I curl my arms tighter around my legs when my stomach rolls, resting my wet chin to the top of my knees, staring at the wall in front of me.
“I’m not v-very h-hungry,” I manage.
“Oh,” my nan’s voice wobbles, and I turn to look at her, placing my cheek to where my chin had just departed.
She wipes her hands on a napkin. “That’s okay, I’ll…” She pauses, reaching for the food, tucking it away. “We can try again later.”
She bends over, searching for something in the overnight bag beside her. “How about some apple juice?” she asks when she straightens.
I keep my cheek where it is, tears shaking at the rims of my burning eyes because Nan’s apple juice had been Jade’s favorite.
I smooth my lips together, watch realization pass through her eyes, then I press my own closed. I seeherbright wide smile,hercanine tooth peeking at the corner,herexcitement for life. A tear brushes across the length of my right cheek.
“Why her, Nan?” Clenching my fists around the blanket, I drag it to my chin.
I hadn’t spoken to her about Jade yet, hadn’t told her a word about what happened to us.After I’d found out about my mother, I’d crashed out.
Too much loss.
Too much pain.
“W-why wasn’t it me?” I bite my bottom lip, taste blood. It wobbles harder. “How am I supposed to live knowing…” I’m shaking my head, more tears falling. “Knowing that I’m still here and she isn’t?” I finish in a whisper, my teeth banging down on themselves.
“Because that’s exactly what she would want.” A voice comes, and my head snaps toward the low and raspy,deadsound.
At the edge of the hospital room, Chase leans against the small door frame.
His dark, haunted eyes are locked to mine.
He walks into the room, and Nan is quick to grab his hands, even quicker to gasp at the crimson mess drying across the exposed stark white bone of his knuckles.
She is talking to him, but he isn’t talking back.
My eyes shiver with tears, my breath a whimper at my lips.
I drop my chin to where my hands rest at my knees, and feel guilt slam and crumble in my chest. And when I flick my gaze back to Chase, finding that his never left, I tell him with my eyes what I hope he can see, what I need him to hear.
It should have been me.
“Let me go get a nurse.”
I wrap my hand around Nanna June’s quivering one. She stops talking.
“It’s okay.” My voice is raspy, a scratch through gravel. I swallow around the rocks.
She sighs and her timid shoulders fall with the sound.
“Chase, darling, you could get an infection,” she says, her voice so soft and sincere, as light and as delicate as a petal. However, an infection was the least of my worries.
I needed to see Laiken…now.
“Soon.” I pause. “Promise. I need to spend some time with your granddaughter first. Is that okay?”
I try to keep my tone light, but the vise of urgency is too tight.
I haven’t taken my eyes from Laiken. A laser beam holds us to each other, and my mouth turns dry when I see the terror in her eyes.
She looks haunted.
