If I Die

3

I stood so fast the room spun around me, and it felt like my head was going to explode.

Is this how I go? A stroke in my own living room, when the stress of knowing I’m going to die becomes too much? Could knowing I was going to die actually bring about my death? And if so, did that make it Levi’s fault? Or Tod’s? Or my dad’s, for letting him tell me?

But the truth was that it was no one’s fault. I’d overstayed my welcome, and death had finally caught up to me. There was no more natural, more necessary part of life than this end to the whole thing. Yet I was overwhelmed by the need to stomp my feet and pound my fists and shout it’s not fair! at the top of my fearsome bean sidhe lungs.

“Kaylee…?” Tod repeated, when I didn’t answer my dad.

Six days…

I headed down the hall and into my room, where I pulled my shirt over my head without remembering to close the door. They both followed, and when my dad realized I was changing, he stepped out of the doorway and shoved a very corporeal Tod farther down the hall.

“Kaylee, say something,” he called, but I couldn’t. I barely even registered his voice. All I could hear was the raucous clamor of panic in my own head, insisting I do something—anything—to take my rapidly fracturing mind off the fact that I had less than a week to live.

No senior year.

I unbuttoned my uniform pants and let them pool around my ankles, then stepped into the pair of jeans draped over my bed.

No graduation.

I pulled open the second drawer of my dresser and pawed through the contents for my favorite blue ribbed T-shirt.

No college.

I pulled the shirt on and tugged my hair from the collar, then stepped into a pair of sneakers.

No career. No family. No anything, beyond whatever catastrophe next Thursday had waiting for me.

“Kaylee, where are you going?” my father demanded as I stomped past him and Tod on my way to the front door.

“Out.” I turned to face them as I scooped my keys from the candy dish, and the panic clear in my father’s expression could have been a reflection of my own. “I’m sorry. I have to… I can’t think about this right now, or I’m going to lose my mind. And I don’t want to spend my last week on earth in a straitjacket. I’ll be back…later. Could you feed Styx for me, please?”

Without waiting for an answer, I opened the front door and jogged out to my car. A moment later, I glanced up as I backed down the driveway to find them both standing on the front porch, staring after me.

As it turns out, you can’t outrun death. No matter how fast you drive, you can’t even outrun thoughts of death, when you know it’s coming for you. Is this how Addy felt? Like she couldn’t breathe without choking on the knowledge that she’d soon be breathing her last?

I drove for nearly forty minutes, paying little attention to the direction, blasting music on the radio in an attempt to drown out my own thoughts. But none of it worked, and by the time I’d made my way back to familiar surroundings, I’d realized that the only way to get my mind off my own problems was to focus on someone else’s.

When I glanced up, I realized the hospital was several blocks ahead, as if my subconscious had known where I was going the whole time.

I found front-row parking in the visitors’ lot, which was nearly empty because visiting hours were over. The lady at the front desk gave me Danica Sussman’s room number, but warned me that I wouldn’t be able to see her this late. I thanked her and headed back toward the parking lot—then looped around to another entrance, where I took an elevator up to the third floor.

There was only one person at the third floor nurse’s station, and it was easy to sneak past when she got up for coffee. Room 324 was around the corner and four doors down. I hesitated, loitering outside Danica’s door for a couple of minutes, trying to dial up my courage and think of an opening line that wouldn’t make me sound like a nosy gossip in search of tomorrow’s high school headline. But when shoes squeaked from around the corner, I hurriedly pulled the door open and stepped inside.

After all, what was the worst that could happen? I’d babble like an idiot and get tossed out of her room? The embarrassment could only last six days, max, and after that, nothing would matter anyway.

The hospital room smelled sterile and felt cold, and it was lit only by a horizontal strip of light over the head of the bed. Danica was asleep on her right side, facing me. She looked pale and small beneath the thin covers. Too young to have been a mother. Not that that mattered now.

I watched her sleep for several minutes, thinking about how very different our lives must be. She’d obviously done at least one thing I hadn’t, and that had led to pregnancy—another experience I would never have—and to a loss I could never personally understand.

But Danica would live. If she wanted another baby, she’d have time for that, whenever she was ready.

I would not. I wouldn’t have time for anything. No more firsts, and only one more last. My time was up.

What the hell am I doing here? I couldn’t help Danica. It was none of my business who her baby’s father was, even if he was a teacher, on the odd chance that Sabine was right. Even if that teacher wasn’t human. I was just using Danica and her problems to distract myself from my own, and that wasn’t fair for either of us.

Half ashamed of myself and half irrationally irritated, I had one hand on the door handle when the bed creaked behind me.

“You’re not a nurse.”

I turned slowly, suddenly nervous. I had no idea what to say to her. How to explain my presence. We weren’t friends. I didn’t have any similar personal experience or wisdom to share with her. I was just snooping. And now I’d been caught.

