If I Die. Rachel Vincent
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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