Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(36)

He opened his mouth, only to have her palm go up in his face. “Even Dr. Raje saw that this is my decision and not hers. And most certainly not yours!”

“You have a tumor in your brain!” he wanted to shout. “How am I supposed to keep you safe at home?” But he couldn’t bring himself to say the word tumor out loud.

What kind of doctor let someone with tumors wrapped around major nerves go out into the world?

“I need to speak with her before we go anywhere.” His desperation must have shown, because his sister leaned forward and took his hand.

“Get your knickers out of your arse crack. She’s only letting me go home for a bit, a week maybe. We have to come back and see her in a few days. You can conspire about how to change my mind with her then.” She pointed to a file folder on the nightstand. “All the instructions are in here. All my prescriptions are in my bag. There’s some test results Dr. Raje’s waiting on. Until then she thinks I’ll be fine.”

“Define fine.”

“Let me see . . . Well, I get to go to work and slap some paint on a bloody canvas. I get to do what I love for a little bit longer before I die. How’s that for a definition?” She poked him with a finger, right in the middle of his chest.

Warmth prickled at his eyelids and he turned away and pressed his face into his elbow.

A nurse walked in and asked if she could remove the IV. Emma nodded and held out her hand.

“I’m not asking for your permission. I’m doing this my way.” Emma glared at him, not flinching as the nurse tugged out the plastic needle and pressed a wad of cotton into the blood that seeped out with it.

As a child, Emma had burst into tears at every little thing. Then Mum had died and she had turned into someone else overnight. Someone who constantly fought to become and not become their mother. Their mother’s funeral was the last time she had shed tears around him; it was the first time he had shed tears around her. They had switched places that day. Her softness had calcified and gone tough, all his hot bluster had fizzled. She had grown an armor, he had realized the uselessness of his.

Of course she wasn’t asking for permission. Emma Caine believed choice was the cornerstone of existence. Her art, everything she stood for was about tirelessly exploring the relationship between choice and power. Now for all her fierceness she looked vulnerable, and it made her seem like the little girl who had curled up in a ball in their mother’s chair and waited up for her when she worked the late shift.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you want to do.”

For a second all her walls collapsed. Just fell to the ground around her. This was what she had needed all along.

“I want to get out of here. And I want to go to work tomorrow.”

The nursing home that housed the art residency she worked at was her life. She had left London in search of something and when she’d found the residency, she had found purpose, found herself. It was a therapeutic residency where they used art to treat everything from dementia to depression and anxiety and other struggles aging residents faced. Emma had once explained it to him as helping them access their lost inner child so they could heal that loss.

“Done. I’ll drive you there and back. What else?”

She smiled a tremulous smile, which for her was like all-out bawling. “That’s good for now. Can’t take up too much of a fancy chef’s time. Who will feed all those rich people if you’re babysitting me?”

“I’ve been babysitting you all my life, sister mine. I got it sorted.”

That, she didn’t argue with.

They only realized the nurse had left when she came back with a wheelchair and insisted on taking Emma down to the car in it. Which didn’t make DJ feel any better about them letting her go home. Panic started to rise again, but he pushed it away. He had to let her breathe. Even if it meant he couldn’t until she changed her mind.

Grabbing her bag and sketchbook, he followed her out. She smiled up at him, and for a moment she was the little sister who’d made him feel like a bloody hero. My Big Brother was the first picture she’d done for him. He’d worn a cape and had six arms, a cross between a superhero and the statue of the Hindu god Vishnu who sat in the altar tucked into the corner of Ammaji’s kitchen.

They waited at the curb for the valet to show up with Emma’s car. The sun had slipped away for the evening, but the bright porch lights tried to play substitute and made Emma’s jet-black curls glisten like a halo around her small face. Hair she had hated as a young child because it had been different from everyone else’s. But then she’d grown up and turned it into a canvas. Unlike him she had gone through all the phases of embracing her African heritage: she had nurtured an Afro, had it braided, shaved it off, grown it long. Pride swelled inside him for her ability to make beauty out of everything, even her struggle to find herself.

He, on the other hand, had inherited hair genes from their father’s side. His curls were more relaxed than Emma’s. Indian hair, Mum always called it. It was the only thing he had inherited from his father other than his hazel eyes. He had started shaving it off when he got to Paris and had never grown it out again. Unlike his sister, he had neither the talent nor the stomach for identity struggles. The only time he had tried to find himself, he’d ended up on the wrong side of the law.

Emma stuck her nose up in the air and inhaled like a hungry dog, then laughed at herself. “Fresh air, DJ! Isn’t it beautiful?”