This Darkness Mine

“None of that,” Layla says, flipping her tablet shut. “I want to see you spell Quetzalcoatl.”

  I shake my head. “That’s a proper noun; you can’t use those in Scrabble.”

  “Whatever,” Brandy says. “I want to see Nadine try to pronounce it.” She pulls her legs off my lap. “C’mon, girl.”

  I get up, ignoring the head rush when I do. Whether it’s the flu or Shanna staging an uprising, I don’t know. But I can’t pass on the possibility of beating Nadine at Scrabble.

  “Hey, can I use your bathroom real quick?” Brandy asks Layla, who nods and pulls a hoodie on over her LVAD before we leave. A prescription bottle falls out of the front pocket, rolling to a stop at my feet.

  “Dropped this,” I say, checking the label before I hand it over. “You still on the Oxy?”

  “Just to sleep sometimes,” she says, tucking the bottle into her top drawer. “You need any for . . . you know.” She grinds up against the dresser, her LVAD cord flapping at her side.

  “Gross,” I say.

  “Uh, yeah, but do you need ’em?”

  “I haven’t seen him since . . .” I tuck my own cord up into my sweatshirt. “Since this. I don’t know how I feel about him seeing me with it.”

  “Got you,” she says. “But don’t let it stop you. I’ll give you a few so you have them if you change your mind.”

  “Later,” I say, dropping my voice as Brandy comes out of the bathroom. The last thing I need is both of them making pelvic thrusts at me as I try to slip Angela narcotics so I can sneak out to see Isaac.

  “The wordsters have arrived,” Brandy announces when we get to the common room. “Well, one wordster, anyway.”

  Nadine rolls her eyes, but Jo makes a spot for me at their table. A couple of the smaller kids are at another table with Junior Scrabble, the winter day being boring enough to draw out a decent attendance at a cardiac center event, for once. Nurse Karen walks by and gives us a serious look before going over to sit with the littles.

  “We know, no actual scrappin’,” Layla says as she pulls a stuffed chair over to our table to watch, though it looks like Brandy is doing most of the work by pushing. I can’t help but notice the sheen of sweat on Layla’s face as she flops into the chair, how shallow her breaths are.

  “Fine, I’m fine,” she waves off my questioning look.

  I draw my tiles, not thrilled with what I’ve got. Brandy immediately leans over my shoulder and spells out fuckers.

  “Sixteen points,” I tell her. “That’s actually pretty good. Sure you don’t want to play, wordster?”

  Somebody’s phone goes off on vibrate, the hum filling the air.

  “Nah,” Brandy says, “I’ve got—” The phone goes off again, and she pulls hers out to check it. “Not me.”

  Mine is back in my room, so I shake my head as it goes off a third time. Layla digs into her hoodie pocket, and Jo flips hers over from where it was facedown on the table.

  “Me either. Nadine? That you?”

  She shakes her head, her eyes narrow and intense on her tiles. “Mine’s dead. I—Holy shit!” Nadine jerks her arm, sending letters flying off the table as she grabs for her side.

  “Karen! Karen! Holy shit!” Nadine screams, yanking her transplant pager from her belt loop and holding it in the air. “It’s mine! It’s mine! A positive, baby! Holy shit!”

  Jo claps her hands over her mouth, her eyes huge above her fingers. Karen runs from the kids’ table, torn between getting Nadine to stop swearing and being happy for her. Brandy and I glance at each other, then look to Layla who is trying hard to smile, but she lifts her shirt up to double-check her own pager, just in case. I don’t tell her the odds of two A positive hearts coming in at the same time.

  “You see that? You see that!” Nadine is still shoving her pager in people’s faces, jumping up and down and yelling. At this rate she’s going to have a heart attack before they can get her over to the hospital.

  “Nadine, honey. Get your bag, we’ve got to get you moving,” Karen says, as the nurse managing the desk comes in, her smile blasting a number one on the pain scale.

  “Ambulance is on the way,” she announces. “It’s go time.”

