“That’s right,” I say, remembering.
Dad glances at Jake and then back at me. “They don’t think Regina’s going to make it.”
Fear bubbles from my nose. I swipe at it with my hands, try to pry it off my face, but it’s thick. I watch as it presses through my fingers and slides down my arms.
“I called you for a reason, kid,” Dad barks at Jake. “Hold her hand or something.”
Jake takes my hand, and I hear him praying under his breath. The fear doesn’t stop, but it slows a little.
“The older girl, Sharon, she’s all right. Broke her collarbone, but they’ll probably release her tomorrow.”
“And the Sadler twins?” I ask.
“Doctors don’t know,” Dad says. “They’re still running tests.”
“Where are they?”
“Regina was life-flighted to Portland, but the others are at Stratus General.”
“I have to get over& those owpD; there,” I say, swinging my legs over the tailgate.
“Hop in the truck,” Dad says. “I’ll drive.”
The ride to the hospital isn’t a long one—Stratus General is just past the high school—but it seems to take forever. If it weren’t for the Palatine here, the war raging overhead, if it weren’t for all of that, maybe Canaan or Helene would have been able to stop the accident. Maybe they could have prevented this tragedy.
I’m crammed between Jake and my dad. The rattle of the truck is all the noise there is—that and the gurgling black tar that’s everywhere. Jake strokes my hand, still praying. Always praying.
I wish I could stop seeing the fear. And it’s not just mine anymore. It bleeds from all three of us, filling the floor of the truck, multiplying, leeching off our misery. Seeing how thick it is, how miserable we are, makes it all so much harder. Even the golden halo on my wrist isn’t much help. I close my eyes and press my head against the seat back.
Regina’s not going to make it. Twelve years old, and dead on her way to dance camp. What a waste. What a stupid, unnecessary waste. Did the Prince do this? Did he do it to force me into his halo?
Is Regina going to die because of me?
I make Dad pull over so I can vomit. I climb over Jake and into the overgrown grass on the side of the highway. There’s a hill here. A few missteps and you could tumble a good hundred
feet or more without finding a thing to slow your descent. It’s tempting to try it. But Jake runs a warm hand up my back and hands me an old shirt that smells like the cab of Dad’s truck. I wipe my face on it and fling it into the bed.
“You okay?” Jake asks.
“No,” I say. Over his shoulder I see the fear spilling out the open door and onto the street. I see Dad’s head pressed to the steering wheel. “It can’t be a coincidence. A car accident on Crooked Leg Bridge the day I decided not to wear the Prince’s halo? It’s my fault the girls are in danger. My fault some of them may die.”
“That’s a stretch, Elle.”
“No,” I tell him, certain, adamant. “No, it’s not. The Prince showed me this. In Danakil. He showed me a car accident on the bridge, but it wasn’t Miss Macy. It was my dad. He was dying and there was no one here to save him. And that’s . . . that’s why I agreed to talk to the Prince. To answer his questions. Because he said he could fix it. He showed me, Jake.”
Jake’s eyes close. “It wasn’t real, Elle.”
“I know! But it was a threat. I see that now. It was a threat disguised as . . . as . . . something else. As help. He wanted me to feel indebted. And I did. I fell for it.”
I want him to tell me it could very well be a coincidence, but Jake doesn’t believe in coincidences, and he’&liinows not going to lie to me. Not again.
He grabs my shoulders now, his hazel eyes dazzling in the dying sunlight.
“It’s still not your fault. We’re each responsible for our actions. You for yours and the Prince for his. He’s a created being just like you. Just like me. And he will answer for his sins.”
He’s fierce when he’s like this, and I love him for it.
“We need to go,” he says, taking my chin in his hand. “I’d like to see if I can help.”
Of course! I can’t believe I forgot about his gift. About his hands.
“Oh my gosh, yes. Let’s go.”
We wade through the long grass and back to the truck. And for the last four minutes of the drive, there’s hope. That we could make a difference. That even if this is my fault, Jake could make it better. Could make them better.
