Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

months now,” I said, watching a lizard dart along the side of a wrought-iron fence.

“Do you want to talk about picking a date for the burial? We never did that before we left, you know.”

“While we’re on vacation?” I said, looking at him quizzically. “Not really.”

“Fair enough,” he said quickly before turning back to the girls. “You two coming?”

Isa nodded. But Charlotte, who was a few steps behind her, said nothing, and there was nothing behind her glassy eyes.

I was stone-cold sober and at her side faster than you can say helicopter parent. “Char, what is it?” I asked.

But I already knew that it was exactly what I’d been most afraid of since the moment she’d received her diagnosis. Her blood sugar had plummeted and was continuing to drop. Her face was pale, and she was shivering as I put an arm around her and guided her into the hotel. “How much insulin did you take?” I asked.

“The usual,” she mumbled. “I think . . . I didn’t eat enough.”

My heart was galloping in my chest. “But your plate was almost empty.”

“She put it in her napkin,” said Isa.

“Oh Charlotte,” I said. “You can’t do that.”

She started to say something but gave up before the first word came out.

“It’s okay,” I told her as we got on the elevator. “We’re here now. It’s going to be fine.”

In fact, I didn’t know she’d be fine any more than I knew how to stop elephant poaching and cure cancer. This had happened to Charlotte once before, after a soccer game. She hadn’t eaten as much as she should’ve beforehand, and she’d been running so hard that her blood sugar had dipped perilously low before she even realized it was happening. It was quite possibly the most terrifying thing I had ever lived through.

And now it was happening again.

The elevator opened and let us onto our floor. I motioned for Shiloh to unlock the door to our room.

“Isa, glucose gel—it’s in my purse. Now,” I barked, making a mental note to apologize to her later. “Shiloh, please get some orange juice from the vending machine, then get the test strips. Go!” Charlotte was like a rag doll as I guided her to the bed. “Stay here, love,” I said, willing myself not to cry. “This is just going to take a minute, and you’re going to feel better.”

Isa, God bless her, was back in a flash with the tube of gel. I pulled the lid off with my teeth and told Charlotte to open her mouth. Please be okay, please be okay, I prayed, watching her glassy eyes as I squirted it onto her tongue. She claimed to hate the way it tasted, but now she didn’t protest at all. In fact, she didn’t really do anything.

“Sweetheart,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, “I know you feel terrible, but please try to swallow.” Her eyes had just closed but her throat had moved, so I told her to open her mouth again, and I emptied the tube.

“How is she?” said Shiloh, who was at my side, holding a bottle of juice out to us.

“Definitely hypoglycemic,” I said.

“Crap,” he said, frantically trying to unscrew the top of the juice bottle. “Try this.”

“Just a little,” I said. “The gel should be kicking in soon, and we should test her sugar before we go too far.” I tried to hoist Charlotte up. “Some juice, Char. Open up for me.”

Shiloh held the juice to her mouth. She startled slightly, but then sat up and took the container from him and took a sip on her own.

“There we go,” I said as the light began to return to her eyes. I smiled, even though I wanted to sob, because I needed her to see that she was going to be okay.

“You scared us, sweetheart,” said Shiloh quietly, putting his arm around her. To an outsider, he would have looked oddly calm, but I recognized this as his version of coming down from fight-or-flight mode. “Thank goodness we caught that in time.”

I knew what he was thinking but hadn’t said—because I was thinking it, too. Even a few minutes longer and she could have slipped into a coma.

“You okay?” asked Isa, her hand on Charlotte’s arm.

Charlotte nodded weakly. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know you didn’t.” I was so overcome with relief that it took me a minute to be able to speak again. “We’re all learning here. Let’s check your blood sugar and get a little more food in you, and then what do you say we hit the hay for the night?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m really tired.”

Dear dog almighty, I was, too. So tired that when Shiloh and I crawled into one of the room’s two double beds an hour later, I didn’t even wonder when he’d finally make love to me, or think about my daughter’s latest brush with death, or wish that my vacation had not gotten off to such a disastrous start. Instead, Vieques, in all its verdant, tropical glory, appeared like a mirage behind my closed eyelids, and before I knew it, I had fallen into a deep, dream-filled sleep.

ELEVEN

“That was way too close.” Shiloh and I were side by side in front of the sinks in the hotel bathroom while the girls changed into their bathing suits. He met my eyes in the mirror. “I know we didn’t have a chance to talk about Charlotte last night, but we need to. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“I know. We should talk about a new plan when we get home. Maybe even get Dr. Ornstein involved,” I said, referring to her endocrinologist.

“Sure, but what about the rest of the vacation?” he asked, frowning as he reached for a towel to dry his face.

“I think we got all of our bad luck out of the way for this trip,” I said, adjusting the straps of my sundress.

“Hmm,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “I