The Names They Gave Us(91)

“Hey,” I say, sitting beside her.

“Hey.”

She doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Of course I’m not. But she sits here—in a hospital, in a chapel—like it is no big deal to her.

“Any news?” she asks gently.

“Not really. It’s wait and see.”

My friend nods slowly, considering this.

“Okay,” she says simply. “Then we’re waiting.”

It’s only then that the tears come. I came to barter for my mom’s life, and maybe God knew I needed Keely. Someone to wait with me. She reaches to hold my hand on the seat between us.

“What if I can’t survive it?” I ask, face pressed into my palm. “What if I’m never, ever okay again?”

Her hand stays clasped on mine. “Yeah. I asked myself that too. More than once. But here I am.”

It’s a fair enough point. Hasn’t Daybreak shown me, day after day, that people can outlast unbelievable pain? That human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you’d expect. Hasn’t my mom shown me that, every day of my life?

“It changes you,” Keely says. “You can be okay again. Just a different kind of okay than before.”

“Well, that’s something,” I mutter, wiping mascara from my cheeks. “I just wish it were still easy for me, to believe. In all of it—in heaven and prayer and . . . I don’t know.”

Keely is quiet for a moment, but she doesn’t flinch or move away from me. “Did you know that energy can’t be created or destroyed?”

Confused, I just wipe my face on my sleeve.

“It means that people may die but their energy doesn’t. It gets redistributed.” She settles back in the pew a little, looking up at the cross. “I like that what we know—about everything—is only a fraction of what’s really happening. You can look at the unknown parts as scary. But personally? I like the mystery. I mean, of course I want to know about other galaxies and other life forms. But I also enjoy the wondering.”

We are on a dark, twisting road that she knows so well. Of course Keely, who believes people are made of stardust, would know how to light the path. If her astronomy is about divine unknowns, about pushing for more understanding, about hoping for new, hard-won revelations . . . can’t my faith be the same? About trying to enjoy the wondering.

So I pour out my heart in silent prayer; I pour out my tears in steady streams. Please don’t take my mom from me. Please not yet. Please don’t let me be alone.

You’re not, a voice inside me whispers.

My dad is eating donuts with my friends in the waiting room. Mohan has a few sprinkles flecked down his T-shirt, so I guess Anna won the Boston cream battle. Or, more likely, Mohan ate two donuts. Minimum.

“There you guys are.” Henry’s smile is hesitant; he’s reading my expression and body language. It’s strange to see him sitting next to my dad. In any other circumstance, I’d be nervous that my dad is telling “endearing” stories about me. But right now, I’m just glad to have a full team.

“Did you get a donut, Bird? There’s a sugar twist left.” My favorite. It’s simple, with a curl to it, freckled with cinnamon. I have really narcissistic taste in donuts, I guess.

“Hansson? Mr. Hansson?” A nurse is standing by, looking around for him.

He’s on his feet in a flash, and I’m right behind him. “Yes.”

“If you could just come with me. The doctor needs to update—”

“What’s going on?” he asks.

I trot alongside them, and I don’t care if I’m not supposed to. She’s my mom. We’re through the swinging doors, and the nurse turns back to me.

“Sweetie, maybe you should wait—”

“No!”

“Luce,” my dad says, weary.

I am unmoved. “No! What’s going on?”

The doctor outside my mom’s room has a neat ponytail and a hand clenched on the chart. It is not good news. You can feel it in your bone marrow, that heavy certainty. Mom.

“I’m Dave Hansson,” my dad tells her, breathless. I stand back, but only a little. “I was just in here five minutes ago—she was fine, she—”

“Mr. Hansson,” the doctor says, as softly as I think she can muster. “Her vitals show a move to sepsis. We’re moving your wife to the ICU. We need to get her on dialysis and keep vigilant watch.”

As if on cue, hospital transport wheels my mom out. We both reach for her hand, but they’re at her sides. Rachel is right behind the bed, face drawn.

“We love you!” my dad calls, his voice frantic as they race my mom down the hall. Flashbacks to her surgery, her being wheeled away from us. The hollowness and dread. “We’ll be right here!”

She raises a hand to her mouth. Blows us a kiss.

I manage to mime catching it.

Then she’s gone—around the corner, out of view, and I sob, “No.”

Rachel, though, looks too stunned to cry. “I’m so sorry. I should have run to get you. But it happened so fast, and I didn’t want her to be alone, and—”

“No, me either,” my dad says.

“But she’s going to be okay, right?” I’m asking this half of my dad, half of the doctor who is still nearby, leaving us some space. This is happening too fast. I can’t process. Septic: that’s something to do with an infection and the bloodstream. My mind races too quickly to recall what else. Dialysis? “Does she need a kidney? You can test me. She has another daughter too!”