Chapter 19
It’s louder than I expected in the ICU.
Hushed voices, yes, and murmurs from television sets, but it’s the overwhelming cacophony of beeps and alarms that makes my skin crawl.
Several short alerts in quick succession from one room, then another long beep from somewhere down the hall, interspersed with the robotic and regulated “shhhh-shhhh” noise of ventilators.
After I check in at another desk, the nurses direct me to Daan’s room.
I move cautiously down the hall, aware of every squeak of my shoe and slightly loud breath, feeling like an oversized beast set loose in an eggshell factory.
The despair and despondency is stronger here, suffocating waves of it, like someone waving a tray of fresh baked cookies right under my nose. Even being full doesn’t stop me from wanting it.
Worse, though, is the sensation of life. Not firmly ensconced in bodies as I normally encounter it, but rather loosely tethered and, in some cases, barely hanging on to its person. It feels as though a sneeze or the wrong thought from me would jar it loose and send it my direction.
Shit, shit. I keep my eyes focused on the bright white tile floor, glancing up only to check room numbers.
Finally, I find Daan’s. The green curtain around his bed is partially drawn, so I hesitate on the threshold. But after a moment, it’s clear he’s the only one in the room, so I go in.
His feet are tall pointed mounds beneath a light blanket, which seems perfectly normal and exactly as I’ve seen so many times before, arriving at his room freshman year to get him for calc class only to find him still asleep.
But as soon as I round the edge of the curtain, all semblance of normalcy vanishes.
Next to the raised bedside rails, his hands lie limp, an IV taped to the back of one.
His head is locked in a gray plastic brace, his long hair crumpled and caught inside.
A plastic mask and tube combination covers his mouth and nose.
The machines at his bedside add their notes to the beep-beeping and ventilator percussion sounds.
He looks so horribly still, and pale, as if someone has sucked nearly every drop of vitality from him.
The glow of life from him is so faint, it looks more like a reflection from some random shiny object in the room.
Fuck. My knees wobble and then give. Instinctively, I catch myself on the plastic footboard of the bed, jostling Daan in the process.
I suck in a breath sharply and jerk my hands away, though he does not react, nor does his light dim any further. Thankfully.
Carefully, I make my way around the edge of the bed, without touching anything, to sit in the visitor’s chair.
Daan’s chest rises and falls mechanically, too abruptly to be natural. He is not breathing on his own, may not ever breathe on his own again.
Hot tears sting my eyes. How did this happen? Two days ago, he was thinking about romancing a brother-sister combo, and now he’s in a hospital bed that he might not ever leave. His parents, his older brothers, they’re going to lose the baby of the family, the self-proclaimed favorite.
The Old Ones destroy everything.
Except … it’s not just the Old Ones in this case. I failed Daan. I hid my true self, and he and Lennie and others have paid for that.
“I fucked up, Daan, and I’m so, so sorry.” I start to reach for his hand and then stop myself. I can’t take the chance. Tears spill down my cheeks, and I swipe at them with the back of my knuckles. “Just hold on, okay? I’m going to do everything I can to fix this, I promise,” I whisper.
Except … even if I can somehow make these attacks and all of this succession bullshit stop, how does that fix anything? It certainly won’t bring Lennie or anyone else back. It won’t even stop this same thing from happening again in the future.
Slumping in my chair, I stretch my hands out in front of me, looking at the words inked there. They’ve never been more accurate.
I am toxic.
I’ve been telling myself I’m doing everything I can. But that’s a lie.
I’ve been making decisions like my life here will continue at some point, like I’ll be able to go back to just being “normal college student Jocasta Trelane, fully human.”
In the process, I’ve made it impossible for the people I care about to make decisions they need to make to save themselves. Because they don’t have all the information.
And here we are. Fighting, dying, dead.
My distorted reflection in the shiny metal bars of the bedside rail stares back at me, eyes flesh-colored holes with lashes.
It’s selfish of me. Wrong. Putting my own needs ahead of everyone else’s when doing so hurts or kills them, just because I’m scared.
Maybe I am more of my father’s daughter than I realized.
That thought stiffens my spine, bringing me upright in my chair.
I can’t be him. I won’t be him, not like that.
Which means I can’t keep going this way. It’s time to try the one thing I’ve been avoiding: telling the truth.
At this point, what can it hurt?
