At the hospital, Caleb steeled his courage and made the call no one ever wants to make. He didn’t even get a chance to speak before he heard his wife’s panicked voice.
“Caleb! Did you find her?”
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I found her.”
“How is she? Can I talk to her?”
“She uh…” Caleb swallowed down a lump of emotion forming in his throat. “It’s bad, Cass. She overdosed on something. I’m at the hospital with her but I uh, I don’t know much about her condition, yet. Is my sister with you?”
He didn’t get an answer at first. All he could hear was his wife crying on the other end of the line. Finally, Lilith’s voice came on the line.
“I’m here with her, Caleb,” she said. “I can stay and watch Lucy for you so Cassie can be there.”
“Thank you,” Caleb sighed with relief. That had been exactly what he was about to ask. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me nothing. You’re my brother. Just worry about Mariah right now,” Lilith reminded him. Caleb nodded with a deep, shuddering breath.
“Right. Thank you again. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Cassandra collapsed in her husband’s arms as soon as she saw him in the waiting room, her whole body wracked with the heartbroken sobbing of a scared mother. She couldn’t even form any words. She just clung to her husband and wept.
“She’ll be okay, Cass. We have to believe that,” Caleb murmured against her hair. “Come on, let’s get you to a seat. You can’t stay on the floor.” He very gingerly helped her to her feet and half-supported her weight to the nearest bench because Cassandra was so distressed she couldn’t walk on her own.
Once he had his wife sitting down, he held her hands in his and filled her in on everything that had happened as honestly but as gently as he could. He told her about Max but left out the fact that he had been the one who hurt him. He knew it wasn’t a smart idea to admit to a crime in the middle of a busy hospital and he also knew his wife wasn’t stupid; she’d fill in the blanks herself without any trouble.
“I hope he’s dead,” Cassandra said with a vicious hatred Caleb had never seen in his wife before. It sent a cold trickling sensation down his spine. “He doesn’t deserve to live after what he did to my baby.”
Caleb didn’t know what to say to that. Perhaps his wife was right and Max Villareal did deserve to die for what he did but he still hoped Max would pull through. If he didn’t, that would make Caleb a murderer. He didn’t believe he should get to play the Watcher and decide who lived and who died based on their past deeds. That’s what he and Lilith had always clashed over. He loved his sister and he knew she tried to do good in the world in her own way… but he still didn’t want to become the kind of vampire she was.
He might have told Cassandra this if a loud, obnoxious, bellowing voice didn’t make every head in the room turn towards the front desk. Caleb immediately put his head back and groaned. This was the last thing anyone needed right now.
“Do you have any idea who I am?!” Hugo abused the poor staff behind the desk. “Can you people not read plain Simlish in black and white?! You’ve got two patients named Mariah Villareal and Max Villareal! I’m Hugo Villareal! You idiots don’t think I might be next of kin?! That’s my daughter! I have a right to see her!”
“YOU SORRY SON OF A BITCH!”
Cassandra was on her feet and on top of her ex-husband before Caleb could grab her. She roughly grabbed him by the back of his collar and yanked him away from the desk. She started beating him relentlessly with her fists, hitting everywhere she could as Hugo tried to shield himself from the blows. Behind the desk, staff frantically called for security.
“HOW DARE YOU?!” she screamed at him with tears running down her face. “HOW DARE YOU show your face here after what your piece of shit brother did to my baby girl?!”
“CASS! STOP!” Caleb leapt to his feet and grabbed his wife, pulling her back. Even he was surprised at how much strength he had to use to pull her off of Hugo. His normally frail, unassuming wife seemed to have suddenly developed superhuman strength in her blind rage.
“YOUR baby girl?! You didn’t make her on your own, Cassie! I’m her father! I have a right to know what’s happening to my daughter! Nice of you to call me and tell me my kid was in the hospital from a drug overdose! Oh wait… you didn’t! The cops had to contact me!” Hugo screamed at her as Caleb tried to drag her away from him. Cassie fought against her husband with all the strength she had, looking at Hugo like nothing in the world was going to stop her from killing him right then and there.
