Quarantine

Adalynn started noticing how her parents were acting. They were always doubling checking the shadows and making sure there was nothing around the corner. She wanted to ask about what was going on, but she didn’t even know what was going on fully. She just knew that they weren’t acting the same.

She sat in her room writing down the answers to one of the math problems. She had found this boring and a little too easy, but her sister had said that it would get harder as she progressed through school. There was something about the way Baden described it that made Adalynn curious about it, but had never thought to ask what she meant about it.

The sound of her mother moving around in the other room was starting to make Adalynn worry a bit. She may not know what was going on for the fact that she was eight years old and also for the fact that her parents sheltered her from the news and everything else that was going on.

Rachel moved around the house, cleaning. She was just trying to keep herself busy for distraction and to make sure that Adalynn would never know what was going on. She sighed when she realized that everything was spotless and there was nothing more that she could clean. She walked into the bathroom connected to her room and washed her face.

Her hands moved over her face, and she noticed something different about her jaw and cheek bones. They felt more pointed and sharper than they were before. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw that she could barely see the changes. They were most definitely there, and there was nothing logical that supported the change in her bones. She looked at the rest of her body and all her bones that she could feel had some sort of minor change going on to it. This didn’t make any sense to her. How could bones just change when she was in her thirties?

Rachel looked at the mirror shocked, and unsure about this. She was confused, and she really wanted answers. She made a mental note to make an appointment with her doctor as soon as possible. There had to be some sort of reason behind this.

She heard the sound of the front door opening, and she turned away from the mirror. She saw her husband walking in through the door. “You’re home early,” she pointed out curiously.

“Yeah, I know. I decided to go ahead and come home. The factory is starting to plan out the Halloween trail for October, and since I’m not in charge of that, nor do I want to be, I came home early,” he said, smiling. “I can go back if you don’t want me here.”

“I’m glad that you are home early. I need to talk to you about something,” she said, knowing he is going to hate that she was going to the doctor.

They were trying to save some money to remodel the house and make it a little bigger like they wanted it. They were getting really close to doing what they wanted and were already looking into companies who would be able to do what they planned on doing. Going to the doctor would unquestionably put a dent in their savings especially if it was something major.

Nathan would want his wife healthy, but he was still be annoyed to have to spend it on something else when he was so close to doing what they had been planning on for ten years. They were close to their goal when Rachel had gotten pregnant with Addie, and they had to put their plans on hold to raise and take care of the youngest Sanders daughter.

“Alright, let’s talk,” Nathan said. He was curious about what was going through her mind. The look on her face told him that it was serious and that he would really need to listen to it.

Rachel explained what she had noticed with her bones. She didn’t want to hide it from him because it could be something serious, and they might need to do something about it before it progressed further into something worse than this. Of course, it could end up being nothing.

Nathan listened to what she had to say and stayed silent as he thought about it. Rachel was worried when he didn’t say anything at first. She started to worry that he was going to call her crazy or insane. Her worries were starting to get the best of her, and she was already worried about what is going on around them.

“Rachel, I think it would be good to make an appointment for tomorrow. I can call in and watch Addie, so you can go. It may be nothing, but what is going on in the town isn’t something that we can put off,” he said, calmly. He hated the thought of losing the money he had saved up for so long, but he hated the thought of his wife sick and miserable even more.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “If it’s bad, we will have to put of remodeling again.”

“Rachel, listen to me. If it is bad and you don’t go to the doctor, it will be even worse. If it can be stopped sooner, then the less we have to worry about,” he told her. He looked at her hoping that she would get it.

She nodded and got up to call the family doctor. She was somehow lucky that there was an opening for tomorrow afternoon. She kind of wished that it was in the morning because she would worry the whole day until the appointment wondering what was wrong with her. Then something her mother told her popped into her head. “You will get wrinkles when you’re twenty with all the worrying you do,” she would say almost on a daily basis. Rachel worried all the time, and this was just added to her already there worry.