How to Save a Life

by Kristin Harmel

  He nods and disappears into her hospital room while Logan and I linger in the hall. A few minutes later, he emerges with Katelyn, who’s wearing a pink sundress and ballet flats. She’s even swiped on some lipstick, which I suspect is for Frankie’s benefit.

  “Where are we going?” she asks me, her eyes sparkling.

  “You’ll see.”

  We wait in the hallway until Sheila has walked away from the nursing station, then I hustle the three kids across the waiting room and into the elevator. I hit the button for the lobby, and after we make a quick pit stop at the tree so that each of us can ask it for one day more, we head for the front doors.

  I grin when we emerge onto the sunlit sidewalk, because there’s a black stretch limousine waiting there, exactly where I asked the driver to pull up when I spoke with him this morning. “Your chariot awaits, guys,” I say, gesturing to the limo.

  They all turn to me with wide eyes. “That’s for us?” Frankie asks.

  “It is indeed,” I say. The driver emerges and opens the door. The kids pile into the back, and I follow. As the driver pulls away from the curb, I grab champagne flutes from the limo’s bar and hand them out.

  “We’re too young to drink!” Logan says, looking dubiously at the flute.

  “Not if I’m serving sparkling grape juice.” I grab the bottle from the ice bucket, grateful that the driver had fulfilled that request too. It’s amazing what you can get done with a credit card when you know the balance will reset in the morning.

  We toast to adventure—and to the tree—as the limo gets on the highway headed south. “Where the heck are we going?” Logan asks, hopping up and down in his seat. I glance over at Katelyn and Frankie and see that they’ve inched toward each other. They’re both grinning as they stare out the window.

  “Let’s just say we’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” I reply.

  Soon, the signs for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport begin appearing, and our driver takes the exit. “We’re going to the airport?” Logan asks. “I’ve never been on a plane before!”

  “Well, get ready for takeoff then, kiddo.”

  The driver drops us at the front entrance, and I tip him with cash I withdrew from my bank account this morning. “Okay, so I just need the three of you to do me a favor as we go through security,” I say as we walk into the airport. Logan’s eyes are wide as he gazes around. “It’ll get complicated if I have to explain that I’m your nurse and I’m breaking you out of the hospital for the day. So if anyone asks, can you just pretend I’m your mom?”

  Logan whips his head around to stare at me. “We have to pretend you’re our mom?”

  I glance at him. “I’m sorry. I hate to ask you to lie.”

  “No, it’s cool!” he says immediately.

  “But what about our last names?” Frankie asks.

  “I booked the tickets under your real names,” I tell him. “Lots of kids today have different names than their parents.”

  “And if it doesn’t work out,” Katelyn says, “we can try again on the next today.”

  We all nod in agreement and head toward the security lines. Luck must be on our side, because the TSA agent who checks our tickets looks us over once and asks Frankie if we’re a family.

  “You bet,” he says.

  “Have a nice trip,” the agent replies, waving us through.

  “This is my mom!” Logan says enthusiastically, earning him a strange look from the TSA agent before Frankie nudges him on.

  I hand the kids their tickets as we head toward the tram to the gates.

  “We’re going to Miami?” Katelyn squeals. “Please tell me we’re going to get to go to South Beach.”

  “Sure,” I say with a shrug. “We have the whole day free; we only have evening plans.”

  “What are they?” Katelyn asks.

  “If I tell you, I’ll ruin the surprise.”

  WE ALL HAVE seats across from each other in first class, so we thoroughly enjoy the two-hour flight. The flight attendants serve a light lunch, which seems to thrill the kids, and I watch as Frankie orders—and slurps down—six Cokes. “I never get to do this in the hospital,” he says. He burps, which makes Katelyn and Logan giggle.

  “Just take it easy,” I warn him. “I know we reset in the morning, but if you make yourself sick, you’re going to have a pretty lousy day.”

  Logan spends most of the flight staring out the window. “Do you think this is what heaven looks like?” he asks me at one point as we coast above a pillow top of fluffy white clouds.

  “I’ve always thought heaven looks exactly like you want it to look,” I tell him. “And you get to see all sorts of people you’ve loved and lost.”

  He nods and doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m glad that when I get to heaven, you’ll already be there.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. Talking about dying is still confusing for me. “You better believe I’ll throw you the biggest welcome party you’ve ever seen.”

  “Can we have it on top of a cloud?” he asks.

  “Whatever you want.”

  We land in Miami at just past one in the afternoon and find another limo driver waiting for us near baggage claim with a sign that reads, Logan, Frankie, and Katelyn. The kids are thrilled, especially when the driver explains that he’ll be with us all day, and that he’ll take us wherever we want to go.

