Premeditated (27 page)

“Don’t touch me,” I ordered, shifting my weight onto my back foot to lean away. “Sorry … just give me a minute to get my bearings.”

“Where’s Dex?”

“Gone.”

Hopefully
.

“Did he say something to you?”

“Say? No.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“That saying things wasn’t the problem.”

“Dinah, what happened to your shirt?”

“It got stretched.”

Brick walls and iron bars rose up around the humiliation I felt standing there with my arms crossed over my chest while he tried to read the expression on my face. I had the sudden urge to go home and burn everything I was wearing, right down to my underwear, then find the bra I’d shown off that first day of school and torch it, too. Maybe then my clothes wouldn’t feel so heavy or clammy against my skin.

“Stretched how?” he asked. “I don’t know what’s going on, but about five minutes ago, Jordan unloaded on me. The things she said … I came looking for you and Dex. Now you’re shaking, and it’s not that cold. Tell me what happened and where he went.”

“I don’t—”

The ringtone belonging to Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen bought Brooks a reprieve from my temper. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten I had it in my pocket, but the whole time I’d been
trying to think of a way to avoid Dex, I hadn’t even given a thought to that nearly weightless piece of plastic. I didn’t need Tabs, and I didn’t need Brooks—Dex was sunk.

“Uncle Paul,” I said, not bothering to hide the relief in my voice. “I’m at the fairgrounds. I really need … What?.… When?… How?”

New tears stung my eyes as my legs forgot how to function; suddenly the ground was much closer than the five and a half feet away it should have been. Uncle Paul’s voice faded to black; all thoughts of asking for help vanished.

Someone was beside me, shouting and calling my name. A familiar voice asked for help from others I didn’t recognize as cold water dropped onto my face.

The whole time, my eyes were open; I was staring straight up, confused by the way the world looked from my place on the ground. A vast canopy of stars, interrupted by vague, human-colored shapes, filled my field of vision from one edge to the other. It was as if a screen had been pulled between me and reality and I’d realized how very small I was in the scope of the universe. All the plans and all the power I thought I’d had was nothing in the grand scheme. One moment of hope was a dim Christmas light compared to the blazing dots out there beyond my reach.

I was pointless—just like all the effort I’d put into trying to make things right for Claire.

“Dinah.” The familiar someone called again. He shook my shoulder, and when I tried to sit up, he helped me the extra few inches I couldn’t manage on my own. “Somebody get security.”

Brooks
.

It was Brooks talking to me.

I was sitting here at a carnival with Brooks while Claire was back on life support.

“What happened?” he asked. “Your call log said ‘Uncle
Paul,’ but he’d already hung up when you fainted. He wouldn’t answer when I called back.”

“He had to go back into the hospital,” my voice said, but I don’t remember my mouth moving.

“Dinah, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong? Does this have something to do with Dex?”

I heard him asking, but the words didn’t register as a question until much later. At that moment, nothing was getting through as coherent, other than what had come from the other end of my phone.

“I need to get to the hospital,” I said. “I d-don’t h-have my c-c-car. My fr-friend t-took it.”

The stutter was new. I’d never gone far enough into a hole that I couldn’t remember how to speak in whole words without tripping over them. Not only could I not form real sentences, I couldn’t get my legs to cooperate with me and get my body off the ground. Either I worked it out on my own or Brooks pulled me up, because at some point I was able to look down and see my own feet. Everything was gray except a puddle of teal syrup sticking out from under my shoe.

Brooks had ceased to exist as a real person, even though he was close enough to put a hand on my arm to draw my attention. He was more like a shadow or a stray thought on the edge of my mind. Not quite solid, until he spoke.

“I can take you,” he said. He could have said other things, and I have no reason to think he didn’t, but those four words were all I registered. It didn’t matter who he was; I latched on to the lifeline he offered and let him pull me out of my scattered haze.

“Do you know where Trinity is?”

“My phone’s got GPS; I can figure it out,” he said. “Come on.”

