The drowning girl is thrown overboard

My mother drove us home from the doctor's office, coldly furious.  "All these years," she said.  "Here I thought we had a competent medical practitioner, and he turns out to be some -- some ideological crank.

"Where the hell did he get his medical degree, anyway?" she asked no one in particular.  "Doctors 'R' Us?"

"UCLA," I said, but she didn't notice because she didn't want to know.

"Go upstairs," she said the second we got in the door.  Not looking at me, walking away from me.  

She didn't drink often, but I knew she was going to get something now.  A glass of wine, at least.  Didn't take any superpowers to figure that one out.

I was angry. What if I'd wanted something to drink, or eat?  We'd been there a long time.  It was almost dinnertime and I hadn't eaten since lunch, and not much of that because I'd been too clenched up about this appointment.

But I didn't say anything.  I knew it wasn't any use.  

I went up to my room, but didn't shut the door all the way.  I sat on my bed and picked up a pillow just to have something to dig my fingers into.

The doctor believed me.

My mother didn't believe the doctor.

If he'd said what she wanted to hear -- that there was nothing going on, it was all a silly dream, nope, no mutants here -- then she'd have believed him.  She wouldn't have called it belief, even.  She would have called it facts.  She'd have said that it wasn't just her opinion; she had scientific backup here. This guy was a doctor.  A man of science.  He had a degree.  He had logic and evidence and facts.

Which was all exactly what she wanted, right up until they added up to something that she'd already decided wasn't true.

I lifted my head. Her voice, downstairs.  She was on the phone.

Calling my father, probably.  Telling him what a quack we'd been relying on all these years.

When I was little and my left lung collapsed and I thought I'd never be able to breathe again, that doctor was the one who helped me.  I hadn't always enjoyed his attitude today, but at that early time there was something vastly reassuring about his looking and sounding so composed and slightly amused at any fuss about something that, after all, wasn't anything to be frightened of.  I just needed a little repair job, and he'd be happy to give it to me. And I'd stopped being frightened even while I still felt like I was drowning on dry land.

I put the pillow down, wiggled my fingers to get some life back in them, and quietly pushed the door open.  My mother's voice got a little more audible, still too far for me to make out words.

They thought I was listening in on them even when they weren't talking.

Might as well do a little old-fashioned eavesdropping.

We become what we're accused of.