The Morning Sickness Mystique & Solution, pt. 5

(Source: Cleveland Clinic)

So there I was. Once again with my ex-step sisters, standing in their front lawn. They told me they had the Zofran so I drove 40 miles that Saturday evening after telling my wife that my Mom who rented a small home in Bountiful needed some help.

“Hey, thank you so much -” I tried.

“Shut up. Payment time,” the youngest ex-stepsister barked.

I nodded and got the ten boxes of top of the line cosmetics, vitamins and health shakes out of my car.

“How’d your POS car even make it here with all that?” the middle one asked.

I replied with the “I don’t know” gesture as they started walking toward the boxes.

“Hold on. Where’s the medicine?”

“He’s got it,” the oldest said as she lifted her chin toward her garage.

“Alright,” I said as I walked toward him.

As I walked toward him I noticed there were two guys there. One smoking a cigarette, the other smoking a joint.

“This what you need?” the taller one asked.

“Yeah. Just let me take a look at it.”

“You need to take that box and run,” the shorter one said.

“Odale,” a third man said from around the corner of the garage.

“Alright guys, I trust you. It’s cool. I’ll just take this and go,” I said as I lifted the box and walked back toward my car, eyes facing them the entire time.

“- the hell is this?” the middle stepsister said as she opened a box that had a bag of garbage in it.

“Drop the box, pendejo,” I heard from the garage.

I dropped it as they started walking toward me.

It was dark by now but I could still dimly see they were pulling things out of their pockets. I didn’t hear a gun cocking but I did hear a switchblade knife opening.

“Hey, mira,” I said pointing at my stepsisters.

Josh and two of his friends had guns to each of their heads. His third friend just finished emptying a 1-gallon can of gasoline on the tree by their front porch which had limbs and branches hanging directly above the roof.

“Chill, Ese. Cool it, guys,” the tall one said to his two friends.

“Switch blade,” I demanded.

The short one tossed his toward me.

Keeping my eyes on them I opened the switch blade and the box. It had several smaller cardboard boxes in it, like the one Josh’s friends gave me. I opened each of the smaller boxes, each marked with Zofran labels on the exterior, and found an Aspirin bottle, Ibuprofen, and Aleve.

The last box I opened matched the label of the Zofran Josh’s friends got for me.

Still not believing I opened the bottle after ensuring it matched the label of the box.

I looked at the tablets, pulled out a tablet I had received form the pharmacy and held them close together. They were a perfect match.

I nodded and walked toward the car.

“Bastard,” the oldest step-sister said.

“For that, I’m taking the one box of cosmetics I brought here. Say hi to your witch mother. Bye, sis,” I said as I walked away. Josh and his friends still held the three — left arms around the girls’ necks and right hands holding the guns to their right temples.

“You can’t just kill us!” the middle girl screamed through her tears before Josh shoved the barrel of his gun in her mouth.

“Actually — I can,” I said as I looked up at my friends’ faces.

They each took the safeties off their weapons and chambered a round.

“It would be more painful to let them live,” Josh told me. I turned to look at him and silently agreed, nodding my head. My friends let go of my step-sisters. We walked toward our cars and drove away.

As I drove home I thanked God for helping me arrive there prepared. I prayed that my wife would somehow continue believing that God was providing one additional pill per day — just as Elijah the prophet blessed the barrel of flour and the jar of oil of the widow of Zarephath never become empty. ( 1 Kings 17)

I had no way of telling her the true source of the Zofran. I didn’t have the heart to share the truth with her — that all of her hard work, her 18 months of missionary service in Colombia, her repeated conscious efforts to outgrow challenges she and her family had faced and carried for generations — and everything I had put into carving out a new life, overcoming even harder challenges than she had overcome — all of it had meant nothing. In the end, I was the same person with the same friends I had in middle school…or was this part of what people meant when they’d say: “God moves in mysterious ways?”

Originally published at https://loadestone.substack.com.