He walked me to the car, I guess. It’s the only way I could have made it, because I wasn’t in any shape to get there on my own. One second, I was testing the tensile strength of whatever cotton-candy and bubble-gum mishmash had glued my shoe to the asphalt, and the next Brooks was opening the door to his Beemer so I could climb in. He even buckled the seat belt for me.

Time shifted. The world passed like a stop-motion camera with a sluggish shutter. The next time I blinked, we were on the highway.

“Is it your cousin?” Brooks asked.

There’s not much room in the front seat of a car like the one he drove, and rationally, I knew he was close, but his voice sounded miles away, like I was listening through deep water.

I was drowning.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s your cousin, right?” he asked. “The phone call?”

“Y-yeah. Uncle Paul said to get there quick. W-we’re almost there, aren’t w-we?”

“Maybe five miles,” he said.

“Is it cold in here?”

I was freezing. My legs shook so bad they were bouncing up and down off my toes against the floorboard.

“I think you’re in shock,” Brooks said. “Keep talking.”

“She woke up.” A fire started in my cheeks, making a stark and unpleasant contrast to the chill everywhere else. “She was fine.… They said she was getting better.”

“Something changed?”

We’d hit that point where one person realizes the other is going to pieces so they try and keeping them talking to stay conscious and sane. I just let it happen. Words spilled out of my mouth in a newly formed nervous tic that required me to answer any question asked.

“He said her heart stopped. They shocked her, but she’s fifteen. A heart’s supposed to last for like seventy or eighty years.”

Unless it’s broken …

I turned to look at Brooks, as though he should have been able to answer me, but he didn’t. He kept his eyes on the road, except for an occasional darting glance in my direction.

“Do you want me to roll the window down?” he asked.

“What?”

Yes, it was a simple question, and I should have been able to comprehend the basic mechanics of operating a window, but windows didn’t have anything to do with Claire or her sudden lack of fight; therefore, windows made no sense in my world.

“Should I call my dad?” My phone was still in my hands, which were now in my lap. I kept turning it over and over. “I should, right? That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“You’re really pale,” he said. “Do you need some air? I can roll the window down.”

He went ahead and did it without waiting for my answer. The tiny motor buzzed in my door and the draft sucked my hair out the window to fly wild. It slashed right across my face, and I barely noticed the change in scenery.

I navigated the hospital by memory. All those tiny details I’d found comforting before turned mocking in the dark, when
there was no one to sit in the chairs or watch the TVs or read the magazines. Everything was turned off except the auxiliary lights. The green rugs looked cheap, and the art had all the appeal of a ten-cent garage sale bargain. In the elevator, I started to push the button for the fourth floor before a random burst of clarity told me Claire would be back in the ICU. They’d taken her out of the angel room and away from Mitch. How was he supposed to watch over her if she was on a different floor?

It took five seconds for the car to lift us to the second floor; I squeezed out of the elevator before the doors had even opened all the way.

I didn’t have to ask which room Claire was in, because I could already see Aunt Helen through the glass partition where they hadn’t pulled the curtain completely shut.… She’d lost it. Uncle Paul was trying to hold her still, but she was screaming. She beat against his arms with her fists and tried to pry them away from her waist. Her feet were pulled up off the ground, but that didn’t help, either; she looked like she’d lost her mind.

The nurses waved me over as I rounded their station, having recognized me from before. They all had the same somber mask in place, the kind people use to hide deep emotion. I’d never seen anything so terrifying. I couldn’t get a decent grasp of what was happening in Claire’s room—every space not filled with a curtain was blocked by the back of someone in maroon scrubs or a white doctor’s coat. The second they stopped trying to block Aunt Helen from the part of the room where Claire’s bed was hidden, Uncle Paul let go of her and she charged into the knot of people there.

Most of the time, when you hear that someone’s fighting for
their life in the hospital, it doesn’t look as impressive as it sounds. They’re lying in a bed while nurses either man the station in the hall or answer call buttons. Doctors do their rounds, and very little changes. But right then, fighting was an understatement. Everyone in that room was playing tug-of-war with death, using Claire as the rope.

