Danielle had been quiet since they had returned to the waiting room. If she had been angry with Ella before, she didn’t show it. Her attention was now drawn to the fold of her left arm, cradling her elbow in her right hand, as if it might pop off at the joint at any second. A small, white pad of gauze stuck to the inside crease by a clear line of tape.

“The doctor wants to follow up with Ella in two weeks since she can’t have a live vaccine yet.” the secretary said.

“You’re lucky you didn’t have to get a shot.” Danielle said, looking away from the offending injury for the first time. Ella noticed her face looked ashen and pale, as if she had been held down and tortured downstairs. She supposed to Danielle, she thought she had been.

Ella wanted to point out that she had just been violated by what felt like a garden hose, but didn’t have the energy to fish out her notebook. It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It just hurt. She wondered why they had bothered to check for an injury before turning her into a human water balloon and not after. It made no sense. Instead, she lifelessly gave her head a small nod at Danielle, who seemed pleased that Ella understood she had gotten off easy.

“He also suggested you pick up a tube of Lidocaine topical ointment from the pharmacy. He’s written her a prescription for that as well to help with any pain or irritation. As for the chicken pox, he suggests an oatmeal bath to help alleviate the itching.” The secretary said. Suddenly she stood and beamed at Ella.

“I heard you did really well in there!” She praised. Ella sunk down a little lower in her seat. The secretary laughed before turning back to Heather. “She’s such a cutie! How old is she?”

“Ten!” Heather answered turning to smile at Ella.

“Ten!?” the lady said, sounding shocked. “She’s so tiny though!”

They both stared at her now. Ella hid behind her arms. The sudden attention made her uncomfortable. The only people she normally interacted with were a rotating staff of regular nurses, and they usually didn’t find her so cute after she had sunken her teeth into the flesh of their arm. Rose was the only one who had been up for the challenge and she had learned very quickly to wear long sleeves.

“Well, I better get this little one home. She looks beat.” Heather said. Ella nodded, wanting nothing more than to just curl up in bed.

“Before you go, since you were such a trooper, would you like a treat?” The lady held out a box towards Ella’s direction. Ella looked blankly at her followed by Heather. Her new mom smiled and gave her a nod of encouragement.

Ella slowly stood up, grimacing as she hobbled over to the chorus of, “Aww’s,” and “Poor Thing.” Without looking, she pulled out the first thing her hand came in contact with. It was a Ring Pop.

She smiled weakly, placing her palm on her chin before moving it outward. “Thank you,” was only one of the few things she knew how to properly sign. The rest she tended to mime out the best she could. “Fake it ‘till you make it!” as Rose used to say.

Danielle rose to her feet. “Can I have one too?”

The secretary glanced up, looking surprised as if noticing Danielle’s presence in the room for the first time. “They’re for the younger kids.” She hurriedly thrust the box back under the desk and busied herself with paperwork.

“O-oh,” Danielle said softly. For a split second a look of hurt flashed across her face at the abrupt denial. Ella wondered for a brief moment if she had imagined it as well as it had come and gone as quickly as the earlier look of malice. “It-Its okay, we always go out for Baskin Robbins after.” She held up her bandaged arm for clarification.

“Not today, Danielle, I need to get Ella home.” Heather said, turning to leave. “We have plenty of junk food at home.”

Ella felt a small surge of gratitude. Unless that trip to Baskin Robbins included a scoop down the back of her pants, the thought of ice cream sounded about as unappealing as Paige walking through that door and saying she couldn’t leave until she pooped one more time. She felt even more grateful when Heather scooped her up after she saw her attempting a painful waddle.

The sour look stayed on Danielle’s face a few seconds longer than last time, before returning to its usual self, albeit with a tinge of a frown. Ella had to hand it to her; she could sure bounce back. Maybe she felt as terrible as Ella did and decided ice cream didn’t sound that great after all.

