This is What Goodbye Looks Like (33 page)

I take a shuddering breath before continuing. “At first we thought she would come right out of it. But then she just...stopped getting better. And my parents recently decided to take her off life support. So... yeah.”

Everyone falls into silence, and the diner suddenly feels way too warm and stuffy. Seth pulls me into a firm hug, his strong arms and steady heartbeat shielding me from the gut-wrenching quiet. He kisses the top of my head and strokes my hair, but he doesn’t try to comfort me with words, and I’m strangely glad for it. There’s really not anything he can say to make things better, and I think we both know it.

“Damn,” Landon finally says. “Lea, I...shit. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Is it going to happen soon?” Maddie asks hesitantly. “I mean, if she’s being taken off life support...?” She trails off and nudges at the crust of the hamburger bun on her plate, suddenly more interested in staring at it than meeting my eyes.

“I think so.” I try to sound strong, but the words come out hoarse and broken, and I’m surprised anyone can even understand me.

Landon shakes his head disbelievingly. “But you said she’s only been in a coma for like a year, right? Don’t a lot of people wake up from them later than that?”

“Some do,” I say. “Yeah.”

“So why do your parents want her off life support?” he asks.

Maddie elbows her boyfriend in the side and shoots him an admonishing look, but Landon ignores it and leans forward, waiting for an answer. Seth looks curious, too, and I can tell he’s been wondering the same thing. We haven’t talked much about Camille since I first told him about the whole situation—he’s tried, but I always avoid the topic, because it’s hard to talk about her without spewing a bunch of lies to his face. But I figure I can risk explaining this without causing too much damage.

“The chances of her waking up are super small at this point,” I say. “And insurance will only cover the life support for so long. So her doctors are recommending we turn it off.”

“So it comes down to money?” Landon says with a grimace. “Seriously,
that’s
what they’re worried about?”

Maddie hits Landon’s arm and makes a noise that’s half shush, half hiss. Landon rubs ruefully at his fresh bruise and grumbles something unintelligible, while Hannah just looks down and traces the ring of condensation around the base of her soda cup.

Seth is the only one to not look away, his gaze meeting mine perfectly. I’m not sure if that means everything or nothing.

“The money’s only part of it,” I explain, although it sounds almost like I’m defending my parents’ decision, and I don’t know why I’m bothering. “My parents really don’t think she’ll wake up again. They think this is the kindest thing to do.”

“Kindest for who?” Seth asks, his voice quiet.

I pick up a scrap of my straw wrapper and crinkle it into a tight ball. “My sister. They’re just doing what they think is right.”

Seth nods, and I think he might actually agree. But then he calmly says, “You say that, but you don’t actually believe it. If you really thought they were doing the right thing, you wouldn’t sound so torn up about it.”

I swallow hard and clench the remnants of the wrapper in my fist. “It’s not like I can do anything to stop it. I’ve looked into it. It’s impossible.”

“But do you really want to stop it?” Seth asks.

“Of course I want to stop it!”

I don’t realize how loud I am until everyone at my table flinches back, and a few of the other diners shoot us perturbed looks. I clear my throat and fold my hands together in my lap, trying to stop their trembling.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “It’s just, I keep trying to find ways to stop this, and I can’t. And maybe all the doctors think my parents are right, but I still don’t. My sister wouldn’t want it to happen this way. She was the most stubborn girl in the world, and there’s no way she’d ever want to go down without a proper fight.”

Seth bites his lip, considering this. “You’re sure you’ve tried every way to stop it?”

I lean further away from him, trying not to feel too ticked off by his question. He’s just trying to help, and I know it, but I still kind of want to strangle him right now.

“Yeah, of course I’ve tried everything. Talking to my mom is pointless, but I’ve spent a ton of time trying to convince my dad they’re making a mistake. He won’t listen. And I’ve spent weeks researching ways to legally stop them, but nothing would work. If you’re not the guardian of a sick kid, you get no say in their medical treatment. Absolutely none.”

The words tumble out, one after another, and I look around to see four entirely sympathetic faces staring at me. Even though my heart pounds angrily, my chest suddenly feels a little lighter.

“Okay, so going through the court system wouldn’t work,” Seth says. “But, like Landon said, it sounds like a lot of this comes down to money. So if you could figure out some way to keep paying for her life support...”

“What are you suggesting, exactly?” I ask. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot the past few weeks, but it still seems impossible. Dad said Camille’s life support costs forty thousand a month. It’s not like I could just pull that sort of money out of thin air.

But if I could... Then my parents would have no good reason
not
to keep her on life support. If I could somehow figure out a way to pay her hospital bills, it might just be enough to convince them to give Camille more time.

Seth leans back in his chair, like he needs space to process his thoughts. Then he slowly says, “I remember hearing about this online campaign about a year ago. It was for a local kid who had cancer. His doctors said it was terminal, but there was some experimental treatment his parents wanted to try, so they set up a crowdfunding campaign to pay for it.”

“Crowdfunding?” I repeat hesitantly. “Isn’t that supposed to be for starting businesses?”

“It can be,” Hannah says, looking up from her plate. “But now some people are using it for charity. We did a unit on it in my Accounting class.”

“How does it work?” I ask.

Hannah bites her lip, and I can tell she’s hesitant to share details, like she’s afraid it might give me false hope. But then she says, “Basically, you sign up online with a crowdfunding service, and it lets you set up a free webpage describing what you’re collecting donations for. Then you pick a goal of how much money you want to raise, and you have a couple weeks to try to get people to donate and reach the goal. If you don’t meet the goal, no one gets any money. But if you do, the crowdfunding service keeps like five percent of the money, but you get all the rest.”