  We start with a late lunch at the News Cafe in South Beach, and then we go bathing suit shopping—a pink bikini for Katelyn and blue swim trunks for both Logan and Frankie. I select a sundress and a beach chair, and we spend the next hour and a half slathered with sunscreen and stretched out on the sand, with Logan running back and forth from the ocean, and Frankie trying to pretend he’s not checking out Katelyn in her bathing suit. Finally, around four fifteen, I take the kids back to the restaurant, where they use the restrooms to change back into their street clothes.

  “Where are we going?” Logan asks as we pile back into the limo.

  “You’ll see,” I reply mysteriously.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re pulling up outside the AmericanAirlines Arena in downtown Miami.

  “Wait, what’s happening here?” Frankie asks, peering out the window. “The Heat don’t play again until October, do they?”

  “I have no idea what the Miami Heat’s schedule is,” I tell him with a smile. The driver pulls up to a checkpoint behind the arena and shows the security guard a slip of paper. We’re ushered through, and the driver pulls to a stop alongside a security ramp.

  He opens the partition and turns around. “I’ll be right here waiting for you when the show’s over,” he says. “Have fun.”

  “The show?” Katelyn asks, her eyes wide.

  “Oh, it’s just some band that’s supposed to be pretty good,” I say. I wait until we’ve all piled out of the limo and are walking up the ramp before I drop my bombshell. “They’re called Original Scin. Have you heard of them?”

  Katelyn’s scream is so ear-piercingly loud that I suspect it can be heard back in Atlanta.

  “Oh, you know them?” I continue innocently. “Then I guess you might be interested to know I bought us tickets to the preshow VIP meet and greet, which is about to start.”

  “No way!” she cries, jumping up and down and snatching the tickets that I hold up. “But what . . . ? How . . . ? How did you get these?”

  “Easy. They were still available online, so I maxed out my credit cards for this trip. It’ll all reset tomorrow anyhow, right?”

  “Oh my God!” she screams. She’s still a few octaves higher than usual. “So I’ll get to meet Dylan? And Noah? And Will? And Benjamin? And Tyler?”

  “If you stop screaming,” Frankie mutters, but he’s smiling. “You kind of look like you’re hyperventilating.”

  “Omigod, omigod, omigod.” K
atelyn takes a few deep breaths and calms herself down a bit. “It’s just that I can’t believe this. It’s, like, my dream come true.”

  “I know.” I glance at Frankie, who’s gazing at Katelyn with what appears to be a blend of happiness and concern. “Actually, it was Frankie’s idea,” I add.

  He raises his eyebrows at me as Katelyn launches herself at him. “Oh my gosh, Frankie, really?” she asks. “You really helped Jill put this together?”

  “Uh,” he says, his voice gruff as he hugs her back. “I know how much you like them and everything.”

  “Oh my gosh. I don’t even know how to thank you!”

  He shrugs. “It just makes me happy to see you happy.” He turns red, and so does she. No one says anything for a minute.

  “Let’s go in already,” Logan says. “I’m dying to see this band you’ve been talking about nonstop.”

  Everyone laughs, and Katelyn pulls away from Frankie to bound toward the stage door. He and I exchange looks.

  “Look how great this is for her,” I say softly.

  “Yeah, it’s awesome—as long as she doesn’t fall in love with any of those jerks,” Frankie replies.

  “How could she possibly fall for one of them,” I ask, “when she’s already so clearly in love with you?”

  I don’t wait for a reply as I follow Katelyn inside.

  8

  KATELYN SQUEALS HER way through thirty minutes of shaking hands with each Original Scin member, getting their autographs and posing for pictures with all of them. The rest of us hang back; Logan says he thinks it’s a dumb band, and Frankie mumbles that this is Katelyn’s big day, and we should all just let her enjoy it.

  “I wonder if she realizes she won’t have those photos anymore when she wakes up in the morning,” Logan says.

  “I think she just wants an excuse to have them put their arms around her,” Frankie mutters.

  I wink at him. “But this is what you wanted, right?” I ask. “To make her happy?”

  He pauses and nods. “I guess. I just don’t see what she sees in those dudes.”

  “I think teenage boys have been wondering that since the dawn of boy bands,” I say.

  Finally, the meet and greet ends, and Katelyn skips over, her face flushed, to show us the pictures on her iPhone, as well as the arm that Dylan, her favorite Original Scinner, has autographed. “Look,” she says, pointing to the Sharpie scribbles on her left forearm. “It says, ‘Love, Dylan.’ Love! I am never washing this arm again.”