“I’m supposed to watch what I eat anyway; I’ve got soccer tryouts next week. Fingers crossed, right?” Danielle said to the secretary. She got no reply. Three strikes and she was out. By the time they made it to the car, Ella took back her original assessment. Danielle looked absolutely heartbroken.

They rode in silence for the next ten minutes as Ella closed her eyes, grimacing at every bump in the road. When the car stopped, she lifted her head expecting to be in their driveway, but instead found herself in the drive thru of a Walgreens.

“Will you stop sulking?” Heather said suddenly, sounding irritated.

“I am not sulking!” Danielle snapped back.

“You act like it’s the end of the world every time you have to get a simple test done!”

“I was dizzy and I fell!”

“No, what you did was put on a show!” Heather said, her voice rising.

“Everything went dark; I got scared.” Danielle mumbled.

“You’re the big sister now. You should be setting a good example. Ella put you to shame in there! I’m sure she didn’t have fun with what she had to do, but you didn’t see her crying about it. You need to start acting your age! You’re almost 13!”

Ella inwardly groaned. She wished Heather would leave her out of this. Besides, Heather was wrong. Ella had cried plenty. Heather just hadn’t been there to see it.

She stole a quick look at Danielle, who was practically shaking in her seat as she bit into her knuckles, eyes cinched tight.

That’s when Ella remembered Emily Masterson, the girl who had ratted her out to security on her first night after Ella had decided to take an impromptu run down the hall naked and hide in Emily’s closet. Ella had never considered her a friend, but she remembered Emily having to go lie down after any kind of injection. Once, they had had to get Iv’s together, and she got all sweaty and started swaying side to side. The nurses had to bring her a pint of orange juice and a cookie to make her feel better. “Squeamish” was what Rose had called her.

She thought back to how Danielle had looked in the waiting room, all quiet and pale. Her new sister may have a flair for the dramatic, but she hadn’t looked like she was “putting on a show.” Emily had fallen once, so maybe Danielle was “squeamish” too.

Ella reached into her pocket and felt the Ring Pop. Maybe Danielle needed sugar? She pulled it out and began to hand it to Danielle, but Heather’s voice startled her into dropping it on the floor.

“Don’t! She’s just upset because we’re not stopping for ice cream. She needs to learn that life will not reward her everytime time she faces a minor inconvenience.” Heather snapped.

Ella shuddered. Danielle smiled weakly at her, but she couldn’t hide the tears anymore, and Ella knew this had nothing to do with getting ice cream.

“Thanks,” Danielle mumbled, bending down and handing the sucker back. “But it’s yours.”

Ella looked at the sucker and frowned. She was confused. Sure she had had a rough time at the drs, but hadn’t Danielle too? They had both faced their fears, so then why? Didn’t it make more sense to be afraid of needles than bathrooms? They had both done unpleasant things, so why was Ella being coddled and Danielle chastised? Why had she gotten the candy? She wasn’t a little kid either. Did two years really make that much of a difference? Ella thought of the blood. Danielle’s just getting older. She shuddered. She didn’t want to get older, and yet… she had. Those two years that meant the difference between punishment and reward… It was the same amount of time that had passed her by. If these two years were so important, just what had she missed out on?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

When they got home, Ella made a beeline for the bedroom. Heather and Danielle’s constant bickering was giving her a headache. She was itchy, sore, and overall just plain miserable. When she got to her side of the room, she kicked her shoes off, peeled off her socks, and let her too-big shorts fall to the floor with a dull thud. It felt too weird going around commando. She searched around for underwear, but was dismayed to find none. All she could find was the torn open bag of pull ups sitting on the floor by her dresser.

Figuring it was better than nothing, she stepped inside the leg holes and hoisted them up to her hips. Feeling slightly more at peace, she kicked her clothes into a pile on the floor before climbing onto the bed and letting herself fall face first into her pillow.

