I stay in Blackwell for five more days, hoping for a change in my father’s condition. My sister, mother, my dad’s younger brother, and Mrs. Flynn work out a system where one of us is always in the hospital in case there’s an important update, but none comes.

The waiting, in some ways, is more painful than not knowing—one way or the other—which way he’s going to turn.

On the nights I’m not staying in the hospital, I stay at Carter’s place, and when I look back on the summer it feels like I’m with an almost totally different person.

After breakfast on Sunday morning, I stretch out in the hospital cafeteria, catching up with my sister.

“You’ve been quiet during this whole thing,” I say. “How are you doing?”

She shrugs. “I’m okay. Honestly—and this pains me to say, but it was getting bad this past year. Every day I got home from ballet practice, Dad would be so drunk I couldn’t carry a conversation on with him. Once I asked him—pleaded with him, more like—to change, to try for one week not to drink. I saw him flinch a little bit, but he said he was too old to change.”

“That makes my heart hurt.”

“I know it’s not because of us. But it kind of makes me feel like I’m not enough, you know? And he said something haunting just before he was in the hospital. He said, ‘I need to keep drinking. Or else bad things will happen.’ ”

My heart wrenches that I’ve been so out of the loop this past year when it comes to my father, but I tried for a long time to make things right and fix the family. It didn’t work.

“That’s weird, why do you think he said that?”

“No idea,” she shrugs, sipping her coffee.

I continue. “I feel doubly bad for you, because you probably barely remember what he was like before he started. I was fourteen, so you were what, six or seven when the plant had that fire, and put it into bankruptcy?”

She nods.

“I have little memories of him being at recitals and things, and actually smiling…wait, did you say there was a fire?”

I nod. “Yes. They were trying to move the plant to Mexico, but there was a big resistance movement to keep it here. After that fire though, there was no point.”

My sister shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “Did someone…start the fire?”

I shrug and shake my head. “I don’t think so. They always said it was natural causes, at least.”

Just then, Carter comes, almost bounding into the hospital cafeteria. He’s out of breath.

“Lacy, Eliza, come now. It’s your dad.”

The bottom drops out of my heart, and both me and my sister jump to our feet.

“He’s not going to make it?”

“No,” Carter says between breaths. “He’s talking.”

We sprint—as much as one can sprint in a hospital—up to the 3rd floor. Before I pull into the room where he is.

He’s still pale, and hooked up to a million machines, but his eyes are open, and a slight smile crosses his face.

“Dad?”

“Sweetie,” he groans out, looking at me. “Honey,” He says, looking at my sister. His eyes flit to Carter. “Young man.”

In lieu of giving him a hug, I caress his arm, not wanting to jolt him. Eliza occupies the other side of the bed, and Carter stands at the foot of the bed. A nurse looks on, silently glancing between us and the computer screen monitor attached to him.

“Dad, we were so worried about you.”

He nods, opening his lips to try and speak, and nothing comes out but a pained vibration.

His eyes flutter closed again, and a host of emotions roll through me.

“What’s going on?” I demand, looking at the nurse.

“His body is working on overdrive right now. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you all to leave. The stress looks to be getting to him.”

We’re all about to leave—in spite of the fact that I’m about to snap, I can appreciate that this nurse is just doing her job—when he opens his eyes again, wider this time.

“The Undertaker started it,” he says. “The Undertaker started it.”

My blood runs cold, and then as if those words were coming from a divine source, he closes his eyes again and slips into his unconscious state.

“What the hell is he talking about?” My sister asks as we leave the waiting room.

“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I just don’t know.”

I feel a little sorry for our family that moment, my father babbling like that. Who knows, the undertaker could be an old memory, something stuck deep in his subconscious, or it very well might be his neurons randomly firing.

When my mom and Mrs. Benson arrive later, along with my dad’s brother, we convene with the doctors again.

“His conscious episode today, is a good sign,” Doctor Mulberry says. “The fact that he was lucid enough to say a few words, was good.”

“He made a joke,” Carter adds. “He called me a young man.”

We all look at Carter, and he shrugs. “I think it was a joke. I’m not young anymore.”

The doctor continues. “However, he’s slipped back into an unconscious state, and we’re left with the same questions we had when he came in here. How long can he hang on? When will he shut down completely? We’ve seen episodes like this be over in a few days, and end up with good results, or bad results. We’ve seen the same results take months.”

“When you say good and bad results,” my mom asks, “To be clear, you mean life or death?”

He nods. “That’s correct. For now, all we can do is keep him hooked up to the I.V. and feeding tube.”

Blowing out a long breath, I hang my head.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” the doctor says, before walking away.

We convene in the conference room, the mood somber. My mom is the first to speak.

“This is hard to say, but it needs to be said. We all love him. But we’ve got to live our lives. We can’t continue this business of being at the hospital twenty-four seven. Eliza, you have school. Lacy, you should be in New York, dancing your heart out. Do you think Dad would have wanted you to live in this hospital for a month, or to embrace the new life you’ve worked so hard to build?”

I nod somberly. “It’s just a hard pill to swallow that his last words to me might be…some nonsense about the undertaker.”

Mrs. Flynn and my mom recoil. “What did you just say?”

“When we were in the room with him—before you two got here—he mumbled something about ‘the undertaker started it.’ Just random neurons firing in his brain, no doubt.”

“That’s eerie, to say the least,” Mrs. Flynn pitches in.

I feel Carter’s hand on my shoulder.

“Mrs. Benson, I agree with you.” he says. “We’ve got to get on with our lives, and keep living them—as difficult as that might be. We all loved Mr. Benson. Love. But starting now, the smart thing to do is to set up shifts for when we can be here, and give the doctors our direct lines. For all of our own good and sanity.”

As we’re leaving the hospital, I head to the bathroom, but notice my mom crying on the way out, standing against the wall.

Stopping to comfort her, I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s rough, Mom, I know.”

She nods. “Yes. But that’s not the end of it.” Turning to me with her crystal blue eyes glossed over, she finishes her thought. “These bills are going to ruin me. Us.”

“How much is it?” I ask, grimacing. “If he stays a month, we are well into the six figures.”

I lower my head. “Fuck.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll figure out something.”