Finally, it was over. The trial was ended; the judge, jury and parties had finished everything up, and the courtroom was emptying out. Jenn took a deep breath; she was starting to feel her head spin again. She sat at the table while Andrew fielded questions from worried family members and other people involved in the case. While he was talking, Kenzie slid into his seat and started rubbing her back gently. “Hey, sis, you made it. How’re you feeling?”

“Ugh, Kenzie, I’m so glad this is over.” Jenn reached over to her sister and gave her a quick hug. “I’m so tired. I just want to go home.”

“Yeah, I bet. Well, you did great. And now — oh my god.” Kenzie suddenly stopped talking, her eyes widening at Jenn. “Jenn, your nose is bleeding! Do you have a tissue?”

“Huh?” Jenn reached up to her face and felt the wetness below her nose, dripping onto her lips.

Kenzie rummaged into her purse to see if she had anything to stop the bleeding, but panicked briefly when she didn’t. “I’ll run to the bathroom and get something,” Kenzie said.

When she returned, Jenn’s hands were covered with blood. She frantically reached for the paper towels in Kenzie’s hands and shoved them up to her face. “It won’t stop. Kenzie, it’s not slowing down.”

Kenzie could see the growing worry in her sister’s eyes. “Okay, we’re going to the hospital. Come on, get into my car.” Kenzie reached over and tapped Andrew on the shoulder, telling him where they were going. He immediately stopped talking to the crowd around him and leaned concernedly down to Jenn, but she waved him off. Kenzie could take her to the hospital; let Andrew commune with everyone before coming down there. His eyes showed strong concern, but at Jenn’s insistence, he kissed her on the cheek lightly before Kenzie brushed him off.

Kenzie raced to the hospital, practically testing the speed limits of her car. Jenn sat in the passenger seat with wads of paper towels pressed up against her nose. The pair sprinted into the hospital and were unhappy to not get a room right away. After the bleeding finally stopped and Jenn could be examined, she sat nervously picking at her fingernails waiting for the doctor to come in.

The news was grim. Perhaps it was the stress of her circumstances, or some other undetermined cause, but Jenn’s kidney failure was happening at an increasingly alarming rate and because of her other complications, a transplant was an additional risk, and her kidneys were at the end of their functional lives. The doctor told a somber-faced Kenzie and Jenn the situation. There was no getting around it: it was unlikely Jenn would survive another six months.

The sisters were too shocked by the news to have any audible reaction. They could only sit there together, clasping their hands together tightly. Their minds had gone blank.

This was it. For almost six years, Jenn had endured IVs, medication, hospital visits; she had been poked, prodded, and, ultimately, abused by doctors; she had been the victim of too many physical and emotional traumas over the course of her life. Now it was all going to be over. The suffering would end.

Jenn always knew this day would come, and she was remarkably calm in the face of the news. She was worried for Kenzie, for her parents, for Andrew; for all the people she wanted to fight for now. For everything to end — that was the pain of the reality. She wasn’t afraid to die. She was afraid not to be there for the others. Not after she had endured so much and developed a fire, she never knew she had.

A few minutes later, as Jenn and Kenzie ruminated in silence, tears sliding down their faces, there was a knock at the door and Andrew poked his head through the threshold. He was ignorant to the atmosphere in the room at first, and smiled. “You guys. We won.”

Jenn sniffed and sat upright. “We won?” Her eyes filled with tears — it was not the reaction Andrew had anticipated. “Oh my god. Andrew....” She reached out her hands, and he came to her and enveloped her in the warmest embrace.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Andrew pulled away from her and looked deep into her eyes.

She looked away, her vision blurred from the tears in her eyes.

“Andrew,” Kenzie spoke up softly, “we just got some news. It’s not good.”

“What?” Andrew’s eyes looked back and forth between the sisters. “What is it? Tell me.”

“I — I only have a few months left.”

“What?”

Jenn nodded. “The kidney failure is happening a lot faster, and there’s nothing they can do. I’m sorry. I just—” She gasped, trying to get more air amid her sobs.

Andrew was nearly out of breath, too. He leaned back into her and hugged her tightly, just holding her and rocking back and forth. Kenzie rubbed her hands up and down Jenn’s back. There the three of them sat, quiet, crying, together.

* * *

Thirty days later — thirty days of continued decline for Jenn in the hospital — Andrew showed up at her room one night while Jenn was watching the evening news. Kenzie was there, too, as was her habit; she would visit Jenn in the morning and again in the evening. Today she sat reading the paper in a chair in the corner when Andrew arrived.

“Knock knock!” he said while entering, prompting a smile from Jenn in the bed. She was always glad to see him. “Guess what I’ve got here — it’s the judge’s official order from the trial. Listen to this: the jury found St. Benedict Regional Medical Center guilty on all counts and has ordered the Connellys to pay you a $10 million settlement.”

“Wow!” Jenn exclaimed.

“Wait, it gets better. Just as they offered initially, they will cover all of your medical bills— past and present. On top of that, there will be a new trust account set up in your name for victims of medical malpractice — again, past, present and future. Plus all of the hospital’s board of directors and executive staff are gone, and there will be court-appointed replacements for now.” Andrew sat down on the edge of her bed. “And the best part? The newly staffed hospital is going to create a lupus research endowment fund set up in your name.”

“Oh my gosh, wow!” Jenn didn’t know what to say; this was all so sudden. The past year of her life had been such a whirlwind of tragedy and pain that she wasn’t accustomed to receiving all of this good news. She felt honored and flattered — and happy to have achieved all of this, especially with Andrew.