Her body felt like dead weight. She was so utterly exhausted, but she couldn’t seem to fall asleep. She had over shot tired, and now as a result ,was unbearably restless. She turned from one side to the other in an attempt to get comfortable. Her shirt kept getting twisted as she moved helplessly about, so without a second thought, she pulled it over her head and let it fall onto the floor with the rest of her clothes.

Ella laid spread out, wearing nothing but a Disney princess themed pull up on the top of the comforter. The stifling heat and stuffy air made the idea of getting under the covers sound about as unappealing as another round of chemo. She was vaguely aware she was running a fever, but all she could do was keep flipping and rotating her pillow in search of a cool spot to rest her burning face.

She wished she could push a button and have someone bring her a fan like she could in the hospital. Even for someone to come open the window would do. The thought of doing it herself crossed her mind, but the idea of getting up and dragging herself across the room seemed a monumental task in her current state. Rose would have had a cow if she caught her out of bed sick.

Ella remembered the last time she had been running a fever. Santa had come early that year and had left all the good little boys and girls of floor three, Influenza type A. The nurses had also given them an early Christmas present two weeks prior. Flu shots. For type B. The call buttons had been chiming like Christmas bells ringing in the holidays.

Ella had knocked a crayon off her tray and it had rolled off the bed and onto the floor five feet away. She thought nothing of it until her picture required a certain shade of blue, and only that shade of blue would do. The sea and the sky were not the same color after all. She pressed the call button and waited. And waited. And waited. No one came.

She looked across the room willing the crayon to roll back, but as it turned out, the trade off for radiation treatments was not super powers. Unless projectile vomiting on school bullies counted, Batman (who was really just Pedro from janitorial in a cheap batman costume) was wrong. She wasn’t a hero. What kind of hero couldn’t even get a crayon to roll back to them?

Her frustration level rose with every passing second. She had had a terrible few days. She was coughing up hail sized chunks of phlegm the same color of the christmas tree in Kids Korner.

Her chest ached and rattled with every cough, and as for her throat… it wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that her lung butter was the same hue as the pine needles from the christmas tree in Kids Korner because she was coughing up the pine needles from the christmas tree in Kids Korner.

Rose had told her to distract herself from how miserable she felt and snuck her a fist full of crayons. It was as if Rose had handed her a fist full of gold. Sure, Ella could get a hold of the basic eight staple colors, but in this handful was magenta, silver, blood orange, three different shades of green and two of blue. The excitement had given her just enough energy to sit up and color.

She wondered how Rose had gotten her hands on this? Word in Kid’s Korner was Steve Mason, the 13-year-old with the trach tube, could get you anything you wanted within reason. For a price. He had a fairly successful black market going on for a bit before he got moved to a different floor. Ella had even got up the nerve to slip him a note once asking for a few markers and colored pencils. She was ecstatic when he had slipped her a reply back underneath the table…that was until she read his demands. A number 10 from Mcdonalds with a large coke.

Money wasn’t the currency here. The currency was food. Specifically food from the outside. You wanted a favor? You paid for it in chicken nuggets and type 2 diabetes.

Her heart had sunk. It was an impossible request. Black market trading she had learned, was for kids who had parents and visitors. Her visitors had dried up long ago when the awkwardness of sitting in silence had become too much to bear for them. Then they sent letters. But now, even those had stopped some months ago.

Visitors, contraband, and chicken nuggets were the farthest thing from Ella’s mind. “Small steps.” and “Divide and conquer” was Rose’s advice to her. If she focused on conquering small goals, she wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed with her slow progress. Her small goal now was that damn sky blue crayon across the room. If no one was coming to help her and telekinetic powers (or lack of) didn’t help, she’d just have to get up and get it herself. She wasn’t allowed out of bed, but rules be damned.

