Rachel Vincent: If I Die

I leaned forward, hurting for her and desperate to help. But I was in over my head. I had no experience with peer counseling, and no matter what Sabine had to say about my inexperience and naivety, I wasn’t exactly a shining example of the adolescent ideal. Just ask my dad.

“Your life isn’t ruined, Danica,” I insisted, scrambling for something to support that statement. “Max might get over this, if you tell him how much he means to you. And even if he doesn’t, you have a whole lifetime to decide who you want to be with, and if you want kids later, you can…”

“No, I can’t.” Danica stared down at her fingers, shredding a second tissue all over the bedspread, and the flat, dead quality of her voice sent chills through me. “I can’t have kids, Kaylee. Not anymore. Whatever went wrong with this one ruined it for the rest of them.”

Ohh …

I leaned back in my chair, devastated for her and stunned beyond words.

“I know I wasn’t ready,” Danica began, and this time her voice was alive with bitter pain. “It was probably stupid of me to think I could handle it. But now I don’t even have that option. What kind of screwed-up world is this, when the doctor can stand there and tell a seventeen-year-old that her insides are so messed up that she can’t support life. Ever. And they can’t even tell me why. That’s the real bitch.”

I nodded for lack of a better response, oddly relieved to find her anger outshining her grief. “They don’t know what happened?”

She shook her head miserably. “They have more tests to run, but all they know now is that this morning I was pregnant, and now I’m not, and I lost a ton of blood in the process. That doesn’t usually happen in a first trimester miscarriage, according to the doc, but I needed a transfusion.”

She got quiet then, with her head against the pillow, and I thought she was falling asleep.

Last chance, Kaylee …

“Danica, who was the father?” I whispered, leaning forward in my chair again.

“Doesn’t matter,” she whispered back, her eyes closed. “Not anymore.” She fumbled for the controller and pressed a button to lower the head of the bed again. “I need to sleep now,” she mumbled, clearly exhausted by the visit. “Thanks for coming…”

I stood and watched her doze for a second, then I was heading for the door when Danica groaned, and I glanced back at her.

“Maybe this would have happened later anyway,” she mumbled, so low I could barely hear her. “Maybe I wasn’t meant to have kids. But I wanted this one…”

“Visiting hours were over two hours ago,” a sharp female voice barked as I closed Danica’s door, and I spun around to find an elderly nurse—her name tag read Debbie Nolan, RN—in pale purple scrubs frowning at me.

Oops . Busted…

“Sorry. I didn’t get off work in time to visit, and she’s my cousin, so…” I was almost disturbed by how easily the lie flowed. When had I gotten so good at that?

“Oh…” Nurse Nolan’s frown melted into a bruising look of sympathy. “I’m sorry. It’s so sad, with her so young.” She glanced behind her, like someone might be watching, then gestured for me to come closer as her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you want to see your aunt, too, while you’re here?”

“My…?”

My aunt was suffering an eternity of torture in the Netherworld at the hands of the hellion she’d sold her soul to. But Nurse Nolan meant Danica’s mom. When Danica said her mother was sick, I’d assumed from the way she said it that “sick” was a euphemism for drunk, or stoned, or psychotic.

“Sure…” I said at last, hoping the nurse hadn’t followed the progression of my thoughts across my expression. What kind of fake cousin would I be if I didn’t visit my fake aunt while I was there?

“Room 348, at the end of the hall,” she said, still whispering. “I’ll give you ten minutes, if you promise not to tell….”

“Of course. Thank you.” I’d hoped to sneak out when she went back to the nurse’s station, but I never got the opportunity because she escorted me down the hall to a perfect stranger’s hospital room, while my heart pumped panic-fueled fire through my veins.

How the hell am I going to explain this to my not-aunt? If Mrs. Sussman ratted me out, my dad was going to be pissed. Especially considering I hadn’t yet told him about the gruesome miscarriage or my nonhuman math teacher, or Sabine’s theory about a possible connection between the two. I wonder if encroaching death is a plausible excuse for temporary insanity?

I held my breath as Nolan opened the door, scrambling for some way to explain and excuse my intrusion. But if hearing about Danica’s private pain and loss was heartbreaking, meeting her mother was downright creepy.

Mrs. Sussman—Amanda, according to the bracelet on her wrist—was sleeping. Deeply. So deeply that her chest barely moved with each breath.

“How long has she been like this?” I asked, and the nurse looked at me strangely, like I should already know the answer to that. “The days all run together….” I said, scrambling to fix my mistake.

“It’s been almost four weeks now,” the nurse said as we stood at the bedside, shaking her head over the tragedy. “Her daughter comes in on the weekends, and her ex-husband has even come a couple of times. But there’s nothing any of us can do for her.”

“What happened?” I asked, before I realized that a real niece would already know the answer to that. Fortunately, Nurse Nolan thought I was asking for medical specifics.

“The doctors aren’t sure. And they’ve brought in several of them. She came in like this—your cousin found her, you know.”

I nodded, like I’d really known.

“Brain-dead from the moment she arrived, but she keeps breathing, and as long as they keep feeding her—” Nolan ran one hand gently over the tube protruding from Mrs. Sussman’s left arm “—she’ll be here just like this.”

“How awful…” At least my mother’d had a clean death. This was… I didn’t even have words for what this was, though it had to come close to my own aunt’s eternal torture. “Thanks, but I… I have to go.” I backed away from the bed, suddenly grateful for the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to linger like this. At least, not for more than six days.

In the hall I jogged for the elevator, running away from pain and anguish that put my own into startling perspective, and ran right into Tod. Literally.

“You okay?” he said, and I knew without asking that no one else could see or hear him, though he was fully corporeal for me.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, tugging him toward the elevator, grateful that Nurse Nolan had evidently found something to do in Mrs. Sussman’s room.

Tod dug for something in his pocket while I jabbed the call button. “Your dad asked me to find you. You forgot your phone.” He handed me my cell, and when my fingers brushed his, there was a sudden swell of color in his eyes—not quite a swirl, but…something. “And that’s not all you forgot….”

“Huh?” I stepped into the elevator, and he stepped in after me, grinning, the teasing light in his eyes comfortable for its familiarity when everything else around me now felt cold, and foreign, and sharp.

“You forgot your date.”

Crap! I closed my eyes, cursing myself silently. I’d forgotten all about Nash.

“What were you doing at the hospital?” Tod asked, as I shifted into Reverse and backed out of my parking space.

“Trying to distract myself from the fact that next week, my address changes from a house number to a plot number.” But that distraction had proved temporary, and without Danica’s problems to occupy my mind, my own tumbled back in, clamoring for attention like a dog willing to howl until it’s fed.