Remedy Read online

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Some days, when I first wake and the hazy light filters through the blinds, striping my white blanket like there were bars on my window, I try to remember what it felt like to be well. I was so little then. Maybe seven or eight? It wouldn’t have occurred to me to feel lucky. I wouldn’t have noticed that nothing hurt.

  I was still discovering all of my body’s potential—the lengthening bones, the coiled muscles. Every so often I could stretch and touch a shelf that I hadn’t been able to reach before. My teeth fell out and grew in. Once in a while, I’d have a skinned knee.

  We used to play with scooters and parachutes and hula-hoops in gym. Back when I was still allowed to take gym. And one Field Day, they brought out the second grade and we hula-hooped in front of the whole school. One by one, each hoop faltered and clattered down to the blacktop. Except mine. I kept it spinning until the principal stood next to me and caught the hoop with her hand. The second-grade hula-hoop champion. I could have twirled for hours.

  They gave me a certificate. I remember tracing the gold seal embossed on the heavy paper. I would have saved something like that certificate. But I probably didn’t pack it for the move. Definitely not for the second move.

  I’d have left the award behind because it would have made my mother sad to see me treasuring it. If she noticed me folding it between the pages of a book or tucking it into a shoebox, she’d think I was feeling sorry for myself. My mother has sacrificed so much on my account. I couldn’t hurt her. Besides, we are Wakely women, after all. We do not feel sorry for ourselves.

  That is what I remind myself while lowering my two feet onto the slats of the wood floor. Brace myself and heave the rest of my body to a standing position. I try to ignore the fog in my brain, the thick coating of sickness in my mouth. I yank the cord to the blinds and the bars of light break and scatter into dapples of sun.

  It’s morning. The glare makes my eyes ache. I try to feel grateful the way I’ve been taught to be.

  Every day opens with the same question.

  “Cara Jean, how did you sleep?”

  “Four.”

  We have a rating system for sleep and appetite, fatigue and pain. For sleep a four is good—great even. Deep and undisturbed. We rate out of five for sleep and appetite. But pain and fatigue go to ten. This means that all fours count as a good score. That’s where I hover at this morning: relatively well rested, ready to eat. Stiff and sore but not in the kind of pain that sometimes has me burrowed under blankets, gasping to breathe through the bile rising in my throat. Four.

  I hold up my fingers as I say it, because Mom’s busy juicing. She’s lined up the beets and carrots, the kale and spinach. The machine chomps and growls. Its screech vibrates my teeth.

  “Good, good!” she shouts, and pours us each a cup of green froth.

  When I reach for my glass, she lightly smacks my hand. “You know the drill, sunshine. Vitals first.” So I perch on the stool and hand over my arm.

  My mom operates efficiently, expertly. Before I was born, she worked as a nurse in an emergency room, but then I came along. She says that life turns out the way it’s meant to. She says she would have studied even harder in nursing school if she’d known her only patient would eventually be me.

  The blood pressure cuff constricts and loosens and she leans over me to write the numbers on the chart hung on the kitchen wall. Next she tucks the thermometer under my tongue and then presses her fingertips to my wrist to take my pulse.

  Everything gets written down. We’ve got the kitchen chart but also spreadsheets and a thick folder full of all my records—the hospital intake forms and prescriptions and waivers. My mom saves all of those so carefully. Sometimes I catch her with all of it spread around her on the table like a map directing her to the distant island of my good health.

  There are other spreadsheets—money in, money out. She keeps a folder full of bills and applications for medical debt relief. Mom doesn’t want me to focus on those numbers. Today is a four. That’s the number that’s supposed to matter to me.

  Mom hands me my glass and tips hers toward me. I raise mine and say, “Cheers!”

  “Salud!” she corrects. We both smile at the stupid joke, sitting at the counter and drinking to our happy and healthy lives. “Think you can make it to school today, baby?” She looks at me expectantly, so I say yes before I think it all through: the reading I haven’t completed yet for Japanese class, the lack of anything remotely decent to wear. But the mom machine is up and running. “Good, good! That’s great news.” As if she can light my way forward with the brightness in her voice.

  The green juice settles in the glass. Then I can feel it on my upper lip like a monstrous mustache. I’m already preparing for the slow climb back upstairs to get ready, steadying myself in the shower. Mom flips through the tiny plastic compartments of my pill case, moving meds. “Let’s hold off on Big Blue until you come home, then.” She holds up the familiar capsule. “It sometimes makes you so drowsy. If your pain’s only at a four, I bet you can power through.” The case rattles when she passes it over to me.

  Today is Thursday. It’s the first time I’ve tried to go to school this week. I open up the compartment labeled TH and gulp the three remaining pills down with my juice.

  Sometimes I genuinely don’t know what creeps at a more glacial pace—my own body readying itself in the morning or my mother’s Toyota. We used to live outside Hubbard, Ohio, and I swear the Amish horse-and-buggies would occasionally pass us. We’ve been pulled over for taking the highway too slow. That time, Mom pointed out my travel oxygen to the policeman. “Precious cargo, Officer. Precious and fragile.”

