Chapter Thirty-One
When I dragged myself into Danny’s room the next morning, I felt about ten types of shitty. Sleep hadn’t been an option the night before, so I’d left the house at the ass crack of dawn. Unfortunately, no matter how fast I drove, I couldn’t outrun my existing problems and even more waited for me in Danny’s room.
I froze at the door. Machines beeped like maniacal robots. The doctor shouted orders like a general in battle. And the nurses’ rubber-soled shoes squealed against the floors like stuck pigs.
“Kate!” Nurse Smith saw me and rushed over. She had something yellow—bile?—all over the front of her scrubs. She grabbed my arm and tugged me away from the door. Shock prevented me from fighting her.
Through the tangle of bodies surrounding my brother, I caught a glimpse of Danny’s ghostly white skin and blue-tinged lips. The frothy spittle spilling onto his chin. The rag-doll reflexes as the nurses moved him and poked him with needles.
A single word dove from my brain straight down to the dark pit of my stomach, where it cannonballed with all the force of a boulder: dying.
My soul shriveled within my skin.
“Kate, honey, I need you to listen to me,” she was saying from far away. “He’s gone into some sort of shock. Doc thinks it’s withdrawal from the potion.”
I blinked slowly. Nurse Smith, black void, Nurse Smith.
“We’re getting him stabilized and then Dr. Henry will come talk to you, okay?” She shook my shoulders. “Do you understand?”
Inhale, exhale, inhale.
Nodding took great effort. “Withdrawal. Stabilized.”
Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.
She smiled, but it was fake. She patted my arm, but I didn’t feel it. “I’m going back in to help.”
“Wait! Where’s Pen?” I said, grabbing her before she could walk away.
“She left half an hour ago to run an errand. She’ll be back soon. Why don’t you go grab some coffee? Dr. Henry will be with you in a few moments.”
Coffee? I turned slowly toward the direction of the coffeepot at the other end of the hall. Coffee couldn’t scrub the image of my brother’s blue lips from my eyes. It wouldn’t calm me down—if I were any more numb I’d collapse. But getting coffee was movement. It was active.
So I marched down the hall. I grabbed the little white foam cup. I put the coffee pod in the machine and depressed the lever that injected a needle into the little plastic container of grounds. I punched the button that forced scalding water to churn against the bitter grounds. Then, abracadabra, a perfect cup of caffeinated alchemy. All that remained was for me to add the creamer or sweetener of my choice.
How sad that the only thing I controlled in my life fit into a six-ounce foam cup.
I stared at the steam rising from the dark surface. The white tendrils reminded me of a movie I saw once where a soul escaping a body was depicted by a puff of white smoke. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that motes danced in my vision. They would have been beautiful if they hadn’t been accompanied by stabbing pain.
“Kate?” A hand landed on my shoulder.
I willed my eyes open and turned to face whoever had interrupted my own private psychic breakdown. Luckily, it was Pen.
“Honey, what’s going on?”
Gravity won the battle and I fell into her as if she was oblivion. She caught me and held on. “Shh.”
I didn’t cry because I didn’t have the energy. But my limbs shook and I screamed inside my head so loud I was surprised no one in the hospital could hear my pain.
“Tell me what happened,” Pen whispered.
I shook my head because if I opened my mouth the screams would escape.
Pen’s chest expanded and contracted on a sigh. Then she was guiding me farther down the hall to the waiting room. All the chairs were empty but she took me to the ones the farthest from the doorway.
Once I was sure we were alone, I pulled away and told her what the nurse had said. And then I took a deep breath and confessed all my sins. Every one I’d committed since I’d taken over as Danny’s guardian all the way to the huge fight we’d had about magic on his birthday. Maybe I was hoping that by the time I’d finished, Pen would give me a list of tasks to do to wipe the slate clean. Some degrading exercise that would teach me a lesson. Maybe once I’d completed the karmic chores, everything would go back to how it was before. Danny could return to being the goofy sixteen-year-old going on thirty, and I would go back to being the almost-thirty-year-old going on sixteen.
But that’s not what happened. In real life, things don’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour. Confessing your sins more often damns you than saves you. And no matter how much you wish it were otherwise, you can’t just wish away the consequences to your shitty decisions.
Pen held me close and told me it was okay to be scared because she was, too. And then I held her back and we were scared together.
“Officer Prospero?” the nurse said from the doorway. “Dr. Henry will see you now.”
I snapped my jaw shut and looked at Pen. She nodded even though I hadn’t asked her out loud to come with me.
We rose together and she grabbed my hand for a quick squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, Katie,” she whispered.
My gratitude for her patient listening morphed into anger. I didn’t need saccharine platitudes. I just needed someone to play straight with me for a change. Not use political maneuvering or double-talk or emotional blackmail. I just needed someone to cut the shit and be honest.
“Kate? Doc Henry’s waiting.”
For Doc Henry’s sake, I hoped he wasn’t planning on blowing sunshine up my ass. Because I was a woman on the edge and I wouldn’t hesitate to pull him and everyone else over with me.
* * *
The room that had been so chaotic an hour earlier was now silent as a funeral home. Which was fitting since I couldn’t help but look at Danny’s too-still form and feel as though I was looking at a corpse.
Especially when I saw that regret in the doctor’s eyes.
I didn’t speak to him. Instead, I crossed my arms, raised my brows, and braced myself.
“He’s alive.” He motioned to the chair next to Danny’s bed. “But we need to talk.”
I glanced at the bed to see if I could pinpoint the reason for his grave tone. The machines were beeping as usual, and—thank God—his chest rose and fell in an artificially rhythmic pattern. But it was hard not to see the damage the potion and the coma had done to him. His cheeks had hollowed into gaunt blades and his complexion was the color of wet cement. He basically had become a hollow shell that was alive only through the will of modern technology.