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She settles into the chair beside my bed and puts her bony hand on my arm. “This is not how I’m supposed to die.”
“So how are you supposed to die?”
Her eyes take on a faraway sheen. “In a house by the sea in an upstairs bedroom. It’s late spring, and the open window lets in the smell of lily of the valley. And there’s a garden outside. It’s decorated with paper lanterns, and the children, the children chase after fireflies while their parents laugh and talk as if they have all the time in the world. In a house by the sea, it will end, and I will slip from this life as if it were no more than a sweater grown too large and threadbare with years, something no longer needed. That is how it should be. Not here. Never here.” She fixes me with her gaze. “I don’t think you should die before you’re ready. Until you’ve wrung out every last bit of living you can.”
This lady is, like, ninety, if she’s a day. I’d say she’s pretty well wrung it. I want to yell at her for having had that long. “Well, I guess there’s not much we can do about that,” I say bitterly.
“Bullshit! That’s what they say so you’ll give up without a fight.” She leans in so close I can smell the old-person odor on her—musty and old-fashioned, like a room no one goes into much anymore. “I’ve seen them outside, burning on the lawn. Tall as houses and so bright, so bright.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. “You’ve seen those freaky fire giants?”
She nods, her eyes wide and fearful.
“What are they?” I whisper.
“They are chaos. Destruction. The end of hope. Oh, these are frightening times. I have to get away!”
An orderly appears in the doorway. “Mrs. Morae, come on, now. You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“I’ll go where I like!” she snaps.
“Now, Mrs. M, don’t be like that.” The orderly comes closer, looming like a shadow, and for a second, in that shadow, I see the outline of something terrible, and then it changes. It’s just a dark blur against the blandness of the wall.
The old lady’s lungs rebel. Long, coughing spasms rattle her frail frame.
“See? Gotta get you well. Back to bed, Mrs. M,” the orderly says, taking her arm.
“It’s okay,” I tell the orderly. “She can stay. Really!”
“Tell them they’ve got it wrong,” she hisses between coughs as he leads her gently away. “A house by the sea. Tell them!”
I fall asleep, but my dreams are full of bad things—fires engulfing the world. A black hole opening above us, pulling everything in without a trace, as if we never even existed. Diseased cattle falling in the fields like gassed soldiers in some long-ago war. The angel in the tarnished armor banging her hands against a window while flecks of snow coat her lashes and hair. I wake up with my heart pounding, unsure of where I am or what’s happened, whether I dreamed the conversation with the old lady.
A house by the sea. I’d like to be there now. And I wish there were a button I could press that would get me out of here, that could make this all go away.
DAY THIRTEEN
Glory’s been off for two days. Today she’s back in her pink scrubs that look good against the dark of her skin. I’m not feeling so great. Sometimes I think I see the punker angel sitting in the corner of the room, reading a comic book with the ill-fated coyote on the cover, an anvil racing for his head. But when I mentioned it to Mom, her eyes got teary, and I haven’t said a word about strange angel sightings since.
“Time for your meds,” Glory announces in her no-fanfare way.
I wash them down even though they’re getting hard to swallow. My body seems like it’s failing me by degrees.
“Okay,” Glory says, once my vital signs have been recorded for posterity. “You need anything else?”
“No,” I say, watching her push the cart toward the door. “Yes.”
Glory stops, looks at me. There’s no “What is it, sweetheart?” or “Oh, my poor brave bunny.” Nope. She just stands, waiting. And I can tell she’s even a little annoyed. Kind of makes me like her. We speak the same language.
“Am I going to get better?”
Glory’s ramrod body softens for a minute. “You got to ask your doctor that, Cameron.” I like the way she says my name, like it has three syllables instead of two.
“It’s just … nobody tells me anything, you know?”
Glory glances toward the hallway, where she has charts to file and patients to check. “That’s cause nobody knows not’ing about how it all works out or why. Why God takes the good or the young or why we suffer. I don’t know why he took my little girl with the cancer when she was only five.” She takes a deep breath, like the pain is still fresh. “I don’t know and I guess I never will.”
All the air has left my lungs. I feel like I should say something, but somehow I don’t think Glory’s the I-want-your-sympathy type.
