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1999-10-22 | 17:50:38

I keep telling myself to relax, do one thing at a time, but the caffeine gets in my way.

My sister, Diane, is in the hospital today. O, cruel irony: she was drinking pretty heavily, unrepentant, and then Criminy brought home this stomach flu that everybody's got. We all went through it, one by one, until finally it found Diane. Suddenly, she couldn't keep anything down, not even booze! She started to go through withdrawal in spite of herself, and had to go to the hospital so they could put her on IV's before she bottomed out. They've told her she'll die if she tries to dry out on her own. I'm not sure why, exactly, though I know her liver's shot.

I took her cigarettes to the hospital. She had saved cookies from her lunch for me and Jasper. She was hunched over, trembling, looking old. She looked like Dad. The room smelled because she had peed the bed during the night. Her hair was matted and she borrowed my brush to comb it, but it was almost more than she could do.

During the day, the social worker came by and said there was a bed available in some women's rehab center. Diane told her she'd think about it. She told my Mom it would cost money; they can't afford it. Mom told her, We'll figure something out. Diane's problem is, she doesn't want to quit drinking.

A week ago today, Bambi had her baby. He's fine. (A doctor at Kaiser read Bambi's thyroid readings and predicted that the baby would almost certainly have birth defects and she tried to pressure Bambi into having a late-term abortion. But Bambi said the doctor was wrong and we were obligated to take her word for it.) I got to be there as labor coach. She may still be mad at me because I talked her out of getting drugs early on. She started begging for them later but the nurse--who'd behaved like a veritable pusher earlier--said it was too late and wouldn't let her have them. I was reminded that it is damned hard to refuse a laboring woman anything, though when it was me, Duff had no problem what-so-ever. I asked Diane to walk Jasper in the hallway, on the pretense that she, Diane, got to be there last time while I couldn't (the nurses wouldn't let me in because there were too many people in the room already). That time, I sat in the hallway with my Mom and cried for an hour. This time, Diane walked Jasper until he fell asleep. But the truth is, Bambi didn't want Diane in the room because she was drunk. When you're in labor, your senses are heightened, and Diane exudes Vodka vapor. She reeks. She's also bossy, argumentative, and loud, behavioral traits which are best reserved for the woman who is actually in labor. When the baby's head was crowning, I told the nurse to call Diane in and she got to see the baby being born. Bambi got all Amityville on us there at the end, shouting "GET IT OUT" and I shouted back, "YOU get it out!" Just like when Rojo was born, the baby's arm was up and the doctor had to reach in and guide it out. Not me; all my babies shot out like spitballs. When it was all over and the baby was resting on Bambi's abdomen, I felt such an upwelling of emotion I burst into tears. He's a gorgeous baby.

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