Blood is thicker than water

Tuesday has turned from garden day to gift making day. My sister and I get together and we trade off what gift ideas to make each week. Last week I picked grandmas BBQ sauce. We spent a ton of time and money on ingredients just to keep tasting it thinking- that's not right. Sneaky grandma left out a

couple secret ingredients. Of course

This week my sis found fruit infused vodkas on pinterest. Good idea in theory. In practice, more vodka was consumed than any recipe would have called for and I watched some tv while she cooked dinner. When I went up to see how dinner was, she could barely stand up. Fuck. Sneaky vodka. But I'd be lying if I blamed the drink not the drinker. 

So when her husband came home, I felt quite embarrassed about the situation. But what was I supposed to do? I love my sister and she loves to drink but something in the Houston blood doesn't trigger the -had enough- cue to stop. So I made small talk and left, her leaning against he wall for support, cussing about how ugly her dinner looked. 

An hour later I got a call from her husband that she fell and was bleeding everywhere. 

He wrestled her to be hospital where a cat scan was followed by many questions about how much she had drank. I sat outside the room as she was disorientedly getting her head stitched up. She made horror movie jokes about being covered in blood and begged to go to work the next day. 6 deep tissue stitches for the nicked artery in her forehead then 17 to close the gash. Very little anesthetic but quite a few nurses to hold her down. 

I snuck away to clear the house of vodka and clean up the pools of blood and the trail. Can I just say nothing is quite as creepy as cleaning up a creepy little house with bloody walls as the trees creek and rain falls outside. 

I looked outside with a lantern for her glasses. The pumpkins  and zombie heads around the doorways didn't help ease my nerves. Blood coagulates rather quickly and I contemplated a career change to crime scene cleanup until I looked at it again in daylight and realized I missed a lot of spots. 

She didn't sober up until we got her back home and the reality hit that she was covered in itchy blood with a big gash in her forehead. She kept wanting to touch it. The doctor said if she would have gone unconscious she would have bled out in less than an hour. 

While I'd like to decidedly state that this is her moment of clarity, I am hesitant to get my hopes up. 

I feel like I'm having these growing pains or mid life crises or some combination of both. My best kitchen worker quit. I miss her terribly as humor really used to get us through whatever. I haven't been to work in days. Rent is due and I don't have it. I spent the first half of the week with my mother who can't go to the store and my dad left her for two weeks with a bunh of sugar free ice cream and sugar free protein bars. 

Ok, so I don't think we will ever make a healthy meal in pill form or anything that comes from a lab. She thought her condition was effecting her bowels and turning them to liquid. Anyone who's had one too many sugar free candies before knows what sorbitol does to you, to anyone. It's sugar free and a very powerful laxative! Yay! Weight loss here we come!

Her fridge was bare. She was eating veggie chips and cheese as a meal. Not veggies cut up but those puffed deep fried things. 

And my brother booked his ticket back to Spain despite not finishing up his med school applications or going through the courts with driving without insurance.  Genius. 

So now I am sitting out front of a dance bar waiting for my friend to come as my dog barks at the drunk girls waking by. Akron looks a lot different than it did 5 years ago when I came back. The crackheads on bikes are still here. So is pints and the college, but that's sprawling and pints has different songs on their jukebox and bartenders not quite as accommodating. 

But maybe it's me that's different.