Christmas day Ginger woke up on the bottom bunk she shared with her sister, her boyfriend still asleep in his too small sleeping bag on the floor. She looked at the time�half past seven. She got out of the bed, ran to the bathroom, and threw up. It wasn't unlike her to do that lately, now that her radiation treatments had become more frequent and she was going every three days. Her last one was the day before (wonderful way to spend a Christmas Eve) at nine-thirty in the morning and she was paying for it now.
Leaning back against the wall, she knew today was going to be a bad day. The energy it took for her to get out of bed, hop over her boyfriend and run across the hall to the bathroom before she threw up all over the place was all she had for the day and she felt like she could barely move. The act of sitting up was too much for her, so she slid down to the ground, not caring that it was a dirty bathroom floor. She'd had it for the rest of the day.
"Ginger?" She couldn't even look up. She recognized Zac's voice in the hallway and anyway, he was the only one who called her Ginger. She was lucky and hadn't had a bad day the entire time he was here. She was hoping she'd last until after he left, but obviously she hadn't. "Honey, are you all right?" She mustered up the rest of her energy to shake her head. "And you slept through the night without waking up once, I thought today was going to be a good day. Here, I'll take you outside." She could barely hang onto him as he picked her up off the floor and carried her into the living room. Taylor was already awake and in the kitchen making himself some coffee. Zac set Ginger down on the couch Taylor had turned into his bed this past week and kneeled down in front of her. "Are you all right, do you want me to make you something to eat?"
"No," she whispered.
"Okay. Do you want anything?"
"No."
"Okay." He lovingly brushed her hair out of her face. "All I wanted was you to have a good day on Christmas and that blasted doctor had to up your treatments right beforehand. He's a crazy mofo, that man." She smiled. "There we go, that's my girl." Kris came out of the bedroom.
"Where is everyone? Is everyone up already?" she asked, slightly dazed.
"Your parents aren't awake yet," Taylor said from the kitchen. "I've been up for a while but Zac and Ginger just got out here." Kris looked over at the couch.
"Oh no, you're not having a bad day, are you sweetie?" Kris asked, walking over to the couch and kneeling next to Zac. "What happened, Zac?"
"She woke me up when she ran out of the room and threw up, and when I'd gotten to the bathroom she was lying on the floor. I brought her over here," Zac explained. Kris put her hands on the sides of Ginger's face, lifting up her droopy eyelids with her thumbs.
"Shit," she muttered. "Honey, I'm going to give you some of the medicine the doctor gave us."
"No�" Ginger said.
"Yes. You're going to pass out if you don't and you'll be out all day. The doctor told me you need to take something when you're like this."
"No!"
"Shut up and don't move or you're going to spend Christmas in the hospital!" Kris snapped and ran over to the kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a syringe and a bottle of some kind of sealed medicine.
"Whoa, whoa, what're you doing there, Kris?" Zac asked, seeing Kris take a needle out of its package.
"She's too far gone, Zac, she won't be able to swallow anything. I have to inject it."
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"Of course I do! The doctor showed me what to do. If I don't do it now she's going to pass out and with her apnea she won't be able to breathe." Zac watched, quietly amazed, as Kris filled the needle with the medicine and gave Ginger a shot in the arm. Ginger complained throughout the entire procedure but when it was over she was already looking better.
"She has apnea?" he asked, then paused. "What's apnea?"
"Sleep apnea. Sometimes while she's asleep, she stops breathing and it wakes her up. She had it real bad before her treatments but now it's not as frequent, but it's still there. Last night was the first night in a long time she didn't wake up once."
"Oh�that's why she wakes up." Kris nodded and threw away the needle in a biohazard box the doctor gave them that they kept under the sink. "How you doing, Ging?"
"Better." She shifted a bit and gave him a weak smile. She still didn't have any energy, but she didn't feel like she was about to pass out. Just then Kris and Ginger's parents came out of their room.
"What's going on out here?" Alina asked. She saw Ginger struggling to stay awake on the couch. "Bad day?"
"Yeah," Zac said. "Really bad day."
"I gave her a shot and she's doing a hell of a lot better than a couple of minutes ago," Kris explained from the kitchen. "I've never seen her that bad before." Zac gave Ginger a small smile but she sighed and looked away. He knew she didn't like them talking around her like that. "Why don't you yell at Orlandito, now that the rest of us are all up, so we can open presents?"