The closer I came, I started picking out specific sounds. I had expected to hear Aunt Helen saying actual words, even cursing, the way she was flailing about, but it was just noise. Choked sobs and muffled gurgles. I raised my hand and knocked on the glass; I still don’t know how Uncle Paul heard me over everything else that was happening. He slipped out of the room, and I knew it was bad, because he didn’t even try to hug me.

“Dinah—”

“Have they fixed it yet?” I asked. “They’re fixing it, right?”

Of course they were; they had to be. Doctors fixed things. That was their job.

“Dinah,” Uncle Paul said.

“I want to talk to Claire.”

“Dinah, honey, Claire’s—”

“No … she’s better.”

He was not calling me “honey.” Honey was the name reserved for bad news and dogs that got hit by cars while playing in the street.

“She opened her eyes because she was getting better,” I insisted. “She’s going to see a counselor and tell him what upset her, and then she’ll come home and laugh at me because I look so different from the last time she saw me. I’ll still be here … Dad said I can stay.”

“The doctors call it an end-of-life rally—”

“No.”

Nothing qualified by “end-of-life” was supposed to be anywhere near my Cuckoo. Not anymore.

“It happens sometimes. She gave it all she had, but it was more than she could—”

“No! She’s just tired from being in the hospital. Uncle Paul, let me talk to Claire. I’ll tell her to listen to the doctors, to not stress herself out so bad and take it slower. She’ll listen to me. She always listens to me.”

“She’s gone, honey. Her body hasn’t shut off yet, but Claire’s gone. There’s nothing on the brain scan. As soon as they finish the last test to make sure and turn off the machines—”

“No! You’re wrong.”

I dodged around Uncle Paul, into the room, just in time to catch Aunt Helen being pulled back from kissing Claire’s forehead. The doctor nodded to a nurse who had her hand poised over the control panel of a piece of clunky equipment, and for the first time all the noises stopped. The pings went silent and the LEDs quit blinking. I held it together until the doctor tugged the sheet up toward the top of Claire’s head.

“Time of death—”

“What are you doing?” I demanded, grabbing his arm. “Don’t. She won’t be able to breathe under there.”

Aunt Helen wrapped her arms around my whole body with more strength than a woman her size who had barely eaten or slept in days should have possessed. My arm ended up pinned under hers while she cried into the top of my head, allowing the doctor to finish his declaration for the official record.

Your brain goes strange places at times like that. Aunt Helen
was nearly snapping me in half, and I was overcome with the need to call my dad, because as far as I knew, he was still researching flights from Oregon so he could see Claire when she came home. But she wasn’t going to come home. She was never going to sleep in the bed she hadn’t made; she wasn’t going to get to see me with my blond hair, or make me give her a picture of myself in her Lowry uniform. She was going into the basement—into the freezer.

Claire hated the cold, and she hated the dark, and they were going to take her out of the ICU’s bright lights and shove her into a drawer without her clothes. She’d hate that.

And the whole time I was thinking about it, Aunt Helen was still hugging me like I was the only thing that existed in the room anymore, and if she let go I’d disappear, too.

It was too much. There wasn’t enough air in the room for all of us; it was too hot and too quiet without the machines. Aunt Helen’s heart beat close to my ear with a rabbit-quick pulse, and every shaking breath wheezed down through her chest as though she were suffocating in slow motion.

I twisted loose and ran for the open space of the hall, then kept going past the nurses’ desk, back toward the elevators. I even punched the call button, but I couldn’t make myself get inside. Sliding metal doors closing me into a box were too much like the freezer drawers in the morgue.

The only other way outside was to use the stairs, so I turned to see if I could find the access door to the stairwell, and ended up crashing straight into the guy I’d forgotten was even there.

“I’m sorry,” Brooks said.

“What?” This was not the time for him to choose to apologize.

“About your cousin … I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t help, but it’s what people say, and I didn’t want to stand here and not say something.”

“Who are you?”

Uncle Paul had followed my retreat, probably to make sure I didn’t go off and do something stupid. Considering his daughter had just died because of a delayed reaction to slashing her wrists, it wasn’t a ridiculous precaution.