by Kat Zhang
A hint of fear.
“Yeah,” Addie said. “I’m coming.”
The main room was full of quiet chaos. Some of the kids were still half asleep, slumped into the wooden chairs, their heads resting on the tabletops. Eli had curled up in a corner, scrunched down so low his knees practically shielded his face from view. A few of the older kids talked quietly near the far door.
Hally was just coming out of the alcove. She held her glasses in one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other, her mouth open in the wide O of a yawn. A second later, Ryan stepped into view. He gave a quick glance about the room, and our eyes met. Addie looked away. But in another moment, he was by our side.
“You all right?” He kept his voice buried under the Ward’s sleepy murmur of noise.
“Fine,” said Addie.
He hesitated.
“She’s fine, too,” Addie said, and pushed away from the wall, moving toward a corner of the room. She’d just passed the nurse when the woman clapped her hands.
“Listen up,” she said. “Eli? Shelly? I’ve got your meds, if you’ll come over, please.”
Addie had stopped moving at the clap. When she started walking again, the movement must have caught the nurse’s eye; she looked down, frowned a moment, and then smiled again. “I almost forgot, Addie. Someone just came to tell me that your parents are on the line.”
Our parents. They’d have told them our results by now. All else flew from my mind. Our parents were on the phone and that was all that mattered in the world.
“Can I talk to them?” Addie said. Our voice came out louder than I’d expected. “Please? I need to—”
“One moment, Addie.” The nurse held up her hand and turned to a little girl who’d just walked up. “Here you go, Shelly—where’s your cup? You need water with this, remember, dear?”
The girl moved off again, and Addie tried to recapture the nurse’s attention. “Please, can’t I talk to them now?”
The woman hesitated. She looked around the room, then at the bottles of pills in her hand. Finally, she sighed. “You can’t wait five minutes?” Addie shook our head, eyes pleading. “Well, all right, then. I’ll find someone to take you to a phone.”
“Thank you,” Addie whispered.
Ryan raised his head as we passed, but said nothing.
It was early, and the hall was relatively empty—just a delivery boy and a pair of doctors bent over a clipboard, talking quietly. But before long, another woman in a gray-and-white nurse’s uniform showed up, and the nurse flagged her down.
“Addie here needs to use a phone,” the first woman said. “I’m bringing the other children to breakfast. Would you take her to an office? It’s line four.”
“Sure.” The other nurse smiled at us. “Right this way.”
We hadn’t walked more than a few minutes before she let us into a small office. A desk, littered with papers and manila folders, took up most of the room. The nurse gestured toward a swivel chair behind the desk. “You can sit there.”
Addie did as she bid, watching as she lifted the phone from its cradle and pushed one of the glowing orange buttons.
“Hello?” she said. A pause. “Your daughter, sir? Her name?” Another pause. “Okay, then. Yes, she’s right here. One second, please.”
She placed the phone in our outstretched hands. Addie smashed it to our ear. “Hello?”
“Hey there, Addie,” Dad said. False cheer strained each word. “How’re you doing?”
“Okay,” Addie said. She twisted the telephone cord around our wrist, swallowed, and curled away from the nurse, who hovered near the desk. “I miss you. And Mom. And . . .”
And Lyle, but our voice gave out before we could say it.
There was the tiniest of hesitations. Then Dad spoke again, and the cheer was gone. “We miss you, too, Addie. We love you. You know that, right, sweetheart?”
Addie nodded. Gripped the phone. Whispered, “Yeah. I know.” When Dad didn’t speak, she said, “How’s Lyle?”
What did you tell him?
“Oh, he’s great, Addie,” Dad said. Then, as if realizing how this might come across, he added, “He’s really upset about you being gone.”
Addie said nothing.
“But we . . . got a call last night,” Dad said. “From his doctor.”
Our muscles stiffened.
“Addie, they’re going to move Lyle up the transplant list. They said . . . they said they’d give him top priority. Even if they’ve got to transport it from another area.”
At first, nothing. Then coldness. Dizziness. Fire in the backs of our eyes. And finally, a gasp from clenched lungs. We knew what this meant, not only for Lyle but for us.
A transplant meant no more hours of dialysis every week for Lyle, no more meaningless bruising and days when he didn’t want to open his eyes.
A transplant meant our parents’ personal miracle.
A transplant meant a trade.
“You said it would only be two days, Dad. You said . . . you said you’d come get me if . . .” Our throat was closing up. We squeezed the receiver so tightly our fingers cramped. Addie couldn’t finish her sentence.
“I know,” came Dad’s voice. “I know, Addie. I know. But—”
“You said,” she cried. A sob punched through our chest. She squeezed our eyes shut, but the tears escaped anyway, hot down our cheeks. “You promised.”
Our brother. Our wonderful, terrible, annoying little brother, fixed up nearly good as new.
And we would never see him again.
“Addie,” our father said. “Please, Addie—”
The roaring in our ears drowned out his words. What did it matter what he wanted to say? He wasn’t coming.
He wasn’t coming.
