting people. She awkwardly patted Leda's back.

"Fuck, what am I gonna do?" Leda moaned painfully. "I killed my goldfish after three days because I couldn't take the pressure! How am I supposed to raise a kid?"

"Maybe you should take to my dad about this," Marli suggested. Leda looked at her youngest niece and groaned.

"Adam will rip me a new one; 'that's what you get from all those one night stands!' God I am so screwed."

"My mom should be able to help; she handled Mira getting pregnant with relative ease. Granted, those repressed emotions may lead her to kill one day, but still."

"Awww!" Matt's voice drew Jamie to look over at him.

Oh no, he found the photo album.

"Matt, no!" She dove at him, but he was too fast. He jumped up on the sofa, eyes glued to the photo album.

"God, you did have an awkward stage!"

"Give me that!" She dove at him again, but this time he raced past her and locked himself in the bathroom.

"You had braces?" Matt's voice was muffled by the door.

"You are so dead, Pascal!"

Mira crossed her arms on the cafeteria table and watched in fascination as Faith separated all the different colored noodles away from each other. Her friend had a strange thing about having different colored foods touch. Sitting next to Faith was Ryan, sipping silently at his Ensured meal.

Staff at ED recovery centers knew that most patients had problems eating solid food, so they would replace all the calories in the meal with several cans of the Ensure- the liquid meal replacement they used on the ward. (The theory was that it was easier to drink calories than it was to eat them.)

Tabitha didn't eat, she had it all put into her body through a feeding tube. It scared Mira that someone's disorder could be so bad that the thought of actually eating made them have a panic attack.

She looked down at the food on her plastic tray. A green apple, roll, turkey sandwich, orange juice, and rice pudding. When she was pregnant, that could have been considered a snack. But now… it was torture to even look at it.

Irrational anger and irritation swelled inside her again, and the physical hatred of the food on her tray made his throat close. She couldn't even bring herself to pick up the fork.

She was dying here. She hated being so focused on by doctors when she felt so vulnerable. She was tired of feeling bloated all the time. She was tired of being away from home. She was tired of being separated from Lucy.

Mira glared down at the food on her tray, her breath coming out in hisses through her teeth. She ran both hands through her hair, gripping it tightly at the back of her head. Faith and Ryan looked up curiously.

She didn't know what was happening. Her heart was pounding in her ears so loud she couldn't hear over it, tears were streaming down her cheeks and she didn't even notice.

"Mira?" Ryan asked gently. She wasn't listening; she just let out a choked sob and whimpered.

"She's having a panic attack," Faith confirmed, standing up and quickly going to the nearest nurse.

Ryan slid his chair out from the table and rushed around to the panicked girl. He placed on hand on her back and used the other to untangle her hands from her hair.

"It's okay, Mira. It's okay. Just breathe," He said as calmly as he could, gripping her hands once they were out of her hair. "It's okay."

"Feel better?" Nurse Tanya Lester asked gently.

"I guess," Mira mumbled, not really feeling like talking. She moved her hand in a circle, the wires of her IV twisting a little.

"Can I get you anything?" The nurse asked.

"No, I just wanna be alone."

"You know I can't do that, hon," she said. Mira rolled her eyes and shifted on her bed so she was lying down.

"I just want to take a nap, okay? Is that too much to ask?"

"Alright, sweetie," Tanya said softly. "I'm gonna leave your door open." Mira waited for the woman to leave the room before curling up on herself.

What had happened in the cafeteria? The nurse said she had had a panic attack. Fantastic, as if she didn't have enough emotions.

She rolled on her side, around the IV, and looked at the picture frame on her bedside table. It was Seth asleep in a chair with Lucy asleep in his arms. Even in his sleep, he seemed to be holding that little girl with care and love. The makings of a smile formed on her face.

Reaching a single finger, she traced the lines of Seth's face. As angry as she was at him, she couldn't deny how much she missed him. She missed hearing him laugh, missed seeing him smile, missed his voice, she missed it all.

"Elsen!" A booming voice barked.

Seth's head shot up from its resting position on the table. "I'm up!"

His coworker Shelly was standing there, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. "Do you realize what might have happened if the boss found you asleep in here again?"

"Yeah, he'd ask me to go home and sleep and ask you to take over my shift." He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye socket. "God I am so fucking tired."

