through the cracks

I came home to house already humming and spinning with nightlife.  The city tucked under a blanket of inversion so thick you can feel the air pushing against you.  It makes the nights weepy, cloaking the light and blackening the snow.

Our house was ridiculously fully lit, too many people running their own agendas about, but it was hard to tell until I walk through the door. The first thing I noticed was the faint smell of bleach and a pile of baking soda spread across the corner of the rug.

I stood alone in the front room.

"I thought you said she threw up upstairs?" I say my stomach wincing. Standing amid bags packed to travel.

"She did," he snaps "She threw up upstairs."

I shake my head trying to figure out what I wasn't understanding then BC appearing from the bathroom, rag in hand, reached up to wipe the vomit off the top the of downstairs armour.  She threw up upstairs and it leaked down through the gap in the flooring that BC never fixed.

So yes, Beach is sick and vomiting.  She was sick when she made it through exactly one-half of practice. Sick when her dad came to take her home while I stayed behind to work and to wonder.

Most of the girls on the team have been sick in one form or another over the last few weeks.  It is simply Beach's turn.

I put my things away walking carefully.  Collected her grip bag from the sofa and shoved it deep in my bag so it would be the one thing I could stop stressing about.  Then I headed upstairs to see her.

She was on the couch on her knees her naked pale shoulders arching bracing herself on her elbows crying. A little white knight in the throws of it.

I removed a cat from her side that was bothering her.  Came back a few minutes later and removed another one. Evidently they were drawn in by the warmth coming off her body.

It's morning and she is still sleeping.
The vomiting has stopped.
Today the sun won't break the inversion but we will drive out of it and leave it behind us.

Today we carry on.