Mourning Song (12 page)

“Tomorrow?” Mrs. Vanoy echoed. “I still haven’t recovered from Thunder Mountain.”

Everyone laughed. Dani eyed her sister, who had become very quiet. “Are you all right?” Dani asked Cassie quietly as she sat at the edge of her bed.

“I’m exhausted, I guess,” Cassie answered, then closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep.

Much later, when everyone was asleep, Dani woke with a start. Her mother was still fast asleep. “Cassie? Do you want something? Are you up?”

Dani eased herself out of bed and felt her way
across the room. At the door, she caught hold of her sister. “What are you doing up?”

“Dani, I can’t see clearly.”

“It’s just dark,” Dani answered. “Why, I can barely see, either.”

“Open the curtain, Dani. For me, the room is pitch-black. I think I’m blind.”

Quickly, Dani pulled the cord that sent the curtain gliding over the track. Outside, the night was lit by a slowly sinking moon. Dani could make out the sand and the patio. “Can you see the patio?”

“I can’t see anything.” Cassie sounded frightened now.

“I’ll turn on a light.”

“No. Don’t wake up Mom,” Cassie insisted. “Please, take me outside.”

Their mother heard their voices and sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“Cassie wants to go outside,” Dani answered.

“It’s only five o’clock, honey. Wait till it’s light,” Mrs. Vanoy said as she walked toward her daughters.

“She can’t see, Mom.”

Their mother took Cassie’s face between her hands. “Oh, baby … I’ll get Nathan. Dani, put on the lights.”

“No … wait,” Cassie pleaded. “Let’s the three of us go outside together.”

Dani knew that Cassie’s blindness meant that the tumor would shut down Cassie’s vital organs and her capacity to function. She felt sick to her stomach.

Dani heard her sister’s voice. “Mom, please—can’t just the three of us go down to the water? I want to feel the sun come up. Then, if I have to go to the hospital, we’ll go …”

Her sentence trailed in the darkness, and all Dani could hear was the sound of her own breathing. “If that’s what you want,” her mother finally answered.

Dani slid open the door and felt the fresh, salty air. She heard the waves breaking on the shore in the distance. “My legs aren’t working very well,” Cassie said, sounding apologetic. “They’re sort of numb.”

“Mom and I can make a seat with our hands,” Dani suggested quickly, and grasped her mother’s wrists. Slowly, her mother grasped hers in return, so their hands formed a grid. Cassie eased onto it and wrapped her arms around their shoulders. They carried her to the water, lowered her onto the sand and sat down on either side of her, each holding one of her hands.

Dani felt the warm water wash over her feet and legs and soak the bottom of her nightshirt. She held her sister’s hand tightly, afraid to let go.
afraid that Cassie might wash out to sea, even though she knew that was impossible.

“I love the sea,” Cassie said. “It sounds so wonderful.”

“There is something comforting about it,” Dani heard her mother say. She was surprised that her mom sounded so calm. “I’m glad you got to visit it. You wanted to so much.”

“Then you aren’t mad at us? At Dani for bringing me?”

“I was furious. Mostly scared that something would happen to you and I wouldn’t be with you. But I’m all right now.”

“Were you afraid I’d die?” Cassie asked. Dani heard her mother suck in her breath. “You should have leveled with me after the seizure,” her sister went on. “I was so scared, I think what I imagined was worse than the truth.”

“The truth?” Dani asked.

“That I was dying. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

“I wanted you to have every chance, every hope possible,” their mother explained.

“I want to know what’s going to happen to me, I need to talk about everything,” Cassie continued.

“You have some choices about whether or not to go on life-support machines,” Dani said before her mother could stop her.

“No machines,” Cassie said. “Let me die when my body says it’s had enough.”

“If you don’t want the machines, you won’t be put on them,” her mother said in a voice that seemed controlled. “But the doctors can give you pain medication.”

“That’s good,” Cassie agreed. “I don’t want to hurt.”

“We’ll be by your side the whole time. We’ll always be with you.”

Cassie squeezed their hands. “I never thought you wouldn’t be.”

Dani struggled against cold, stark terror of what was to come as pink filled the horizon and the water lapped at her legs. Sandpipers, scurrying back and forth along the shoreline, seemed in such a hurry, but appeared to have no place to go.

“Is there anything you want us to do for you?” her mother asked.

“I wrote down what I want you to do for my funeral. It’s in my old school notebook, in the van.”

Dani had tossed the notebook in with Cassie’s suitcase when she’d packed. At the time, she’d thought it would keep alive the illusion that Cassie could return to school after the trip.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I picked some songs I’d like sung, and a poem I want read. I want to go back home, to the same cemetery where Daddy’s buried. Can I be buried near him?”

“You’ll have the plot I’d reserved for myself right next to him.”

“You’d do that for me? Give me your plot?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

“Let Austin’s dad do the service. That will be comforting.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And I’d like you to bury me in my lace dress, the one with the puffy sleeves.”

“You look so beautiful in that dress.” Their mother’s voice sounded soft, but full of tears.

“Is the sun up yet?” Cassie asked.

“Almost,” Dani replied, watching it edge through a bank of clouds. “Maybe you can see it?” Dani hoped that Cassie’s eyesight would magically return.

“I can feel it.” Cassie turned her face heavenward. “It feels … warm.”

A cry escaped from their mother’s lips. She took Cassie in her arms, held her, rocked her. “I love you, baby. I wish I could die for you. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mama.”

Dani pressed her hand against her mouth. Cas
sie reached out for Dani and pulled her closer. “You’ll have to be good to each other. I’ll count on that so I won’t have to worry.” She paused, then said, “You can get Dr. Phillips now, Mom. I’m ready.”

