Keeping Jemima

Not up to the job

Matty

After being stuck in traffic for another hour I was going out of my mind, yelling out the window at the morons cutting us up, just to let out some of my frustration, the boys letting me. When we got to Jem's room she was fast asleep, still hooked up to machines, William went straight to rush to her side, stopping looking at me, I waved him on giving him permission.
"How she been? Any updates?" I asked jack
"They've been in and out, they made me wait outside, sorry Matty. I think they were stripping her down for tests, obviously not appropriate I was in the room. But she seems to be doing better. Whatever they've pumped into her is kicking in already. She's been ok, not panicking or anything that you weren't here, we were checking the social media posts so she knew you'd made it back in time. there was a group of docs in here with her for hours Matty. She's been asleep since they left less than ten minutes ago."

I thanked Jack and went to go find the doctor again, accompanied by Tom for moral support, his mum had texted him and told him to make sure he supported his brother because i was struggling. Tom laughed saying as if he needed to be told. We'd been brothers since his parents took me in at twelve years old. My gramps had died a few months after I moved to Australia, he was a heavy smoker and it eventually killed him like my mum always said it would. Grandma Stephanie was so brave and I was in owe of her strength from a young age, I often wondered how my mum was so weak if she had a mum like my grandma. She got sick soon after gramps died in his sleep and she died of cancer two years after I'd arrived. I was devastated, I'd spent a lot of time with Tom who I'd met at music club that my grandma had signed me up to as soon as arrived in Australia, I spent a lot of time at his house while she was having treatment, sometimes days at time, we were close despite him being younger.

I wasn't sure why they offered to take me on but from the moment they did I was made to feel like family, my mum didn't want me back, I was planning on running away, scared to be put into the system, stuck on the other side of the world from my sister who my mother wouldn't let me even speak to on the damn phone. Sandra and Ralph would have adopted me, in fact they asked once, they were my legal guardians, mum had signed over all rights to them before grandma Stephanie even died but my name was the only thing I had connecting me to Jem, I didn't want her to think I had forgotten her by becoming an Eastern and not a Miller. I know they offered to take in Jem as well but were shut down. If only mum hadn't have moved to England as a love sick teenager, although I guess she wouldn't have been dumped three years later and then met our dad and neither Jem and I would have existed if she hadn't have immigrated to England from Australia at nineteen.

We found the doctor who took us to an office room where we talked through everything with him. He confirmed that Jem was suffering from pneumonia and prolonged malnutrition and that we had to focus more on regaining the weight and appetite. He told us that she would be more prone to picking things up and that was what was making her weak, saying there was no point with the calorie drinks if she was just throwing them up, that that was worse than not having them just like max had said weeks ago. they had some in juice form they wanted to try her on. We had to focus on just getting food any food into her then work on balancing it out after, he upped her prescriptions saying she was still very anaemic which wasn't helping the tiredness and was causing the bruising, so needed a high iron intake. she'd hardly put any more weight on, but hadn't lost any more which he said although it didn't sound it that it was a really good thing.

Jem had given him permission to tell me that they had assessed her again, quite frankly from the sounds of it properly this time, the last hospital didn't spend half as much time with her. Jem had officially been diagnosed her with depression, severe anxiety disorder and complex PTSD and the eating issues stemmed from that somehow rather than a specific traditional eating disorder on its own, he couldn't discuss the details without Jem. For the first time in a long time I felt like we were getting somewhere, he had already discussed it all with Jem and was happy to discharge her once her drip had finished, as long as we bought her back to a hospital as soon as we thought the pneumonia was getting worse or wasn't getting any better or we thought she had picked something else up. I went to get the fresh prescriptions with Tom, stopping for a much needed bro hug on the way, we were both relieved that this wasn't irreversible, something we were all considering for weeks but daren't say out loud, all of our minds going to places of undiagnosed incurable worse case scenario illnesses that had been picked up too late like Vanessa's had.