Dad drops us at the sliding glass doors of the hospital and leaves to park the truck. I rush inside, Jake behind me. Pastor Noah and Becky meet us in the waiting room. They’ve been here for a while, I can tell. Sharon’s little brother sits at a small table at Becky’s side with a portable DVD player and earphones.
“His mother ran to the cafeteria,” Becky explains.
“What about the other girls?” I ask.
“It’s a waiting game with the twins,” Pastor Noah says. “A couple broken bones and lacerations, but they haven’t been able to wake them.”
“And Miss Macy?”
“She’s awake,” says a voice behind me.
I startle and turn. I’m face-to-face with a doctor who looks remarkably like the giant orangutan at the Oregon Zoo. His arms are too long for his round body, his eyes are closely set, and his red beard is patchy. But he has a kind smile. “Brielle, I assume?”
“Yes,” I say. “Can I see her?”
He nods. “She’s asking for you. But just for a few minutes, all right? She needs to rest.”
“Is she okay?”
“Seems to be. She can live without her spleen. We’ll keep her
for a while. Observation and recovery. She’s got a drain in, so be careful with her.”
“Of course.”
Miss Macy looks very small and frail in her hospital bed. I enter, Jake by my side. The doctor almost didn’t let him come with me, but I can be rather persuasive when I need to be.
“Elle, sweetness.” Her voice is small and hoarse, but I burst into tears at the sound of it. “Now, stop that,” she says, her words coming in short, raspy chunks. “I need you to tell me about the girls. That monkey man wasn’t the least bit helpful. And this little gal here is under doctor’s orders not to tell me a thing.” She’s talking about a candy striper stacking supplies in the cabinet beyond her bed.
“I’m a good soldier,” the girl says with a little salute, “but if you’d like to update her, I won’t say a thing to Dr. Olsen.”
Jake gives me a look that doesn’t take a genius to decode. He can’t touch Miss Macy’s stomach with the candy striper here. Can’t even try.
“Come on, Elle,” she says. “Spill it.”
I tell her because I can’t lie to her. Not well, anyway. But I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d lied or sent someone else in first, because the first thing that happens when I tell her about Regina is that fear gushes from her chest. Black and soupy. It runs down her stomach and onto the bed, pooling where the bed is folded and then dripping in rivulets to the floor. Her hands, jammed with IVs, tremble and her shoulders shake.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” Jake says. It’s a weird thing to say. Especially to Miss Macy, who knows nothing about Jake’s gift. But it doesn’t faze her. She’s always thought Jake had superpowers.
“You know what you can do? You can pray.” She looks nearly as fierce as Jake did just minutes ago alongside the highway. “When we pray, things happen. Strange things. Miraculous things. You pray, young man. And you don’t stop.”
I hear her words but can’t keep my eyes off the fear. Her fear. My fear. It’s all mingling. Even the candy striper adds her own to the slick mess on the floor. Before I can gather myself enough to answer, we’re interrupted by a nurse who shuffles in with a tray of needles.
“I’m going to need you two to head on out now. This wonderful lady here’s got some recuperating to do.”
I lean in to kiss Miss Macy on the cheek, everything about me slow and weighted down by fear.
Jake takes my hand and leads me out the door. “She’ll be all right,” he whispers. “If I was concerned at all I would have done it anyway.”
“Okay.” That’s all I can manage right now.
“Let’s see if we can get in to see the girls,” he says.
But our efforts are blocked. We’re allowed a glimpse of the twins through a pane of glass, but the doctors are running tests and everyone’s been asked to wait outside. We stand with their parents for a while. Both of them are so bound by fear they can barely stand. Mrs. Sadler is hunched over, hugging her abdomen, the fear leaking through every meager gap. Her husband rubs her shoulders,&s D1A his arms shaking, his shoulders trembling with the black weight pressing down on him.
He smiles at me though. When I talk. When I say hopeful things. And yet, the fear still runs. I wish again and again that I didn’t have to see the fear. That I could let myself believe this man isn’t entirely void of hope. But as I watch, as I listen to the
tragic best-case scenario Dr. Olsen’s painted for them, I can’t help but succumb to the fear myself. It’s not fair for these two little girls to lose their lives. Not fair to them and their futures, not fair to their parents.