Alina went to Orlandito's room and got him up. Everyone assembled in the small living room and Kris distributed the presents. Zac had a few from the family, including one that Taylor brought along for him and Taylor some as well. The rest of their presents were at home and they'd open them once they got there. When Kris handed Zac Taylor's present, he looked at his brother.
"I didn't bring yours, Taylor, sorry," he said. Taylor shrugged.
"I'll open it when we get home."
"I haven't bought it yet," Zac whispered to Ginger, who was still laying on the couch directly behind him. He was sitting on the floor in front of her. She smiled. Kris finished giving out the presents and sat down on the floor by the tree, next to Taylor. Ginger noticed this immediately and raised an eyebrow at her sister. Kris didn't see it. They'd been rather chatty this past week, but they hadn't done anything or gone anywhere, which confused both Zac and Ginger. Ginger had no idea why they would have any reservations about this, but if they did, she was dying to know.
"Zac, will you open my presents for me, sweetie?" Ginger whispered into Zac's ear. He nodded. "Thank you." The family started to open presents. Zac opened Ginger's for her, making sure she saw everything she got, but he made her open her gift from him. He got her a pair of diamond earrings that nearly made her cry. "Zac�"
"Yes?"
"You know I hate it when you spend money on me."
"You know I hate it when you complain. I do it for a reason, sweetheart. Let's open another present."
"They're beautiful, though," she whispered. "I love you." She kissed him. He pulled out another present from her pile.
"This one's from Kris."
"Don't open that one, Zac," Kris said. Zac looked over at her.
"Why?"
"Because I got her underwear and frankly I don't think you need to see that," Kris said as bluntly as she could with a straight face. Zac rolled his eyes.
"It's not like I'm never going to see it." The whole family grew quiet and Zac paused. "I mean�um�"
"There's no pulling you out of that one, Zac," Taylor said, laughing. "Just move on to the next present." Zac grew a nice shade of pink and Kris, Ginger, and Taylor laughed at him.
After everybody finished opening presents and the mess was cleaned up, Ginger was feeling a lot better. Her stomach wasn't churning any longer and she was having a good day�one of the best ones she'd had in a very long time. She was walking around, her hair ratted and dirty, her skin dry and her teeth still not brushed. She had breakfast at noon, two pieces of toast and a cup of the mildest coffee Kris could make. It tasted terrible. She sat in the kitchen for a while, hoping it wouldn't come back up, and it didn't.
Zac sat with her at the kitchen table. Her parents were watching a movie and her brother had gone across the street to play his new video games with his friends. While Ginger was silent, waiting for the inevitable churn in her stomach before she threw up, Kris and Taylor walked into the kitchen from the bedroom. "We're going to go for lunch," Taylor announced. Zac watched Taylor carefully as Kris fussed over Ginger.
"Are you okay? How are you feeling? Is it staying down?" she asked, taking a brush from her purse to Ginger's hair. Ginger batted her away.
"Kris, stop it. How long are you going to be gone?"
"An hour or two, however long it takes for lunch," Taylor said, looking at Ginger instead of Kris, who was standing behind Ginger still brushing her hair although Ginger was still fussing over her.
"See, you'll only be gone an hour or two, I'll be fine. Zac's here. He'll know what to do," Ginger said, finally hitting her sister hard enough so she would leave her alone. "Have fun."
"Yeah, okay, as long as you're all right," Kris said, giving her sister a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "I'll be back in an hour or two. Hold up, sweetheart." Ginger looked up and saw Taylor staring at her. She gave him a look, confused. He broke his stare and looked at Kris.
"Ready?" he asked Kris.
"Yes." Kris wiped the lipstick off Ginger's cheek and went to the front door.
"I won't keep her," he said to Ginger and not to Zac. Zac, however, was fuming but Taylor didn't notice. When the door was closed and Taylor and Kris were gone, Zac blew up.
"Did you see that?" he snapped. Ginger looked over. The look on Zac's face was unmistakable. Something happened with Taylor that, once again, Ginger completely missed. "He's going to lunch with Kris and he couldn't even keep his eyes off of you. In front of me as well! Dammit I'm sitting right here."
