Wake (51 page)

Al they had to do was eat, and they’d live. They didn’t need strong drugs and harsh medicines, or surgeries or radiation treatments that burn the skin, or whole new organs—they just needed to fucking swallow.

Meira snapped one day in October when one of the girls burst into tears over a cup of applesauce.

Meira was in rough shape at the time, but she still felt it was worth it to haul her wrecked body and IV pole all the way around to the other side of the wing, into the room where lunch was being eaten. We all just stared, too stunned to believe that she’d actually mess with these people.

“No one invited me,” she said, playing on her sweet appearance. Meira welcomed herself to a seat and said, “You’re not gonna eat that?” She snatched the tray from the crying girl and began to eat, making all kinds of appreciative sounds and remarks about how good it tasted.

After that Meira was confined to her room. She set six kids a few months back in treatment and spent the rest of the afternoon throwing up applesauce, but she refused to apologize.

“You gonna come to my funeral?” Meira asks. She says it like she’s inviting me to her birthday party.

“Sure.”

“I get discharged in two days if all goes well. I’m going casket shopping.”

“Are you scared?” She seems to be at peace with the fact that she’s going to die. Maybe she’s known for a while now and has already crawled through the five steps to acceptance. I never could get there, even when the odds were stacked against me. I only got as far as bargaining.

“Yeah,” Meira admits. “But it’s sort of…easy. I don’t have to worry about the future. I don’t have to stress over picking a college or save for retirement…. I can do what I want. I’ll miss out on a lot of stuff, and sometimes that really pisses me off, but this whole dying thing is sort of liberating.” I’m not sure if I should believe her. Meira tends to deadpan a lot, even when she’s being ironic or sarcastic, so it’s hard to tell .

I blurt out, “My friend just told me she tried to commit suicide,” and immediately feel like a jerk for saying it. Meira doesn’t need to hear about my issues when she’s drowning in her own.

“Did she have a good reason?”

“No.”

“well that’s a kick in the teeth.” Meira pats my hand. “Try not to hold it against her. Not everyone knows what life is worth.”

“I’ll try.” Will I? Or am I agreeing with Meira because I feel guilty that she’s dying?

Gil ian, the redheaded nurse who corks on her break, comes in with an IV bag in her hands. Meira smiles like it’s Christmas and Gil ian tells her it’s the good stuff. She takes an empty bag off the pole and hangs the new one—it’s morphine.

“Can you make it a fast drip?”

*

I hang around the hospital until Meira’s medication makes her fall asleep, and then I slip my hat back on and make a quiet exit. The next time I see her, she probably won’t be breathing.

It takes me ages to fall asleep, and when I do I have nightmares. I see Elise, weak and pale and shriveled, like something out of a concentration camp. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘It’s you or me.’ She presses a withered hand to my chest. Her little shove topples me over, back over the edge of a very tall building, and I jolt awake with the sensation of falling.

“Shit…” I get out of bed to splash cold water on my face. I haven’t had pulling-the-plug dreams since I last checked out of the hospital. Fuck Willa for disturbing my sleep like that. Fuck her for killing a woman who could have died with a little dignity.

As I wipe my face I consider the frightening idea that Willa might have been mentally unsound before the shrinks ever got to her. Maybe that’s why she decided to go out of her way to make sure Thomasina died—Willa said she asked her to hoard pill s, but what if that was a lie? Maybe that poor woman was abused in her most vulnerable state, and no one came in time to save her from her insane sister.

Of course, even more disturbing is the idea that Willa killed Thomasina with an entirely clear head; that she had it in her to be so cruel and cold and calculating, slipping pills into Thomasina’s mouth one by one and forcing her to swallow. Not everyone has it in them to end a love one’s suffering. Willa did. So what kind of person does that make her?

I feel like I didn’t even know her before now. Al the nice things she did, all the encouragement she gave me, was just cover for the twisted creature underneath. Her blunt way of speaking, her refusal to take anybody’s bullshit—those are things she probably picked up during her time amongst the rough crowds of the mental hospital and therapy group. That’s not the real her; it’s who she became when she kil ed her own sister.

