Would You (12 page)

“Hey,” says Zack.

“Whoa!” says Audrey. “Carson, what is your damage? Oh god, sorry, Nat! But Carson! Stop. I mean it, before I kick you in
the place.”
There's a little hill of shredded napkin fluff in front of her.

“Guys,” I say.

But Carson hasn't finished. “Let's put your, uh,
personal improvement
aside for a second, Leila, and think about what's really going on. Would you rather have your
sister
die or have her be a brain-damaged paraplegic? Isn't that more to the point?”

Everybody looks away from me. Silence.

“I don't have a sister,” Leila finally says.

“Your weaselly little brother, then,” snaps Audrey. “Though in some people's opinion he's brain-damaged already.”

“Audrey!” says Zack.

“Oh god, sorry. Sorry, Nat. Reflex.”

“I don't think …” I stop.

I don't know what I think or don't think. I'm hot and cold and numb all at once.

“It's not up to me,” I whisper. “It's not like it's my choice.”

“Worst words,” I say, to no one in particular.
“Statistic.
It's so prickly. And so is
optimistic.”

“Most pessimistic word ever,” agrees Zack. “Only used when a disappointing outcome is expected.”

“And fluids,”
I add.

“Moist fluids,”
says Audrey.

“What other kind are there?” asks Carson.

“And
coma,”
I say.

Mom and Aunt Jeanie are at the table when I come in. Dad is shifting an aluminum-foiled pan in the oven.

“What's up?” I say.

Mom looks like the inside of her has been scraped out and she's drying up.

“Family meeting, Nat,” says Dad. “Why don't you go wash your hands and we'll eat in five minutes.”

Aunt Jeanie grabs and then pats me.

“My hands are clean,” I say. “I was in the pool for four hours.” I hold up my fingers. “Cleanest prunes in town.”

Aunt Jeanie laughs way too hard. “You always were the funny one, Natalie.”

Clunk.
Silence. And which one was Claire? Pretty? Smart? Kind and loyal? And now? Which one is she now?

Mom moves my chair back so I'll sit down. Aunt Jeanie opens a bottle of red wine and puts a glass in front of me.

“No, Jeanie,” says Mom, moving the glass. “She's sixteen.”

“Don't you think she's old enough this week?” asks Jeanie. “If we lived in France …”

“I don't like it anyway,” I say.

Dad pulls the pan out of the oven and almost drops it on the table. The pot holders are kind of shabby. Claire made them at camp, probably in the Elves cabin.

“You left the card on, Dad.” I point to the charred rectangle taped to the casserole:
From the Bensons.

Luckily, the Bensons are not here alongside their inedible broccoli-tofu slop, so we don't need to fake it past the first bite.

I clear the plates, except the wineglasses, which get refilled all round.

“So?” I say. “Family meeting?”

Mom looks at Dad; Dad looks at Mom; my aunt looks back and forth like she's watching tennis.

“Dr. Hazel spoke with your mother this afternoon,” starts Dad. Aunt Jeanie grabs Mom's hand.

“Oh Christ,” I say. “Just tell me.”

“There's nothing to ‘Just tell,’” says Dad.

“The results came back.” Mom is talking slowly, making herself sound steady. “From the EEG. Dr. Hazel came to find me.”

I go cold and I can't make my mouth work. I realize Dad and Jeanie already know. I realize this is all for me.

“Her brain … Claire's brain … it's dead, Natty. She died. Probably on Saturday night before we … when she …”

My eyes flood over watching Mom's do the same. I push back from the table, flinging my arms across my face.

No! Oh, Claire! Oh, Claire!
Claaaaaairrrrrre!

It's me howling, but I don't know when it started. I feel hands all over me, trying to take hold, but I'm rocking, trying to speed through this part, shaking them off me, Don't make me be here anymore….

I run to the bathroom and squat in front of the toilet. I flip up the seat. I put my palms on the sides of the cool bowl. I lean over, heaving, trying to puke. I heave deep in my gut, but my mouth is dry, dusty. There's a lump of something unbearable inside me but it won't come out.

Not sure how long it takes, but later I'm ready to hear the rest.

My sister is dead.

Only she's still breathing.

Jeanie makes tea and dumps half the sugar bowl into my cup. “Brandy would be better,” she says. Mom just looks at her and Jeanie turns red. Mom is older.

Claire was older.

There'll be no one to scold me with a
look
when I'm forty-three years old.

“Claire's heart…” Mom has to drag herself forward. “Claire's heart is healthy. It could continue to beat until… well, for fifty more years. Sixty, maybe, or more.”

Claire's heart.

I get a flash of a valentine that Claire made when we were little. For me. Two paper hearts, sewn together around the edges with big lumpy wool stitches, and stuffed with those little cinnamon candies.
Luv
printed in big white letters.

“But it's only beating because the ventilator is providing oxygen. There are no natural functions working. If they …
when
they … remove the life-support system … she will… no longer be able to breathe.”

“She'll be dead,” I say, suddenly cold all over.

“She will die,” says Dad.

“She's already dead,” says Mom. “Really.”

I look around for my hoodie. I'm shivering.

“So this … this is …
it?”
I say. “There's … no actual choice to make?”

Mom and Dad look at each other. Aunt Jeanie opens her mouth, but Mom shakes her head.

“What?” I say. “What are you not telling me?”

“It's a difficult subject,” says Mom.

“We're not sure you're ready for it,” says Dad.

“Let's wait till a little later,” says Aunt Jeanie. “But really, it has to be decided.”

“See, Claire was an adult, according to the law. Mom and Dad say what they think Claire would have wanted. And the hospital has to decide what her wishes would be.”

“How the hell do they do that?”

“She checked that little box on her driver's license. She agreed to be an organ donor.”