"What do you have to be tired about?" She asked snottily. He gave her a dirty look.

"How about my second job, screaming baby, and emotionally distressed girlfriend?"

Shelly raised an eyebrow, "So Mira's your girlfriend now?" She asked. She, like many others on the staff, knew of his former player ways.

He scoffed and walked past her.

"Knock knock," A voice said. Mira's eyes snapped open and she sat up to find Tabitha, Faith, and Ryan standing there. She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes.

"What's going on?" She asked sleepily.

"We just wanted to make sure you were alright," Faith said, "You were pretty freaked out earlier." Mira blushed and looked down, embarrassed.

"It's nothing to be ashamed about," Tabitha quickly said, "I had a few when I first got here too. Lots of people have panic attacks.

"I don't know what happened." Mira hugged her knees to her chest. "I just… panicked."

"Is this your daughter?" Ryan asked, picking up the picture frame with the picture of Lucy and Seth.

"Yeah, that's her."

"Aww, she is so adorable. Faith, look at her little feet!" He held the frame out to his friend, who took it and smiled. Tabitha looked at it over her shoulder, a smile on her face.

"Seth isn't bad looking either," Ryan said, wiggling his strangely triangular eyebrows. Mira giggled.

"I have more pictures of her on my laptop… if you wanna see?" Mira offered shyly.

"Hell yeah!" Faith jumped beside Mira on the bed as she reached for her laptop.

Tabitha set the photo back on the nightstand and looked over the other frames. "Is this your family?"

There were seven photos of various family and friends crammed on the nightstand.

"Some of them," Mira answered, opening the photos on her computer. "This is Lucy on the forth of July."

"Quanto belli," Ryan said quietly. At Mira's confused look and Faith's annoyed look, he asked, "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"Yeah," Faith said shortly.

"Doing what?" Mira asked.

"Sometimes I randomly start speaking Italian. I'm not exactly sure when it started." He shrugged and leaned close to the computer to see the pictures.

Mira was a little surprised. During group therapy, Ryan was so… angry. He never spoke about his life. But now he was laughing and making jokes and sharing little things about himself.

Tabitha didn't come over to look at the computer screen; she just held a single framed photo in her hands, staring at it intensely.

"Tabitha?" Mira asked. Tabitha snapped out of it and looked at her. She turned the frame around so she could see it.

"Is this your family?" She asked again. Mira took the picture and looked at it.

It had been taken last year. Somewhere between the six weeks of Mira getting pregnant and taking the pregnancy test. She remembered not wanting to get the picture taken because she had been feeling nauseous all day, but her parents insisted. She and Matt stood on either side of Marli, Audrey and Adam behind them.

"They look nice," Tabitha said.

"Yeah, they are," Mira replied absently. "I honestly don't know where I would be without…" She trailed off, realizing that the other three teens in the room all had major issues with their own parents. She cleared her throat awkwardly, "Um, here's a picture of Lucy and my friend's son Luke."

"So how's Chicago?" Leda asked into her cell phone.

"Windy," Adam replied dryly. "I hate doing this. Of all the times my company decides that I need to get this account." He sighed and Leda could almost hear him slump back on a chair. "I should not be away from my family."

"You're doing what you have to do," Leda said reasonably. She drummed the positive pregnancy test against her palm. "Speaking of which…"

"Audrey called me earlier today," Adam said, not realizing he was interrupting his sister because of his own stress, "She doesn't sound too good."

"It'll only be for two more days," Leda said patiently. She understood her brother's position. His daughter was in the hospital while his wife stayed at home with their granddaughter. And she also knew that Adam and Audrey had only recently reconciled, so this had to have been a strain on both of them. But she needed to tell him about her own baby, before she lost her nerve.

"I know, but I should be home. With them. God only knows how Marli is coping."

Leda looked at Marli, who was sitting on Leda's bed texting, lost in her own world.

"I think she's handling it well."

"what makes you say that?"

"Just trust me, dude."

"If you say so."

The first generation of Pascals sat in silence for almost a moment before Leda worked up the nerve to speak again.

"So um… guess what?"

"What?" Her brother sounded almost amused.

"Okay, so a few months ago, I-"

"Oh hold on, Audrey's calling me." There was a click and his voice disappeared. Leda sighed heavily and glanced at her youngest niece, who was still texting.