He wasn’t coming. Not to take us away.
“They say they can make you better, Addie,” he said. “They’re a good hospital—and they’re the only place in this part of the country that specializes in this . . . this sort of thing. We want you to get better. You want to get better, Addie, don’t you?”
There was no mention of what Addie “getting better” would mean for me, for his other daughter, who he claimed to love. He’d said he loved me. I’d heard him.
Addie didn’t respond. She held the phone to our ear and cried, knowing the nurse was watching us and hating her for seeing.
“Addie?” our father said quietly. “I love you.”
But what about me?
“We—” Addie gasped. “I mean, I—”
It was too late. The silence seeping through the phone said it all.
“I want to go home,” Addie said. “Dad, take me home. Please—”
“You’re sick, Addie,” he said. “And I can’t make you better. But they—they say they’ve got all these ways. They can . . .”
“Dad—”
“I know this is hard, Addie.” His voice was tight. “God help me, I know, but it’s the best thing for you right now, okay? They’re going to help you get well, Addie.”
How much of that did he truly believe, and how much was he just saying it so he could feel better about abandoning us?
“But I’m not sick,” Addie said. “I—”
“You are,” he said. The words were so heavy with defeat they knocked our breath away.
“I’m not,” Addie said, but so softly only I heard.
“We’ll call again tonight, and we’re going to fly up as soon as we possibly can,” Dad said. “Addie, listen to what they tell you, okay? They only want the best for you. Mom and I only want the best for you. Do you understand, Addie?”
For a long moment, she said nothing. He said nothing. The phone line buzzed with silence.
“Addie?” our father said again.
We gave no reply.
Twenty
We were numb for the rest of the day. There were too many people, too many pairs of eyes. The other kids. The nurses. Mr. Conivent. We were never alone, and we wanted nothing more than to be left alone
. Instead, they shoved us from one room to another, one meal, one activity, to another, always under surveillance, always watched. Everything was background noise, like static on a radio. Again and again, Ryan or Hally tried to speak to us. Addie fled whenever either came too close, turning our face and threading through the crowd of kids until we were as far away as possible. I didn’t try to persuade her otherwise.
Finally, night fell and a nurse lined everyone up, leading us through the now quiet halls to the Ward. Beyond Nornand’s windows, a yolk-colored sun dropped slowly below the horizon. Some of the kids took their medication while the rest of us milled around. We sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs, staring at the carpet.
“Addie?” Kitty said, breaking us from our reverie. “We’ve got to go back to our room now.”
Addie followed her silently. Hally walked beside us, too, her hands twisting one in the other, her eyes darting between us and her brother, who kept a greater distance. She seemed ready to say something just as Addie reached our door, but she didn’t, just looked at the ground and disappeared into the room next to ours.
Kitty shut the door after we entered. Our duffel bag now sat beside the second bed, a folded white nightgown laying on top. Addie didn’t bother changing, just crawled beneath the covers without even kicking off our shoes.
After a few minutes, the lights clicked off. Finally, there was darkness and no more watching, no more meaningless noise. Addie gritted our teeth, but the tears strained past our eyelids anyway.
Silence. Then a whisper in the night.
“Addie?” Kitty had slipped from her own bed and padded over to ours. Darkness shielded her expression; we saw nothing but the soft shape of her nose, the roundness of her cheeks and chin. Her voice was reedy, like a sad lullaby. “Addie, are you crying?” Addie turned our face toward the wall, but a hand brushed against our cheek. “Addie?”
“Yes?” Addie whispered.
For a moment, Kitty didn’t reply. I almost thought she’d returned to her bed. But Addie looked up, and Kitty was still standing there, more fairylike than ever in her white nightgown.
“Sometimes . . .” She hesitated, then went on. “Sometimes it helps if I think about what they’re doing at home.” When Addie didn’t break eye contact, Kitty swallowed and said, “I used to talk with Sallie about home. About my brothers and sister.”
“Sallie?” Addie said.
Kitty nodded. “She was my old roommate. But she hasn’t been here for months.”
“Where did she go?” Addie said, pushing ourself slowly up. She leaned backward until our shoulder blades pressed against the wall. Our eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to make out Kitty’s trembling mouth.
“They told us she went home,” she said. “Like Jaime.”
Jaime again. Should we tell her? Would it do any good?
“Addie?”
Something in her voice made us bite back our weariness and the stabbing in our gut. It was the same voice Lyle used when it was just him and us and he was too tired to worry about sounding tough.
Thinking about Lyle made our chest clench again. If there was anything good coming out of this hell, it was the chance that our little brother might get the chance we’d all been aching for.
Addie patted the bed next to us. Kitty hesitated, then sank onto our mattress, tucking her legs up beneath her.
“Tell me about home,” Addie said.
“Home?”
Addie nodded. “Home. Family. Tell me about your brothers.”
“I’ve got three,” Kitty said. “And a sister. But Ty’s the nicest. He takes care of us since Mom. . . . He’s twenty-one.”