  “My apologies, ma’am.” That time, the officer rapped his knuckles gently against the car door. “God bless.”

  Today I don’t have the travel oxygen tank at my feet or tubes up my nose. My backpack feels light because Mom won’t allow me to strain my back carrying books. In my locker, I keep a second set I can bring to my classes.

  “How’re you feeling?” she asks again. “Any nausea?”

  I shrug. Out the window, the town passes by like a flipbook of strip malls. Sometimes I want to tell my mother that it’s the car’s unhurried crawl that turns my stomach. I feel every bump and jolt.

  When she needs to, she can drive fast. The last time we moved, Hubbard receded in the rearview in a blur. I remember gripping the armrest beside her and marveling at her focus on the road, how she’d suddenly learned to gun the engine and change lanes like a stuntman in a spy movie. Sometimes my mom surprises me.

  But not today. We take each turn slow. Mom pulls up in the handicapped spot, right at the front entrance, so I try to propel myself out of the car quickly, before anyone sees.


  “Do you need me to sign you in?” she asks, her fingers already closed around the door handle.

  I don’t. She knows this. Parents have to sign their kids out to leave early, not to drop them off late.

  “No worries,” I call out, slinging the bag over my shoulder.

  “Text me if you need me.”

  I nod. Who else would I text?

  Immediately, I regret braving the front office alone. The secretaries stop chatting the second I open the door. Mrs. Arsenault, the gray-haired lady who sits farthest back, leaps to her feet and disappears into the vice principal’s office.

  That leaves me with Mrs. Oakes, whose hair is colored a deep shade of cranberry. She studies me carefully.

  “May I have a pass to third period, please?” I ask.

  Her brow furrows. “Third period is over.”

  Okay. Deep breath. Already I am so very tired. “May I have a pass to fourth period, please?”

  Mrs. Oakes taps the clipboard. “Sign in. Make sure to write the reason for your tardiness.”

  I carefully write my name in the space provided. Under reason, I print illness the way my mother has instructed.

  Mrs. Oakes reads as I write. “Illness? Are you sick?” We have had this conversation so often, I almost answer before she asks.

  “I have a chronic illness. It’s not contagious.” My voice sounds automatic, like a robot version of me. The school edition.

  “Ummm-hmmm.” Mrs. Oakes starts carefully lettering the hall pass as Mrs. Arsenault swoops back to her seat.

  “Mr. Brinks would like to speak with you …”

  “Cara.” I supply her with my name.

  “Cara.” Mrs. Arsenault sounds triumphant.

  “Now?”

  “What?” Mrs. Oakes asks. She stares at me blankly. I don’t know if it’s my brain that’s cloaked in fog or hers.

  I try again. “Would Mr. Brinks like to speak with me now?”

  Mrs. Oakes glances at Mrs. Arsenault, who calls behind her, “Mr. Brinks, are you ready to speak to Cara …”

  “Wakely.” I supply that one too. I’m on a roll.

  “Wakely?” Mrs. Arsenault calls into the office behind her. I feel as if I’m waiting to audition for a part in a play about a kid who has the audacity to cut class.

  When Mr. Brinks pokes his head out of his office, he smiles directly at me. His eyes crease kindly. “Cara?” I’m prepared to list symptoms, discuss diagnoses. Mrs. Oakes and Mrs. Arsenault settle in their chairs. I am used to starring in this show.

  Mr. Brinks doesn’t order me into his office, though. Instead he says, “I think you should attend fourth period. How about coming back later?”

  “You mean like after school?” I ask. “Do you want my mom here?”

  “How about lunchtime? Did you bring a bag lunch today?” I nod. “Great! We can chow down together. I’ll see you at twelve thirty.” Mr. Brinks disappears back into his office. Show’s over. The secretaries seem disappointed.

  “You should get a move on,” Mrs. Oakes prods. “That pass is time-stamped.”

  I’m not very accustomed to walking fast. Just getting to fourth period is an obstacle course. I stop at my locker and need to look up the text I sent myself with the combo. It’s English class and I’m not entirely sure which novel we’re reading. But Mr. Durand is one of those inspiring teachers, a self-designated lighthouse in the storm of our adolescence. He always wears colorful shoelaces and makes us write journals. So I grab three books and stuff them into my bag, knowing Durand won’t examine the time stamp on my pass too closely. He won’t roll his eyes and sarcastically say “Nice of you to join us today, Cara” the way other teachers might.

  Everyone’s still milling around in the classroom as Durand fusses with his laptop and the projector. He doesn’t even ask for the pass in my hand. “Hey there, Cara,” he says. He is the only one who acknowledges my arrival. The eyes of my classmates barely flicker in my direction.

  But that’s okay. That’s understandable. I grab a seat in the second row and wait to see which book Libby Gilfeather retrieves from her bag.

  This is how I manage most school days: I find a kind person who attends on the regular and take my cues from them. If there’s a test or a quiz, I fill in every answer and hope occasionally one lands right. School is full of tests that don’t matter—quadratic equations, battles of the American Revolution. Mom says that my classmates have the luxury of learning a little at a time, that once we figure out my health I’ll catch up. For now I try to absorb as much as possible in the few hours I can hold my body upright in a desk.

