True: An Elixir Novel (2 page)

“Oh my God . . . We have to go to the hospital.”

“We don’t. It hurts like hell, but it’s fine.”

Before I realize what he’s about to do, he grabs the glass with his right hand, yanks it free, and throws it to the ground. A wild gush of blood bubbles up and pours out of him.

“What did you do?”

“I pulled out the glass so it can heal,” he says, but his voice sounds a little spacey, and he stares at the torrent of blood as if it’s a fascinating curiosity, not a danger to his life. I have to snap him out of it.

“Sage. Sage!”

He isn’t paying attention. He’s transfixed by his own wound. He might be going into shock. I rip off my hoodie and yell up the hill, “Ben! I need you! Call 9-1-1! And bring a towel or something from the car! NOW!”

I place my hoodie against Sage’s soaking arm and press down as hard as I can. He looks at me, childlike confusion in his eyes.

“A cut like that . . . that’s nothing. It should heal right away. . . .”

A sticky dampness wets my palms. For the
second time tonight, they’re soaking in Sage’s blood. I can’t stop flashing back to before, and what it felt like to hold his lifeless body. Panic pounds in my head, but I can’t let it take over. I won’t lose him again. I force myself to calm down and speak with gentle authority.

“Don’t talk. I need you to lie down. Slowly. I don’t want you falling on anything else.”

I can’t tell if he really understands what’s happening, but he nods and lowers himself to the ground.

“Great,” I say. “That’s great. Now I’m going to raise your arm over your head.”

I kneel over his wrist and press my whole body weight against it. My hoodie squishes between my fingers like a sponge.

“They’re on their way!” Ben calls as he crunches down the hill. The ambient glow from the cars on the highway barely reaches us down here, but I can see a vague silhouette of him, and it looks like he’s carrying something. Good.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Did you find a towel?”

“I had one in my gym bag. It might not smell too great—I’ve been pushing pretty hard on the free weights, and I’m up to six miles on the treadmi—”

“Seriously?” I pull the ratty hand towel away from him and press it onto Sage’s wound.

“Sorry, I . . . Here, let me do that.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Stop. I’m stronger. He needs more pressure. On the count of three: one, two, three.”

I pull away, and Ben takes my place. Now that I’m off triage, my mind spins terrible fantasies about all the hideous, flesh-eating bacteria that could live on that sweaty gym towel and get into Sage’s bloodstream. My stomach lurches.

I need to focus. I crawl to Sage’s face and smooth the hair off his forehead. His skin is clammy and cool to the touch. I bend down close so he can see me. He has a half smile on his face, like he still can’t comprehend what’s happening.

“I feel so . . . strange,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, keeping my voice light. “That’s what happens when you almost bleed to death.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t bleed to death.”

“They drained the Elixir from you. You won’t heal anymore. Not like you used to.”

“But . . . my stomach. I saw it heal.
You
saw it heal.”

“That wasn’t the Elixir,” Ben says, his voice strained from the pressure he’s putting on Sage’s
wrist. “It was the soul transfer. I don’t know how exactly it works, but it heals the host body.”

Healed
, maybe. Now Sage’s breath comes in fast, shallow gasps, and I know it’s only a matter of minutes before he loses consciousness. I run my hand over his cheek and will him to stay awake and alive.

“You’re going to be fine,” I say. “You just need to take better care of yourself from now on, okay?”

Sage gives a single puffing laugh. “I guess you’re not the only one who’s human.”

We hear the ambulance siren, and Ben says, “Go up to the road so they see us. I’ll stay here and keep the pressure on.”

I hate to leave Sage’s side, but I lean down and kiss his cheek, then race up the embankment. I stand in the glow of our car headlights, jump up and down, wave my arms, and scream.

It works. The paramedics pull over, and two EMTs make quick work of stabilizing Sage enough to put him on a stretcher and bring him back to the ambulance. Ben and I don’t have to say anything to each other; we know I’ll ride in the ambulance and he’ll follow in the car.

Sage spends the drive unconscious, hooked to a machine that measures his heart rate and blood
pressure. I sit on a hard, cold bench that keeps me close enough to hold his hand. One of the EMTs is with us, but he doesn’t ask any questions. I guess for him it’s not so strange to find three people covered in dirt and twigs, battered, bruised, and bleeding out on the side of the road.

