“Fine. I believe you. But tell me what is going on.”
Rachel didn’t think her sister would answer. She stayed silent, chewing her lip, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold. “I think it’s my fault,” she finally whispered.
“Your fault?” Rachel stared at her, uncomprehending. “What is your fault?”
“Mum’s stroke. It’s my fault.”
A big part of Rachel wanted to dismiss Meghan’s concern, tell her she was being ridiculous, but she also felt the cold wave of trepidation sweep through her body. “Why?” she asked. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Because.” Meghan bit her lip hard enough for Rachel to see a drop of blood well on it before she licked it away. “I upped her meds.”
“You—what? You mean you got a higher dosage from the doctor?” A few years ago Janice had switched from Percocet to OxyContin, and then a few months ago her OxyContin dosage had gone from ten milligrams to twenty. But looking at Meghan’s face, Rachel knew that wasn’t what her sister meant.
“I gave her more OxyContin than was prescribed.” Meghan’s voice was low. “That time she said they fell in the toilet? They hadn’t. She’d just taken them all.”
“What?” Rachel’s mouth opened and closed as she struggled to find the words, to form them. “Meghan, don’t you realize how dangerous that was? OxyContin is a very strong drug—”
“I know. But you don’t know what it’s like—you’ve never known what it’s like—to be home with Mum all day!” Her voice came out in a desperate screech, tears starting in her eyes, trickling down her blotchy face. “How much pain she’s in, how hard she has it. How she moans and begs. You’re never there, Rachel. You think you are. You think you’re working harder than anyone, but you’re never there.”
The accusation in Meghan’s voice made Rachel reel back as if she’d been struck. She felt the words like hammer blows, shattering her illusions. She’d thought Meghan had had it easy, lounging around with Nathan and Mum, watching Real Housewives and eating crisps. And there had been some of that. Rachel had seen the evidence herself.
“If you had it so hard,” she asked, “why didn’t you tell me? Why did you just give Mum more drugs without even asking?”
“Because you never wanted to know. I know you think I’m lazy. And maybe I am. Maybe I should have worked every night at the pub or somewhere else, but you’ve never even listened.”
“You’ve never told me!” Rachel’s voice rose to match Meghan’s. “How on earth could I know how difficult you were finding things, if you never told me?”
“Because you never asked. You come in every evening moaning about how messy the kitchen is, how Nathan is such trouble, doubting that I’ve even looked in on Mum. What am I supposed to think? That you’d believe a word I said?”
Rachel sank onto a chair. Her head was spinning and starting to ache. “Tell me when this started.”
“Which part?”
“The OxyContin,” she snapped. “The overdose.”
“It wasn’t... I didn’t think of it like that. She wasn’t overdosing.”
“She was having more than her prescription, Meghan. That’s called an overdose.”
“But it wasn’t like that,” Meghan insisted. “It was just a little extra, to take the edge off. The doctor had upped it once, and he even said he might have to do it again.”
“So you thought you’d prescribe it yourself?”
Meghan’s expression hardened. “You really don’t know what it’s been like. How much pain she’s been in.”
“Maybe she hasn’t told me because she didn’t want to admit she’s taking so many damn pills!” Distantly Rachel knew she was being unfair, even cruel. Distantly she recognized the truth of what Meghan was saying, wrapped up as it was in a lot of self-justification. Rachel hadn’t been there. Working eight or ten hours a day scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets might actually have been easier than being stuck at home with a fussy baby and an invalid mother. Distantly she recognized that perhaps she’d always known that, and she felt a hot rush of shame.
“So how much OxyContin did you give her?” she finally asked.
“Just a couple of extra pills a day. Sometimes not even that. Only when she really seemed to need them...”
“She might have been addicted, Meghan—”
“I looked that up on the Internet. That whole addiction-to-prescription-pills thing is mostly a myth. It’s not addiction if you actually need them to manage your pain.”
“If that’s the case, you go to your doctor and ask for more. Why didn’t you tell the GP about this?”
“It was easier just to do it,” Meghan mumbled. “And make excuses for why she needed more. You’d be surprised at how easy it is.”