  Libby sees me eyeing her book. She points her finger to the chapter number and nods and smiles. There are people on this planet who are instinctively generous. That’s one silver lining of sickness—it gives those people a reason to flex their compassion muscles. I turn to the correct page, meet Libby’s eyes, and smile. For a second, I let myself imagine having a best friend. Libby Gilfeather and I would study at the kitchen table together. We’d ride our bikes to the Dairy Queen on Hanover Avenue and text each other photos of questionable outfits before school.

  But I know how that goes. My ketogenic diet doesn’t allow for Dairy Queen. I’m not sure I could actually propel a bicycle forward. And I am everyone’s nightmare partner for group projects. Libby would understand the first few times I canceled. She’d probably even swing by my house and pretend to be fascinated by my potassium levels. But really the first rule of friendship is that you have to show up. I can rarely show up.

  Mr. Brinks and I sit across from each other at a round table in his office at lunchtime. He’s come out from behind his oversized desk, probably to avoid intimidating me. Or maybe he didn’t want the mayo from my turkey-and-spinach wrap smeared on his important papers.

  Mr. Brinks is eating yogurt—three of them, which seems like an awful lot of dairy but what do I know?

  “What do you know about the attendance policy at Middlefield High School?” he asks, pitching the first emptied carton into the trash can.

  “I’m not sure.” I nibble on my wrap, stalling for time. But Mr. Brinks is pulling that adult trick of letting the silence sit, waiting for me to fill it. So I trot out my own overplayed card. “To be honest, I’m just really focused on my health right now.”

  “Tell me about that.” Yogurt: The Sequel pops open.

  “I have a chronic illness.” My robot voice crackles.

  “Right.” Brinks lets the quiet stretch.

  Fine. “It’s called unidentified autoimmune syndrome. I first began experiencing symptoms in the third grade: joint pain, fatigue, muscle depletion.”

  “Third grade. That’s a long time to be sick.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can almost see that younger version of myself, twirling her hula-hoop over and over. “Well, I’ve had periods of remission. My mom says that if we consistently work on it, my health might become more consistent.”

  Brinks nods into his yogurt. “Make sense.” He looks up. “What does your doctor say?”

  “Which one?” My laugh is half robot. “We see a lot of doctors.”

  “But you have a pediatrician? Someone who oversees all your care.”

  “I guess so. My mom is a nurse—she used to work at a hospital. So she’s able to coordinate my appointments and make recommendations. We’re lucky for that. Some parents don’t know enough to even question doctors.”

  “Should we do that? Question doctors?” Mr. Brinks sounds genuinely curious.

  It takes me a moment to chew on my bite of turkey wrap. I think of how often the medicine I’ve been prescribed has done nothing but introduce new side effects. How doctors would examine me, but not really listen to me. How often my mom would scorch the phone lines, insisting, “She’s not getting any better. Do something.” Sometimes we’d need to move on to the next office and hope someone new might help us.

  “Lots of times we assume that doctors have this authority, but they don’t always know
everything,” I say. Mr. Brinks listens intently. “My mom has tracked my symptoms for years; she’s basically an expert. But people underestimate nurses.”

  “That’s how she feels?”

  “That’s how I feel.”

  Mr. Brinks nods. His fingers steeple together in front of him. “I’m not an expert in autoimmune disorders.” His last yogurt sits on the table unopened. “But I have a lot of experience getting kids through high school. I’m worried that you’re not off to a great start.” He reaches to the giant desk behind him for his laptop and taps the keys. “It’s November fourteenth?” he asks me.

  I want to tell him that I have no idea. For me, the day’s number is four: four out of ten for pain and fatigue; four out of five for sleep and appetite. But it’s starting to seep into my dull brain that I’ve already spoken too freely to Mr. Brinks. My mom would remind me that health is a private matter. There are laws in place to protect us from nosy and judgmental people. So I don’t even nod. I don’t need to help him along.

  “Right,” he says, as if I’ve contributed. “We’ve just completed the first marking period. We’ve been in school forty-five days so far. Do you know how many you’ve attended?”

  “I’ve been really struggling this fall.”

  “You’ve attended eighteen days of school.”

  I want to ask, That many? Instead I just set my lunch down and say, “Yes.”

  “Less than half.”

  “I’ve worked really hard to keep up with my assignments.”

  “I know you have. All your teachers report that.” Well, that’s something. “I see from your middle school transcript that you’ve moved a lot. My concern, Cara, is that you are so used to playing catch-up that you don’t realize how your frequent absences are eroding your educational experience.”

  My head nods thoughtfully. I am so, so tired.

  Mr. Brinks goes on, “High school counts in a different way. Colleges will wonder about that kind of pattern. And there’s the matter of state mandates. I’m legally bound to report truancy. Now, I know you’re not a truant. You complete your work diligently. Your mother is an involved parent who communicates with our office frequently. But the end result is the same—I can’t give you credit for classes you haven’t actually attended.”