  Nadine does one last fist pump and slams Jo a high five before noticing Brandy and me being less than excited about her new lease on life.

  “Hey, Layla,” she says, jerking her chin. “Don’t worry. Black lives matter, just not to the organ donor registry.”

  Layla goes a shade paler. Brandy jumps to her feet and Jo covers her head as the Scrabble board goes flying, sending Nadine back a few steps.

  “You bitch,” Brandy says, her voice low and dark. “I swear to God—”

  I reach out, grabbing Brandy’s wrist. “Leave it.”

  “She can’t just say shit like—”

  “I said leave it.” I grind her wrist in my hand and whip out my field-commander voice. She sits down slowly, pissed at me.

  “Uh-oh,” Layla says, digging deep to offer me a weak smile. “I see Sasha’s thinking face.”

  I drop Brandy’s arm. “Layla, get your bags packed. Leave me the Oxy.”

  “What?” Layla says. “That’s not—”

  “Do it.” I toss the words over my shoulder as I head for the kitchen. The staff is a mess, the nurses gathering in groups to share the news or hurrying off to get everything in place for Nadine’s exit. I spot the squad as I walk past the main doors, sirens off but lights flashing. The driver is leaning over the front desk, flirting with the receptionist.

  The cafeteria is empty. I swipe a saltshaker from a table and slip behind the counter, turning on the hot water and opening cupboard doors until I find the cups. I screw the cap off the saltshaker and dump at least an inch into my cup, then fill it with hot water. It overflows onto my hand, hot and slick with salt. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and chug it.

  The saltwater hits my stomach like lead, a trail of heat following it down as it burns into my gut. I’m still swallowing, chasing the hideous taste with the sludge that sits at the bottom of the cup. It’s more solid than liquid, a gelatinous mass that I have to make myself swallow.

  But I do. Because I am Sasha Stone, who can force her bent and screaming hands to play for one more hour, who can choose not to breathe if she wants. This is mind over matter, and my mind is the strongest thing inside me.

  The salt water is down, all bodily signals begging to let it retrace its steps immediately. But it’s not time yet, I lurch away from the counter, water rolling in my stomach, and head down the hall. They’ve got Nadine in a wheelchair, her go bag across her knees. She’s bright as a star, her face radiant and a smile so big it even includes me as she sees my approach. Nadine sees me coming with arms open wide, and opens her own, welcoming what she thinks is a celebration, her victory over a shared struggle.

  She’s still smiling up at me as I clamp my hands on either side of her face and puke into her mouth.

  thirty-four

  I’m in big trouble.

  Brandy is still in the common room, pretending to read while she’s actually eavesdropping on the front desk and texting me everything that’s going on. I’m on my bed, reading her messages as they come in. I don’t dare even crack my door. Karen pulled Angela from her duties and stuck her outside my room with strict instructions not to let me out under any circumstances.

  From Brandy

  Another accident on Wbound. Squad guy said not snowstorm but a shitstorm.

  Cops here. K says charge you w/ assault

  Can’t prove anything. I’m a sick girl. I puked.

  . . . that’s what they’re saying too

  K totes pissed

  LOL K jus tol them if Nadine dies b/4 next
  More like bitchslaughter

  Layla get to the squad ok?

  Y

  We heard the screamin & she dropped half her shit but I got it all packed b4 they loaded her up.

  She said you so lily
-white to get that pissed. People say shit like that to her = just another Tuesday.

  She left you the pills, btw

  “Good,” I say aloud. I didn’t drink a whole glass of salt water for nothing.

  Ur like my hero right now

  I don’t have an answer for that one. Yes, I made sure Layla skipped the line for an A positive heart, and maybe she’ll get to write another letter to her boy now, one that sets up a time and a place to meet. But the most important thing to me in this whole string of texts is the mention of the Oxy.

  I hear raised voices outside my door, Josephine arguing with Angela. I get out of bed and go over to it, ear pressed against the crack.

  “I just want to talk to her,” Jo says.

