My pager goes off too early.
My bag is packed, sitting on my bed, a note for whoever finds it first at the top, neatly centered so that it can’t be missed. There’s a light tap on my door and Karen peeks in.
“Sasha? You’re . . . good, you’re up.”
She’s trying hard to be happy for me, and I’m trying to appear sane. For the rest of the patients in this moment I’m sure there’s a true smile, but the one I’m getting is professional. Now more than ever Karen looks perfect for the cardiac center flier, calm, distant, possibly drugged.
“My pager went off,” I tell her, sitting on the edge of the bed with the bag behind me so she can’t see that I’m already packed. “How much time do I have?”
She glances at her watch. “Twenty minutes, then I need you in a chair. We’ll call your parents, and anyone on your notification list. I—”
“Karen!” I hear a voice yelling from the front desk. “Got another one! Get the little Ries boy ready.”
“Jesus,” she says under her breath, glancing back at me. “Twenty minutes,” she says.
I doubt the ambulance will leave without me. This isn’t exactly a city bus route, but I nod like a good girl. “I’ll be ready.”
She nods and turns to leave, pausing with her hand on the doorframe. “And, Sasha . . . congratulations.”
It’s a dead word in her mouth, one she’s supposed to say. She’s trying to make it sound right, like her lips are in a smile even though I know they’re not. She’s smart enough to keep her back to me when she says it, and I give her credit for trying.
“Thank you,” I say, my fingers digging into my palms while I wait for her to get out of my room already.
As soon as the door closes behind her I grab what I need, opening the door a crack to peek outside. Angela looks at me, and I almost slam it closed again. I thought with all the activity she’d be called off, my guard dog assigned other duties.
“What do you need?” she calls through the closed door as I rifle through my sock drawer for Layla’s Oxy.
I’m more composed on the next try, my eyes meeting hers.
“What do you need?” she asks again. “Chair?”
“No, I’m not ready yet,” I tell her, and she looks at her watch.
“Then you need to get ready,” she says. “Ten minutes and you’re in the chair, out the door.” She doesn’t add good riddance, but I hear it in her voice.
“Karen said I had twenty.”
“Karen’s being pessimistic,” Angela shoots back.
My whole body starts to sweat, the handle of the knife tucked into the back of my pants sliding down my spine. “Listen, Angela . . .”
She cocks her head to one side and raises an eyebrow, like she’s intensely curious to see what I’m going to say next. And honestly, I am too. I’ve got the Oxy in one hand, but her eyebrow is up there pretty high, so I don’t know if that’s going to be enough. The last time I snuck out I still had her trust, plus the pills. Now I’ve only got one of those.
“Listen to what?” she prompts me.
I don’t know, but my brain is racing, trying to come up with what I should do. It reminds me of school, and all the nice people wearing their WWJD bracelets. But it’s not Jesus I’m worried about. What would a normal girl do? What would someone who hadn’t puked down someone else’s throat do? What would a girl who didn’t have a knife in her pants do? What would Sasha Stone do, if she didn’t have Shanna curled inside of her?
“I just want to see the stars again,” I blurt out.
It’s stupid. It’s romantic-comedy, made-for-TV, crap dialogue. So of course it totally works. Angela’s eyes soften a little, the wrinkles around her mouth relaxing a smidge.
“There’s no reason to think you won’t make it,” she says.
“Yeah, but . . .” I let tears pool in my eyes. “What if I don’t?”
I reach for her hand and squeeze it. It doesn’t hurt that five Oxy make an exchange along with the pretense of affection.
She glances down and slides the pills in her pocket. “Five minutes.”
“Thanks,” I say, slipping out the door and gliding down the dim hallway to the side exit. I zip my jacket closed and jam my hands into the pockets, breath crystallizing in front of me.
It’s cold outside, a place I haven’t been in weeks. The air hits my lungs in painful bursts, my toes curling against the snow that edges over the tips of my flip-flops. I take my coat off anyway, hanging it on a nearby tree branch so that Angela will see the sleeve at the edge of the door, dumbly believing that a dying girl who just wants to see the stars again would do so right next to a sodium light.
I head out across the snow, feet punching through drifts. I lose my left flip-flop in the first thirty seconds, the right one staying in place a little farther, only giving up after I fall forward, hands planted in a snowbank up to my elbows.
A little noise comes out of me, a mix of pain and annoyance. I haven’t hit numbness yet, but I won’t wait on it either. This is nothing compared to what’s coming, I tell myself, gritting my teeth as I find a spot I like beneath a cluster of birches. Their bark is as white as the snow, the limbs as thin as my arms, which are now shaking, my skin not even warm enough to melt the snowflakes that land on me.
I hear his bike before I see it, the sound sending a jarring mix of chemicals through Shanna’s dying heart. He’s looking at his phone as he gets off, kicking the stand in place casually, a second nature that looks oh so sexy on him and he doesn’t even realize it. I know that he’ll run his hands through his hair twice, shaking out the snow. I know that he’ll hold his phone in his left hand even though he’s right-handed. I know all these things because I know him.
And I hate that.
I glance back at the cardiac center, gauging the movements of shadows behind the blinds. No one is panicking yet. That’s good.
“Isaac,” I whisper-yell at him, and he glances up, spotting my waving arms.
“Hey, what . . .” He comes to me, leaving the circle of light he parked his bike under. “What the hell are you doing? Jesus Christ, you’re going to freeze out here.”
