I flush when I remember I still haven’t responded to her texts. But my hands are covered in flour and chicken. The call goes to voice mail.
And then the phone promptly starts ringing again.
I heave a sigh. At least I’m finally a bit calmer. I barely glance at the screen long enough to use a pinkie to swipe the call and hit Speaker before turning back to my chicken to make sure it doesn’t burn.
“Hey Tal! Sorry I haven’t—”
“Livvy! Th—there’s ... been ...” My mom’s voice is hysterical.
“Mom?” Cold fear spears through my chest. “Are you crying? What’s going on? What happened?”
“It’s—it’sFarmor. She ... collapsed. Sh-She ... wasn’t b-breathing ...” My mom gasps, nearly incoherent.
“What?”The thud of my heartbeat echoes in my skull.“I’m coming—just tell me where you are!”
“I called 911 ... They’re putting her in ... the ambulance.” She’s full-on sobbing now.
Farmor collapsed. Farmor wasn’t breathing.
A spear of terror impales me; the kitchen tilts as though I’ve suddenly stepped into a carnival fun house, where the mirrors distort everything—up is down, right is left, everything iswrong,wrong,wrong. But somehow, I manage to calmly instruct, “Go get in the ambulance with her and find out where they’re taking her. I’ll meet you there.”
There are other voices, other sounds around my mom, coming through my phone. I don’t know what the sounds are. I don’t know what they mean.
She doesn’t say anything else but doesn’t hang up either. I’m trembling; my hands are clammy. It’s an almost out-of-body experience as I turn off all the burners, leaving the nearly completed meal to spoil and go to waste.
Once everything is off, I stand in the kitchen, paralyzed. Muffled sounds come from my phone. I fight off visions of Farmor lying on the ground, her beautiful face gray and foreign.
Her words to me today—the way I turned my back on her and walked away—
Farmor collapsed. Farmor wasn’t breathing.
The last thing she may have ever said to me—
“Osborne Medical Center—That’s where we’re—” My mom’s voice is suddenly back, but she’s cut off by someone else shouting something I can’t understand.
And then the wail of a siren echoes through my phone, into the kitchen where the chicken has stopped sizzling and the water has fallen still around the diced potatoes.
It’s the sound that has made my blood turn to ice ever since I was thirteen. The soundtrack to my worst nightmares for over a decade. The one sound that can make my heart immediately lurch into a panicked gallop, slamming into my rib cage.
The line abruptly disconnects, leaving me in a silence so complete it feels deafening. And that’s even worse, somehow, than the sirens.
My terror-induced paralysis morphs into frantic action; I scramble to find my car keys, snatch my purse off the counter, and careen through the condo and out the frontdoor, clumsily trying to type Osborne Medical Center into my GPS.
A sleek, silver BMW pulls up behind my Volvo and parks as I finally manage to pull up the hospital.
Fifteen minutes away.
“Olivia!”
I ignore Hunter and rush to the driver’s-side door of my car.
“Liv! What’s wrong? What are you—”
“Why won’t you justleave me alone?” I’m barely able to see to get my key in the stupid lock on the side of my stupid old car that I have to open like a house door—
“Here, I can help—”
“You’ve doneenough!” The words are a ragged shout.
