“That one is Fluttershy,” Ashley said, pointing to the television.  “She’s really pretty.”

 

Vivian nodded, saying, “I can see that.  I like her little butterfly thingy.  Is that a tattoo?”

 

“That’s her cutie mark.”

 

“Oooh.  Is she your favorite?”

 

Ashley scooched even closer against her left side, and beamed up at her.  “My favorite is her and Rarity, because they’re both the beautifulest.”

 

“A favorite is just one,” her older sister, Tiffany, said.  “They can’t all be your favorite.”

 

“Yes they can!”

 

“What about you?” Vivian, seated in the middle of the couch, turned to her right.  “Do you have a favorite?”

 

“I don’t watch Ponies anymore.”

 

“She likes Rainbow Dash!” Ashley said emphatically.

 

“Well,” Vivian said, wrapping an arm around her older niece, “I’m glad you’re watching with me now.  The last time I watched My Little Pony, they looked a little different.  Maybe later, we’ll put something else on that you want?”

 

Tiffany made a non-committal noise, leaned into her side, and hugged her around the middle.  “I’m glad you’re here, Aunt Vee.”

 

“Yeah!”  Not to be outdone, Ashley matched her from the other side, and Vivian endured one of the most vigorous huggings of her life.  “You’re my favorite babysitter.”

 

“See?” Tiffany said.  “You are a baby.”

 

“I’m not a baby!”

 

“Girls,” Vivian said, in a tone she’d heard Carly using.  “That’s enough.”

 

The hug settled into them more-or-less using Vivian as a pillow while they all watched TV, and Vivian couldn’t help but feel like she’d missed some things.  They were already so well-spoken.  Tiffany was in Kindergarten, and reading.  It was happening so fast.  They were little ladies, which was mind-blowing for her, and, more than anything, a scary reminder of how much time had vanished up her nose.

 

Darren and Carly were out to dinner, taking a rare night for themselves, and Vivian was eager to be helping.  It was one of the first times since waking up that she felt like she was contributing rather than freeloading off of the generosity of others.  In another life, she would have happily soaked up whatever anyone wanted to give her without a second thought.  Now there was all this guilt, and sometimes it felt like too much.

 

“Okay,” she said, at the end of the episode.  “Need you two to move.  I’ll be back.”

 

Ashley quickly grabbed a throw pillow for herself.  Tiffany, despite her objections to My Little Pony, barely looked up as Vivian pried herself free and ambled through the kitchen.  Vivian was able to move around the house mostly cane-free by that point, just placing a hand on the back of a chair here or the corner of a table there, on her way to the bathroom.

 

Getting on and off the toilet was a bit of a production.  Vivian’s balance wasn’t wonderful.  It was one thing when she was standing and moving forward, but up and down was trickier.  Only her right leg was really strong enough to support her in a quasi-squat and it certainly wasn’t strong enough to do the job solo, so she usually needed to brace herself before her left leg would give out.  Given the effort involved, she usually waited until it was a real crisis before going, and this time was no different.  Once she sat down, it was a long time until she was ready to get back up again.

 

“Aunt Vee,” came Ashley’s up-pitched voice.  “It’s not working!”

 

Vivian dried herself, and grabbed the edge of the countertop.  “What’s not working?”

 

“It’s Netflix,” Tiffany added.  “It says it can’t play back or something?”

 

“Put it back on,” Ashley half-whined.

 

“Stop being such a baby!”

 

“I’m not!”

Their bantering was more than an annoyance for Vivian; it was hard to hear.  Conflict of any kind, even arguments between characters on TV, had been causing her to have these twinges she couldn’t describe, and she hated it.  On previous occasions where the two little girls had bickered in front of her, it had taken all of her self-control to stop from snapping at them, and that was a scary problem all on its own.  Properly dried and hands washed, Vivian turned for the door intent on stopping the problem at the root…

 

...and the door wouldn’t move.  The handle was stuck.  Vivian tried not to immediately give up on her weaker left hand, and squeezed tighter, but her fingers simply slid around the smooth metal knob.  Her therapists had all preached persistence, so she stuck with it.  She grunted, gave the door a shake, and then braced her right hand over the left one.  No matter how tight her grip, she couldn’t make the handle turn.

 

“Aunt Vee?”

 

“What?” Vivian said, aware after the fact that her fear was evident in the tone of her voice.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

She gave the door another hard shake, banging it against the frame repeatedly, and switched the places of her hands.  Her grip had always been better in her right hand.

 

Bang-Bang-Bang

 

“Aunt Vee?”

 

Now their voices were right on the other side of the door, and Vivian’s self-control crashed.  Her voice was thick with hysterics as she cried, “I’m stuck!”

 

“Is it locked?” Tiffany asked, clearly worried.  “You have to turn the thing!”

 

“I am turning the thing!” she screamed.  “I’m turning it and it won’t move!  Why won’t it move!”

 

Bang-Bang-Bang

 

Out in the hallway, Ashley was crying too, and Tiffany did not sound very composed when she repeated, “You have to turn the thing!”

 

“I am!  I’m turning the—”

“—in the middle, in the middle of the thing, that’s like a—”

“—out!  Come out!  Come out!”

 

The knob lurched in her hand as one of them tried twisting it from the other side, but it was no use.

