Fated Lovers (Sold To The Sheikh 2)

didn’t get.” She gave herself a shake as she pulled into the driveway and parked the car.

Amie Campbell was outside, in the middle of watering the bedraggled front garden. Amie had always enjoyed gardening, and even in ill-health had never quite let her discomfort and fatigue prevent her from maintaining the carefully-planted gardens around her house. Weeds were multiplying in the front garden and some of the bushier plants needed to be trimmed back, but most importantly, everything was alive. Mia shut off the car and climbed out carefully. Her stitches had dissolved a couple of weeks before, but everything from her ribcage to her knees still felt ever so slightly unsteady, and not quite the way it had been before her pregnancy.

“Hey, Mom!” Mia closed the driver’s side door and hurried around the hood of the car to get to her mother, hoping that Amie’s presence in the garden meant that she was feeling a little better than she had been recently.

“Hey, baby girl,” Amie said, turning to watch Mia approach.

“How are you feeling today?”

Amie shrugged. “Like my joints are on fire and my nerves are doing a tango,” she replied with a sigh. “But everything needed a good dose of water, so here I am.”

“Mom, you knew I was coming over,” Mia said firmly. “You could have let me do it.”

Amie shook her head. “There’s more than enough for you to help me with. If I can do something, I feel like I should at least make the effort.”

Mia sighed, reaching out to take the hose away from her mother. “Well I’m here now, and I’m here specifically to help you around the house today,” she said, meeting her mother’s gaze. “So you can let me go ahead and get started, right?”

Amie turned the spray nozzle of the hose halfway towards Mia, raising a challenging eyebrow. “I’m almost done anyway,” she insisted. “I’ll let you get to work in a minute, but I wanted to do this part for myself.”

Mia relented, telling herself that if it made her mother feel better to get something done on her own, it was better not to try and argue her out of it.

After a few minutes, the two women went into the house. A peek in the fridge showed Mia that her mother had enough basic components to make a decent pot of soup—something she would be able to heat up and eat throughout the rest of the week. Mia set to work, gathering up laundry and sorting it for the washer, then going from room to room to empty the wastebaskets.

As she was emptying the basket beneath the desk in her late father’s study, Mia noticed the logo of one of her mother’s doctor’s offices on a sheet of paper that had been ripped through twice. “Huh? That’s weird. If it’s a bill, she shouldn’t be throwing it away.” Mia fished out the pieces and laid them on the desk, moving them around until she could work out the text on the page. Dear Mrs. Campbell, it began. I’ve consulted with several of my peers on the issue of your particular problems with finding a medication that works for you…

Mia read the letter slowly, trying to understand what it was saying and why her mother would have ripped it up and thrown it away. At this point, considering your rapid tolerances to steroids, NSAIDs, and other medications, the best course of action that I can see is chemotherapy. I’m concerned that if we don’t treat your disease aggressively, we will have to begin preparing for organ failure a lot faster than we normally would.

As she came to the end of the letter, asking that Amie contact the office within the next two weeks if she wanted to schedule her treatment, Mia felt anger flare up inside of her. Why had her mother hidden this? She had been so worried that nothing seemed to be helping her mother’s condition for more than a few weeks at a time—and here was a suggestion for something that could dramatically improve her quality of life. Mia collected up the ripped shards of paper and walked out into the living room where her mother was slowly folding towels.

“What’s this?” Mia asked with no preamble, thrusting the ripped-up letter in her mother’s direction.

“Paper?” her mother asked, apparently genuinely confused. Mia growled angrily. She arranged the paper fragments on the coffee table and pointed to them, meeting her mother’s gaze.

“This is not just paper. This is a letter from one of your doctors. Would you mind telling me why I found it ripped up in the trash?” Oh God, I sound like she did when she found me trying to burn my C+ essay in sophomore year. Mia pressed her lips together.

Amie’s eyes watered and she sat down heavily. “I ripped it up because I can’t do it,” she said, looking up into Mia’s eyes with such pain and regret that her anger dissolved in an instant. “I figured I might as well just forget that it was an option, since it’s never going to happen.”

“Why not, Mom?” Mia stared at her mother in astonishment. “What’s wrong? It sounds like they think it’s the best—maybe even the only solution on the table right now.”

Mia’s mother sniffed, wiping at her running nose with the end of her sleeve. “It’s not going to happen because I can’t afford it—and neither can you,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm. “It’s too expensive. I called and asked…” Amie shook her head. “It’s thousands of dollars, Mia. So…” she shrugged. “I’m going to keep on with the old medications, and either they’ll help me or they won’t.”

“No,” Mia said, shaking her head quickly. “No, that’s not right. You have to do this, Mom. If you keep taking the medications they’re going to screw up your liver and kidneys!” Mia crossed her arms over her chest and felt the ache in her breasts, but couldn’t bring herself to change position. Her cheeks flushed as she realized that she was yelling at her own mother; treating the older woman almost like a child. “How could you keep this from me?”

Amie looked up at her and smiled weakly. “How could you expect me to tell you about it?” Amie shook her head. “You have to take care of the baby, Mia love. You’re responsible for him. You have to make sure he gets what he needs—you don’t have the money to spare to spend on expensive treatments for me.”

Mia tried to maintain her anger—but she couldn’t. She stepped around the coffee table and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, holding the older woman tightly. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Mia said, feeling tears running down her own cheeks. “I just—I just worry about you so much. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

Her mother gave her a playful pinch on the cheek. “You’d keep going, that’s what you’d do. You’d take care of your baby and do what was right to keep yourself afloat.” Amie Campbell looked her daughter in the eye and held her gaze in spite of the tears that streamed down both their cheeks. “You’d survive. Because that’s what your Dad and I taught you to do.”

Mia sighed and nodded, hugging her mother tightly once more. “Okay,” she said finally, wiping at her face. “Right, I’m going to make you some soup, then I have to get back to my baby. Based on the way my breasts are aching, either he’ll need to eat or I’ll need to pump in an hour or so.” Mia glanced at the living room window and saw that it was rapidly approaching twilight; it was definitely nearing time for her to get back to Rami’s family. Her fiancé would be home soon, and Mia needed to talk to him.