Kaya Bluebird's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Kaya Bluebird woke to the sound of her youngest sister crying her name from the hallway. She was thirty-one, and she had been answering that call in one form or another since she was twelve, when their mother walked out and left three girls in a quiet house. She sat up, pushed dark hair streaked with white out of her face, and swung her feet to the cold floor. The house still smelled like the broth she had simmered last night, trying to feed grief out of her sisters one bowl at a time. Elleanor stood in the doorway with one hand pressed low on her stomach. Her late-teen face was pale, her jaw set the way it got when she refused to make a fuss. "Joy's throwing up again," Elleanor said. "Bad. She has a fever." "Your belly?" "Later." Kaya took the hall in six steps. In the bathroom, Joy knelt over the toilet in a black jacket and jeans, dark hair stuck to her neck. Joy was in her early twenties and treated animals in barns without proper tools; she did not flinch at blood or fear, and she did not flinch now. She flinched only at her own body. "How long?" Kaya asked. "Since three." "Fluids?" "Can't." Kaya put a hand to Joy's forehead. Hot. This was not a bug. This was the whole stack of things the doctor had named for her: the gastritis, the ulcerative colitis, the nervous stomach, the IBS, all flaring at once because Joy had buried a horse she couldn't save and then buried the feeling under work. Kaya had watched her sisters grieve for weeks. She had cooked. She had listened. It had not been enough. "Elleanor, kitchen. Kettle on. Bring the small pot and the ginger." "I'll do it," Elleanor said, and went, one hand still on her stomach. Kaya wet a cloth and folded it against the back of Joy's neck. She held Joy's hair in one fist and rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades with the other. Joy heaved again. Nothing came up but bile. "I'm calling the clinic," Kaya said. "No." "Yes." Joy did not argue a second time, which was how Kaya knew. Elleanor came back with the pot and set it beside Kaya's knee without a word. Then she sat down hard against the tub, sweating, and pressed her forehead to her arm. Kaya looked at one sister curled around the toilet and one sister curled around her own belly, and she understood she could not sit with them the way she had all week. Broth would not fix this. She reached for the phone on the counter. "Maple Street," she said when they picked up. "I'm bringing both of them in. Now." She hung up and reached for her coat. The waiting was over. Whatever came next, she was driving.