The Whispers

17: Adopted

"Hello?" I answer. I didn't bother to check the caller ID. I mentally scold myself and hope it's not a telemarketer or Dallas. Perhaps it's Mom and she's calling to tell me that she isn't dead and that she's coming home to take me to see Maggie.

"Hi, this is Doctor Lewis from the Lee Perry Memorial Hospital, is this Rosalie Standish?" The voice is quick and clear, as if they can predict the miniature heart attack they're giving me and they want to do it as quick and painless as possible.

"This is she," I confirm. Harper's hand stills on my back, waiting for what's to come.

"I'm calling about the blood test we did yesterday," they say. "Unfortunately it isn't a match for your sister, but that's not surprising given she was adopted-"

What?

I don't hear the rest. I don't want to. I block it all out as my ears start to ring. Ringing ringing ringing. It's unbearable.

"What?" I ask. I want them to repeat themselves. I need them to, that was too much information given to me at one time.

"You aren't a match, so you aren't able to donate your kidney as there is a high possibility her body could reject it," she explains. "This was not unexpected because, looking back at her records, she was adopted and you don't share any relation to her. She is high on the transplant list, however, so-"

I don't hear whatever else they have to say. I block out their voice and panic. Panic because I can't give her a kidney. Panic because the idiot doctor I'm talking to seems to think Maggie Is adopted. Panic because she's high on the transplant list, meaning her life is at risk and I can't rip my organs out of my abdomen to help her.

If I could then I would take out both kidneys if she needed them. If she needed a liver or a heart I'd rip myself open and tear them out personally, I don't care. Anything she needs I would give her, whether I need it to live or not.

"She's not adopted," I say. I know she's not adopted, I remember little four year old me having a talk with Mom and Dad about a baby being on the way, them showing up with one a few months later, and Mom constantly saying that Maggie reminds her of Dad. I can see why, because she inherited his brown hair and tall stature. I, on the other hand, am short like mom and have blue eyes like Dad and blonde hair-

"I regret to inform you of this seeing as you didn't know beforehand, but she was adopted."

"No, she wasn't," I insist. This doctor probably looked at the wrong file or is pulling some kind of mean prank. That or she's a fucking idiot. Marguerite Standish is a common enough name.

"Her birth certificate says that her birth mother was a girl named Anna Lynch, she was fifteen..."

I throw my phone across the room and it shatters. I'm glad it shattered - now I don't have to listen to any more of that doctor's bullshit. They're wrong. Dad wouldn't ask her if she could hear voices if Maggie weren't his kid, he would know that whatever shit he has going on is inherited...

But she never heard the voices. She said she never did. In fact, she liked bugs. Maybe Dad just wanted to know if other people could hear the bugs, regardless of blood relation.

"What did they say?" Harper asks, gawking at the shattered phone on the floor.

"That I can't give her a kidney, she was adopted, and she needs a kidney soon or she'll die."

They did say that. I know how to read between the lines. Doctors really are a bunch of fucking downers that know nothing.

"Shit," he says.

Yeah.

Shit.

I start to cry yet again. Uncontrollably cry and shake on my bed. I guess it doesn't matter that I'm bawling, it won't change anything, but I'm not really the happiest right now. Sometimes I feel like all I do is leak from my tear ducts.

I supposed crying isn't as bad as some of the things I could be doing - take yesterday, for example. I could be doing dangerous drugs and kissing a mentally ill addict I barely know, but instead, I'm sitting in my room bawling.

Come to think of it yesterday seemed like the less miserable of the two options.

"Norton wants to know how she is," a spider on the wall tells me. "His little girl isn't okay. Neither of them. Not you, not her. Update update update."

"She's not his little girl!" I scream at the spider. Harper doesn't question me as I slam my palm against the arachnid and have it splatter all over the wallpaper.

"Do you want something to cheer you up?" Harper hesitantly asks.

Fuck yes I do.

I nod and get off of the bed, moving towards his box. He takes the hint and brings out the bag of pills he took when he woke up. He hands me two and I immediately swallow them.

"This will be the last time we do this," he says. "I don't want you hooked on them."

"It's hasn't even been twenty-four hours," I point out. "I doubt I can be addicted within this little time."

"It doesn't take long."

It didn't.