He laid a gentle kiss on her forehead. “You did it, sweetie. I’m so proud of you.” There was one other thing she achieved in the victory in court, and Andrew stifled a grin to not give more away; Jenn would find out very soon. For now, she was content to lie there next to him for a few minutes, and her gaze faded out as she daydreamed.

But she was abruptly jolted out of her happy thoughts by a familiar voice on the television: it was Holly Mills, the reporter who had interviewed Jenn for the local television station, the one who had blown up the whole scandal into a national affair. She was sitting at the news desk with a somber voice, and Jenn snapped to attention when she heard a familiar name.

“The son of a former hospital executive was found dead on Friday in his home in what appears to be a suicide after the hospital’s fall from grace. Steve Connelly was discovered by his mother in the garage after being thought missing for several hours. Steve was the son of Richard Connelly, the former president and CEO of the St. Benedict Regional Medical Center — the family and hospital recently lost a medical malpractice case. Steve Connelly was 30 years old.”

“Oh my god,” Jenn gasped, and put her hand to her mouth. “Did you guys see that?”

Kenzie nodded. “Yeah. Wow. I can’t believe that.”

Andrew immediately turned to Jenn to make sure she was okay.

She nodded back. “I think so. I’m just — I should have seen that coming.”

“Huh?”

Jenn looked guilty. “Okay, I didn’t tell anyone this, but a couple of days ago — hmm, let’s see, I think it was Wednesday — Steve actually visited me here.”

“Jenn!” Kenzie turned to look at her in utter shock. “Why did you say that? You don’t owe him anything!”

“I know, I know. I just thought I should see him, knowing what I do now,” she said, referring to her new prognosis. “It was kind of cute: he brought me this little rubber duck as a gift, to remind me of our first date when we walked in the park and fed the ducks. That was kind of nice.” Seeing the skeptical looks on both Andrew’s and Kenzie’s faces, she rushed on. “I know what he’s done has been horrible, but it was nice to see him, as a human being for once.

“Anyway, he came in looking really nervous and upset, and we talked for a while, but then he broke down and started crying and apologized for everything. He wished things had been different with us and he hoped that I could forgive him.”

“What did you say?” Andrew asked. He couldn’t see how Jenn could ever forgive any of the hospital staff for the things she went through.

Jenn shrugged. “Nothing. I couldn’t say anything; it was such a shock. It was weird, though. He didn’t stay long, but before he left he told me he’d just wanted to see me before it was too late. I didn’t say anything about me, so I didn’t know if he knew or what he meant by that. But now it all makes sense.”

A pregnant silence fell upon the trio. To Jenn, hearing about Steve’s death was the bookend of the entire ordeal she had been through. He had been there through the worst of it — as part of the worst of it— and now, he was gone. She didn’t know what to feel; her emotions were so conflicted lately that everything was overwhelming.

Jenn went to bed early that night, asking Andrew and Kenzie to leave her alone until the morning. They both understood; she needed some time alone with her thoughts. Before he left, Andrew told her he had a surprise for her in the morning, so not to stay up too late.

Sure enough, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, the door slowly creaked open. Jenn was awake, clean and fed, and although she was still reeling with the news from yesterday, she was excited to know what Andrew had in store for her. But when the door opened all the way, it wasn’t Andrew standing there; it was her parents. Jenn opened her arms wide to accept them into an embrace.

When they parted, her mother spoke up. “Jenn, it’s time to come home.”

“Huh?”

Her mother smiled sadly. “You’ve been in the hospital long enough. We’ve spoken to the doctors and they all agree it’s time. We’ll bring you hospice care at our house, but we don’t want you to stay here anymore. Is that okay?”

Jenn, surprised by the news, but she agreed. She nodded quickly. “Yes. Sure, I think it’s time, too.” She packed up her meager belongings and gingerly hopped off her bed; her mother was quick to support her tiny body. “Before we go, though,” her father added, “we have to stop somewhere first.”

Okay... Jenn thought, confused. Andrew, is this your surprise? Because it’s not a very good one.

Jenn’s parents told her to close her eyes as they put her in the car, asking her not to open them until they said. She rode in near-blindness, the shadows from the sunlight outside dancing across her closed eyelids. She tried to follow the corner’s the car turned to guess where she was, but she was stumped. She would just have to wait and see.

Then the car stopped. Jenn lurched forward for a moment as the vehicle came to a stop, and she waited for her mother to come around to the back and let her out. Carefully, her mother guided her out of the car, onto the curb and up the sidewalk a few feet. Her eyes still closed tightly, Jenn tried to listen intently for what was going on, but all she could hear was the soft tapping of her own shoes on the concrete and the wind blowing past her ears.

“Okay,” her mother said, “open your eyes.”

The light hit Jenn’s eyes abruptly and she couldn’t see anything at first. But then, when they adjusted —

“Surprise!” A crowd of at least 30 people stood in front of her in a big group, her parents, Kenzie and Andrew at the front of it, all smiling, and clapping when Jenn arrived. Behind them was the St. Benedict hospital, bright and shiny as always, with its name on the sign covered by some large cloth. For a moment, Jenn was crestfallen — why had everyone wanted her to come here of all places?

Then Andrew rushed up to her. “I told you I had a surprise for you. Watch.” As Andrew stood next to Jenn, his arm around her waist, two members of the crowd reached up to the ropes from which the banner hung, gave it one firm tug, and the banner came floating down on the sidewalk.

Jenn didn’t even register what she saw at first. When the banner came down, Jenn gasped: on the front of the hospital were now the words “Jenn A. Walsh Memorial Hospital.” She clapped her hand over her mouth and burst into tears. Next to her, Andrew grinned and pulled her close to him, uniting their lips into the most passionate kiss. Everyone cheered and applauded.