Who she was before that doesn’t really matter. If Willa was ever a nice person, that girl died with Thomasina.

Before I fall asleep, I consider the third disturbing thought of the night: maybe she really should have jumped.

Thursday My bad night of sleep makes me dozy all through my morning classes. I can hardly stand to keep my head up, much less pay attention. I fully intend to crash in the nurse’s office at lunch, after I get something to eat.

It’s out of habit that I notice where Willa is sitting. She looks up at me and offers a pained sort of smile.

I turn away and head for Elise’s table. I can’t even look at her.

“Are you okay?” Elise asks me. A few months ago it wasn’t weird for me to give up eating after only half a Jel -O cup, but now my lack of appetite is notable.

I can literally feel Willa’s eyes boring into the back of my head. It makes my skin crawl.

“Will you leave me alone?” I grouch. Elise lets me be—after stealing the remainder of my Jel -O.

Social Studies is hell. I can’t look at Willa without feeling the intense urge to yell at her, so I don’t.

Civility is a chal enge. I carelessly pass the assignment form to her and Willa rounds on me.

“Stop being such a moody little bitch,” she says seriously. “If you have something to say to me, just say it.”

“What is there to say?” There are no words for how completely repulsed I am by her behavior—the parts I can riddle out, anyway. I’m still convinced she’s a liar and I have no interest in talking to her anymore. I turn back to my work, away from Willa.

“I hate you,” she whispers. How very much like her.

“I don’t care.”

*

After dinner Mom and I spend some time cooking. We do four kinds of soup so we can freeze the leftovers and I have food for a week. I try to ignore the fact that the recipes are all written in Willa’s slanted, messy penmanship. Eric keeps coming through the kitchen to steal pieces of chopped vegetables off the cutting boards. Mom and I chat a little about her work, but when it comes time to tell her about how my day went, we hit a stal . She senses that I’m not in much of a talking mood and starts singing lowly. If it weren’t for her extensive knowledge of Alison Krauss music, it would be easy to forget that she grew up in Saskatchewan.

“Sing with me.”

The side door flies open with such force that it bangs back on its hinges and slams shut. Elise storms in, red-faced and tear-stained. She’s sobbing like Dumbledore died all over again “What’s wrong, honey?”

Elise blows right past Mom to throw her arms around my waist. She clings to me and cries loudly. Al attempts to extract information from her are useless; she’s crying too hard to speak clearly. Mom and I share perplexed looks over her head.

“That boy?” Mom mouths. I shrug. “Did you and Carey have a fight, sweetie?” Mom says. She rubs soothing circles across Elise’s shoulders. Elise just shakes her head no, she didn’t fight with her friend, but that’s all she can communicate.

“Come on.” I shift her so she’s clinging to me sideways and walk her upstairs with an arm around her shoulders. I take her to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Her tears don’t really stop, but she’s able to catch a breath with her head between her knees and a cool cloth on the back of her neck.

“What happened?”

Elise pants a little, trying to find her shaky voice. “I w-went to talk to W-Willa—”

Oh fucking hell.

“I thought maybe you guys had a fight, and”—she interrupts herself to wipe her drippy nose— “that you’d make up if you just…I dunno, talked?”

“Why would you try to interfere?”

Elise sniffles. “Because the two of you fight over the stupidest stuff.”

“What did she say?” Wrong question. Elise’s face crumples into a look of anguish and a fresh wave of sobs makes her impossible to understand. Holding her doesn’t seem to help. I keep wiping her cheeks with my thumbs, but it’s like sandbagging in a monsoon.

“What did she say, Lise?”

Elise shakes her head. “I’m not gonna repeat it.”

“That bad?” Elise nods and tucks her head under my chin. “Do you want your toy wand?” Dumb little things like that always make her feel better.

“Yeah, so I can stab her with it.”

“What did she say? Tell me.”

Elise firmly shakes her head. “It was mean. Very mean.”

I keep trying to badger the story out of her, but she won’t budge. Eventually her tears run out of steam and she starts to col ect herself. I give her a minute alone in the bathroom to wash up—and give myself an opportunity to text Willa.