“YOU ONLY WANT TO BE HER FATHER WHEN IT MAKES YOU LOOK GOOD!” she screamed back at him. “WHERE WERE YOU ALL THOSE TIMES SHE RAN AWAY?! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN SHE WAS SPENDING THE NIGHT IN JAIL OR IN THE HOSPITAL?! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN SHE NEEDED HER DAD, HUGO?! WHY IS HER STEP-FATHER DOING YOUR JOB FOR YOU?!”
“Hugo, just get the hell out of here!” Caleb yelled at him, still struggling to contain Cassandra. “If you love your daughter, stop antagonizing her mother and go wait outside for news!”
Security burst through the door and, seeing that Caleb already had Cassandra restrained, grabbed Hugo and started trying to drag him out of the room with them. “Go fuck yourself, Caleb! Stop trying to act like her father!”
“HE WOULDN’T HAVE TO IF YOU’D ACT LIKE A FATHER FOR ONCE IN YOUR SORRY LIFE, YOU ASSHOLE!” Cassandra screamed. “GO TO HELL! I HOPE YOUR PIECE OF SHIT BROTHER DIES!”
“YEAH WELL THAT MAKES TWO OF US, YOU CRAZY BITCH! FUCK YOU, CASSIE!” Hugo managed to scream back before he was dragged out the door and Cassandra slumped into her husband’s arms, crying so hard that her sobbing couldn’t even make a sound. Caleb wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her close, kissing the side of her head.
“I hate him, Caleb,” she gasped out between sobs. “He’s such a piece of shit.”
“I know, Cass,” he hushed. “But you can’t let him make you that angry again or they won’t let you see Mariah,” he reminded her gently. “Don’t play his stupid games. Just stay focused on her, okay?”
After assuring security that his wife was now calm and wouldn’t have any more outbursts, they were reluctantly allowed to stay in the waiting room. Caleb just held her and rubbed her back, trying to lull her into a light sleep since he didn’t know how long they’d be here and he knew she hadn’t slept at all that night. It didn’t work. She just leaned against his shoulder and cried softly all night.
When a doctor did come out to speak to them, they were told that Mariah was still in rough shape but conscious and starting to come off of the drugs she had taken… and that she wanted to speak to Caleb alone before she saw anyone else.
“I don’t understand… Why doesn’t she want to see me?” Cassandra asked, hurt and confusion warring on her face. Her husband hugged her and kissed the top of her head.
“She hasn’t fully come off the drugs yet, honey. She isn’t completely herself, yet. Maybe she wants to talk to me about what happened because I’m the one who found her. I’ll tell her you’re here and how much you love her, I promise,” he comforted his wife but he was confused, too. Mariah had called him for help, not her mother. Now she wanted to see him before her mother. He’d always had a good relationship with his step-daughter but Mariah had always insisted that she didn’t need Caleb to be her dad. Or anyone to be her dad because she was grown. Caleb had always done his best to be close with her while respecting her boundaries at the same time. So why was he the first person she contacted?
When he walked into her hospital room and saw her for the first time, he had to remind himself that he couldn’t cry. He had to be strong for the broken shell of a person lying in that hospital bed. Mariah was half the weight she was the last time he’d seen her before tonight, at his wedding. Her eyes were sunken in with deep, dark circles under them and scars from old beatings that never healed right marred her face. She was awake and reasonably alert but her eyes still had the glassy haze of someone coming off of a high. In spite of everything she’d just been through, she mustered up the feeblest little smile for her step-father when she saw him.
“Hey, Pops…” she croaked out in a throaty whisper.
“Hey,” he smiled back at her but his voice hitched slightly in the back of his throat. Very gingerly, he sat at the edge of her bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” she said bluntly. “The docs say I would have died if you hadn’t brought me in when you did. So… thanks. I uh, I didn’t know if you’d come when I called but you said I could call you if I ever needed someone and…” her eyes pooled with tears. “I guess I wised up and realised I needed my dad.”
“I’m sorry your dad’s not here, Mariah,” Caleb told her sympathetically. He didn’t think it was a good idea to tell her that he was here earlier and got into a horrible fight with her mother. Mariah didn’t need to be worrying about any of that right now.
“He is. I’m looking at him.”