He’s so fragile.
I never thought of Sage that way, but it’s true. There’s so much I don’t understand, but I do know our time is precious. I can’t waste any more of it with doubts. “You’ll be okay,” I whisper into his ear. “I’m here for you. No matter what.”

I keep my promise and stay close as Sage is transferred from the ambulance to the emergency room. They wheel him into a room with two beds, but the other one’s blocked by a curtain. Sage is still out, so I tell the nurses what happened . . . more or less. They listen, then make me step into the hall while they pull another curtain around him and go to work.

It’s only after I plop down in the most uncomfortable molded plastic chair that I realize I have no idea where we are. We started in Vermont, I know that, but I’m not sure how long I was out. Are we closer to home? I scan the hall for clues, but there’s nothing except doctors and nurses
moving briskly between doorways, and a lot of anonymous equipment.

My phone vibrates. It’s Ben. He’s in the waiting room. They won’t let him in, so he says he’ll wait until I can come out.

“And don’t forget,” he says, “Sage is Nico.”

“Right, because that was totally going to slip my mind.”

“I mean officially. For paperwork and stuff. He has Nico’s wallet in his pocket, with all Nico’s ID.”

I hadn’t even thought about that, but it’s the kind of detail Ben would never let slip.

“Thanks,” I say. “Sorry.”

“No problem. I’m here. Text or call if you need anything.”

I hang up quickly as I see a man in a white lab coat stroll into Sage’s room, and I duck in after him. He disappears behind the curtain around Sage’s bed and I hover by the door, staring at the red container of
USED SHARPS
for the eternity until he emerges again.

“How is he?”

Something flashes in the doctor’s eyes when he looks my way, and I know he recognizes me. I’m far from famous, but my family’s filled with some
of the decade’s biggest political players, not least of whom is my mom, Senator Victoria Weston. We’re not the Kennedys or the Clintons, but I’ve had my picture in enough newspapers and magazines that some people know who I am. The doctor’s professional enough that he doesn’t say anything. He also doesn’t question if I’m authorized to hear private information about Sage, so maybe the recognition is good.

“He needed stitches and blood,” the doctor says, “but he’ll be fine. The biggest worry in a case like this is infection, so we have him on IV antibiotics plus a painkiller, and we’ll want to give him a tetanus shot . . . unless he’s had one in the last ten years?”

“I’m not sure,” I say.

“That’s fine. We’ll do it as a precaution. We’ll want him here for another couple hours, then you can take him home. The stitches will dissolve on their own, so just keep his wound clean and dry, and bring him right back to the emergency room if he develops a fever or shows any sign of infection.”

“I will.”

“Good.” He nods toward the curtain around Sage’s bed. “You can go in, if you’d like. He’ll
drift in and out of sleep, but when I left him, he was awake.”

I don’t even respond; I dart past him and pull aside the curtain.

Sage is awake, but he looks like he’s in a daze. He stares down at the back of his good hand, where the IV line disappears into his skin. His other hand is bandaged, to hide the brand-new stitches. For a moment, I concentrate hard enough to stencil Sage’s old body over this one: dark hair; angular face with the slightest growth of stubble around the mouth, chin, and neck; sinewy body; Italian olive skin and chocolate eyes.

It’s an impossible image to hold. The eyes are still there, but every other part of him is milk-fed farm boy.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” he says. His voice is relaxed and dreamy.

“Of course. You were hurt.”

“No . . . I mean thank you for letting me see this.” He raises his hand with the tube snaking out of it, then turns to indicate the IV stand and electric monitor that beeps as it measures his vitals. “Magnificent.”

“Magnificent?”

It sounds bizarre, until I think about it. “I guess
if you haven’t been in a hospital for five hundred years, it’s pretty amazing.”

“Five hundred years? I knew it was a long time . . . but that long?”

“What do you mean? Don’t you remember?”

He shakes his head. “I remember Magda, that old woman in Japan . . . the things she showed us . . . images from a long time ago. People . . . you and Ben, but you didn’t look like yourselves. And I was there too, but I always looked the same, year after year after year. . . .”

