All the Days of Her Life (12 page)

“You and Dad never did
that.”

“No. I became the other kind of parent. I decided it was best to let you shoulder the whole thing.”

“You used to give me some of my shots. When I was younger … I remember.”

“And I hated it. I couldn’t wait until you took over the whole business and I didn’t have to deal with it. Your father and I used to fight about it.”

“You did?”

“He’d fuss at me for shirking my duty and I’d fire back that he completely ignored his role in your management. His idea of dealing with it was to dictate orders that I was supposed to follow like an obedient soldier.”

“He never did any of the day-to-day stuff,” Lacey admitted, remembering how their battles often revolved around words like “responsibility” and “lack of caring.” She recalled her denial to Dr. Rosenberg that she felt responsible for her parents’ divorce. “Is that why you divorced? Was it because of me?”

Her mother shook her head. “No. You and your diabetes often became the battleground, but our problems went far deeper than that.”

Lacey wasn’t convinced. It seemed as if they’d argued for years about one thing or another; she was sorry that her diabetes had been one more area of constant friction. “But you’re divorced now,” she said. “And I’m sixteen and I still have to be in charge of my diabetes.”

Lacey watched a cascade of emotions cross her mother’s face. “That’s what Dr. Rosenberg said too.”

“He’s on my side?” Lacey was surprised. She had secretly wondered if the doctors would put her
firmly under her mother’s thumb like a naughty child.

“He warned me—us, your father too—that it was still
your
diabetes and that just because you’d blown it didn’t make you any less responsible for it.”

Lacey didn’t know what to say. She half wanted, half loathed getting the total responsibility back.

“Dr. Rosenberg said there’s a world of difference between inquiring and nagging. So I won’t nag you about testing or appointments,” her mother said. “I
will
ask you how you’re feeling and what Uncle Nelson said during your checkups.”

“That sounds fair.”

“And I’ll do a better job with dinnertime. I know I’ve been focused on the divorce and my job and haven’t put a good dinner on the table every night for us.”

“I can cook,” Lacey declared. “I know how—but it would be nice to have you eat with me.”

“The new Diabetes Research Institute will have special cooking classes once it opens. Maybe we could take a class together,” her mother offered.

Lacey wasn’t enamored of the idea, but she told her mother it would be okay.

A nurse came into the room to remind Lacey of her appointment with Dr. Rosenberg. “I’m glad we talked,” her mother said as Lacey was ready to start down the hall to Dr. Rosenberg’s office.

Lacey admitted that she was glad too. It was the first time for as long as she could remember that she and her mother had actually talked without recriminations
or lectures. “Will you see Dr. Rosenberg again?”

“Yes. He’s helping me immensely. I know your father’s seeing him too.”

“Then it’s a family affair,” Lacey observed. “Sort of ironic, don’t you think? Now that we’re not a family anymore.”

As the nurse walked her down the hall, Lacey knew that if Dr. Rosenberg could bring about change in her mother, then perhaps it was time that she came clean with him. If she did, however, would he recommend that her diabetes management be taken away from her? She decided it was a chance she’d have to take if she was ever going to get out of the hospital and back into a normal life.

With heart pounding, she went inside his office.

L
ACEY TOLD
D
R
. Rosenberg about the talk with her mother.

“You sound pleased,” he said, steepling his fingers together and peering at her through them.

“I guess I am. I mean, all we usually do is yell at each other. Or, rather, she yells and I tune her out.”

“It’s not an uncommon pattern for parents and teenagers.”

“So if you’re making progress with Mom, how’s it going with my father?”

“I haven’t seen him as frequently. He’s been bogged down in his business.”

Lacey felt a twinge of disappointment.

“But he tells me he’s visited you while you’ve been here,” the doctor added.

“Oh, yes. Of course, never when Mom might pop
in. I hate being juggled between the two of them like a bouncing tennis ball. It wears a person out.”

“Is that how you feel? Like a tennis ball?”

“Sometimes. It’s better that they’re divorced, you know. Our house was like living in a pressure chamber all the time.”

“And now? How is it now at your home?”

“All right, I guess. More peaceful.” She gazed toward the window. The afternoon sun was slanting through the partially closed blinds and casting striped shadows along the wall of Dr. Rosenberg’s office. Although the shadows were horizontal, they still reminded Lacey of prison bars. Suddenly, without warning, her eyes filled with tears. “I miss being a family,” she said softly.

“Your dad says he sees you often. Is that true?”

“He calls it ‘dates.’ He’s taken me to a play and a few movies, then out to dinner. But it’s not easy to make time, because I have things to do at school and he travels.”

“Don’t you enjoy the time together with him?”

“I don’t want a date with my dad.” Lacey sniffed and wiped away the moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I want us all to live together. Be together.”

“But you also said the two of them can’t get along when they live together.”

“So why can’t they? Other people do. What’s so hard about working out problems so that you can live with someone?”

“Are you angry at your parents because they can’t get along?”

Many times, she’d been disgusted with them, irritated at their inability to communicate and work out their differences. She remembered the trip up to Jenny House the previous summer. They’d fought and argued the whole way, and by the time she’d arrived, she felt ready to throw something. It was no wonder that when she’d marched into the room determined not to stay around a bunch of sick kids all summer, and Katie had come on like Miss Congeniality that Lacey had snapped at her and sulked the first few days. “I guess I am angry at them,” Lacey told Dr. Rosenberg. “I know kids my age who can get along with one another better than my parents can at their age.”

“And how about the divorce? Are you angry about that too?”

