noun

      • a distinctive costume, as of a nun, etc; a thing done often and hence easily; a usual way of doing things; an addiction, especially to narcotics.

transitive verb

       • to clothe. 

Connor spends most of the following week alternating between his sister's bedside and hushed conversations with his mother in the hallways. It's hard, watching two of the strongest women in the world at their weakest, and every ounce of his being wants to shake the both of them into being okay again, but he knows that he can't. He lets his sister smile and pretend it doesn't hurt to have half the bones in her body crushed and he lets his mother frown and worry that she spent too many years teaching Nicola she could do everything everyone else could when she can't.

He rolls his eyes when his baby sister tells him he looks tired, tosses out a sarcastic, "I'm not the one who broke eighteen bones tripping over a curb," and pretends that isn't just another subtle reminder that she needs to be more careful, that she's so very fragile, that a miracle may be the reason she made it past five months but their caution is the reason she's made it to seventeen years.

She rolls her own eyes right back, that infuriating smirk dancing across her pale features as she sinks a little further into the bed. "I didn't break eighteen bones," she corrects matter-of-factly. "Some of them are just a little fractured."

He laughs and he smiles and he jokes along with her because this is what they do- they laugh and smile and joke and pretend her bones are not so brittle they could shatter just from bumping into the table. This is what they've always done- laughed and smiled and joked and pretended it's a real possibility when she says she wants to take up rock-climbing, pretended she simply changed her mind when she gave up on it a week later and pretended it wasn't because she never could have tried in the first place and she knew that, they all knew that.

Connor lets his mother watch them from the doorway looking exhausted herself, lets her sit next to him on the couch when Nicola's door is closed and tell him they should have been more careful, she should have been more careful, shouldn't have pretended she could go out and live a normal life with something as great and terrible as this hanging over their heads. Sometimes Connor thinks all his family does with Nicola is pretend.

He smiles, pulls his beautiful, strong mother into his arms, and assures her she's the best parent any of them could have ever asked for. She smiles, clings to her beautiful, strong son, and assures him she's so proud of the incredible people her children have turned out to be.

This is what they do. This is what they've always done.