“But how do you find people to donate?” I ask. “I mean, even if every person who knows my sister donated, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

Seth shakes his head. “You’re missing the point of crowdfunding—the main donations are supposed to come from the ‘crowd’ on the internet, not family and friends. If you give people a convincing enough reason to donate, they’ll pay to help out a stranger. That boy with cancer had his story picked up by the media, and something like seven hundred people donated to his campaign. They raised enough for the treatments in just three weeks.”

The table goes quiet as we all consider this. I finally break the silence, hesitantly asking, “So did those treatments work for the kid?”

“He didn’t survive,” Seth admits. “But he had five months longer to live. And if you think your sister might wake up, maybe that’s all she needs. Just a little more time to rest and heal.”

“A crowdfunding campaign,” I murmur. “It could work.”

As soon as the words slip out, I realize they’re true. Not only would the money pay for the life support, but if hundreds of people were donating to help Camille, it’d send a pretty strong message to my parents. Dad’s biggest weakness has always been public criticism. And if he had hundreds of people telling him he’s wrong to pull the plug on Camille? It’d probably be enough to convince him to keep her on life support for a couple more months and give her a better chance to wake up. And if Dad changes his mind, Mom’s bound to go along with it. These days, she does anything he tells her to.

Of course, there’s a major problem with the plan. In order for a crowdfunding campaign to work, I’d have to share details about Camille. Real ones. Not just a made up story with vague details, because if anyone suspected my story was fake, no one would donate.

“A crowdfunding campaign is actually not a bad idea,” Landon says slowly. He nods a couple times and then adds, “Actually, I think it’s a really good idea.”

“We could totally do it,” Maddie blurts out. “I could handle all the technological parts, you know, setting up the webpages and stuff. And Brie’s taking that Accounting class, too, so she’s also learned a bunch about this. So when she gets back, she and Hannah can both work with Lea to figure out all the details, like the mission statement and donation goal and things.”

“Plus, pretty much everyone at Harting is on social media,” Hannah adds. “So we could all help spread the word.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Seth says. “No one’s asked Lea if she actually
wants
to do this.”

He leans back toward me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me into his chest. His voice is still soft, but with my head resting against him, it sounds booming.

“I know you said you think your parents aren’t doing the right thing,” he says to me. “But no one’s going to judge you if you change your mind. I imagine just sitting around waiting to see if your sister will ever wake up is torture. If you’re ready to let go, no one would ever judge you for that.”

I glance up at him and find that his expression looks protective and almost a little fierce. He’s telling the truth—I know that much for sure. Whatever decision I make, whether I say yes or no to this idea of a crowdfunding campaign, he’ll stand by me.

But not for long after that. If I do this, it means revealing who I really am. And that can only result in losing him and everyone I’ve grown close to at Harting. No more circle of friends to support me. No more teachers to watch over me. No more makeshift family.

No more Seth.

“My parents might be right,” I admit. “There’s a good chance she’ll never wake up.”

Seth nods slowly, but he keeps his word. There’s no judgment in his expression. I swallow hard and close my eyes, leaning into him and taking in as much of his warmth as I can get.

“But just because they’re probably right doesn’t mean they’re doing the right thing,” I say. “I really think she might still wake up. And as long as there’s even the tiniest chance of saving her, I’m taking it.”

Chapter Thirty-One

We spend two hours sitting in the diner planning the campaign for Camille. Tanya brings out brownies and milkshakes for us, even though we didn’t order them, and we pick at the dessert as we map out our plan of action.

It all takes shape with surprising ease. I’m still slightly dazed by the idea of a crowdfunding campaign—it’s so simple, but could be so effective. I should have thought of it before, but there’s no time to rebuke myself. I’m too busy trying to keep up with all the ideas flying around the table, some of them good, some of them bad, all of them aimed at getting the public to donate toward keeping my sister alive.

Maddie’s geekiness proves to be invaluable. She knows social media websites inside and out, and after listening to her for just a few minutes, I pull out my phone and start taking notes. Hannah and Landon also have some good insight, although Seth’s strangely quiet as we work out the details.

A couple of times, he excuses himself from the table and heads back to the kitchen, saying he wants to catch up with Tanya. He manages to hide it pretty well, and I can tell he’s beating himself up for feeling it, but his envy is still clear to me.

I understand it, even though I don’t want to. Running this sort of campaign is a way to fight for my sister, even if we all know it’s a long shot.

Seth never got to fight. All his family got was a phone call in the middle of the night from a police station far across the country. Parker was simply dead, and Seth never had the chance to change his brother’s fate.

It’s a relief whenever Seth leaves the table, because it means I don’t have to worry about him asking me questions. I keep avoiding personal details about Camille, which is easy enough to do when the others ask—they just assume I’m too emotional to talk much about her, I guess. But whenever Seth asks a question about my sister, my responding lie makes me feel ten times guiltier.

Seth returns to the table after disappearing in the back for a while, and I lean into him as he sits next to me. Looking around, I’m surprised to find we’re the last ones in the diner.

“Tanya needs to close up for the night,” he tells us. “We should get going.”

Everyone gives a tired agreement, and we all start packing up our stuff and throwing coats and scarves on. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, leaving the others to finish the last remnants of their desserts. I don’t even have to go, but I do need some space. My head just keeps spinning, and my heart keeps pounding, and my lungs feel tight with a sickening mixture of despair and guilt and hope.

I’m nearly out of sight when I glance back at the table. Seth keeps rubbing at his forearm, like he’s not sure what to do with his arms while I’m not in them. Hannah reaches down and adjusts Koda’s vest, making sure it’s tightened and ready for Seth to use when we leave. Meanwhile, Landon poaches a french-fry off Hannah’s plate and sneaks it to Koda, who eagerly laps it up. Seth rolls his eyes as he hears Koda munching on the treat, and Maddie playfully swats at her boyfriend for sneaking it, but they all end up smiling.