Was it really necessary to make my sister cry?

It’s going to take one hell of a reason to keep me from keying her car tomorrow.

Tell her to keep her nose out of it, then.

Bitch. She has no right to be mean to Elise; my sister didn’t do anything to her.

Elise comes out of the bathroom and crawls onto her bed. She sits facing me, crosses her legs, and hugs a pillow to her chest. “What,” she says seriously, “did the two of you do to each other?”

“Never mind.”

“I do mind. Nobody says hurtfull stuff like that without a good cause. What happened?”

“Willa’s got…secrets.”

“We all do. What’s that got to do with you?”

“She told them to me, that’s what.”

Elise narrows her eyes at me. “And what did you do?”

It’s a very long story and not at all easy to tell . Elise interrupts frequently, asking questions and making me repeat myself. She wants to know my exact words, my exact inflection, Willa’s tone of reply and the details of body language, like the conversation was a play and she’s dissecting it in drama class. She starts to cry again at the rough parts, and then practically jumps down my throat when I try to stop telling the story.

“Tell me the
whole thing,
Jem,” she says through her teeth.

“You’ll just get upset.”

“I’m already upset. Tell me what you said!”

Elise’s eyes are still red and puffy at the end of the story, but she’s no longer crying. She hugs her pillow tighter against her front, looking off into space with a deeply thoughtful expression.

“I get it,” she says quietly.

“I always knew there was something off about her, but I didn’t think she was actually insane.”

“Not that.” Elise shakes her head. “I mean why she did it. Everything else—the series of bad decisions, I mean—started when her sister died. It’s…it’s the consequences, sort of; not the root of he problem.”

“When she
killed
her sister,” I correct her. “The difference is subtle, but meaningful.”

“No, she
helped
her sister to die. I understand why,” Elise insists. “If it’s all the same, if her sister was going to die anyway, Willa did it out of love. The sister didn’t have to suffer any more. She could have hung around in pain for weeks.”

“You’re missing the point. It’s illegal to help someone commit suicide. She had no idea what she was doing—just gave her sister a fistfull of pill s. You don’t know that it was painless and peaceful.”

Elise leans over to kiss my shoulder. “I would have done it for you,” she murmurs. “Legal or not.”

“What?” I push her away so I can read her face. She’s being completely serious.

“If you were going to die I wouldn’t want you to suffer.” Her lower lip trembles. “If we could say goodbye and I could help it end quickly, well , I think that’s a better way to go than just waiting for the inevitable.”

Her voice cracks a little on the end. “It’s not cruelty—that’s love.”

“If you love someone you don’t make their last moments about fear and let them die alone,” I argue quietly. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I’ve gone out of my way for months not to talk to Elise about dying, and here it sounds like she’s thought the whole thing through when I wasn’t looking.

“I don’t think it matters,” she says. “Once you’re dead, you don’t much care about any of that. And the people who keep on living get to do it with the knowledge that they did what they could.” She sniffs back snot. “There’s nothing graceful about dying, anyway.” Willa said that once. “We prolong lives so much longer than we should in hospitals.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this shit. I get off her bed and head for the door.

“Thank God you’re not my next-of-kin.”

The slam of the door behind me doesn’t do enough to distance me from that conversation. She would have accelerated my demise, if it had been up to her. And all I thought about for her was a quick and natural death.

Mom hears my loud exit from Elise’s bedroom and comes to the upper hall to investigate.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fucked.” I slam my bedroom door behind me and lock it.

I take a shower to calm my nerves, but it doesn’t help. When I get out I find a note from Elise slipped under my door:
I’m sorry.

I can’t deal with this shit right now.

I need to talk to someone who gets it, which immediately rules out all of my Ottawa friends. I thought Elise would understand my position, having gone through my illness alongside me, but that turned out to be a fucking catastrophe. The only person who can stand to talk to me about the fucked up shit in my life is…Willa.

As I hang my bathrobe back in the closet—the guy in the mirror looks hideous and pinched—I consider all the awkward ways that telling Elise is going to come back to bite me in the ass. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have brushed her off, like she did when I asked her what Willa said.