  “Nope,” Angela argues. “Karen says she doesn’t come out, and nobody goes in.”

  “This is a cardiac ward, not a prison,” Jo says, and I crack a smile.

  My phone vibrates in my hand.

  Cops have to go, say roads r a mess, Another accident

  OMG Karen just threw the pencil cup holder

  Jo knocks on my door. “Sasha, can I come in?”

  “I told you—”

  “And I’m going to tell the cops in the atrium to check your purse if you don’t let me talk to Sasha.”

  There’s a moment of dead silence, followed by the click of a handle turning. I step back from the door and sit on the bed.

  “Hey,” Jo says, shutting the door behind her.

  “Hey,” I answer as she takes the desk chair.

  “So, what the hell?”

  “Layla wasn’t going to last much longer,” I tell her.

  Jo hooks her feet around the chair, considering my answer while she swivels back and forth for a minute. “So you flooded my friend with possibly infectious pathogens so that yours got the heart instead?”

  “Exactly.” I also ensured that I’d have my own source of pain pills to slip Angela when I need them. If Layla gets a new heart she’ll come back here for recovery, along with a whole new list of prescriptions, painkillers among them. If Layla dies, the Oxy goes out the door with her stretcher.

  “Wow. Just, wow.” Jo stares me down like I might flinch. I don’t.

  “Karen thinks you’re crazy.”

  A gust of wind hits my windows, a total whiteout of snow coming with it.

  “That sounds like an opinion, not a fact.”

  And that’s exactly what it is, the opinion of an RN against the complete psychological evaluation I lied my way through to even get onto the donor wait list. So I’ll hedge my bets waiting to see what happens first—an official diagnosis or the death of someone with an O neg heart. Someone who could be out there driving right now, in this snowstorm. Or shitstorm. Or perfect storm. In my lap, I cross my fingers.

  Your mom just called in. K left her like 20 messages

  Uh-oh K just called u the b word

  To ur mom

  TODAY AT THE CARDIAC CENTER—crafty Karen cusses!

  Jo sighs and swivels in her chair some more. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”

  “Then don’t say anything.”

  Her hands clench on the seat of the chair, and I see her pulse racing in her throat, strong and hot. Jo gets up to leave.

  “I guess I just wanted to tell you that I hope Layla makes it okay,” she says, her hand on the doorknob. “And I hope you don’t.”

  She’s gone before I can tell her I understand why she feels that way, and honestly I’m learning to adjust to the fact that I might die.

  As long as Shanna goes first.

  thirty-five

  She won’t go easily, my sister. She wants me to see what I’ll be missing without her and so as I descend into sleep she sends me Isaac, one of her memories tucked away that I didn’t get to take part in.

  “Hey,” he says, the dark branches of a tree cast across his face in the moonlight. “You’re up late.”

  “You texted me,” I remind him, crossing my arms over my then-unscarred chest, trying to replicate anger when I’m actually elated.

  “Didn’t wake you up though, did I?” he asks, in a way that says he already knows the answer.

  “No,” I admit, stepping closer so that he puts his arms around me, feels me shivering in the chill. He slides his jacket off and I take it gladly, listening to the old leather creak as it settles around me, adjusting itself to the fit of a new body.

  “What’re you doing up?” he asks, lighting a fresh cigarette.

  “Reading Shakespeare,” I answer, and he snorts, choking on a puff. “What? I’ve got a test on The Tempest tomorrow. What are you doing up?”

  “Not reading Shakespeare,” he says, and steps closer to me, the exhale of smoke surrounding us both.

  “You should try it,” I say, but I don’t know that the Bard holds any fascination for me in this moment either. All I want is Isaac, the play of his eyes over mine, the pull of my body toward his.

  “Make me,” he says, and I lean forward, whispering a line into his ear, my hands sliding over his chest to follow the lines of his tattoos up to his mouth.

  “‘This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine,’” I say, sliding my fingers through his hair and pulling his mouth down to mine.

  “Totally yours,” he says, right before our lips meet.

