Oklahoma, Age 17
Like all teenage girls, I did everything to impress cute boys.
In middle school, it was skateboarding. I'd try to do fancy flips on stairs, scraping my knees and palms as I fell. It never turned out well since I was very clumsy.
In high school, parkour became a huge thing. The guys would flip off the side of the school, trying to be like comic book characters. I was never afraid to do anything once, and somehow in between showing off and flirting with the cute boy, I hurt my ankle.
I can't remember if there was a snap. There may have been. All I know is that my friends had to help me get to my first period. Then when second period came around, it took two of my friends to yank off my boot. My ankle was swollen, already turning into a watercolor painting, and when I touched it, it felt squishy and gross. I went to the nurse. She said that I probably pulled a ligament and should wrap it and walk on it. Then she sent me on my merry way with an ice pack.
I limped from class to class, using the wall as a guide so I would put the least amount of pressure on my ankle. I begged Heather to take me to the doctor because my ankle hurt so bad.
Heather never did.
I don't know why I was surprised.
This was the same woman who last year sent me to school with a 102-degree temperature—she never answered her phone, so I spent the entire day in the nurse's office working on homework.
This was the same woman who didn't listen to me when I said I was sick. Two weeks before my fifteenth birthday, I fainted. I ended up in the hospital for pneumonia and bronchitis.
Heather took me out of the hospital against the doctor's orders. The doctor was extremely concerned about the fluid in my lungs due to pneumonia and bronchitis, but Heather insisted on taking me home. She told him she'd care for me and ensure I took it easy.
It was a lie. She went back out to party with her friends while I took care of my siblings, still running a temperature and coughing up phlegm.
This was the same woman who didn't listen to me when I told her that Camron, my littlest brother, needed to go to the doctor. He was maybe only a year or so old, and he had a sinus infection.
The sinus infection got so bad that the poor boy had literal mucus coming out of his eyes. He'd wake up screaming in the mornings because his eyes were basically glued shut from the congealed mucus that had oozed out during the night. Neither Heather nor Brian would wake up to take care of him.
Instead, that was up to me. I'd get a warm rag and place it over his eyes, whispering, "Shh, Cam Cam, it's okay, monkey," to calm him down.
So no, I shouldn't have been surprised that she never took me to the doctor for my broken ankle. Maybe I was still holding on to the hope that she'd prove she could be a good mother—she didn't.
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