“I’m taking her to the hospital,” I insisted gruffly.
“When this happened before, she wanted to be taken home.”
“She needs professional help.”
“She is professional help, she’s a fucking social worker.”
“This isn’t normal, Mal.” I shifted gears, unsure whether to head home or to the hospital. One thought pulsed through my veins: “She’s not ok.”
“She would be ok if you hadn’t grabbed her and thrown her over your shoulder. You scared the shit out of her!” Mallory yelled.
I yelled back. “I didn’t know she would —”
A whimper rose from the back seat. In the rearview, she looked asleep.
Panic fluttered wildly around in my chest with the need to fix her.
Mallory hissed, “Last time she said, ‘All they can do at the hospital is check my pulse and send me a bill. I just want to go home and be left alone.’”
‘Feliz Navidad’ came on — Christ, how often do they play that fucking song? — but instead of bouncing along, Mallory flicked off the radio before looking out the window.
A few miles passed in tense silence.
“You should learn to drive stick, in case I’m not …”
As she watched me shift. I whispered, “I could teach you.”
“Who would survive the driving Thunder Dome?” she snorted, knowing I would flip my lid when she struggled with the clutch. “I'll ask Dad.”
Maybe I’d misjudged my sister. She was impulsive, but that didn’t make her unreliable. She knew how to take care of Grace when I was failing.
“How often does this happen?”
“Less than it used to.” She pulled down her ponytail and ran her fingers through her hair. “More if she’s stressed or not sleeping well. When she’s well resourced — meditating, doing yoga, eating right — it’s less common, but unexpected things can still be triggers.”
“Like what?”
“Obviously being thrown over somebody’s shoulder,” she said.
I clutched the wheel tighter and felt my teeth grind.
“Sorry, Alex, I shouldn’t have … you didn’t know she struggles with being upside down. We approach inversion poses carefully at yoga class. She's ok if her feet are on the ground but struggles as soon as her legs go up, so she won’t do headstands or forearm balance poses unless I’m there. I’ve never asked why because it's none of my business, but my guess is her asshole brother Levi dangled her from a tree or something.”
My fists clenched the steering wheel tighter at the idea of her brother being rough with her … even though I’d thrown my sister over my shoulder, it hadn’t been malicious.
“The memory tonight was from before she transitioned, right? That’s why she was confused about her name.”
Mallory nodded, then blew out a long exhale. “I’ve triggered her with much less, and I didn’t know …” Her knee started to bounce, voice so quiet I strained to hear.
“I fucked it up the first time. We were watching Home Alone. I didn’t realize … I teased her for crying at a kid’s movie. Her eyelids were fluttering, but she — she wasn’t there, you know? And I panicked. I shook her, screamed her name. I yelled that the family would come back for him, but that only made the crying worse. Mom pulled me off, spoke gently while I paced the hallway. I was a complete mess, I thought I broke my friend, I —” Her breath hitched, and in the lights on her face from highway lights, tear lines reflected on her cheeks.
“How did you know what to say?”
“When she came to work the next day, she explained how even small triggers can make her re-live the most traumatic memories. She coached me on what to say if it happened again. And it did. And it will keep happening, maybe forever. That might have been the hardest part for me to understand. I couldn’t fix it for her, but I can be there when she needs me.”
She wiped away the tears. “I still fuck it up. One time, I didn’t … I didn’t get her grounded back into the present well enough, and I asked about her memory, and she started looking around for Elijah. I had to tell her — I had to watch her lose him all over again, Alex.” My tough, fierce sister shoved her knuckle into her mouth to hold back a sob.
"Ok, I’ll save all my body throwing energy for you, ok, Shrimp?" I reached over to squeeze her nape. "Anything else I should avoid?”
She glared at me skeptically, as if I was looking for Grace’s weakness to use in a negotiation and she wanted me to stay away from her entirely.
“Mal … I don’t want to hurt her again.”
She tucked her leg up onto the bench. “She can usually recognize her triggers and catch herself. If you see her breathing deeply, wiggling her toes, gripping a table or desk, those are some of her coping mechanisms to ground herself.”
Oh shit. She’d gripped the chair in the dining room at Carol’s house, and when I said her name, she’d looked through me for a minute. Before sharing about her family’s kitchen table. Had she been reliving a memory?
“When her body stiffens or her breath hitches, she told me to remind to her breathe, which can be enough to pull her back into the present. But unexpected things send her back, totally out of her control. A scene in a movie, a particular smell. One time it was a hawk.”
I paused, thinking through all the ways I could accidentally make her worse. “Sounds like a lot of work, making sure you don’t mess up.”
“She’s my best friend, Lex. She and Kate are the sisters I always wanted. She’d burn down the world for me, and I don’t know what I did to deserve that loyalty.”
My throat tightened painfully as my sister glanced over her headrest and smiled softly at Grace’s restful expression.
I choked out, “She’s lucky to have you, Mal.”
