Running on Insulin

Chapter 72

After dinner, Samantha and Brendon played Fortnite together. It was nice to see her warming up to our friends and laughing.  She'd hold her side from time to time when Brendon made her laugh the hardest, because of her broken ribs, but for the most part, she did fine.  She was joking with Brendon and talking with Sarah and Josh was chiming in.  Jenna and I sat on the sofa watching the whole thing.  We were so happy.  Our daughter was going to be okay. 

After they'd been playing for about an hour, Jenna suggested coffee and ice cream.  Samantha asked if it was sugar-free, and Jenna said she found one that was, and that the person said was actually really good.  Samantha said she'd try it.  She got up and tested her blood sugar, which was a little high from the sauces on the Chinese food.  She looked at the carton of ice cream that Jenna had bought and calculated how much insulin she needed. 

"You do that in your head?" Sarah asked her, watching, fascinated.

"Yeah. I always have."

"Wow.  That's really impressive," Sarah smiled. Samantha smiled back. 

"So, I'm, going to give myself a little more insulin for the ice cream, because my blood sugar is a bit high from dinner," Samantha said to Jenna.

"Okay baby, whatever you need to do," Jenna said.  "Do you want tea or coffee or chocolate milk or anything?"

"No thanks," Samantha said. "Ice cream is fine." 

She smiled and it was so nice to see a full smile. A real smile. 

We all sat around the kitchen table. eating ice cream and cake, which Samantha did take a small piece of, and said her extra insulin should help cover it.  She was really careful and took a very small piece. 

Zack asked her about her diabetes and how she manages to do all those calculations in her head. 

"I don't know," she said.  "I've always been able to."

"Math comes easily to her," I said. "Except it comes to her differently than most other people. She seems to have a natural ability to do calculations that get her to the right answer, but in a different way than her teachers have taught her.  We had to have a report sent to the school for her teacher to stop marking her down."

"Oh," Samantha said to me. "I didn't tell you."

"What?" I asked. 

"My math teacher asked me to show him how I do math and how I get the calculations and the formulas.  He wanted to see it.  He said he didn't get how I got it, but since I got the answer, and the calculations right, just in a different way, he's going to stop marking those wrong. "

"Fantastic, sweetheart!" Jenna said. "Now you don't have to stress over math class anymore."

Kala asked her some questions, too, and asked her how she treats her diabetes and whether she'd ever looked into any more natural treatments. 

"Uh, well, my pancreas is basically dead, and there's no way to make it work, so, no. Insulin is the only thing I can use."

Kala has a lot of ideas about natural healing and such, and her heart is in the right place, but diabetes is diabetes and a dead pancreas can't be revived.  

After dessert, Samantha helped Jenna clean up the table and put the dishes away.  Jenna looked at her and told her to go to bed. 

"You're falling asleep on your feet, kiddo. Off you go up to bed.  Brendon and Sarah will be back tomorrow with Zack and Kala and you can hang out with them more then."

"Why don't we come by around lunchtime and we can all go out?" Zack suggested. 

"That sounds nice, let's do that," Jenna said. "Okay?"

Samantha yawned and nodded. 

"Good night," she said. Brendon, Sarah, Zack, and Kala all came by and gave her a light hug.

"We'll see you tomorrow," Brendon said, giving her a fist bump.  "More Fortnite?"

Samantha smiled and nodded.  We said goodnight to her, gave her a kiss on the head and she went upstairs to get ready for bed. 

"Don't forget your insulin!" Jenna called up. 

"I won't!" she called back down. 

"I thought she already took insulin," Sarah said. 

"She takes fast-acting insulin at meals and snacks, and a long-acting at bedtime that carries her through the day. It's supposed to last around 24 hours. I have no idea if it does, but, she seems to take it with no problem. We've never had a problem anyway. And her numbers stay pretty good, so it seems like she's taking the right amount."

"She had a bit of a problem taking a proper dose of her fast-acting. Her birth father would make her ration her insulin and it caused a few problems," Jenna said. "But she's getting better. She's dosing properly much more easily."

"Her birth father's a piece of work, huh?" Zack asked. 

I sighed. 

"That's putting it mildly," I said. "All I can say is that I am glad we are done with him. We went to the prison to visit him as he requested and he can't claim we didn't. There are records, video and the social worker was with us."

"It's been such a nightmare for Sam," Jenna said. "Just when we would make some headway with the mental health issues he's caused her, somehow he manages to find a way to traumatize her again, and we're pretty much right back where we started.  I mean, just listen to what she said about the black eye and the broken ribs the kid at school gave her. She's so used to being beaten up, it doesn't faze her in the least."

"It's sad," Kala said. "That a kid so young is so... I don't know. Jaded? That doesn't sound quite right."

"It's not entirely wrong, either," I said. "When we asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up, back when she was just fostering with us, she said she didn't expect to live long enough to grow up. She fully expected, and maybe she still does. I don't know, we haven't talked about it yet, but she fully expected that her birth father would kill her before she got old enough to consider a career. She didn't expect to survive high school."

"That terrible!" Sarah exclaimed. "How does a parent do that to their own child?"

"I have no idea. She may  not be my biological child, but I have loved that kid from pretty much the moment she landed in our backyard and I wound up catching her as she passed out. She said we've spent more time with her in the hospital, and we've been three times already, than her father ever did."

"It's so sad," Brendon said. "But now she has you guys, and I see the way you two look at her. I would never know she wasn't yours biologically, if I didn't already know you and that you adopted her. She's in a good place, with good parents."

"I love her to the moon and back," Jenna said. "There's just something about her. But I have felt protective of her from the moment Tyler brought her into the house. It seems like that was so long ago, but it was barely a month."

"Well," Zack said, standing up. "We're on California time still, but it's getting kinda late.  I know tomorrow is Saturday and no one needs to be up early, but noon is going to feel early for us, so I say we head back to the hotel, and we'll see you three, sorry Josh, four, tomorrow."

"Indeed," I said. "See you guys tomorrow, bright and early, relatively speaking."

I walked our friends out, locked the door behind them and put away the few remaining dishes that were out.  Jenna and Josh and I headed upstairs.  Josh went on to his room while I stopped at Samantha's door and listened. I didn't hear anything, so I carefully opened the door and looked inside.  Samantha was fast asleep with... a smile on her face. It was the first time I'd seen her sleeping with anything but a grimace, or in the throes of a bad dream. Jenna came up behind me and sighed. 

"A smile.  She's smiling in her sleep,"

"Yeah," I said. I think she's going to be okay."