Chapter 2

Luna jumped to her feet and stood ram-rod straight with her legs firmly planted to keep herself steady. There, across the kitchen, stood her mother. She was sleep rumpled wearing a simple matching pajama set in a deep red that offset her gorgeous tan skin and her nearly jet black hair. In the dim light she looked young and ethereal but Luna knew that in the harsh light of day the thin brackets framing her mouth and the crow’s feet around her eyes would begin to show her age and then the grey streaks that littered her cork-screw curls would age her further than her years. The signs of the stress brought on by the move, by the fire, by Luna.

Despite the rapid aging her mother, Rebecca had gotten from the sheer stress of life between her daughter’s surgeries and the work she did as a surgeon, she was a beautiful woman with wild, and wildly intelligent, chocolate brown eyes and a smile that warmed up the heart of its recipient. Not to mention a strong body of lean muscles from exercising daily and a backbone of steel from handling the stresses with barely a pout or complaint. At least not a complaint to Luna.

The concerned look that was rapidly growing across Rebecca’s face brought Luna back to the present. She blinked rapidly and tried to fight through the fog that sleep deprivation had leeched into her brain. When she didn’t answer fast enough her mother was beside her in seconds, leading her back to her chair and then stepping away to grab an icy cold bottle of water from the fridge and shoving it into her daughters hands with a simple, no-nonsense order of “drink”

Luna popped the cap of the drink and greedily gulped down as much as she could, realizing only the second the water touched her tongue that she hadn’t had anything to drink since last night despite the running and the tree-climbing and the terror.

Her mother reached out a hand to steady the back of the bottle and lead Luna to setting it back down, now half empty. “What happened?” Rebecca asked in a voice so calm and soothing that Luna almost did break down and tell her about the run. But she couldn’t tell her about the dangerous thing she got up to so many nights in a row. Her mother would undoubtedly tell her to stop and she just couldn’t do that. But she could tell her a little bit of it.

“I had a really bad nightmare ... again.” She watched her mother’s face but it remained impassive as she reclaimed her seat, which wasn’t shocking. You don’t because the best surgeon in the state if you flinch at every mention of something bad happening. However this same unreadable poker face had Luna struggling not to shift in her seat. “I couldn’t breathe in my room, so I climbed out onto the porch roof and-” In Luna’s mind she hesitated for a second but in the real world her lies flowed from her tongue like a gentle stream. “I sat out there for a few hours, listening to my music until I felt like I could be inside. Then I showered and came down here for food but after fixing it ... I had another panic attack. I think the kitchen just got too hot for me and so I had a flashback and ... yeah ... then the panic attack came on.”

When Luna looked up into her mother’s eyes she could see something like hurt and anger flash through them and her heart galloped at the thought that maybe the lie hadn’t sounded as good as she had thought. But just as the look was there it was gone in the next millisecond. Her mother’s eyebrows just lowered with further concern.

“and your asthma? Was that kicked up because of your panic attack as well?” Luna hadn’t even realized that her lungs had tightened again until her mother pointed it out. Even from across the room Rebecca had recognized the slight wheeze in each of her daughter’s breaths. Luna just nodded, this being the only truth in the whole thing. Her asthma attack had been kicked up by the panic attack. It just wouldn’t have been if her lungs had had time to relax since her run home.

Rebecca examined her daughter from across the table for a bit longer, her eyes narrowed as Luna sat sweating in her seat. Finally she stood up and marched to her daughter, tilting back Lunas head and pressing her ear to Luna’s chest to hear the wheezing more clearly. After a minute she pulled back and nodded her head.

“That’s going to need a nebulizer treatment in order to knock it out. Your inhaler won’t cut it this time. Eat your breakfast” she said, pushing Luna’s plate back to her, now much colder but also not smelling so strongly nor turning Luna’s stomach as much just by the sight of it. “and then when you are done you are going to take your treatment and head back to bed”

Luna instantly bulked at this as her eyes shot back up to meet her mother’s. “Mom I can’t go back to bed. I have school today.” Rebecca instantly zeroed back in on her daughter with her intimidating stare but instead of choosing to comment she just tapped the plate with her finger and sternly said “eat and we will discuss that after you’ve had your treatment.”

Luna nodded then hesitantly took a bite of her food, finding that the second it hit her tongue, her nausea was replaced by a ravenous hunger that could only be had by a growing teenager who just spent their night climbing trees and running from fear itself.

Luna watched her mother make coffee as she ate. Rebecca’s movements were slow and sure and deliberate as she poured beans in to the grinder then poured those into the machine then added water. It was almost like watching a choreographed scene from a play. Luna’s mother was a couple of inches shorter than Luna, about 5’4”, but her confidence and precision always made her seem so much taller.

When hanging around at the hospital, the other doctors just delighted in telling her stories of her mother slamming full grown men, from gang members to veterans to athletes, down onto their gurneys and holding them down even as blood would slick her hands and spray across her white coat. Or how she would talk down raging patients with just her calm, assertive voice, brooking no argument.

That was the woman she was seeing now. Not her mother who would sit and watch hours of old musicals like Annie, singing with her daughter as Luna struggled to keep up with her lungs tightening and her voice cracking. Not the woman who would dance with her in the kitchen until both had to flop down into chairs when their giggling fits became too much.

No, this was the woman who could see right through Luna’s shit and Luna just did not know how to handle her.

{3r}

After Luna had finished her breakfast and her water, she offered to fix her mother breakfast but Rebecca declined. The air in the room had been tense enough that Luna gladly took advantage of her need for a nebulizer treatment to escape the room and her mother’s intense looks.

The treatment lasted for about 10 minutes with Luna just sitting silently and breathing in deeply. The medicine tasted salty on her tongue and kept collecting on her nose and upper lip, making them itch. Soon enough though it was done, leaving her breathing easier but also leaving her heartrate elevated and her hands slightly shaky.