When Mr. Sadler runs out of words, Jake and I stand by him and his wife in silence. We watch the little girls sleep, their chests moving up and down, helped by the machines on either side of them. Tia has one arm in a bright pink cast, and Pria’s leg is in traction. But with their orange hair splayed across their white pillows, both remind me of Helene’s celestial form. Small. Fragile. I pray they have some of her strength. Some of her fight.
Jake presses a hand against the window. I know he’s praying, but fear marks every single one of his movements: a smear on the glass, a shoe print on the floor. He wants to fix them so badly. I know he does.
Eventually we’re shooed away from the viewing area as well. “Family only,” the doctor says. I squeeze Mrs. Sadler’s shoulder and we go, Jake’s hand burning hot in mine. There’s nothing more we can do here. Nothing more to say.
Before we leave, and even though visiting hours are over, we slip into Sharon’s room. She’s alone, her neck in a brace, her arm in a sling, staring at a muted television.
“Hey, Sharon,” I say, trying to remember if she’s just turned thirteen or fourteen.
“Miss Brielle? What are you doing here?”
“Checking on you, of course.” I try to smile. Try to inflect something other than sadness. Where the other rooms were full of fear, this one is drenched in the waters of misery. It runs down her face like tears, soaking her sheets, splashing to the floor.
“I’m okay. Better than Regina, at least. If I hadn’t called
shotgun,” she says, her voice warbling, “if I hadn’t taken the front seat, maybe she’d be okay.”
I want to hug her, but my hands are thick with fear. I’m afraid to touch her, afraid to pass it along, so I wrap my arms around myself and try to pray. But it’s so hard.
Jake reaches out, takes her hand. “Don’t give up on her,” he says.
A sob shakes her, but the brace and the sling keep her from bending to it. “It was awful, Elle. It’s . . . I don’t understand what happened.”
“The sheriff told my dad they’re not sure,” I tell her. “He said Miss Macy must’ve lost control of the van.”
She takes a labored breath. “S& to be owpD;he ran into something, I think. We just stopped. The hood was all crunched up. And then the van flew sideways, right off the bridge.”
“Through the guardrail?” Jake asks.
“Over it. And then I wake up here and my mom tells me Regina might not make it.” The misery runs faster now, and I close my eyes just to escape for a second. The room grows very, very quiet.
When I open my eyes, Jake is functioning the way he was meant to function. Entirely in his element. His hand is on Sharon’s shoulder, and she’s fast asleep.
“Almost done,” he says. Every bit of the fear on him has gone. Having the ability to act, to do, to fix, frees him from it. I wish I could figure out how to escape the fear that comes with my gift. Seeing only multiplies it, makes it harder to evade.
“Try it,” the Prince had said. “That’s all I ask.”
Even if I didn’t use the dark halo at night, if I let myself dream, it could still be helpful here, couldn’t it? Where fear and
misery are everywhere. Where it renders me useless. I’d be so much more valuable if I could do something other than shake at the sight of it.
“Okay,” Jake says. “You ready to go?”
Sharon looks peaceful now, her head nestled into her pillow, her lips softly opened. It’s tempting to take off the brace, let her be truly comfortable. She doesn’t need it now, but it’s best to let the medical professionals decide these things.
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s.”
Dad’s in the waiting room talking to Pastor Noah. Well, kind of talking. He’s got a magazine open, covering half his face, but he nods every now and then at the pastor’s remarks. It’s absolutely rude, but it’s progress. When he sees me, he tosses me the keys to his truck. They smack me in the gut and fall to the floor.
“Sorry, baby,” he says. “Thought you were paying attention.”
“I was. I just didn’t expect to be attacked by jagged metal.”
Jake scoops the keys off the floor.
“I’m going to stay here tonight,” Dad says. “We’re going to take turns sitting with Miss Macy—Noah and I.”