“Oh?” Addie said. Gingerly, she reached over and ran our fingers through the girl’s long hair. It was tangled, and we had no brush, so she began working the knots out by hand. Kitty stiffened, then relaxed.
“He plays the guitar, and he’s really good.”
Addie continued smoothing the knots from Kitty’s hair.
“He said he’d teach me to play, too,” Kitty said. “But that . . . But he’s in trouble now. Because he tried to keep them from taking me away—”
Our fingers stilled.
“Let’s talk about your sister,” Addie said. “How old is she?”
“Seventeen—no, I think she’s eighteen now.”
“I have a little brother,” Addie said quickly, ignoring the pain as it intensified in our chest. “His name’s Lyle. He’s ten.”
Kitty nodded, but I could feel the conversation ending, as tangible as the curtain fall at the close of a play. Addie brushed a strand of hair away from the little girl’s face.
“Think you can fall asleep now?” she said. Kitty nodded without meeting our eyes. But she didn’t move. “You can stay here if you’d like,” Addie said. The air was cold, and her nightgown looked thin. “I can go over to your bed.”
Another faint nod.
“Good night, Kitty,” she said.
Addie slipped off the bed, but hadn’t taken a single step when a hand shot out and grabbed our wrist.
“Yes, Ki—”
She pulled herself to our side, her mouth so close to our ear that when she spoke, we felt more than heard the word.
Nina.
And then her eyes were huge and bright and intent on ours.
Waiting.
“Good night, Nina,” Addie whispered.
The small hand on our wrist squeezed, nails biting into the hollow between our bones. We heard a sigh like the release of a dream. Then the hand was gone. Nina turned and slipped beneath our blanket without another word.
Hours later, we were still awake. A nurse had just come by and opened our door, casting a quick glance over our beds before stepping back into the hall.
We could hear Nina breathing softly, her dark hair pooled across her—our—pillow. If the nurse had noticed the change in beds, she hadn’t tried to do anything about it. Maybe someone would reprimand us in the morning. Or maybe who slept in which bed was one bit of control we were allowed to keep.
Our head ached from lack of rest. We hadn’t slept more than four hours a night since we’d left home. I hadn’t spoken since last night. The wall between Addie and me stood sturdy and seamless, letting nothing through.
I told myself I was still angry with her. Angry at what she had said. Angry at what she had implied. But our parents were not coming. Our father was not going to whisk us away in his arms like he had when we were a child. We were alone. We had no one else.
We should have had each other.
Yet here was the wall and the silence and the anger getting in the way. Here were Addie and I, not speaking to each other. I could wait for her to make the first move, as I had for years.
But I was so sick and tired of the loneliness.
She flinched. For a second, I was terrified she would ignore me. I’d never ignored her when she reached out after a fight.
I fell silent. I knew she didn’t mean coming to Nornand, wasn’t talking about the doctors and the tests and the fear of never going home.
I said.
Addie climbed from Kitty’s bed, shivering as our feet pressed against the cold tiles. She crept to the window, staring out at the darkness and the pinprick stars.
If we’d never learned to hate ourself. Never allowed the world to drive a wedge between us, forcing us to become Addie-or-Eva, not Addie-and-Eva. We’d been born with our soul
s’ fingers interlocked. What if we’d never let go?
Addie rested our forehead against the icy glass.
Her apology should have made me feel better. Instead, it only made the pain worse. How was I supposed to reply? Yes, I accept your apology? No, it’s not your fault?
It wasn’t Addie’s fault. I’d never thought it Addie’s fault. If anything, it was mine. I was the one who hadn’t faded when I was supposed to. I was the one who’d ruined Addie’s life forever. A recessive soul was marked for death before birth. I should have disappeared. Instead, I’d dragged Addie into this half life, this dangerous existence, forever afraid.
I reached for her, across the blank space between our souls. I said
We looked out at the world on the other side of the window. There was some sort of shadowy courtyard below, an irregular-shaped space bound by a chain-link fence. We could just barely make it out in the darkness. Nornand curved around part of the courtyard, half obscuring our vision. But there was a stretch of the enclosure blocked only by the fence, and beyond that—beyond that was just blackness. Not a single light.
Addie pressed our fingers against the windowpane, and if I imagined hard enough, I could almost see it giving way, see us landing unharmed in the courtyard below, scaling the fence like it was nothing, and running, running away until the darkness enfolded us and hid us from view.
Twenty-one
We felt the change in the air as soon as we awoke the next morning. The nurse corralling everyone in the Ward didn’t smile like she had the day before, and when Eli stumbled rising from his chair, she yanked him back to his feet so hard he cried out. Kitty must have seen Addie staring; she sidled up next to us and whispered, “It’s because they’re here.”
“Who?” Addie said, but the nurse demanded silence and Kitty refused to speak again, no matter how quietly, until we reached the small cafeteria where we ate our meals.
Even then, Kitty waited until the nurse retreated to her chair in the corner of the room. “The review board,” she said, leaning toward us over her breakfast tray. A strand of her dark hair trailed through her oatmeal, and she squeaked in dismay.