He’s taking off his coat, and I kind of hate that too because in the end he’s a good guy, maybe even a great guy, and I can’t accept that.
“Listen to me, Isaac,” I say. “I got a heart.”
“You did?” He stops, one shoulder free of his coat, the empty sleeve dragging in the snow. “Holy shit!” he yells. “Holy shit, lady!”
Isaac grabs me, pulling me completely into him, our hearts smashed together. I feel my LVAD protesting the tight space, my lungs crushed by his enthusiasm. I pull away, my feet numb and the coldness working its way up to my knees.
“That’s awesome,” he says, hands still on my shoulders, eyes brighter than anything I see around me.
“Not for Shanna,” I say, my head down, the words falling out like small stones that barely ripple in a pond. But even those ripples reach the far shore, and I feel his hands tighten on me.
“What do you mean? I thought you said that was all bullshit?”
I shake my head, unable to hold his eyes. Because I’m a good girl and I lied to him. Lied to him about ignoring his texts. Lied to him that my heart was his. Lied to get him here, right now.
There are two warm spots on my cheeks, a small trickle of tears that will freeze before they hit the ground. I raise my head. The least I can do is look at him.
“She’s always been here, Isaac. And she loves you so much. The way she feels . . . it’s . . . I can’t even begin to tell you. Her heart swells. I always thought that was a stupid thing they just said in romance novels, but it’s real. It’s real and she feels it.”
I take his hand, now hanging limply at his side, and place it on my chest, right near the scar that peeks out of my tank top.
“She’s so in love with you,” I say, holding his gaze.
“Right,” he says, his voice colder than the air around us. “She is. Not you.”
He tries to reclaim his hand, but I keep it pressed against my skin. “It’s a compliment, Isaac,” I try to explain.
He jerks away as I hear the first raised voice from the cardiac center. Words can’t be made out, but I recognize the hint of controlled panic.
“A compliment?” Isaac repeats. “I’m supposed to be happy that you can’t admit that you care about me?”
“No,” I shake my head, half-frozen tears flying from my face, my lips going numb. “It’s not like that. You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t!” Isaac is yelling now, his voice echoing back off the birch trees, my arms, the building behind us.
“Shhhh . . .” I urge him, lifting my finger to my lips, the knife I’d pulled from my waistband coming with it.
“What the fuck is this?” Isaac yells, backing up a few steps, his hands in the air.
“SHHHHH!!!!!” I hiss at him, the sound sliced by the blade, the heat from my lips fogging the metal. “They can’t find me. Not yet.”
“Who can’t find you? Sasha— What—?”
“She loves you,” I repeat, pulling the knife away from my face. “Shanna loves you so much and all she wants is to be with you. I can’t take that away from her, not when I owe her so much already.”
I slip the straps of my tank top down off my shoulders, my chest bare and naked in the moonlight. His eyes follow, even here, even now.
“Sasha . . .”
“I need you to listen to me,” I say, raising my voice so he can hear me over what’s now a group of people calling my name inside the cardiac center. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” he says, swallowing hard, eyes flickering over my shoulder.
“She’s going to come to you now,” I tell him. “Once she’s with you I’ll be okay. I’ll be good again.”
“Sasha . . . what are you even saying?” Isaac takes a couple of tentative steps toward me, his eyes on the knife and not my face.
“I’m saying what comes next will be disturbing, but I’m going to be okay.”
I’m close to numb, but the knife still hurts going in, the tip of the blade barely registering when it cuts through deadened scar tissue, then flaring into a bright streak of pain as it goes deeper, past skin, through nerves to the hard surface of my sternum. It makes a noise when it scrapes across bone as I follow the path of the scar, calmly lifting my breast as I curve underneath it.
“Jesus Christ, what the—help! Somebody! Anybody!”
Isaac is screaming, immobile, torn between running away and stopping me. Blood is pouring from me, running down my torso, soaking my shirt, eating through the snow at my feet and creating steam all around me as my body heat leaves in a cloud, my life evaporating in the night air.
But I am not done yet, and I am determined, I am Sasha Stone. This is mind over matter and my mind is the strongest thing in me and I will not falter, will not hesitate to exorcise my sister from me and reclaim my life, even as I give her what she wants. What she needs.
“Isaac,” I say, staggering a little in the snow, tasting blood on my teeth. “Isaac, come here.”
And he does, his hands on my shoulders again, now slicked with blood as the weight of my breast pulls the opening I’ve cut in my chest wider. I reach in, numb fingers warmed by my own body cavity. I find the LVAD, the metal now cold from the night air rushing into me. I clutch it, feeling Shanna, pounding, pulsing, unsure.
And I pull.
She doesn’t want to come out, doesn’t want to be torn out of the womb of my body. And I understand her fear, understand how hard it is to come face-to-face with someone and show them all your ugliness. Because I’ve been there, with the scar on my face and wires in my chest, and still I persevered. So I’m taking her out now, tearing out my own ugliness so that I can be new again.
Veins come with it, the connections to my body unwilling to be severed, the cord of my LVAD stretching tight against my stomach as they’re pulled out through the hole in my chest. It’s still working, spraying blood in a fine mist over my face and his as I cut the cord, cut the veins, cut through everything that holds us together as one.
I give Shanna to Isaac, and she quivers in his hands, happy to be home.
“That’s for you,” I manage to say, before I fall forward into my own frozen blood.