C
ASSIE INSISTED ON
staying with Dani by the water while their mother ran to wake the others. Alone with her sister, Dani wiped her eyes. She wanted to be brave, like Cassie. The tears stung her eyes. “I don’t want you to die,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I’m crying. I just don’t know how you can face this.”

“I don’t want to die. But nobody gave me a vote.” Cassie stretched out on the sand, balling her fists into its depths. “It feels so soft. Is the sun up all the way yet?”

Dani glanced seaward. “Not quite … just a little more.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see it one last time. But I’ll never forget these past few days. I’ll carry them here”—she touched her heart—“even if I’m locked up in some old hospital.”

“Oh, Cassie.” Dani continued to weep in spite of her best efforts to control herself.

“You have to be strong for Mom.”

“But who’s going to be strong for me?”

“Austin will be there for you. I like Austin, Dani. And he’s crazy about you.”

Dr. Phillips couldn’t treat Cassie at the local hospital, but he arranged for her medical records to be sent from Ohio and acted in an advisory capacity to the doctor in charge.

Cassie drifted in and out of consciousness. Her mother called grandparents, friends, and other people back home. When Austin’s parents returned from their mission work in Haiti, he explained the situation. Dani was glad they didn’t bawl him out for taking their van on an unauthorized trip to Florida. It saddened her to realize that the next time she saw them, it would be at her sister’s funeral.

Dr. Phillips made certain that Cassie’s new doctor understood her wish that no extraordinary measures be used to keep her alive, so there was a minimum of equipment in her room. Dani, her mother, Austin and Dr. Phillips spent their days at the hospital staying with Cassie.

When the waiting became unbearable for Dani, she’d go back to the hotel room and run on the beach. If she ran at night, Austin ran with her. She concentrated on the beating of her heart, the pounding of her bare feet on the wet sand, the regularity of her breathing, the pumping of her arms. She found the exercise soothing.

“I’d rather play racquetball,” she admitted to Austin after an especially long run. “Remember the day I beat you? It seems like a million years ago.” They were walking back to the hotel, along a moonlit shoreline.

“I could probably find us a court,” he told her, “if you really want to play.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to be anyplace but here or at the hospital.”

Dani mopped her brow with her hand. Perspiration dripped between her shoulders, and the air felt muggy and heavy in her lungs. A line of hotels stretched down the beachfront for as far as Dani could see, their windows sparkling with artificial lights. “I’ll bet most people don’t know what it feels like to watch and wait for someone die.”

“JWC knows,” Austin said. “Did you ever figure out who it is? Does your mother know?”

Dani shook her head. “It’s a mystery to all of us. Cassie’s convinced it’s a girl, but I think it’s a recluse who likes to do good deeds.”

“No matter,” Austin said. “Whoever it is understands about losing someone to death.”

“Sometimes I wish it was all over for Cassie. I hate seeing her suffer. Then I feel guilty about wishing such a thing. Death is so final. Once Cassie’s gone, she’ll never come back.”

“Maybe it would help to keep your perspective,” Austin said.

“Perspective? What are you talking about? It’s easy for you to say—someone you love isn’t dying.”

“Cassie’s life was a gift, Dani. Just like the One Last Wish money. She didn’t expect that money. She didn’t ask for it. One day, some stranger with the initials JWC gave it to her. Unexpectedly.”

The waves splashed against the shore. “We’re grateful for the money. Without it, I’d have never had the courage to do this. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the money. Of course, Cassie didn’t expect it.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Austin said. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Life is a gift, too. We don’t get to choose if we’ll be born. Or when, or who our parents will be. We just get to be alive. That’s God’s gift to us.
How
we live our lives is our gift to others. When a newborn baby dies, do you think it hurts his family any less because he was only a few days or even hours old?”

Dani shook her head. She understood completely
what he was trying to say. “Grief doesn’t have a life span, is that it?”

“That’s it.” He lifted her chin and looked deep into her eyes. “And neither does love. That’s what JWC’s letter was all about. Love is stronger than death, even though it can’t stop death from happening. But no matter how hard death tries, it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death.”

The night wind blew the scent of salt through the air. Austin pulled her into his arms and rested his chin atop her head. “That’s part of what faith is all about. We have to believe that every life has a purpose, no matter how long or how short it is. Your life has a purpose, too—to go on living, for those, like Cassie, who can’t.”

“I’m going to miss Cassie so much.” Tears slid down Dani’s cheeks.

“We’re all in this together, Dani. You, your Mom, Dr. Phillips, me. That’s the bonus. We don’t have to go through this process by ourselves. I’m here for you whenever you want.”

She clung to him until the moon rose in the starry sky and dimmed the artificial light from the high rises and condos. Together, hand in hand, they walked to the hotel.

*  *  *

The next morning, Cassie slipped into a coma. For two days Dani waited with her mother, Austin, and Dr. Phillips beside Cassie’s bed. She measured time by the faces of the nurses changing shifts.

Cassie looked impossibly frail as she clung to life. Dani stroked her sister’s new growth of downy soft hair. “I love you Cassie,” she whispered.

At three o’clock on the third day, Cassie’s breathing became short and shallow. Dani clutched her mother’s hand as Cassie’s breathing grew ragged, then staggered. Her chest stopped moving and slowly her body relaxed.

In the stillness of the room, Dr. Phillips put his stethoscope against Cassie’s chest and listened. “She’s gone,” he said. Wordlessly, Dani wrapped herself in her mother’s arms and together they clung to one another.