The Perfect Mum. Janice Johnson Kay

I think she may be regaining consciousness. I sent Ginny for an ice pack from the freezer.”

      “Where are they?” Kathleen asked desperately, even as she heard a distant wail.

      Jo rose. “I’ll let them in.” She gave Kathleen a quick hug. “She’ll be all right, Kathleen. Just hold on.”

      The EMTs were actually coming up the stairs when Emma’s eyes opened. She stared blankly up. In a slurred voice, she asked, “What happened?”

      “You collapsed. And hit your head.”

      Slow and heavy, Emma whispered, “I was…a…little…dizzy.” Her lids sank shut.

      “Oh, sweetheart,” Kathleen whispered, feeling again how icy her daughter’s hand was. “You’ll be fine.”

      For the first time, she knew she was lying.

      KATHLEEN PACED THE SMALL waiting room, too scared to sit down or to pretend to read a Good Housekeeping or Sports Illustrated magazine, as a couple of other people were doing. They watched her surreptitiously, and she saw pity along with kindness in their eyes.

      Looking as if she’d been running, Jo appeared in the doorway, Ginny clinging to her side. “How is she?”

      “I don’t know!” Kathleen wailed. “They’re taking X rays.”

      Jo opened her arms and Kathleen fell into them, marveling at how natural it felt even though she’d never been comfortable with casual hugs or physical intimacy. It was a moment before she felt movement down by her thigh and remembered that poor Ginny was here, too.

      Face wet, she pulled back and said quietly, “You didn’t put Ginny on the school bus?”

      “How could I? She was too upset. Here, Hummingbird.” Jo hoisted the child onto a chair. “Your mom is coming.”

      “You called Helen?”

      Jo looked at Kathleen as if she were nuts. “Well, of course I did! You don’t think she’d want to know?”

      “Well, I suppose…” Kathleen said uncertainly.

      This was new to her, having this oddly assorted family. After leaving her husband, she and Emma had lived for a few months in an apartment, before she decided the arrangement wasn’t temporary and they needed a real home. Of course they could have moved in with her father, but she’d been glad to leave her parents’ house in the first place, and wasn’t about to go back at her age. With Seattle real estate prices and her own lack of job skills, she couldn’t afford a mortgage on her own. So she’d advertised for roommates.

      She had been amazingly lucky. Kathleen had had her doubts about the wisdom of taking on Helen and small, sad Ginny. Helen was engulfed in grief and Ginny was so withdrawn, Jo admitted to thinking of her as a ghost, drifting insubstantially around the house. The truth was, Kathleen had felt sorry for Helen and offered her a room out of pity, not common sense. Sad though Helen still was, she had become a good friend.

      In her late twenties, Jo had seemed like a better choice. Unencumbered with children, she’d gotten tired of being an “acting” librarian and decided to go back to school to get her master’s degree so she could be the real thing. She’d seemed to be pleasant, private and quietly ambitious. Better yet, she had turned out to have some construction skills and had been a big help in remodeling first the upstairs and then the downstairs bathrooms in the old house in the Ravenna district.

      She had also become engaged in short order to Kathleen’s brother, Ryan.

      Now, clinging to her hand, Kathleen was intensely grateful that they’d decided to put off the wedding until summer to give his kids time to adjust to the idea of having a stepmom. After all, Melissa and Tyler had suffered enough trauma when their mom decided over Christmas vacation that she couldn’t keep them and had sent them to live with Ryan.

      Kathleen was dreading having to find a new roommate who would come close to measuring up to Jo.

      Especially since the three women and two kids had really come to feel like family in such a short time. They depended on each other. How could they replace one member of their household as if she was…was a washing machine that had quit?

      “I left a message for Ryan, too,” Jo told her. “I don’t know when he’ll get it.”

      “Something’s wrong,” Kathleen decided. “They’d have come back for me if it wasn’t.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “I should go ask. I’m so scared, Jo.”

      “I know.” Her roommate gave her another hug. “But she was already talking to you on the way over, wasn’t she?”

      “Yes, but her eyes looked funny. And her voice…” Kathleen had to stop, then try again with quiet desperation. “Her voice was slurred. As if she was drunk.”

      “She did hit her head,” Jo reminded her.

      “Yes, but…”

      “Mrs. Monroe?”

      Kathleen whirled.

      A dark-haired, plump woman in a white lab coat, stethoscope around her neck, stood in the waiting room doorway.

      Kathleen’s heart drummed in her ears. “Yes?”

      “I’m Dr. Weaver. Emma wants to see you, but I’d like to speak to you first.”

      Kathleen nodded dumbly and followed her, leaving Jo and Ginny in the waiting room.

      Dr. Weaver stopped in the wide corridor where they were alone, and said quietly, “Emma tells me she’s been in counseling for her eating disorder.”

      “For the past year.” Kathleen told the doctor Emma’s history, the name of her therapist and internist.

      “Ah.” Dr. Weaver’s face was compassionate. “Well, I suspect she’s been conning them somehow. She weighs seventy-seven pounds.” The doctor talked about electrolytes, liver and kidney function and the danger of heart damage, concluding, “Emma needs to be in a controlled, residential setting where her food intake is monitored. She should gain as much as ten pounds before she can safely be discharged.”

      Kathleen seemed able to do little but nod. The lump in her throat made talking difficult, but she said, “We’ve discussed putting her in a residential program, but she seemed…” She bit her lip, breathed deeply. Don’t cry. A semblance of control regained, she said simply, “I kept telling myself that she was doing better.”

      The doctor nodded. “People with eating disorders are some of the best liars and manipulators in the world. They’re a little like drug addicts. They’ll do anything to protect their habits.”

      “Has she suffered permanent damage?”

      “We’ll need to run further tests to have a better sense of where she is. I think she can recover. Her youth is in her favor. The odds of complete recovery diminish the longer someone with her problem goes without effective treatment. You did the right thing getting her into counseling so soon.”

      “For what good it’s done,” Kathleen said bitterly.

      The doctor gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Unfortunately, resisting is also part of the process. Teenagers with this problem don’t listen to you or a counselor and say, ‘Oh! I see the light.’ They kick and scream and dig the trenches deeper. That’s what she’s been doing. It doesn’t mean she hasn’t been hearing more than she is willing, yet, to accept.”

      Kathleen nodded again, teeth worrying her lower lip. “Does she have a concussion?”

      “Certainly a mild one. This may be good for her, Mrs. Monroe. A wake-up call even she can’t ignore.”

      Kathleen had to laugh, if without much humor. “Oh, I don’t know. Emma can ignore quite a lot.”

      They agreed that Emma should be checked into the hospital for the night, giving Kathleen time to make