This was a more difficult question to answer because her feelings went deeper than anger. It was an anger coupled with a sense of helplessness. “I’ve already said that the divorce made life more hassle-free for us.”

“But does it make you
angry?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be part of a broken home. Whenever kids at school talk about their families, it bothers me because they have two parents living together and I don’t.”

“Surely some of them come from single-parent families. Or maybe step families.”

She thought of the people she really cared about—Jeff, Terri, Katie, Chelsea—they all lived with both their parents. Even Todd had parents who’d remained married. She looked at Dr. Rosenberg. “I
know there are lots of kids who come from split homes. But I don’t like being one of them.”

“So you’re angry about what you can’t change.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” she countered sharply.

He didn’t answer her, but instead asked, “What have you done to let your parents know you’re angry at them?”

“Nothing,” she grumbled. “There’s nothing I can do. They didn’t ask my permission to get their divorce. So they wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Or wanted.”

“Often, when someone makes you angry, you want to take revenge on the someone who hurt you. That’s a typical human response.”

“Revenge?” Lacey scoffed. “How can somebody get even with parents who dump each other?”

“Are you certain you have no power, nothing in your control to get back at them?”

Baffled, she struggled to grasp his meaning. “I can’t get even with them. There’s no way.”

He tapped his fingertips thoughtfully against the top of his desk, where papers had been stacked into several wire baskets. “I want you to think about what you control that they don’t. Think about what you can do to make them miserable and helpless, feeling the way you felt over their divorce.”

“What I control?” She puckered her brow. “I’m sixteen, I don’t control—” She stopped talking as insight washed over her in a flash. She glared at him, feeling he’d tricked her, made her think of something that was outrageous and farfetched. “My diabetes,” she said flatly. “You’re saying that since I
control my diabetes, I used it against my parents. That’s not true!” She stood up, knocking over her chair.

He looked up at her and took her hand. “It’s your most potent weapon, Lacey. Don’t be too offended by the suggestion. Would it surprise you to know, diabetic patients use it quite often?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She was fairly shouting at the doctor. “Losing control of my diabetes on purpose hurt only
me!
I’m the one who ended up in the hospital.”

His round, Santalike features lit up with a smile. “Ahhh! How right you are.”

She was still mad over his suggestion. “I’m telling you that was never once in my mind when I—” She stopped her denial cold.

“When you what?” Dr. Rosenberg asked. “Come on, Lacey, tell me what you did.”

She righted the chair and sat down heavily, all the fight gone out of her. “I was going to tell you anyway. I know I blew my control, but only because I wanted to lose weight, not get even with my parents.”

“How did you choose to diet?”

“I juggled my insulin doses.” Her heart pounded as she confessed where she’d made mistakes. She took a deep breath and added, “And sometimes, if I ate the wrong stuff, I’d make myself throw up.”

He nodded, but no expression of shock or disgust crossed his face. “Would you believe that close to thirty-five percent of diabetic women have eating disorders?”

“I don’t have an eating disorder.”

Dr. Rosenberg continued speaking, his voice calm and nonjudgmental. “Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are two disorders that plague women eighteen to forty-five. Most often it’s teens who have the problem. Binge eating and the guilt it causes is bad enough in the general population, but in the diabetic it’s disastrous. It wreaks havoc with blood sugar levels and metabolism. It’s often life threatening. You were lucky this time.”

She fiddled with a piece of paper on the edge of his desk rather than look at him directly. “I hate being fat.”

“According to weight charts, your weight’s well within normal limits and has been for years. Maybe it’s the fashion industry that gives you girls an unrealistic message about body weight and appearance, but so many women cling to the idea that thin is better.”

“Sometimes I feel fat,” Lacey argued.

“And when Type I diabetes is diagnosed, it’s usually after the patient is in the grip of keto and has become greatly dehydrated. Once insulin levels are restored, the patient experiences rapid weight gain and rehydration. Unfortunately, a lot of women get scared because they’re fearful of becoming overweight. So they begin a regime of insulin manipulation and purging to knock off what they think is excess weight.”

“It’s easier to lose weight if you give yourself less insulin,” Lacey said defensively. “Especially if you eat the wrong stuff.”

“But didn’t Sue explain to you that there are no wrong foods for you to eat? You just have to plan for them.”

“And what fun it is,” Lacey declared, her tone edged with sarcasm. “All your friends are partying and eating anything they want, and you’re stuck with your meal plan.”

“People with illnesses have to make compromises. Much like people who are married and can’t get along,” he said quietly.

His logic had brought her full circle. Her parents had never learned the art of compromise and now, if she was going to manage her diabetes, she would have to become a master of compromise. Lacey suddenly felt tired and defeated. There was no way to win this war, she decided. Jeff’s words about asking and knowing why something happened returned to her. He was correct—the answers couldn’t
change
anything. They could only help a person to perhaps understand and learn to live with whatever happens.

She looked straight at the doctor. “I don’t plan to mess up again. I won’t force myself to throw up anymore.”

“I don’t think you’re a true bulimic, Lacey,” Dr. Rosenberg said, tilting back in his chair. “I think you got caught up in something and it got out of control. But you’re smarter now and you have a whole team of professionals who want the best for you. You’re intelligent, bright, and very attractive. There’s no reason in the world that you can’t control your diabetes instead of it controlling you.”

He stood, took both her hands, and pulled her to her feet. “And speaking of controlling, your parents are out of your hands too. They’ve made their choices for their lives. But you have many choices ahead of you. Make the ones that will bring you health and happiness.”