Then, my hands began to glow. My fingers, slick with blood, started to tingle, then numb. And in the most harrowing moment of my life, I watched her body knit itself back together. Beatrice’s blue eyes blinked open.
I screamed for James, and then turned.Only to find him dead—hanging halfway out of the motor car, his body twisted and torn.
I didn’t know it then, but the price of life is death, and I had traded his soul for hers.
Even now, I cannot regret it.
If I had known, I would have made the same choice again.
And that’s the sin.
One day, I woke up and decided to play God.
one
Astoria
October 2018
Car horns blared beside me as rain fell in its consistent heavy droves, beating the sidewalk like a steady drum. Pushing through the hospital doors with three coffees in hand and a heavy bag schlepped over my shoulder, I made a silent plea as I crossed over the threshold, a prayer to whoever would listen—that today would begood.
Fine, even.
It didn’t have to be great, but the ominous feeling I woke to settled over my chest and thrust my mother’s superstitious spirit to the forefront of my mind. It was a suffocating suspicion that I just couldn’t shake.
My phone was pinned beneath my ear as I mumbled the silly sentence. The man on the other end chuckled, as if he knew whatI attempted to say with only a few short words spoken on one measly lung of breath. It was hardly morning and I was already a mess.
“It can’t be done,” Nemo reiterated.
Even though I had never met the man, I always pictured him with too-large glasses and an exasperated look about him. Every time he told me “no,” I imagined him nudging the glasses up his nose as he rolled his eyes. Probably because of the stressed sound he made as he explained himself.I did always tend to push boundaries…
Still, I couldn’t be dissuaded. Any attempt at reconciling an old life with that of the new was long forgotten with his dour words.
“And why not?” I argued, growing frustrated as he rattled off several reasons, none of which I understood. Nor cared about.
“You don’t pay me to tell you what you’d like to hear.”
“I don’t pay you at all.” Reasoning with Nemo was like reasoning with a toddler: it just didn’t work, but I couldn’t resist trying.
Juggling the coffee between hands, I went through the motions of checking in at the front desk. As many times as I’d been here, the receptionist always asked for my identification. It wasn’t that I was against hospital protocol, I was actually thankful for their due diligence, but every time I handed over the small plastic card, there was a voice of fear at the back of my mind wondering if this would be the time that someone would discover me.
“Exactly.” Nemo sighed, pulling me back from an anxious spiral. He hung up shortly after, no doubt annoyed with me.
I thanked the woman as she handed me my license back, then tossed my cellphone back in my bag. That was apparently the end of our conversation. I wanted to call him back and coax himinto doing what I asked, but my frustration fell as the doors to the elevator creaked open to reveal a friendly face.
“I thought you went home,” Regina said, a tired smile on her face.
“Now I’m back.” I handed her a coffee and switched places with her as she exited the elevator. “An extra dry cappuccino.”
Regina was the charge nurse for the oncology floor at the Pacific Northwest Pediatric Hospital. She was tough as nails and clever as a fox. Nothing got past her, and she never left a room without leaving her patients and their families smiling bigger than they ever had before. She’d quickly grown to be my favorite nurse.
She held her arm out, keeping the door from shutting as she took my offering. “You should be at home studying, don’t you have a big test this week?” It only took one sip for her face to change, morphing from exhaustion to relief. “Bless you, child.”
I smiled, rubbing my elbow over my forehead that still felt damp from the rain. “I can study here.”Not that I actually had anything to study, or a test to prepare for.
Regina clucked her tongue, removing her arm so that the elevator would close once again. “I’ll see you up there after my lunch break,” she called back.
As the doors shut I took a moment to tuck the wet strands of hair behind my ears, careful not to dump a hot coffee over my head. The elevator rang, the number on the panel lighting up for the thirteenth floor. A shudder ran through me as I fought hard to shove my mother’s superstitious thoughts out of my mind, but I had lived long enough and experienced my fair share of misfortunes to understand that perhaps there was more to throwing salt over ones shoulder than it would seem.
