Dear Journal:
I didn’t bother dressing up for therapy this week. I wasn’t in the mood. With school letting out and sissy growing fatter by the day, you’d think I’d be happy. After all, those things have caused 99% of my angst over the past few years. Now one was ending (for now), and the other was getting too fat to be much of a threat.
Combine that with my own weight-loss and modest academic advances, and I should've been on Cloud Nine. But I wasn't. Instead, I felt lower than I did on my first day of therapy.
Dr. Chen knew right away that something was wrong. Not that it was hard to tell. After weeks of wearing nice clothes and makeup for our sessions, I was back to my sullen, sweat-clad self.
“Does pregnancy cause acne?” I asked when pressed about what was bothering me.
“I…Uh…Yes, I think it can.”
Dr. Chen may have intuited my troubled mental state, but he clearly didn’t anticipate my out-of-left-field question. Nor the even further afield follow-up.
“Does it make your breasts bigger?”
“Usually.” Dr. Chen shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, just curious. I have this friend…” My mouth froze mid-sentence. Had I really fallen into the "asking for a friend" trope?
The look of concern that spread across Dr. Chen’s face informed me that I had indeed.
“Jessie,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Are you pregnant?”
“No!”
In retrospect, I should’ve kept up the lie, but I didn’t want him to think I was pregnant. I doubted doctor-client confidentiality applied to knocked-up sixteen-year-olds.
So, I slumped in my seat and said with a sigh, “It's my sister.”
“Michelle is pregnant?”
“Was.”
There was silence as the weight of my words word sunk in. To say abortion was frowned upon in our (red)neck of the woods would be an understatement. But to Dr. Chen’s credit, he didn’t freak out or proselytize. He mostly just expressed concern for Michelle, which didn’t make me feel better about myself, but at least it eased my mind about throwing her under the bus.
For about 45 minutes.
After my session, Dr. Chen called my mom into his office while I sweat in the waiting room...and not just because I was wearing a sweatshirt in June. After five minutes or so, Mom emerged without a word, an inscrutable look on her face.
“What was that all about?” I asked on the walk to the car.
“Dr. Chen wants to see your sister,” she answered, as casual as can be. “I scheduled her for next week.”
If my journal ends here, it’s because I'm dead. I expect sissy will be coming to kill me at any moment.
--Jessie