"Zac, he's not stupid. He's not stupid enough to make any kind of pass at me with you right here."
"Are you defending him?"
"What?"
"You're defending him. Ginger, he wants to get in your pants." Ginger's mouth dropped.
"Zachary! My parents are right there."
"They're too into the movie, they'll never hear us. He wants to sleep with you, Ginger, and I don't think he'll let up until he succeeds."
"Why are we even talking about this?" Ginger asked. "Every single time his eyes look in my general direction we get into a blasted fight about it. I'm sorry if he has an attraction to me. I don't do anything about it. I will never do anything about it. You need to get over it."
"Why?"
"Because it's not going to happen, Zac! He's out to lunch with my sister, he obviously has moved on from me."
"If you were paying any attention to how he was looking at you right now you would know that is not true. He may like Kris, he may be going to lunch with her, he might even fall in love with her for all we know but as long as he is around you this is going to happen."
"What am I supposed to do about it?" Ginger said, the level of her voice rising. She was obviously getting pissed off. "Considering now he's dating my sister and how he's your brother, I don't know how I'm going to get away from him. I'm not going to avoid him for the rest of my life because you're fucking insecure about me. I'm sorry if you don't trust me enough to�"
"This isn't about trust! I don't think even for a moment that you would give him a chance."
"Then what is this about, Zac? Why the hell are we still fighting?"
"We're not fighting!"
"We're yelling at each other, Zac, over a conflict in viewpoints. That's fighting in my book. I don't know what you consider fighting." Zac huffed. "What? What does that mean?"
"I cannot believe this."
"What can't you believe? Zac, I don't know where you're going with this. Just because he's made a pass at me before."
"What?" Zac said, the look of disbelief on his face so prominent Ginger knew she'd said something wrong. She grew silent immediately and looked at the ground. "When did this happen?"
"It was a long time ago, Zac."
"How long? We've only been dating for four months. You've only been around him twice, when you were living with me and now. When did he do it?"
"It was when I was living with you," Ginger whispered. "It wasn't anything big and I didn't let him go anywhere with it but he still did it. But Zac that doesn�t mean anything. It happened a long time ago and I put him in his place. It's not like he's still doing it now." She was lying. Over the past week that Taylor had been living there he'd made a total of seven passes at her. Once a day. She'd counted.
"My ass! I bet if I left you alone for five minutes with him he'd do it again."
"Zac�"
"That fucking son of a bitch, I never should have brought him along. We're going back tomorrow anyway, but still, you are not leaving my sight until we leave."
"Excuse me?" Ginger asked. "I'm not leaving your sight? Like you own me, like you own any part of me. You know he may have made a pass at me before and he may do it again, but you should at least trust me enough to deal with it on my own."
"Once again, this is not about trust," he retorted. Their voices were rising and it was getting hard not to hear them.
"Oh, I think it is. I don't think you trust me. Otherwise this wouldn't be such a big deal. You haven't trusted me around him since the day we met. I don't know what the hell he's done to you in the past but it's not going to happen again, okay? I am not going to sit around here and fight with you every single time he enters the room. If you have a problem with him, that's your deal. You work it out with him when I'm not around. Don't fight with him through me. Don't let him get in the way. He's going to be around, Zac. You can't do anything to stop that. What's going to happen when I move in with you after graduation? Are you going to conveniently hide me from him whenever he's home? And what about after we get married? Are you going to watch him every single time he's there for the rest of our lives? Is that what it's going to take to get you to trust me?"
"I trust you! I don't trust him!"
"No, you don't trust me with him. I'm not going to deal with this. I am not going to deal with your bullshit about him anymore. Don't say another fucking word to me until this is solved." By now she was yelling as loud as she could, her parents trying not to listen, and Kris frozen to the core at the front door. Ginger looked over and stopped dead in her tracks.
"I�I forgot my purse." Her purse was in her hands but she hadn't moved. Ginger didn't know how much of the conversation she overheard, but the two had been yelling so loud Ginger was sure whenever she came in Kris heard every word. Just then Taylor opened the door and came in.
"What's taking so long?" Kris looked up at Taylor, back at Ginger, then ran to her room and slammed the door shut behind her. Ginger turned to Zac.
"Now look what you've done."