Page 236 of Fighting Chance

“It’s unfair.”

“It’s more than unfair. It feels like someone is wrongfully punishing her.”

“How do you do it?” I ask as she slides my cup of tea across the countertop. “How do you stop feeling so helpless?”

She gives me another sad smile. “You don’t. You just learn to hide it around her.” Putting her mug down, Charlotte goes on. “Layla carries a lot of guilt for those in her life. Misplaced guilt.”

“She think she’s a burden.”

She dips her chin. “I’ve tried to drill it out of her but you know her, once that girl settles on something she’ll do it. I’ve never been able to convince her that everything her father and I did was always a choice and one made out of love. We don’t regret a single decision we’ve ever made. Not a sacrifice, a missed vacation or event, nothing. We’d both do it again in a heartbeat for her.”

“I don’t know how to help her. This seems…”

“Bigger than her chronic illness.”

Taking off my lucky hat, I run my fingers through my hair. “Yes, as awful as it sounds. I know she struggled emotionally with her health, but this is different.”

“It’s robbed her in a different way than lupus ever did.”

“With lupus, it’s like there was always a hope that the flare-up would go away but this won’t disappear. This isn’t manageable.”

“I hate to ask this, and please don’t take offense, but does her diagnosis change your feelings for my daughter?”

I rear back like she slapped me.

“Excuse my language, Charlotte, but fuck no.”

She nods. “I thought so, I just…I had to ask.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“That’s true.”

Taking a sip of her tea, Charlotte places the cup down with a sigh. “I don’t know how to help her this time. It’s kept me up every night since.”

“All we can do I guess is keep showing up and hope that one day it works.”

“Just give her time. It’s a lot to process.”

We fall into silence, both of our minds whirling.

I can’t keep sitting around doing nothing. I feel like I’m constantly hovering over her shoulder waiting for her to say what she needs. Trying to preempt her emotions before she does so I can be ready to catch her when she falls.

My hope that Charlotte would have something up her sleeve to help Layla has left me crestfallen. Driving to the arena, I feel like my body weighs a thousand pounds, my heart sinking with every minute, my mind in disarray.

I don’t think I can help her.

And I’ve never felt so fucking hopeless.

There’s no magic words to say to make her feel better, no trial drug. Her lupus symptoms have slowly faded but her ovaries won’t start magically functioning like they should.

Layla just opened her heart to me, expressing how she felt like she couldn’t wish for a family because of how sick she was, and she finally had hope after years of illness, only for that to be taken from her too.

She’s lost so much, so fucking much, that as I park my car I find I can’t fucking breathe.

It’s overwhelming how cruel life can be. Not only for Layla but for everyone.

Emmy and her horribly abusive mother, her early years that I can never make right.