Caleb very lightly put a hand on her knee since he knew her whole upper body was battered and bruised and looked her in the eye with nothing but love on his face. “Mariah, I’ll be your dad as long as you want me to be. Just never stop calling me Pops,” he half-joked with her in a shaky voice. “And never, ever, for one second think I won’t come when you call. I will always drop everything to come get you when you need me. Always.”
Mariah half-laughed, half-cried and leaned into him for a hug she desperately needed. “You got it, Pops.”
Her step-father hugged her as tightly as he could without aggravating any of her injuries. “I love you, Mariah. Even at your darkest. So does your mother. She’s here, you know,” he told her softly, being very careful to keep any judgment out of his voice. His step-daughter needed to feel loved, not judged. “She’s very worried about you. Do you want to see her?”
Mariah pulled away from her step-father slightly and wiped her streaming eyes. “I do… but I’m scared,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “I don’t want her to see me like this and be disappointed in me. Again. I’m always disappointing her…”
“She’s not disappointed in you, Mariah,” Caleb assured her. “You could never be a disappointment to her, no matter what you’ve done. She’s just happy you’re finally safe. I think you really need your mom right now, too. So… do you want to see her?” he asked her again and this time Mariah nodded without any hesitation but Caleb could still tell she was scared so he stayed with her when the nurses let Cassandra in.
Cassandra wrapped her arms around her daughter and cried when she saw her. “Oh my Watcher, I’m so glad you’re safe, my poor baby girl. I love you so much, I don’t know how I could have gone on if I’d lost you.” Disappointment was the farthest thing from Cassandra’s mind and her daughter clung to her mom like she was a scared little kid again. She felt like a scared little kid again.
“I love you, too, Mom,” Mariah said in a small voice. “You would have been okay, though. You have Lucy.”
Cassandra sat on the bed and lifted her daughter’s chin. Mariah, too ashamed to look up but not wanting to hurt her mother any more than she already had, reluctantly lifted her gaze but not her head. “Sweetheart, I love your sister with all my heart but one child can never replace another. Watcher forbid if anything ever happened to you, I’d have a hole in my heart for the rest of my life that Lucy would never be able to fill. Because she isn’t you. I can never be whole without both of you.”
Mariah started to cry again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when she was born, Mom. I should have been. I’m sorry for everything I ever did to make you worry about me. I’m sorry I’m such a fuckup.”
Cassandra cried, too, and held her daughter close. “No, baby. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every bad decision I ever made that ended up hurting you and leading you to be in this situation in the first place. I was young when I had you but that’s no excuse. You were depending on me to be a good example and all I gave you was a broken home because I was busy fighting with your father or working late night shifts instead of being home with my daughter. I made so many mistakes with you but I always tried to do what was best for you. I always loved you.”
“I know, Mom. I know you tried,” Mariah whispered. “That’s more than Dad ever did and I love you for it.”
Caleb didn’t say anything. He let the moment happen without any interference from him. This was something that they’d both needed to address for a very long time, long before he ever came into the picture. He didn’t want to do anything to interfere with the emotional healing process they were going through.
Finally, Mariah composed herself enough to let go of her mom. “Can I meet my sister? I mean like… later. When I’m not all fucked up. Obviously,” she added hesitantly.
“Of course,” Cassandra and Caleb both said immediately without any hesitation. They looked at each other and smiled. “We’ve always wanted Lucy to know her big sister. We’d love that, honey,” Cassandra added.
Over the next few days, doctors worked on getting Mariah through the worst of her initial withdrawals and treating her numerous injuries. Hugo attempted to return to the hospital to see his daughter but Mariah was adamant that she wanted nothing to do with him ever again so the staff wouldn’t let him in. They did find out through Hugo that Max had survived the attack in the alley but doctors expected he would be paralysed from the waist down for the rest of his life. They were uncertain about whether the brain damage he’d sustained would be permanent or not.
Max had been ranting and raving about Caleb being some kind of demonic creature that threw him into the wall but police chalked it up to the ramblings of a drug addict and weren’t buying his story about demons or monsters. They figured a drug deal had gone bad in the alley and someone had run him into the wall with their car or something. Even though there was a distinct lack of evidence to prove that, they couldn’t reasonably conceive of any other explanation for how Max had been slammed into the wall with that kind of force. In any case, Mariah’s injuries were consistent with markings Max had on him from beating her and they had enough evidence that he’d been the one to give her the drugs so he would be going back to prison once he was released from the hospital.