"Leda?" Adam's voice returned a minute later.

"Yeah?"

"I have to go. Audrey needs to talk. I'll call you later." The line clicked again and the call ended.

"Fuck!" Leda exclaimed, tossing her phone on the sofa beside her and kicking the coffee table.

"I take it that didn't go too well?" Marli asked, finally looking up from her phone.

"Duh."

"How long have you been playing guitar?" Mira asked. Ryan looked up from the music book on his lap.

"Since I was five or six," He answered, "Music is pretty much the only stable thing in my life right now."

Mira hugged her pajama covered leg to her chest and rested her chin on her knee. Faith was in her room and Tabitha was eating her mandatory snack.

Mira had quickly realized that, out of the four of them, Tabitha's disorder was way worse than her own. Faith's seemed to be the least serious. She didn't purge or have anorexic tendencies, she was an athlete.

When Faith had showed Mira her room, the blonde was a little overwhelmed by the medals, trophies, and posters of various female sports figures.

"You're pretty good," Mira said kindly. Ryan gave her a crooked smile and brushed his wild black curls off his forehead.

"I'm fucking amazing."

"And conceited, that's something every girl… um, guy wants in a guy."

Ryan chuckled and went back to tuning his guitar. Mira passed her cell phone from one hand to the other and watched him quietly.

During group sessions and meals, Ryan seemed so stressed and angry. But now he seemed so… at peace. He must have not been lying when he said music was all the stability he had. He truly seemed to rely on it.

"Can you… I mean, can you show me how to play something?" She asked. Ryan looked surprised, but it soon blossomed into a smile. He stood up and motioned for her to do the same. When Mira stood up, he took the guitar off his back and slipped the strap around her back.

Moving to stand behind her, he took her hands in his and placed them on the guitar and put his hands over hers.

"Just put your fingers like this…" He positioned them so they were right. "Now strum."

"Strum?"

"Yeah like this." He cupped her right hand in his and moved it back and forth over the strings, one by one. "E. A. D. G. B. E. Those are the strings." His hands were bigger than hers, and much more calloused, so it was easy for him to guide her.

"Cool," She commented.

"You ever play any instruments?" He asked conversationally.

"Nah. My old boyfriend played the violin, though." She grimaced at that memory.

"Really? I was never into violins. I prefer this." He moved her hand over two strings.

Soon, Mira was able to move her fingers along the strings on her own. She was just making the same note over and over again, but it was a start. She turned her head and grinned at Ryan.

She knew it was lame, but for a while she had felt like she was in some sort of horrible rut, so it was nice to actually accomplish something.

Mira turned her head to smile brightly at him. It was the first real happy smile she had given in a long time. He grinned back brightly.

"What are you guys doing?" Faith asked as she slowly approached them.

It was at that moment that Mira and Ryan realized how close their faces were.

"Nothing!" they both squeaked. Mira tugged the guitar strap off her back and placed the instrument in his hands.

"He was just showing me how to play the guitar," She quickly explained.

"Riiiiiight," Faith said with a dark quirked eyebrow. "Ry? A word?" She snatched his arm and dragged him off toward his room.

"What the hell are you doing?" She asked. "She has a boyfriend and a baby!"

Ryan stared at her like she had grown four more heads. "Faith, you do know how being gay works, don't you?"

"I've asked you to teach me how to play guitar, but you always said no!" Faith countered. "Yet there you are with Mira! Explain that."

Ryan just continued staring at her. "Are you insinuating that I am developing feelings for Mira?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Well I'm not." He carefully placed the guitar back on its stand before sitting himself on his bed, "Its just… there's something about her. She's… in pain, I guess you could say."

"So she's like a kindred spirit?" Faith asked, crossing her arms.

"Sure, if you wanna call it that. I don't know, I just get this feeling that she knows what it feels like to be, you know, hurt."

He touched his hip absentmindedly, hand right above his left hipbone. Faith noticed and her eyes widened.

"I don't know if she's been through something like that." She nodded at his hip, "But maybe you're right."

Meanwhile, in the common room, Mira's phone lit up in a text message. She picked it up and opened the message to see a picture of a sleeping Lucy. It was from Seth.

And underneath it were three words.

I love you.