“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” Danica squinted into the shadows beyond her bed, and I nodded.

“Yeah. Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was…visiting a friend. Then I remembered you were here, and thought you might like some company.”

She didn’t smile and wave me over. But she didn’t yell for security, either. “Isn’t it kinda late for visitors?”

I shrugged and came forward slowly, my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, but I can hang till I get caught, if you want.”

Danica stared at the hands she was twisting together, and I knew she was going to tell me to get lost. But then she looked up, and there were tears standing in her eyes, and I realized that maybe her problems were as rough as mine. Maybe even rougher—after all, mine would soon be over. “That’d be cool. If you want.”

I sat in the armchair by the window, and we avoided looking at each other, neither of us sure what to say. But finally Danica sighed and pressed the button to raise the back of her bed, then she leaned against the pillow and rolled her head to face me. “So, I guess everyone’s talking about what happened?”

“Well, it’s probably safe to say that the girls’ quarter-final basketball loss is no longer big news.”

Danica nodded slowly. “What are they saying?”

“The most extreme theory I’ve heard so far is that you’re dying of colon cancer.” Another shrug. “But most people think you had a miscarriage.” Which I knew for sure.

Danica rubbed tears from her eyes with the heels of both hands. “Everything’s so messed up….”

“Messed up seems to be my natural state of being. But if it makes you feel any better, Max has your back. He’s telling everyone you couldn’t be pregnant, ’cause you guys never…” I let my words trail off toward the obvious conclusion, and Danica’s eyes overflowed again.

I felt bad about manipulating her. I really did. But I couldn’t tell her I knew the rumors were true, because she’d ask how I knew. So I needed her to tell me herself.

“Yeah. Max doesn’t have my back anymore,” she sniffled. “He came to see me after school, and I had to tell him the truth.” Another sniffle, and this time she reached for a tissue from the rolling tray table.

“The truth?” I held my breath. She wouldn’t tell me. I mean, I wouldn’t tell me, if I were Danica. She didn’t owe me any answers.

“I was pregnant. But it wasn’t his.”

I actually glanced around the room in surprise, looking for evidence of medical malpractice in the form of unregulated, judgment-impairing pain medication. But then I saw her watching me, looking for something in my expression, and I realized that she wasn’t overmedicated. She just needed a friend.

“Wow.” And suddenly I felt guilty for pumping her for information just to distract myself from my own encroaching expiration date, when all she wanted was a friendly ear. “So…how’d he take it?”

I can do this. It didn’t have to be either-or, right? I could listen like a friend and still dig for answers like…um…an ill-fated amateur detective trying to solve one last case before she kicks the proverbial bucket. Right?

Danica wadded her tissue in one hand, then dropped it onto her lap. “At first he just looked at me, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Then he got this awful heartbroken look, like I’d told him I murdered his puppy. Then he just turned around and walked right out the door without a word.” She sighed and tossed the tissue toward the can, where it landed a foot and a half shy. “The only visitor I’ve had, until you, and he leaves hating me. But I guess I deserve that.”

Her only visitor? “Your parents didn’t come?”

“My mom’s…sick. And my dad won’t talk to me. The doctor told him what happened, and he left without even coming in to say hi. Because, you know, the shame is contagious.” For a moment, biting sarcasm eclipsed the obvious pain in her voice, and I found myself hating a father who wasn’t mine. A man I’d never met. “And now I’ve lost Max, too. And I don’t even know how this happened!”

“You don’t…?” I started, brows raised, but Danica rolled her tear-reddened eyes.

“I mean, I know how it happened. I just can’t figure out why. I remember…getting pregnant. But I can’t remember what I was thinking. I don’t do things like that. I love Max, and I can’t remember why I was willing to throw him away for one stupid night….”

“It was just one night?” I said, stunned by the thought that a single mistake could throw her whole life into chaos.

Danica nodded miserably. “Less than that, really. It was just a couple of hours about a month ago. Afterward I tried to put it behind me and move on, but every time I see him, I want him all over again, even though I hate myself for what I did to Max. How horrible does that make me?” She covered her face with both hands. “Why can’t I get him out of my head?”

I waited, hoping she’d let a name slip, but when her hands fell, she only stared at the wall across from her bed, shoulders slumped, eyes starting to lose focus. Maybe she was a little medicated after all.

“Did you know you were pregnant?” I whispered, wondering if I’d worn out my welcome. She looked like she wanted to go back to sleep for a long, long time.

Danica nodded slowly. “I found out last week. That was the only bright spot.” She blinked, then faced me again. “I was going to keep it. I don’t know how—my dad would rather kick me out than claim a bastard grandchild—but I would have found a way. Then this morning, I passed out in first period and woke up in the hospital, and bam, my whole life’s ruined.” She let the tears fall that time, and they rolled down her face to drip on the white blanket.

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.