. . . that’s what they’re saying too K totes pissed
LOL K jus tol them if Nadine dies b/4 next <3 comes up it’s on you. that’s manslaughter.
More like bitchslaughter Layla get to the squad ok?
Y
We heard the screamin & she dropped half her shit but I got it all packed b4 they loaded her up.
She said you so lily-white to get that pissed. People say shit like that to her = just another Tuesday.
She left you the pills, btw “Good,” I say aloud. I didn’t drink a whole glass of salt water for nothing.
Ur like my hero right now I don’t have an answer for that one. Yes, I made sure Layla skipped the line for an A positive heart, and maybe she’ll get to write another letter to her boy now, one that sets up a time and a place to meet. But the most important thing to me in this whole string of texts is the mention of the Oxy.
I hear raised voices outside my door, Josephine arguing with Angela. I get out of bed and go over to it, ear pressed against the crack.
“I just want to talk to her,” Jo says.
“Nope,” Angela argues. “Karen says she doesn’t come out, and nobody goes in.”
“This is a cardiac ward, not a prison,” Jo says, and I crack a smile.
My phone vibrates in my hand.
Cops have to go, say roads r a mess, Another accident OMG Karen just threw the pencil cup holder Jo knocks on my door. “Sasha, can I come in?”
“I told you—”
“And I’m going to tell the cops in the atrium to check your purse if you don’t let me talk to Sasha.”
There’s a moment of dead silence, followed by the click of a handle turning. I step back from the door and sit on the bed.
“Hey,” Jo says, shutting the door behind her.
“Hey,” I answer as she takes the desk chair.
“So, what the hell?”
“Layla wasn’t going to last much longer,” I tell her.
Jo hooks her feet around the chair, considering my answer while she swivels back and forth for a minute. “So you flooded my friend with possibly infectious pathogens so that yours got the heart instead?”
“Exactly.” I also ensured that I’d have my own source of pain pills to slip Angela when I need them. If Layla gets a new heart she’ll come back here for recovery, along with a whole new list of prescriptions, painkillers among them. If Layla dies, the Oxy goes out the door with her stretcher.
“Wow. Just, wow.” Jo stares me down like I might flinch. I don’t.
“Karen thinks you’re crazy.”
A gust of wind hits my windows, a total whiteout of snow coming with it.
“That sounds like an opinion, not a fact.”
And that’s exactly what it is, the opinion of an RN against the complete psychological evaluation I lied my way through to even get onto the donor wait list. So I’ll hedge my bets waiting to see what happens first—an official diagnosis or the death of someone with an O neg heart. Someone who could be out there driving right now, in this snowstorm. Or shitstorm. Or perfect storm. In my lap, I cross my fingers.
Your mom just called in. K left her like 20 messages Uh-oh K just called u the b word To ur mom
TODAY AT THE CARDIAC CENTER—crafty Karen cusses!
Jo sighs and swivels in her chair some more. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
Her hands clench on the seat of the chair, and I see her pulse racing in her throat, strong and hot. Jo gets up to leave.
“I guess I just wanted to tell you that I hope Layla makes it okay,” she says, her hand on the doorknob. “And I hope you don’t.”
She’s gone before I can tell her I understand why she feels that way, and honestly I’m learning to adjust to the fact that I might die.
As long as Shanna goes first.
thirty-five
She won’t go easily, my sister. She wants me to see what I’ll be missing without her and so as I descend into sleep she sends me Isaac, one of her memories tucked away that I didn’t get to take part in.
“Hey,” he says, the dark branches of a tree cast across his face in the moonlight. “You’re up late.”
“You texted me,” I remind him, crossing my arms over my then-unscarred chest, trying to replicate anger when I’m actually elated.
“Didn’t wake you up though, did I?” he asks, in a way that says he already knows the answer.
“No,” I admit, stepping closer so that he puts his arms around me, feels me shivering in the chill. He slides his jacket off and I take it gladly, listening to the old leather creak as it settles around me, adjusting itself to the fit of a new body.
“What’re you doing up?” he asks, lighting a fresh cigarette.
“Reading Shakespeare,” I answer, and he snorts, choking on a puff. “What? I’ve got a test on The Tempest tomorrow. What are you doing up?”
“Not reading Shakespeare,” he says, and steps closer to me, the exhale of smoke surrounding us both.
“You should try it,” I say, but I don’t know that the Bard holds any fascination for me in this moment either. All I want is Isaac, the play of his eyes over mine, the pull of my body toward his.
“Make me,” he says, and I lean forward, whispering a line into his ear, my hands sliding over his chest to follow the lines of his tattoos up to his mouth.
“‘This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine,’” I say, sliding my fingers through his hair and pulling his mouth down to mine.
“Totally yours,” he says, right before our lips meet.
Karen wakes me up with dinner, her face the stiff flat line of a number five on the pain scale.
“I can’t get a hold of your case worker,” she says. “Power lines are down everywhere. Your parents will be coming in the morning.”
I poke the straw through my juice box.
“I’m not letting you out of this room,” she says.
“Good call,” I tell her, and chomp into a granola bar.
I thought she’d leave, but she settles onto my couch, measuring the depth of the snow on the ledge with her hand. It’s at least five inches, and that’s just what made it under the eaves to my sill.
“Layla’s in recovery,” Karen says, real quiet, her words almost not reaching me.
“Thanks for telling me.”
She doesn’t say anything else, so I start eating, trying to fill the empty hole left behind after I dumped everything I had onto Nadine.
“Why’d you do that?”
I don’t answer. My logic doesn’t need defending, and she would despise my goals in any case. Karen sighs and gets up from the couch, pulling the blood pressure cuff off the wall behind me. “Arm.”
I lift it, still eating with the other hand. Karen makes a notation in her laptop, then takes my temperature.
“Fever’s going down,” she says. “Figures.”
“So what was causing it?”
Karen glances at the screen. “Your blood work came back. Doesn’t look like you had an infection, so it was likely just a flu bug of some sort.”
A flu bug I poured down Nadine’s throat out of my own.
“Okay,” I say lightly, spearing a strawberry.
Karen’s teeth clamp down tight on her lips to keep her from saying all the things she wants to say to me. The Hippocratic oath must be a real bitch. I see the edge of Angela’s sleeve as Karen slips out the door, closing it behind her.