“Nine months. Maybe a year.”
“Thank you, Dr. Krasten,” Theo says, his voice hoarse.
The doctor leaves the brothers in silence, the only sound the click of Oliver’s IV. Theo clears his throat. His voice shakes. “Oli, listen, I think—”
“Don’t, Theo. Just don’t, all right?” He can’t handle one of his brother’s lectures right now.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“It doesn’t matter.” None of it matters.
Theo keeps talking anyway. “Dr. Krasten is wrong.”
Oliver laughs, but it’s hollow. Theo always has to be right. He never hesitates to let Oliver know what he can do better, when he is making a mistake, or, worst of all, when he is wasting his time. But this? “I think I’m the one that’s supposed to be in denial.”
Theo’s face crumples. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?” Oliver has the sinking feeling that denial is better than whatever Theo is about to tell him.
He runs a hand through his hair. “What do you remember about Mom and Dad’s accident?”
“I was fourteen, not four,” Oliver snaps. “I remember everything.”
Theo made all the arrangements, wrote the eulogies and read them in front of everyone: their father’s colleagues and coworkers from the hospital, their mother’s current and former students from the dance studio, all of Theo’s friends and their parents, and Oliver’s, too.
Oliver wanted to crawl out of his skin. He didn’t want his friends’ pity, didn’t want them to look at him that way. Like he was fragile. Damaged. He even caught Theo looking at him that way a few times. Luke was the only one who didn’t.
Theo’s throat bobs. “It was so sudden, you know? Out of nowhere, they were just gone, and I kept thinking, ‘That could happen to anyone. That could happen to me.’ And if it did—if I died, too—what would happen to you?”
For weeks after the funeral, Oliver would lie awake and listen to Theo pace circles around the kitchen below his bedroom at all hours of the night. He never imagined it was the same terrible thought keeping them both awake.
“I took some of the money Mom and Dad left me, and I went to Aevum,” Theo admits. “I had to know you’d be all right.”
“You time traveled?” Oliver can’t imagine his older brother going on any sort of adventure.
Theo shakes his head. “No. I filled out a lot of forms. Then they sent an investigator twenty years into the future and gave me their report.”
Oliver’s heart pounds. “What did it say?”
Theo reaches inside the coat tossed over the arm of his chair and pulls out a folded piece of paper. It’s obvious by the state of it that it’s been crumpled and flattened, folded and refolded time and again. He offers it to Oliver. His hand trembles. “I’m sorry.”
Oliver carefully unfolds the page, his heart in his throat. A photo of himself he doesn’t recognize stares back at him. His gaze trails down to the paragraph beneath it:
Oliver James Rhodes, born December 3, 2177, passed away peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, on September 19, 2202.
“Dr. Krasten is wrong.” Theo’s voice cracks under the weight of his words.
This time, Oliver understands. He doesn’t have a year if he’s lucky, doesn’t have at least nine months. He doesn’t even have six.
Oliver Rhodes has three months, three weeks, and five days left to live.
He tears his attention from the date, already burned into his memory, and examines the grainy image. He can’t tell where he is, only that it is somewhere green and sunny. At least he looks happy.
He can’t bring himself to read any more, but he can imagine what it will say.Surrounded by loved onesis probably a stretch. Theo will be there. Maybe Luke and Zoë, if they haven’t become too entangled in their new lives. Theo will have to guess at his interests. He’ll probably mention the time they ran the Boston Marathon together, even though it was years ago. Say Oliver left behind one brother, his only surviving family. Ask for donations in lieu of flowers.
He’ll be buried with their parents, and Theo will be alone.
“Maybe it’s a mistake.” Maybe it’s not the doctors, maybe it’s Theo and Aevum who have it wrong.