She had made it halfway there, but froze when Rose opened the door. Ella knew she was in trouble when Rose pulled out her green key chain of a flip-flop and shook it at her before chasing her back into bed. Rose had begun muttering under her breath in Spanish. Ella didn’t have to be bi-lingual to understand what she meant. “If I had a real sandal; i’d smack you with it.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

“I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

Ella was brought back to the present to find Danielle leaning against the doorframe staring at her spread out nearly naked on the bed. She was miserable and modestly was the furthest priority at the moment.

“Here” she heard before something landed next to her on the bed. “Mom told me to tell you to drink it.” Ella reached out her hand and groped blindly until it landed on something cold. Instead of drinking it, she drew it into a hug keeping it pressed against her chest.

“You hot or something? It’s kind of cold in here.” Danielle remarked. Ella was flabbergasted. Cold? It had to be a 100 degrees in here at least. Ella nodded, pulling at an imaginary collar around her neck. She heard the window slide open. Although there was no breeze, she found the fresh air to be refreshing.

“Oh man! Does it itch?” Danielle asked. Ella opened her eyes again and found Danielle hovering over her and examining her body as one would something gross, yet oddly fascinating. Ella nodded again before flipping on her stomach and burying her face in her pillow. She didn’t feel like trying to communicate. She just wanted to be left alone- that was until she felt fingernails begin to run up and down her back. She quickly decided she didn’t mind the company after all. In child black market standards, this kind of service would have cost her an M&m Mcflurry easily.

She had almost managed to fall asleep when Heather’s angry voice from the doorway made both of them jump. Her heart hammered and she could feel the pull-up between her legs growing wet. “What do you think you’re doing?!” What little peace and relaxation she had been able to obtain was gone in the blink of an eye.

Danielle sat on the edge of Ella’s bed stammering. “Huh? Wha-”

“Look at her back! It’s full of finger nail scratches!”

“Sh-She said she was itchy! I- I was just trying to make her feel better!”

“I’m supposed to keep her from scratching! I send you up with a bottle of water and find you’ve taken what looks like razor blades to her back. What do you think CPS is going to say if they see that?”

“I-I didn’t know! I’m sorry!”

“Don’t you ever think before you act?” Heather snapped.

Ella curled up into a ball on the bed. Something that felt like hands was squeezing her lungs again. She wanted to get up and leave, but couldn’t move. She could hear Heather’s angry footfalls coming towards her. She felt a cool hand trace the bumps on her back. Any other time and place but now, she would have found the gesture soothing. Suddenly the hand went lower and made contact with the now sodden garment. She heard Heather’s breath hitch.

“You’re not supposed to use these any more.” While the voice had been gentler than the one used with Danielle, it still caused her to hide her face under her arms. “I was going to bring up the mop bucket. You can just kind of, I don’t know, keep it under your bed until you need it I guess. At least until we can figure out a better idea.”

“A bucket? Really?” Danielle couldn’t stop herself from asking. “In my bedroom? It’s going to stink up my room!”

“Then just empty it!”

“Eww! No, that’s disgusting!’

“It is not just your bedroom anymore. When we decided to take Ella in we all agree-”

“No, mom! I didn’t agree to anything! You decided to chop up my room and make me share it instead of converting the office into another bedroom. Now you’re expecting me to be okay with someone taking a dump in my room! This is my space!”

“Where am I supposed to put it?” Heather said, throwing her hands up.

“Oh, I don’t know. How about the office that should have been her room in the first place!”

“I am not moving her into the office. End of discussion!”

“Then just put the bucket in there!”

“No, I work there.”

“I sleep here!”

Ella’s head was pounding.She couldn’t take their arguing anymore! She wanted to tell them they could just leave it in the backyard for all she cared. She grabbed the blanket off the top of the bed and began walking off with it while ignoring Heather’s questions about where she was going. Her nerves were completely shot.

“You need to get cleaned up!” Heather yelled after her. “Don’t sit on anything, I’ll be right there.” Ella slammed the bedroom door closed behind her and went into the next closest room. She hadn’t explored the house yet and now seemed a good enough time as any. She didn’t care if Heather chased her with a sandal later, she just needed to be alone.

