"Hospital," I said, sitting up. "Probably a scheduling thing."
Miles nodded, his expression shifting to mild concern. "Take it."
I answered. "Charlotte Huston."
"Charlotte." Sarah's voice was wrong. Tight, stripped of warmth. "I'm so sorry to call you on your day off."
Cold crept down my spine. "Sarah? What's wrong?"
A pause. A horrible, hollow pause that stretched for an eternity.
"It's Jeremy Lewis."
The name hit me like a fist to my sternum,Jeremy. Twenty-two years old. Bright, funny art student with a shock of blue dyed into his black hair. Three weeks in my unit after his bone marrow transplant for leukemia. We'd talked about graphic novels and his dream of illustrating children's books. He'd shown me his sketchbook two days ago, a dragon he was drawing for his niece, all scales and whimsy.
"Sarah?" My voice came out thin. "What about Jeremy?"
"He spiked a fever this afternoon. Septic shock. We rushed him to the ICU, but it moved too fast, Charlotte." Her voice cracked. "It moved so fast. He coded about two hours ago. We couldn't… we couldn't get ahead of it. He's gone."
The words didn't make sense. They were sounds, sharp and wrong, colliding in my ear without forming meaning.Gone. Coded. Two hours ago.
"Two hours?" I heard myself say. "Why didn't anyone call me?"
"We tried. It went to voicemail. I'm so sorry." Sarah's voice was thick with weeps. "The family wanted to move quickly. His parents were... they didn't want to wait. His body's already been transferred to the mortuary."
Already transferred. Already gone. I couldn't even say goodbye.
"He showed me his sketchbook," I whispered. "Two days ago. He was drawing a dragon."
"I know." Sarah was crying now. "I know, honey. We all loved him. I'm so sorry you couldn't be here. I'm so sorry."
She kept talking, logistics, condolences, offers of support, but the words blurred into static. The warm, sunlit room with Miles on the couch telescoped away, replaced by the cold, fluorescentmemory of Jeremy's hospital room. The beep of his monitors. The shaky smile he'd given me when I'd adjusted his IV, saying he hated needles but trusted me.
"You've got good hands, Charlotte,"he'd said."Steady."
My hand, the one holding the phone, went numb.
The phone slipped from my fingers. It hit the hardwood floor with a sharp crack, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of fractures.
I stared at it. The broken screen. The silent, dark rectangle that had just delivered the news that a twenty-two-year-old boy would never bring joy to his niece.
"Charlotte?" Miles's voice was worried. His hand on my shoulder. "Charlotte, what happened? What's wrong?"
I couldn't answer. I couldn't breathe. The perfect day lay shattered around me, and all I could see was Jeremy's hopeful smile, his blue-streaked hair, his sketchbook full of dreams he would never complete.
The first sob tore out of me without warning—ugly, broken, a sound I didn't recognize as my own.
And then Miles's arms were around me, pulling me against his chest, holding me together as I fell completely apart.
10.Miles
Iheard the phone hit the floor before I understood what was happening.
One second, Charlotte was answering a routine call from the hospital, her voice casual, unconcerned. Next, she was white as paper, her lips trembling, her eyes going blank in a way that made me seize with instinctive terror.
"Charlotte?" I was off the couch before I'd consciously decided to move. "What is it? What's wrong?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't. A sound came out of her, raw, broken, a sob that didn't sound human. Her knees started to buckle.
