“You just pulled it out of a cupboard though.” Norm leans forward and peeks over the edge. “A cupboard that has a mini fridge in it. Pierre?”
“Yeah. There are also little shelves with dividers on them, all labeled with each individual med’s info and shit.” I pull my hair up into a messy knot as Pete eyeballs me. “I made a lot of mistakes early on when I had a lot more meds to take. This made things easier, and it’s a good system.”
“How is all that not a lot of meds?” Pete points then picks up a bottle.
“It’s mostly vitamins and supplements.” I line those up and separate everything so they can see what I’m talking about. “Then my diabetic pill, antidepressant, migraine and allergy med in the morning.”
“Still Zyrtec?” Lucky asks without looking up.
God, I love these men.
“Same dose and everything.” Then I separate out my mealtime meds. “Only the enzyme and Lactaid in green duct tape with avocados on it. I take these vitamins at night with another dose of my antidepressant and a sleeping pill.”
“That’s a heavy dose, princess.” Pete looks at the Temazepam bottle and back up to me in concern.
I shrug again. “It doesn’t work. Honestly, I need to talk to my doctor about changing it anyway.”
Lucky makes a note of that in the margin of his rapidly filling page. “I want to go over your list of doctors, too.”
“We can do that later. I’ll even give you the dates for my next appointments.” I know he’s going to want at least one of them to go with every time I see someone in a white coat.
I grab for the last three bottles and set them in front of my boys, eyeing them with a weary sigh. “These two are only as needed, both for anxiety. One is to take at onset of a panic attack during waking hours, the other I can take in addition tomy sleeping pill if it’s been a rough day. The last is something I’m supposed to take when I have a migraine but I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”Because it was the one I took the most of when I tried to kill myself.“All three are narcotics and I try to avoid taking them.”
“I don’t like any of this,” Mark says as he crosses his arms against his chest. “I understand it, but I don’t like it.”
“I know. But this is way better than it used to be. Mostly vitamins, mostly stuff that keeps me alive. It would all work more efficiently if I took better care of myself, but it’s still a huge improvement.”
“On that note.” Mark and Pete get up from the island and come around toward me, the former reaching out to squeeze my hand as he walks past, the latter stopping to kiss my temple before he does the same. “The gumbo should be done.”
My stomach lets out a terrible screech as Pete directs me to the stool he just vacated by Lucky then goes back over to help Mark.
All the weird feelings are happening tonight.
And I’m not sure if it’s because I haven’t had any kind of attention in a long time, or if it’s because I’m getting attention fromthem, but I’m all sorts of warm and fuzzy right now, and I never want this feeling to go away.
“I’m glad you told us about all this,” Lucky says as he scoots my stool closer to him. “I still have questions, though.”
“I knew you would, honey. We’ll talk more later.” Just not about anything other than what I currently take and who I see for them.
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his chest. “When is your next appointment?”
“I have a routine exam with my endo in two weeks. Then the rest of my routine shit starts all over again. Primary,psychiatrist, neurology, allergy... I have a PAP smear coming up, wanna come to that too?”
“Yes.” Lucky smirks as I look up at him over my shoulder. “But we’ll stay in the waiting room.”
“You are a ridiculous man.”
I watch as Mark puts five enormous bowls of his incredible shrimp gumbo out on the counter before he goes for the beer.
Yeah, all the things are happening on my insides right now.
A girl could get used to it.
“I may be ridiculous.” Lucky lowers his voice as his mouth dips close to my ear, and I feel his breath on the side of my neck. “But I love you. We want to keep you around for a long time, Leo, so if that means I drag you kicking and screaming to each appointment, I will.”
Letting my head fall to his shoulder, I sigh wistfully. “Just like the good old days.”
He used to have to do that for every single one of my doctor appointments, even if I just had a head cold. Hell, he and Pete had to carry me into my dentist one time, and Iwaskicking and screaming while they did it.