As for Mariah, everything that had happened to her started coming out in bits and pieces and it was so much worse than her mother and step-father feared. She’d tested positive for several STIs and admitted to them that she got them from men she was sleeping with for money. Max was making the #1 mistake of rookie dealers; he was using more than he sold so their drug money dried up. Max got his niece into prostitution to try and fund their drug habit. Mariah had thought it was a good idea at the time because she needed the drugs as bad as Max did but when she got sick of it and wanted to stop, he’d either beat her up or just give her more drugs to shut her up. That’s when things between her and her uncle had gotten really ugly. The mattress in the alley Caleb had found her on had been where she’d been sleeping for weeks.
The entire story absolutely shattered her mother and step-father but they assured her they still loved her and didn’t think any less of her for anything that she had done. It was true. All they wanted was to love her and bring her home.
Eventually, the doctors said Mariah was doing well enough to be released sometime the following week and Caleb had brought her a bag of things from home so she’d feel more comfortable during her last days in the hospital; like her own clothes instead of the hospital gowns.
And Lucy.
“Are you excited to meet your baby sister?” Caleb smiled when he walked in with the baby.
“Kind of nervous, actually,” she admitted. “I dunno, I smell weird and shit from the hospital and my face is all fucked up. She might not like me. I’m scary.”
“Well… I guess we’ll have to let Lucy be the judge of that, won’t we?” he said kindly and gently deposited the baby in Mariah’s arms.
Lucy blinked up at her sister for the very first time, eyeing every detail of her face curiously. Then the biggest smile anyone had ever seen lit up her entire face and she giggled, reaching up to touch Mariah’s nose. She knew that was her sister. Mommy and Daddy had her picture in her nursery and told her stories about her amazing, brave big sister Mariah every night. She was starting to get old enough to understand some of it even if she couldn’t say so.
“… I don’t get it,” Mariah mumbled, blinking back tears she didn’t understand. “Why isn’t she scared of me?”
“Because she knows who her sister is,” Cassandra said softly. “We’ve told her about you every single day since she was born, Mariah. How much we love you and can’t wait for the two of you to be together.”
As Mariah looked into the innocent blue eyes of her baby sister, an unbreakable bond of sisterhood was formed. She knew she’d do anything to keep Lucy safe and happy. She wanted to be there to watch her grow up. She wanted to be the one to sneak her an extra cookie after Mom and Dad said no. She wanted to be the one she gossiped with about all the annoying kids in her class. She wanted to be the one who held her when her first love broke her heart and remind her that she was a strong independent woman who didn’t need the approval of anyone to be enough so fuck them, anyway.
And Mariah knew she couldn’t be any of those things for Lucy right now. The best way to keep Lucy safe was to keep her distance until she was someone Lucy could be proud of.
“Hey… Mom? Pops? About what’s going to happen when I get out of here–” she started.
“Don’t worry, honey, your step-dad and I already have your room set up for you,” Cassandra smiled and it killed Mariah to have to crush her poor mother again but she knew this time it was for the best when she shook her head.
“I can’t go home with you, Mom,” she said in a wobbly voice. “I’m still a drug addict. I can’t be around Lucy until I’m clean for good. I’m not good for her. But I want to be.”
“Mariah, we aren’t going to turn you loose out there in the world again,” Caleb said firmly but kindly. “You need support. Lots of it. People who love you, good doctors and therapists, the right medications and treatment–” he started.
“I know, Pops,” Mariah agreed, furiously wiping tears from her eyes with her free hand that wasn’t cradling Lucy. “I’m not going MIA on you again. I wanna check into a rehab facility. One of those nice ones with the 90 day programs and shit. And I’m gonna stay there until I’m the kind of sister Lucy deserves.”
“Oh sweetheart…” Cassandra sighed tearfully. “You already are if you’re brave enough to admit you need more help. Your step-dad and I will look into rehab centres and find the absolute best one out there for you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Mariah whispered as she kissed Lucy’s forehead. “But drop the ‘step’ thing. Just call Pops what he is. My dad. He’s earned the right to call himself that.”
Snarky Sims 