 

“My phone,” Vivian said, through the sobs.  “Get my phone!”

 

Two sets of bare feet slapped away down the hardwood floor.  Her hands were starting to ache by the time they returned, and her phone slid under the door about one second before she would have just started pounding with her fists.  She fell down, sliding against the wall, when she went to go pick up the phone, and it was hard to read the small text on the screen as she scrolled through her contacts.

 

***

 

“Are you clear?”

 

“Yes,” Vivian croaked.

 

The door burst open, showering the room in splinters, and a booted foot was right behind it.  Ashley and Tiffany dove in after, and hug-tackled an already-seated Vivian where she huddled.  She held them tightly, whispering into their hair that everything was all right, and that she was all right.  It hadn’t felt that way to her, but she could put on a show if it meant helping the girls stop crying.

 

And there, framed in the doorway against the darkened hallway behind her, was Lucia.  She looked like a warrior queen, with her shoulders thrust back, chin out, and her fists clenched tightly.  Vivian quivered, hidden only by the fact that she had been shaking on and off for the last twenty minutes.

 

“Are you okay?” Lucia asked.

 

She had dreamed of this moment often.  Vivian nodded.

 

“Alright,” she said.  “Clear out, munchkins.  Let’s get her out of there.”

 

The girls dutifully hustled from the room, and when she extended a hand Vivian took it.  This time, Lucia did a much better job of supporting Vivian at her own pace, and had her seated at the kitchen table in short order.  She filled a glass of water and set it down in front of her, and Vivian took a long, grateful pull.

 

“You’re okay,” she said.

 

Vivian nodded, and pressed a hand to her chest.  Her heart was still pounding.

 

“You’re okay.”

 

“I’m okay,” Vivian repeated.

 

Lucia sat down next to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.  “Are they okay?”

 

The girls were back on the couch, watching something else, but they kept looking over at her.  Vivian tried to wave them off, but she knew they wouldn’t be convinced by a hand gesture.  “Once they calm down,” she said eventually, “yeah.”

 

Lucia watched her closely.  “It doesn’t matter what happened.  It’s over now, right?”

 

“Yeah, but—”

 

“It’s just a stupid door.”

 

The echoing squeal of the hinges at the front of the house sent a cold chill straight down her spine.

 

“We’re home,” Darren called.

 

The girls moved like homing missiles, and by the time Ashley reached her father’s legs she was already crying again.  Tiffany was slightly more composed, but their overlapping retelling of the events of the previous hour was incomprehensible.  He came up the stairs a moment later holding Tiffany, while Carly held little Ashley, still trying to get them to slow down, but it was seeing Lucia seated at their kitchen table that finally made their eyes bulge.

 

“I don’t know what happened,” Vivian said, her head ducking.  “I just went to the bathroom, and—”

 

Carly darted in front, now cradling Ashley protectively, and said, “What do you mean, you don’t know what happened?  You can’t greet a mother at the door with I don’t know what happened, so start filling in some gaps!  Why are my daughters crying?!”

 

“I just went to the bathroom,” she repeated, pointing, “and-and—”

 

Carly zipped across the kitchen, her eyes wide with fury.  “What the fuck happened to my bathroom?!”

 

“She locked herself in there,” Lucia said.

 

“I was talking to my sister-in-law.” Carly hissed.  “You know, the one who was in charge of keeping my children safe?”

 

Darren moved carefully around his wife, and groaned.  “It’s okay.  It’s just part of the molding… and the strike plate.”  He hefted Tiffany and kissed the top of her head.  “Were you scared?”

 

“It’s not just a door,” Carly yelled.  “You can’t break down!  Not when my daughters are counting on you!  What would have happened if there was a fire?!”

 

“Sweetie, come on—”

 

Carly turned on her husband, and raged, “Don’t you sweetie me!  We trusted her!”

 

“Hey,” Lucia said, standing up and planting herself beside Vivian.  “That’s not fair.”

 

Carly looked like she was going to explode.  “Why the fuck are you in my house?”

 

“Viv called me, and I came right over.  Took me ten minutes.  I blew every red light to get here.”

 

Carly stared back in quiet, apoplectic rage.  “You called her?  Not me?  Not your brother?”

 

Vivian swallowed hard.  “She was the first person I—”

 

“The first person you thought of was a junkie?”

 

“Back off,” Lucia shouted, this time stepping in front of Vivian.

 

Just like before, when the girls had been arguing, her nerves started to fray.  The tension around her made her stomach want to empty itself.

 

Lucia said, “It’s not a big deal!”

 

“I think I’ll decide what is and isn’t a big goddamn deal,” Carly roared back, “in my own goddamn house!”

 

“She was in a coma for a month!  Do you hate her that much that you’d set her up to fail like this?”

 

Vivian almost corrected her, that she’d only been unconscious for a week, but she didn’t when she realized that the reason she wanted to correct Lucia was so that she could be cut less slack and be held to a higher standard.  She wanted to be screamed at.  She felt like she deserved it…

 

...and the only person who disagreed was about ten seconds away from making everything a whole hell of a lot worse.  She reached over and laid her hand on Lucia’s arm.  Lucia immediately stopped yelling and turned around, and the fact that no one was arguing with her anymore did not stop Carly from continuing to deliver the pitch-perfect rant of an aggrieved mother.