I grimace. It’s the end of my life here—my fantasy of a normal life—so actually, I suspect it’ll hurt quite a lot. But hopefully only in a way that doesn’t require medical attention.
Or a casket.
Gathering my courage, I stand. “I’ll bring you coffee and Froot Loops next time,” I tell Daan, my voice thick with tears and regret. “And you better wake up soon because Dove and her brother aren’t going to wait forever for that double date. Okay?”
I find Carter and Devon standing pretty much where I left them in the waiting room. Only now they’re facing off, with Carter vibrating with an angry tension while Devon looks on, eyebrow raised with that smug arrogance. An expression that, to be fair, does kind of make you want to punch him.
Chessa has moved closer to join them. Sort of. She’s staring out the windows with her back to me, ignoring them and seemingly everything around her.
A picture of this moment would present like an album cover for the world’s most dysfunctional band.
But then again, it’s possible that I’m just trying to distract myself by focusing on anything but what I’m about to do.
“Hey,” I say, as the ICU doors close behind me.
The three of them turn toward me as one, and the force of their full attention makes me stumble, catching the edge of my shoe on the carpet.
“Is there any change?” Chessa asks, edging closer. She has one arm wrapped around her waist still, as if for comfort, and the other arm is propped on it, bent at the elbow so she can continue chewing her thumbnail. One of her nervous tics.
It makes my heart fill with a heavy sense of ineffable sadness. I know her, and I won’t. Not after this.
“Not that I could tell,” I say. “He’s still … asleep.”
She nods curtly. “I’m going back in to sit with him. I’ll wait there for my dad to come back and pick me up.”
The mention of Chessa’s dad only firms my resolve to speak up. He’s just one more innocent bystander who may get sucked into this mess if they don’t leave town immediately. Which is what I’m going to advise.
After I tell Chessa and Carter … the other thing.
She starts to move past me. It’s so tempting to let her go. But I can’t.
“Wait,” I say.
She stops but keeps her gaze firmly fixed forward. “What?”
“Your grandmother. She’s still in her house in Milwaukee?” I ask. There’d been talk about moving her into a facility after her last “heart scare,” but Chessa’s noted stubbornness is apparently nothing compared to her grandmother’s.
Chessa gives me an odd look. “Yes,” she says slowly. “Why?”
That should work. Or at least make them safer.
I look to Carter. My heart sinks. I have no idea where his family lives. “And you’ve got somewhere else to go?”
He frowns at me. “I’m not going anywhere. Even if the university decides to go remote for classes, I still need to work.”
“Beecher is going remote?” I ask, feeling the first bit of hope I’ve felt in a while. That would help so much. At least in terms of lowering potential body count.
“If you’re going to carry on a full-blown conversation in the middle of an intensive care waiting room, either speak up so we can all hear you or go somewhere else,” the woman on the couch with the jacket over her face says loudly, without getting up.
Right. I wince. “Let’s get out of here for a minute,” I say to Chessa and the others in a quieter voice. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”
We eventually end up in a small room on the far end of the ICU floor. A chapel/meditation room. The walls are painted a soothing blue, and the early morning sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows creates geometric color blocks on the gray carpeted floor.
An altar of shiny polished wood holds a place of honor at the front of the room, with a few rows of folding chairs spread out before it. The wall behind the altar is appropriately blank for a nondenominational chapel, no cross or crucified Jesus. But it looks strangely empty to me.
My mother took me to church every Sunday until I was fourteen, hoping to save me.
From myself, from my father’s influence, I don’t know.
But if she actually believed in what she was attempting to indoctrinate me with, she would have understood that her religion held that God created everything, including me.
The back half of the room, closer to the doorway, is more casual. Overstuffed chairs in a neutral fabric, tissue boxes on every end table between the chairs, and plants overflowing their pots, carefully and thoughtfully interspersed. A water feature burbles over polished stones in the corner.
Good enough.
“What is this about?” Chessa demands from behind me. When I turn, she’s at the threshold to the room, refusing to go any farther.
“Yeah, Jo. What are you doing?” Devon asks as he squeezes past Chessa. His question sounds more like a warning, though. He knows, or suspects, what I’m about to do.
I sigh.
Carter, at my side, leans closer to whisper in my ear. “You realize he’s not even a Beecher student?” His forehead is furrowed in concern.