The room she had entered must have been the office Heather and Danielle had been talking about. There was a desk on the far side of the room with a laptop. On the other side of the room was a couch facing a small flat screen tv mounted on the wall. She thought about snuggling up on the couch, but knew Heather would quickly find her. What she wanted more than anything was to be alone, so she made due with the best hiding place she could find. Under the desk.

She used the blanket to make herself a little place to curl up, before crawling in and sealing the entrance to her “cave” with the computer chair to hide her. She thought she had been well hidden, but Heather had immediately spotted her the moment she walked in.

“Ella, what are you doing? Come out of there.” Ella shook her head and scooted herself away as far as possible. Heather moved the chair out of the way and squatted down in front of her. She dropped the notebook and pencil in front of her before saying, “Talk to me.”

Ella shook her head. She had nothing to say.

“Ella! You’re dirty! You need to get cleaned up!”

She shook her head again as she fought to see through her tear streaked eyes. Urine had come in contact with her raw skin and was burning her. She couldn’t deal with the pain, fever and stress of the fighting at the same time. She could feel herself short circuiting.

“Ella, if you don’t come out in the next three seconds i’m going to pull you out myself!” Heather warned. “One. Two. Three.” Ella didn’t move a muscle, only continued to stare at her.

“Fine!” Heather said.

Ella felt an arm grab her, and so she did what she always did when she felt scared or cornered. She sank her teeth into the woman’s arm.

“ELLA! NO!” Heather cried out in pain before quickly withdrawing her arm and eying the damage. “You do not do that!”

“What? What’s wrong?” Danielle said coming into the room. “What happened?”

“She bit me!” Heather said. Ella could hear the mix of surprise and pain in her voice.

“Seriously? Where is she?”

“Under the desk.” Heather swore. “I’m going to go wash this.” When Heather left, Danielle followed her out before quickly coming back in and shut the door. She knelt down a safe distance away and saw Ella bundled up in the corner. Ella was prepared to bite her as well if she tried to pull her out, but Danielle didn’t.

Instead she slid a few things toward her and quickly withdrew her arms, before giving her a wink and standing back up. Her peace offering appeared to be her pillow, a trash bag, wet wipes and a clean pull up. Ella quickly pulled the loot into her den. With a bit of twisting this way and that, she managed to change, threw the used pulled up and wet wipe in the bag. The cool, wet cloth helped ease the burning and she felt grateful to Danielle. Even more so when she saw what she was about to do.

Danielle unfolded a sheet and threw it over desk, leaving Ella in semi darkness in her new desk fort.

“What is this?” Ella heard Heather ask. She could hear her approaching and stiffened.

“Don’t! Just let her be. She’s sick. She probably just wants to be left alone.”

“So why doesn’t she just sleep in her bed? Why is she hiding under the desk?”

“Because you came in and started yelling! That’s why. Remember when we got Ribbit and he wouldn’t come out of the closet for a week?”

“Ribbit is an animal! Ella is-”

“Sick and probably freaking the hell out…Just let her come out on her own when she’s ready.”

“But she’s wet and-” Ella heard the crinkling bag shake.

“Let her be.” Danielle said walking out of the room. Heather gave a defeated sigh and followed her out.

Ella felt herself finally relax in the semi-darkness. It was cramped, warm, and absolutely perfect. She drew her knees into her chest and curled back into her blanket nest. She was about to drift off to sleep when a new visitor decided to peek its head under the sheet and investigate. Ella was delighted when the tortie shelled cat rubbed up against her outstretched hand and began to loudly purr. After deciding that the stranger was friend rather than foe, the cat entered the fort and plopped down in the nest of blankets. Ella smiled as she laid down next to her new friend and stroked its fur.

You must be Ribbet, she thought before finally drifting off to sleep.