Claire and I never talked about it, not straight up. Why would we? We're
teenagers.

So we're in the car and Mom says, “George Casson called.”

And Dad says, “George,” in this fond, nostalgic way, and they look at each other, smiling, sharing some invisible thing.

“Who's George?” I say.

“We went to college with him,” says Dad.

“We used to go camping,” says Mom. And they
laugh.

“Good old George,” I say. But I have this disturbing flash that Mom and Dad are
friends.
They have memories that don't include Claire and me. How odd is that?

“The thing I keep wondering is …”

“What?” they all say.

“I keep wondering if someone out there is waiting for Claire to die.”

“Ah,” says Audrey.

“Of course,” says Zack

“Do you mind telling me what the hell you're talking about?” says Carson.

We're at Beanie's, iced coffee dregs melted into milky puddles at the bottoms of our glasses. I swirl mine, wanting to explain it the right way.

“Maybe there's some little boy who was born with a
hole in his heart,” I say. “Or whatever. And they've kept him going all this time, but now he's ten, and if he doesn't get a heart transplant, he'll never see eleven. So with Claire's heart…”

“But wait! Then
she
won't see nineteen,” says Carson.

“She won't see nineteen anyway,” Zack says quietly.

“Claire's heart could save his life, this boy.”

“Let's name him,” says Audrey. “Let's call him … William.”

“Not save just
his
life,” I say. Maybe I'm trying to make it okay somehow, but, “Maybe William's supposed to grow up to do something really important. Maybe all the time he's spent in hospitals makes him grow up to be a brilliant doctor and he develops the cure for AIDS and all the billion children in Africa are saved.”

“Yeah,” says Audrey. “Thanks to Claire's heart.”

“Good picture,” says Zack.

“What else do they use?” says Carson. “Aside from the heart?”

“Carson!” says Leila.

“Kidneys,” says Zack. “It's called harvesting. Big demand for healthy kidneys. All those people on dialysis. And the liver, the lungs, bone marrow… Pretty much everything can be used to help someone.”

“Her skin,” says Audrey. “They can graft her skin onto someone who's been burned.”

“Oh!” I say. “What if someday I met someone who'd
been in a terrible fire and got all reconstructed, but I recognized some part of her arm, because Claire has these really distinctive freckles in a row on the top of her wrist, and they got stitched onto somebody else?”

“That's gruesome,” says Leila.

“But so cool,” says Audrey.

“That's gotta be the opening sequence for a horror movie,” says Carson. “Where this deranged doctor—”

Audrey throws her spoon at him. “Shut up!”

“Shut
up!”
says Zack.

“What?” says Carson.

“You promised, you idiot.” They glare at him.

“Oh.” He glances at me and away. The tips of his ears go pink.

“Okay, okay,” he says, after a minute. “But how about some loser kid who never made a goal in her life, maybe she could have Claire's right foot and turn into a soccer star?”

“Can they do a brain transplant?”

“Not yet, Leila,” says Zack.

“You in the market for one?” says Carson. Then he stops. “Oh crap, I did it again.”

I pat his hand. “It's okay, Carson. But what I'd like to know is what happens to Claire's
knowledge?
I keep wondering. Hours of studying! Where does her vocabulary go? Or her ability to kick the ball just the right way, to analyze the best defense in a split second? Or all those lyrics to every
Beatles song she memorized? Or, you know, just how to flip pancakes?”

“That what makes a person who she is,” says Audrey. “That's what dies.”

“That's what's unbearable.”

I put my head on the table just as Zack says, “How about her eyes?”

When I think about Claire's eyes, I see hazel pools with golden green flecks, framed by the best eyelashes a girl ever got. I see them crinkled up so tight while she laughs that she looks Asian. We even bought her a T-shirt one time:

ASIAN GIRLS HAVE MORE FUN.

I know that whoever gets Claire's eyes, it won't actually be her eyes. They take the eyeballs from their sockets and harvest the corneas for use by some old blind person.

“Oh!” Carson would say. “That would be an awesome movie! What if a person got someone else's eyes, and suddenly had all the memories of everything the eyes had ever seen?”

But in real life it won't be like seeing the world through Claire's eyes. Just a second chance.

I wake up. I wake up remembering that old rhyme about birthdays: Wednesday's child is full of woe. Thursday's child has far to go. It's about
birthdays
, but I'm thinking how far Claire is going to go today.

Full of
woe.
I don't even want to open my eyes. I press my face into Claire's pillow, using it to soak up the tears that feel like steam behind my lids.

We must believe utterly that there is no brain activity at all. Period. That Claire is dead. And we're just… releasing her body from the confines of medicine.

But the body is one thing, right? What about her spirit? Is there such a thing? Is there a Claire angel hovering over her body, watching this going on? When I was talking to her all week, I was talking to the body, just in case it would keep her on earth somehow to hear my voice. But what if… There I go again,
what if
she's listening in some other way?

And when we turn off the machine … where will she go?

“Of course there's a heaven,” says Leila. “If heaven doesn't exist, how can it have a name? And all those pictures of it?”

“Uh, Leila?” says Audrey. “That would be Im. Ag. In. Ary…. How can people in heaven tell us what heaven looks like? They're
dead.”

“Well, how come so many artists have the same ideas?” Leila asks, like she's scoring some winning point. “The paintings all show choirs of angels wearing floaty robes. God has a white beard like Dumbledore, and it's blue up there, with creamy clouds and no red except Christ's lips. Someone must have seen it!”

“First of all, Leila, there is no god,” says Audrey. “And, secondly,
if
there is one, he's not… wait,
she's
not… no, actually, if there is one, he's clearly male because he's
messing up so bad. … So anyway, he's not sitting on a lawn chair in the sky, surveying his kingdom from the deck of a cruise ship, deciding who gets into heaven.”