‘Tell me. . .’ I rasped.
‘Your daughter . . .’ Dr Griffith touched my forearm. His hand was heavy, cool against my clammy skin.
He said something about an accident.
Somebody finding Olivia at the bottom of an embankment near the ZigZag Bridge.
Something about a grand mal seizure, corneal reflexes, and a Glasgow score of four.
He said something about a head wound, about fixed and dilated pupils and a CAT scan.
That they’d taken her in for surgery as soon as she’d arrived.
I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
I collapsed on the chair, bending forward until my head was between my knees, as if preparing for a crash landing. I could hear my heart throbbing in my chest, the blood roaring in my ears, the harsh hiss of my breath as it rushed in and out of me in sharp, hollow gasps. My elbow throbbed painfully where I’d banged it.
‘No . . . no . . .’ I pleaded over and over, clenching and unclenching my sweat-soaked hands.
The doctor sat next to me, his voice breaking through the heavy, viscous bubble surrounding me.
‘–sustained severe head trauma. I’m really sorry, Mrs Knight, but your daughter has suffered permanent and irreversible brain damage.’
My mind reeled, trying to assimilate these facts into something that made sense. Shards of his words assaulted me through a roar of panic.
‘Is there someone we can call . . . ?’
Who was there? My mom was dead. I never knew my dad. There was no husband, no boyfriend. I was too busy being a mother to date, too busy to have friends. There was only . . .
‘My sister.’ My voice sounded very far away, as if it came from down the hall rather than my own mouth.
I wrote Sarah’s number on a scrap of paper. He took it and opened the door, handed it to somebody, then sat back down across from me.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Knight, we did everything we could to save her, but Olivia won’t wake up. Right now she’s attached to life support that’s keeping her body alive.’ He licked his lips, on the verge of saying something else. ‘But she . . .’
‘She’s an organ donor,’ I whispered numbly.
It was what they wanted, wasn’t it? The day she got her driver’s license Olivia had signed up to save another’s life. ‘You know,’ she’d said, shrugging with the confidence the young have that they’re impervious to death. ‘If it ever came to that.’ My kind, gentle girl.
‘No, that’s not – What I mean to say is, we can’t legally turn Olivia’s life support off in her condition.’
I didn’t understand. It was as if he had suddenly started speaking Urdu. A throb began pulsing under my eyes.
He cleared his throat, his eyes scurrying momentarily away from mine. ‘We can’t turn life support off from a pregnant woman. Not in Washington State.’
‘Wh –?’ I breathed. My body went limp, boneless, my head spinning.
‘Olivia was – is – Olivia’s pregnant.’
OLIVIA
april, 6 months earlier
The yellow school bus swayed slowly past the glimmering sea that fringed Portage Point and headed toward Seattle: our day-trip destination.
‘Ughh, the bus is so bo-o-oring.’ My best friend, Madison, flopped back in her seat next to me. She took a compact from her purse and started sweeping powder across her already-matte nose.
We were heading to the University of Washington for the start of our two-day college tour. I didn’t know why she was complaining. Being away from school was like a vacation.
Madison tossed her long dark hair and peeked over her shoulder. I knew she was looking at Peter and barely resisted rolling my eyes. Madison could be totally ADD when it came to guys.
I slid the cool metal of my charm bracelet through my fingers. ‘At least we’re out of school,’ I said.
‘Too bad we can’t do something fun.’ She applied a shiny layer of cotton-candy-pink gloss to her lips and smacked them loudly. ‘Filling out college applications is totally lame.’
I bit my cheeks so I wouldn’t say anything. Madison’s parents were rich. She didn’t really feel the same pressure I did about college.
My mom, on the other hand, scrimped and saved every penny so I could go to college after I graduated next year. Four years of tuition was totally going to break her. I kept offering to get a part-time job, but she’d just say my job was to study hard and do well in school.
I stared past Madison out the bus window and chewed a lock of hair. Sunlight slid through the window, interrupted every so often by the shade of passing trees.
‘Did you see Zitty Zara’s new zit this morning?’ Madison stage-whispered. ‘I think there’s a science experiment happening on her forehead.’
‘Don’t be mean!’ I smacked her softly, trying not to laugh. Zara did have gross skin, but I felt bad for her.
‘Don’t they have Accutane now?’ Madison continued. ‘Why doesn’t she take it?’
She’d dropped all pretense of whispering, so I shot her a warning look. Zara was only a few rows in front of us. I didn’t want her hearing.
But Madison ignored me. She could be mean. Like, hurtfully mean. Once in fourth grade we got in a fight, and Madison got all the girls in our class to stop talking to me. Girls who’d been my friends just ‘forgot’ to save me a seat on the bus or invite me to their sleepovers. I’d never forgotten that feeling of not belonging, like wearing someone else’s shoes and feeling the pain all over. Since then I’d made sure never, ever to get on Madison’s bad side.
‘What’s in a zit anyway?’ she asked.
I snickered. ‘It’s pus, you idiot.’
‘Eww. God, even the word is gross. Puh, puh, puh-sss.’ She leaned hard on the p sound. I laughed out loud. ‘Puh-ss,’ she enunciated. ‘It’s like an ejection from your mouth. A voiding of puh-ss from a puh-stule.’
‘Oh God! Gross!’ I gasped, breathless from concealing my laughter.
A few rows ahead, Zara turned around. We both ducked below the seat in front of us, laughing hysterically.
My phone beeped, and I pulled it from my backpack. It was my mom.
Knock knock
Who’s there? I texted back.
Mom: Olive
Me: Olive who?
Mom: Olive ya Olivia!
I laughed and sent her a row of x’s and o’s just as Tyler’s head popped up over the back of our seat.
‘Hey, babe.’ His amber-flecked hazel eyes crinkled in a smile.
My boyfriend was your typical high school athlete. He was captain of the football team, had lettered in every sport he did, and was working toward a football scholarship to UW. He was way popular, and he knew it. Like, in a confident way, not in a dickhead way.
He leaned down and licked my earlobe, trying to be seductive. I giggled and lurched away from him. He frowned, looking