His dreamy voice rings out in the room, and I dart my eyes to the curtain separating us from the next bed. I lean in close to Sage and whisper, “That’s because you never died. You drank the Elixir of Life, remember?”

“I do remember. . . . I remember knowing about the Elixir, and that I’ve had a long life . . . but I don’t remember
living
it. Does that make sense?”

“No. Not really.”

“That day I met you in Brazil . . . I took one look at you, and knew I loved you, at that moment and forever.”

“Right. Because you already knew me.”

“I suppose . . .”

“You suppose?”

He squeezes his brows together, as if struggling to find something in his mind. Then he gives up and shrugs. “It’s not there. I don’t remember. I remember
you
. Clea Raymond. The minute you and I met . . .
that’s
when my memories start.”

CLEA

A moment later Sage is fast asleep. He drifts off smiling, still holding my hand in his. The bandages make his unconscious grip feel inhuman, and I slide away from his touch.

Or maybe it’s not the bandages that leave me cold.
The minute you and I met
 . . . that’s
when my memories start.
They’re the kind of words that would make Rayna swoon, but that was never Sage’s and my story. That started long before I was even alive. It brought us together, a soul connection that stretched throughout history.

A soul connection.

Could that be what happened? When he cut our soul connection, did he keep our love, but lose our past? Or is his memory loss from the soul transfer?

There’s so much I don’t understand, and I feel like I have to before he and I can figure out what’s next. Or explain things to Rayna. I shudder. I definitely need to know more before I talk to her. How can I expect her to handle all this if I can’t comprehend it myself?

I don’t want to wake Sage, so I pull a chair next to the bed and text Ben. I ask him to scope out the closest motel, then I check my phone’s GPS to see where we are. Vermont. We haven’t left Vermont, so we hadn’t been driving very long when I woke up in the car. I feel a little better knowing that even if I passed out, it was only for a bit.

Sage twitches and thrashes as he sleeps, murmuring angry words I try to understand but can’t. It hurts to hear him—whatever torture he feels, it rips at me, too. When he curls into a ball and whimpers like a kitten, I can’t take it anymore.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.” I reach for him, but the minute my hand touches his damp forehead, he
bolts upright and grabs me. He clutches my wrist in both his hands. His grip is so hard it hurts, but I remind myself that this is the man I love; I shouldn’t be afraid.

“Help me,” he rasps. His eyes are wide open, but he’s looking through and past me. I don’t even know if he’s really awake. He’s trembling, and I put my other hand over his and rub them gently, trying to calm him down.

“I want to help you, Sage. Tell me what you need.”

Instead he closes his eyes and falls back onto the bed, still now and sleeping soundly. At some point I nap too—a dreamless sleep that ends when I feel someone right in front of me and open my eyes to see Nico’s—
Sage’s
—grinning face. He puts a finger to his lips.

“We’re busting out of here.”

“What?” I feel woozy, and there’s a crick in my neck.

“Aw, dude, come on!” calls a voice from the door. “I’m supposed to wheel you out! It’s my job! I’m gonna get in trouble!”

Standing in the doorway is a mountain of an orderly, who can’t be more than nineteen. He holds the handles of an empty wheelchair and
shifts uncertainly from side to side, darting his eyes around for whatever authority might come yell at him if he doesn’t get Sage into the chair. I don’t know why he’s worried; he takes up the entire doorway. There’s no way out except through him. Sage sighs and reluctantly plops into the chair. In his new body, he and the orderly look like they’re teammates on a college football team: an injured quarterback getting pushed to the locker room by his oversize linebacker.

“I used your phone and called Ben,” Sage says as he’s wheeled through the halls. “Hope you don’t mind.”

When the doors outside slide open, Ben’s already there, smiling ironically as he leans against his car.

“Your chariot,” he offers.

I’m squinting against the low morning sun, so it takes a second to see what he means. The “chariot” looks more like a junkyard swamp creature. Ben is the most cautious driver in the world; he washes his car every two weeks and is meticulous about regular service appointments. He’s been driving his little black Corolla since he bought it himself—used—when he was eighteen. Now it’s coated in a thick layer of dirt, pitted with dents
and scratches, and the entire undercarriage is matted with clots of mud and grass.