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I didn’t know if it was my intuition, or if I caught something in her tone, but I didn’t believe her. “I’m good at keeping secrets. I made everyone believe I was an Alchemist for months.”
Onyx chuckled, but it sounded like she was more uncomfortable than anything. “I guess you’re right. But I’ve never told anyone this before, so you can’t tell anyone—even Lucas.”
I made an X across my heart. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Onyx drew a long breath. “It was my mother.”
My jaw dropped. “Your mom did that to you?”
“She didn’t mean it,” Onyx insisted. “Mom’s never hurt me before.”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” I said.
“I know that. I’ll never be okay with the way she treats me, but I can’t stop it, either.”
“You can just leave, stop seeing her, right?”
Onyx shook her head. “It’s not that simple. My mother’s a narcissist. If I ignore her calls, she’ll just show up on campus. If I moved across the country, she’d follow. One second I can be her perfect little daughter, and the next I’m her mortal enemy. If I show any sort of independence, she goes off on me. Suddenly, everything’s my fault. She’ll claim I don’t love her, or I don’t care. To her, I’m an extension of her. I’m not my own person. Goddess, it’s exhausting.”
“That’s unfair. There must be something we can do.”
Onyx sighed. “All I can do is placate her.”
“I’m a priestess. I’ll put your mother in her place,” I offered. I would, too.
“Trust me, there’s no reasoning with my mother,” Onyx said. “As it is, she flipped when I mentioned it was unfair the priestesses cut our insurance. That’s literally all I said, and she went on a tangent about how entitled I was. Entitled! For something I already pay for! It was worse than when I came out as asexual.”
My jaw dropped. “Why would she have a problem with that?”
Onyx rolled her eyes. “Because I’m not giving her grandbabies.”
I was so angry for Onyx. I wanted to believe there was a solution, but I didn’t know her mother. I didn’t know what extremes she’d go to, and I certainly would never understand what Onyx was feeling. I realized I didn’t know much about Onyx at all, and that made me sad. She seemed like a really wonderful, interesting person.
“If there’s ever anything I can do to help, let me know,” I said.
“Thanks,” she replied. “For now, I’m just doing my best to ignore my mother and focus on getting my nursing license. Speaking of which, I should probably get back to work.”
“Thanks for chatting with me,” I told her. “It gets lonely during dialysis sometimes.”
She glanced around the empty room. “I can stay, if you’d like.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be much fun,” I teased. “My only plans were to go through my mail.”
Onyx shrugged. “It’s that, or you can watch me work.”
I dug inside my bag and pulled out my mail. I opened a greeting card from Talia that had a picture of a stone that said, “You Rock!”
I showed Onyx, and she laughed. I tossed aside a few pieces of junk mail, then opened an envelope that was marked from the hospital.
My stomach sank the moment I saw the numbers. It was a bill for my dialysis treatments, but I didn’t see the insurance coverage anywhere. The bill was over $500 for just one treatment! My heart hammered as I mentally calculated how much that would cost per year. I realized it was over seventy-eight thousand dollars annually. Holy shit. How could anyone possibly expect me to pay that?
Onyx must’ve noticed the fallen look on my face, because she asked, “Is everything all right?”
I shook my head. Complete hopelessness sank in my gut, and I wanted to burst into tears. I literally didn’t know how I was going to survive on dialysis. What if they took my treatment away because I couldn’t pay?
Isa could tell I was distressed, and she pressed her head against my leg. It was at that moment that a tight, sharp pain shot up my leg.
“Ow!” I grabbed my leg, and it felt like holding a rock. My muscle was cramping, and it hurt like I’d been stabbed.
