“Hi, Mandy,” Juniper said softly.
Her sister-in-law opened her eyes and managed to pull her mouth into a semblance of a smile. She didn’t move to get up, so Juniper went to her and bent down to wrap Mandy in a hug. “It’s good to see you,” she said. But the truth was, it was hard to see her. Mandy was a shell of the woman she had been only days ago. Her eyes were dark and sunken, her skin gray. It was obvious that she hadn’t washed her hair in a while, because it hung lank and dull against her ashen cheeks.
“Here.” Juniper took Mandy by the shoulders and turned her so that she could reach the back of her head. She deftly finger-combed her sister-in-law’s loose waves, then pulled them into a French braid. Juniper was wearing a hair elastic like a bracelet and slipped it off her wrist to wrap it around the end of the improvised hairdo. When she was done, she gave Mandy’s upper arms a squeeze.
“Thank you.” Mandy’s eyes welled with tears.
“Don’t. It’s just a braid.”
“June…” A tear spilled down Mandy’s cheek and she whispered: “I’m scared.”
Juniper hugged her. “I know,” she said. But she didn’t want Mandy to fall down that dark hole, and quickly steered the conversation in a different direction. “Where are Law and Reb?”
“They went downstairs to grab some coffee.” Mandy pulled back with a heavy sigh. “They’re here all the time, June. All. The. Time. It’s…”
“Exhausting?” Juniper offered. “Difficult, frustrating, annoying?”
That elicited a laugh from Mandy. It was short-lived as a hiccup. “Yes. All of those things. I love them, I do, but—”
“No need to explain. Why do you think I live in Colorado?”
“Smart girl.” Mandy sounded wistful. “I wish I could fly away from all of this.” Immediately, her gaze snapped to Juniper’s and her eyes brimmed with remorse. “I don’t mean that. I love Jonathan. I—”
Juniper shushed her. “This is hell, Mandy. I want to fly away too. You don’t have to apologize for how you feel. Go get a cup of coffee. A bottle of wine. Do they sell wine in the cafeteria?”
“No.” Mandy’s lips held a fragile smile. “They should. But there’s a Starbucks around the corner. Maybe…?”
“Go. I gotta talk to Jonathan about a few things anyway. I’ll keep him company while you drink a large latte or two and do the crossword.”
“I’m more of a Better Homes and Gardens kind of girl.”
“Perfect. Grab yourself a magazine to go with your frothy coffee. Take your time.”
“Thanks, Junebug.”
Mandy hoisted herself to her feet and shambled down the hallway like an old woman. It hurt Juniper to watch her go, but she swallowed a shaky breath and steeled her resolve. After taking a moment to collect herself, Juniper approached the triage desk in the hallway. The ICU rooms fanned behind the low work counter, glass windows ensuring the patients were visible at all times. They were indistinguishable from here, bodies in beds attached to a network of machines that put Juniper in mind of the worst sort of science fiction. She felt like she should know which one was Jonathan, as if they were truly twins and shared a connection that went molecule-deep. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t until she had scrubbed in and donned shoe coverings, gloves, a gown, and a mask that she was finally taken to where he lay.
“He’s in isolation because of the risk of infection,” a nurse explained. She had frosted hair and matching silver wire-framed glasses that sparkled in the fluorescent lights. She looked like someone’s fun grandmother. “Pneumonia is common in cases like his, but we don’t want to tempt fate unnecessarily. Please don’t remove any of your protective gear while you’re inside the room.”
“Okay.”
The nurse smiled gently. “And you can’t touch him. He gets agitated when we touch him, so we’re keeping contact to a minimum. But you can talk to him all you’d like. In fact, please do. Tell him who you are. Talk about pleasant things, fond memories and the like.”
It was a lot to take in. Juniper wanted to ask the nurse if it was a good sign that Jonathan became agitated when touched, but she was too busy worrying about what to say to him. Their past was littered with snares that she was sure would sabotage any progress he was making, but the present was filled with uncertainty, too. Juniper realized that there was much she didn’t know about her brother. Although they remained close on the surface, it had been a long time since they had confided in each other like the best friends they had been. In many ways, Juniper was walking into the room of a stranger. The room of a man that she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust.
The nurse opened the door for her and moved over to the bed, where she examined complicated machines and checked levels that Juniper couldn’t begin to understand. She must have found everything to be satisfactory, because in less than a minute she was patting Juniper on the arm and leaving them alone. The door closed with a soft thud behind her.
Jonathan was beset by an invasion of tubes. In both arms, his neck, his mouth, and snaking out from under a thin blanket. Still more were attached to his chest, his fingers, and coiled beside his swollen cheek. Reb had tried to prepare her, but everything was alien and terrifying, whooshing and pumping, filling the room with the soft hiss and whir of artificial life. Jonathan was in there somewhere, buried beneath the weight of all they had done to stop him from slipping out of his body and away. Juniper balked especially at the thick red pipe that so clearly cycled oxygenated blood into the vulnerable stretch of his pale throat, but she forced herself to take a few steps forward. To find his face beneath the towers of machines that surrounded him.
Jonathan. He was as still as a wax doll and puffy from all the extra fluid he had needed in those first awful days, but recognizable. His hair was charcoal against the white pillow and just a little too long, and even now Juniper envied his lashes. She smiled in spite of herself, and felt something inside of her crack.
“What have you done?” she whispered. And then, more loudly. “Hi, Jonathan. It’s me, June.”
There was a flurry of activity on one of the machines. She moved closer.
“I sent Mandy out for a coffee. I bet you’d like a dark roast right about now, wouldn’t you?” She felt kind of stupid babbling at him, but there was a surge of energy in the room that made her step closer still. Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe it was raw hope that he could hear her and was even now swimming back from the deep.
“You have to come back to us,” Juniper said. “Mandy needs you. The boys need you. I need you.”
Was she doing it right? Juniper had no idea, but suddenly there were a thousand things she wanted to tell her brother. Important things she should have said, and frivolous nothings that didn’t matter at all. She wanted to ask him if he had any idea who was harassing him, and what had happened all those years ago. She wanted to apologize.
“Juniper and Jonathan.” She smiled faintly. “When we were little it sounded like one word: juniperandjonathan. As if one couldn’t exist without the other.”
Something shifted. It was a quickening, a blip on the monitors that cataloged everything from Jonathan’s kidney output to his brain activity. But before she could truly start to worry about it, the nurse with the silver glasses was back, her face a professional mask, her pace disclosing concern.
“Someone likes you,” she said, catching Juniper’s eye as she leaned over Jonathan. Then she turned her full attention to her patient. “Good morning, Mr. Baker. Are you thinking you might join us today?”
Juniper’s heart stopped and then started back up painfully. She reached for her brother’s hand, but caught herself at the last moment.