Page 64 of Our Sadie
I don’t know what to do.
“Did you hear me?” George is saying, and I tune back into him.
“Say again?”
“Paisley is fine. This is a minor issue. I only mentioned it because I needed to put the sedative notion by you.”
“How is she fine but needs a sedative? How can it be both, George?”
He sighs. “It’s not that serious, Dom. But I couldn’t in good conscience not tell you.” I’m losing my mind right now. “Why don’t you let me get your sister for you? Then, you can speak to her and judge for yourself how she’s doing.”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
When Paisley appears in front of the screen with her usual slightly absent grin, I nearly bawl like a baby. Mother of fuck. I can barely keep my bottom lip from trembling.
“Dommy...” Her dark brown eyes light up, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from humiliating myself.
“Hey, Princessa.” I sigh and speak. Even still, there’s a frog in my throat. Good thing she can’t hear it. “What did you do today?”
“Colored in my coloring book.”
“Yeah? What did you color?”
“A pony. I made her blue.”
“Blue?” I chuckle at her. She colors everything blue. Navy blue. Sky blue. Royal blue. Light blue. “Are there really blue ponies?”
“Hush, Dommy. I like it. That makes her magical.”
“I bet.”
This is one of our regular schticks. And Paisley seems normal. There are no purplish-gray splotches under her eyes, and she’s as animated as always. She’s not coming across as wrecked at all. Regardless, I keep her on for a full half-hour, double the time I typically take, because I’m having a hard time letting go of the sight of her.
At the end, rather than having her disconnect, I ask her to bring George back. His posture is cautious as he returns, and that’s my fault.
“She’s okay,” I concede.
“Yes.”
“You just let me know about the sleep thing as a precaution.”
“Yes.” His features relax by a couple degrees.
“Sorry I blew up at you.”
“I’ve seen blowing up, and that’s not what you did. But thanks for the apology. You know I have Paisley’s best interests at heart.”
I do know. “Yeah. Thank you.”
Realizing that my sister is holding her own over a month into this exile of mine should console me, and to a certain extent it does. But the guilt and fretting aren’t going away. I doubt they will until I’m back there with her.
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SADIE HASN’T BEEN EXPERIENCING any more episodes of sleepwalking since we’ve all been staying with her, though she does mumble rando nonsense sometimes. Last night, sometime around three in the morning, she gasped and shot up from the bed.
“What was that?” This woke me even though she’d been whispering.
“What was what?” I whispered back, placing a hand on her blanket-coated knee.