  Karen wakes me up with dinner, her face the stiff flat line of a number five on the pain scale.

  “I can’t get a hold of your case worker,” she says. “Power lines are down everywhere. Your parents will be coming in the morning.”

  I poke the straw through my juice box.

  “I’m not letting you out of this room,” she says.

  “Good call,” I tell her, and chomp into a granola bar.

  I thought she’d leave, but she settles onto my couch, measuring the depth of the snow on the ledge with her hand. It’s at least five inches, and that’s just what made it under the eaves to my sill.

  “Layla’s in recovery,” Karen says, real quiet, her words almost not reaching me.

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, so I start eating, trying to fill the empty hole left behind after I dumped everything I had onto Nadine.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  I don’t answer. My logic doesn’t need defending, and she would despise my goals in any case. Karen sighs and gets up from the couch, pulling the blood pressure cuff off the wall behind me. “Arm.”

  I lift it, still eating with the other hand. Karen makes a notation in her laptop, then takes my temperature.

  “Fever’s going down,” she says. “Figures.”

  “So what was causing it?”

  Karen glances at the screen. “Your blood work came back. Doesn’t look like you had an infection, so it was likely just a flu bug of some sort.”

  A flu bug I poured down Nadine’s throat out of my own.

  “Okay,” I say lightly, spearing a strawberry.

  Karen’s teeth clamp down tight on her lips to keep her from saying all the things she wants to say to me. The Hippocratic oath must be a real bitch. I see the edge of Angela’s sleeve as Karen slips out the door, closing it behind her.

  From Brandy

  News says 2 more inches tonight

  County on level 2

  B kinda cool to hit level 3

  No—3 is total shutdown, emergency vehicles only on roads.

  Brandy doesn’t answer, so I assume she understands why a level 3 would be bad. I need people on the roads. I need people losing control. I need screeching metal and failed brakes. I need sirens and panicked, unanswered phone calls.

  I need people to die.

  And soon.

  thirty-six

  Amanda is not happy with me. I can tell because her eyebrows are tightly knit, which is a poor choice on her part because it’s obvious she overplucked one of them when they’re together like that. The afternoon sun isn’t doing her any favors either, making her squint from the glare off the snow ou
tside.

  “Your dad said he thinks it’s better to keep distance between you and your mother right now,” Amanda says.

  “Better for her,” I say. It’s not a question.

  “And he said he’ll make the drive once the roads are cleared.”

  “Are they still that bad?”

  Amanda mistakes my interest for a sincere need to see him. “The plows were out all last night and into the morning,” she says. “I’m sure he’ll get here as soon as he can.”

  I’m not sure about that at all, but I let it slide for now.

  Amanda has drawn her feet up onto the chair, her knees at her chin. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Was this . . .”

  She shakes her head quickly, as if to discourage herself from asking the question. Asking if it was Shanna or me who did this, pouring breakfast and bile and salt water into another girl. But asking that would mean I’m not better, that her miraculous microwave box of healing didn’t work.

  “Karen wants to have your mental condition reevaluated ASAP.” Amanda pronounces the acronym phonetically. I wish everyone would start doing that with the American Heart Association. It would make all our conversations so much more spontaneous.

  “I don’t know if I can really argue against that, at this point,” Amanda goes on.

  “I was sick. I puked,” I say.

  “Yeah, I know. But given your past history with Nadine I don’t know if I can make it fly.” She sighs and rolls one foot, her ankle cracking. “What do you want?”

  I want to stay where there’s a knife under my mattress and a bottle of Oxy rolled in my sock. I want someone with an O neg heart to die. I want to fill out my jeans again and get plastic surgery on my face. I want Heath standing next to me in our senior prom photo because we fit. I want to see my bedroom again and close the window I should have never gone out of in the first place. I want my life back. I want future Sasha Stone to be a real thing, a real girl, an end goal I can invest in.

  “I want to stay here, if I can.”

  “Okay.” Amanda nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She stands up, looking out the window as a gust sends some of the piled snow on the roof eddying off into a spiral.