I wake up and wipe the drool from my face as nurses begin shuffling into the room.
“Sorry, sweetie, we know this is hard. Impossible, really. The doctor will be here soon.”
I don't look up at them; my eyes are on my sister. I sweep her dark hair from her face and memorize it for the thousandth time this week. I don't want to forget anything about her.
The nurses scuttle back and forth, I don't ask questions because everything will end soon enough. I don't need to know the details of her death.
The bustling stops for a moment as the nurses leave to get something from another room and in a moment of quiet, I take Janie's unmoving hands, and kiss the tops of them tenderly, knowing I want to say my last words in private.
Whispering words I can't believe are my truth, I say to her, “I don't want you to worry about me. You've hung on long enough. Of course I want more time with you, I'd give anything to have it. But I'm going to be okay with you gone, Janie. Ace came into my life … somehow at the perfect moment. And I don't want to trade you for him, but it feels like that is what is happening.”
I let go of her hand, my heart letting go too. I've made my peace, at least some crazy semblance of it.
Tears fall freely down my cheeks, stinging my skin, reminding me that none of this is easy.
And then, the monitors pop to life. Blare with noise and beeping.
Janie moves her head ever so slightly—the first movement I've seen since I showed up here at the hospital two months ago.
“Nurse!” I scream. “Come quick, Janie moved!” I was not expecting this at all.
Two nurses rush to the bedside, and we watch in awe as Janie's eyes blink open.
She looks right at me.
17
EMMY
Against all odds, Janie is awake. Startlingly, awake. Eyes wild, hands manic.
She immediately begins trying to pull the ventilator out of her lungs, ripping IVs from her arms.
The doctor runs in, the nurses are frantic, and they quickly force her down, securing her arms to the bed.
I cover my face, shocked and unprepared for her to begin moving violently.
Unprepared for anything that doesn’t end in death.
The doctor sedates her, and nurses move to replace her IVs.
And then, in an instant, she is gone again as the drugs are absorbed.
The room stills around me as the truth sets in.
Janie is alive.
ACE
I’m in my office, getting shit done, when the phone rings.
Finally.
Emmy is a fucking dick-tease with the way she’s held out on calling me. I gave her my number before she left for the hospital. I wanted to go with her, but she refused, saying if she was saying goodbye to her sister she needed to do it alone.
I get that. When my two sisters were found dead a week after they were kidnapped by the fucking Bollario family, I didn’t want anyone to see me cry.
When I found my mother at her kitchen table, blood seeping over her white tablecloth—shot in the head while she was peeling potatoes—I didn’t want anyone to see the way I broke down.
So when Emmy said she needed to do this alone, I fucking got it.
But, damn, it was hard to watch her go.
I confessed my motherfucking love to her before she left. And now it’s been twenty-four hours, waiting for her to call.
“Emmy, you okay?” I ask.
“She woke up,” Emmy says, her voice soft. “They didn’t pull the plug.... she’s awake.”
“That’s fucking unbelievable.”
Emmy laughs, sharp and high and full of relief. “I know right? I still can’t believe it, Ace. I didn’t lose my whole family today. I thought I would be going to bed alone in the world, and now I don’t have to.”
“You wouldn’t have had to anyway,” I tell her. “I told you I love you, and I mean it.”
“I know you did, it’s just....”
“Just what?” I don’t like her hesitation.
“It’s just ... I thought you and I made sense when I had no one else. Like, that the universe was giving me someone when I thought I was going to be alone. But now I’m not. I have my sister. And my priority is Janie. I don’t know if I can really start something with you ... now.”
“That’s fucking bullshit, Emmy. You can’t really start something?” I want to punch a wall. Instead I start pacing my thousand-square-foot office.
“I’m not being coy, Ace. I’m being honest. I’m not one of those girls who play games. I mean what I say. And I say my sister is my priority.”
“And me? I’m what, a fucking distraction? Because I know I’m more than that to you.”
“You’ve known me what, a week? Come on, Ace. Those words in the elevator were just that. Words.”
I want her to understand words like I love you aren’t just words to me. She doesn’t seem to get that I haven’t said them to a soul since my mother died. She doesn’t understand because she isn’t listening. She may say she doesn’t play games, but she knows how to fucking run.