  “It’ll be gone in the morning anyhow,” Logan cheerfully informs her.

  She deflates a little. “Oh yeah. It’ll be like this never happened.”

  “No, it won’t,” Frankie says softly. “Because you’ll always remember it. No one can take the memories away.”

  She smiles. “You’re right.”

  “Should we go find our seats?” I ask.

  Thirty minutes later, we’re in the second row of the arena, thanks to some extremely overpriced tickets I bought on StubHub. Frankie and Katelyn are talking quietly, and Logan turns to me.

  “It’s pretty amazing that you did this for Katelyn,” he says.

  I shrug. “She wasn’t going to have time to get her Make-A-Wish wish. Besides, you guys have been cooped up in the hospital for way too long. I wanted us all to get out and have a fun day together.”

  “Aren’t you worried that someone will notice we’re all missing and call the police?”

  I laugh. “It’s quite possible that’s already happened. But it’ll take them a long time to track us here. And by then, it’ll already be morning again, and it’ll be like this whole day never existed.”

  “Except to us,” Logan says. “We’ll know it existed.”

  I smile and put an arm around him.

  He’s silent for a moment, then he says, “You know, no one will miss me at the hospital.”

  “Of course they will!”

  “No, I mean, I bet Katelyn’s and Frankie’s parents are freaking out. But there isn’t anyone to freak out about me being gone.”

  “Logan, I would freak out if something happened to you.”

  He smiles and leans into me. “I know you would.”

  ORIGINAL SCIN PUTS on a much better show than I expected; the choreography is impressive, and I even recognize a few of the songs from the radio. As the concert moves into its second hour, a strange thing begins to happen: Frankie and Katelyn seem to be moving closer and closer to each other, occasionally whispering into each other’s ears.

  “Hey, look,” Logan says, pointing to his left. I follow his gaze to Katelyn’s right hand, which is intertwined with Frankie’s left hand. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Logan whispers to me.

  By the time the show ends with an encore and a rousing performance of “Lay One on Me,” one of Original Scin’s most popular songs, Katelyn is no longer looking at the stage. She’s looking at Frankie. And just as the house lights go down to end the show, I see Frankie lean in and give Katelyn a quick kiss on the lips.

  “Woooo!” Logan says, grinning as he nudges Katelyn. “I knew it! I knew you two loooooved each other!”

  “Whatever,” Frankie says gruffly. As the lights come back on and people begin to filter out of the arena, I can see that his face has turned beet red. He stares at the floor.

  “So what?” Katelyn asks after a moment without looking at anyone. “So what if I love him?”

  “You do?” Frankie asks, his head jerking up.

  Katelyn shrugs. “Maybe. Is that okay?”

  “It’s very okay,” Frankie says. He hesitates and leans forward to kiss her again. This time, she kisses him back.

  “Okay, you two, let’s keep this PG,” I say, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “We still have a few hours ahead of us with this limo rental. What do you say we get out of here?”

  Frankie grabs Katelyn’s hand as we head for the exit, and after a moment, Logan slips his hand into mine too.

  “I’m glad we’re all here together, Jill,” Logan says.

  “Me too, Logan. Me too.”

  WE GRAB A late dinner at a Cuban restaurant called Mateo in downtown Miami, near the arena, and then we ask the driver to take us back to the beach after Katelyn says she wants to fall asleep tonight to the sound of the crashing surf. We stop for beach blankets on the way, and then we head to the front desk of the Fontainebleau, where we check into a room, which allows us access to their pool and beach areas. We make our way out to the sand just past midnight and drag four lounge chairs into a row, facing the ocean. The moon hangs over the water, bathing the beach in pale light.

  “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” Katelyn murmurs. She hasn’t let go of Frankie’s hand since we arrived.

  Eventually, the two of them scoot their chairs away from us, and they lean close to each other, whispering and giggling. It reminds me that love can surprise us with the things we least expect. Katelyn thought she was going to have the experience of a lifetime with her favorite band tonight; instead, she discovered that the things she’d been looking for were right in front of her all along.

  “How long until the day resets?” I ask Logan as we stare up at starry sky.

  “We think it’s sometime between one and two in the morning,” Logan says. “We’ve all tried to stay up, but the latest we’ve made it is about one fifteen.”

  “Because you’ve been overtired?”

  “No. Definitely not. We drank tons of coffee and promised each other we’d sit there and talk to keep each other awake. I think it has something to do with the tree. It can’t reset the day if you don’t go to sleep. I think it’s part of the magic.”

  “Well, let’s keep talking tonight until the day ends.”

  “You know,” Logan says after a minute, “I was going to remind you earlier that big, expensive tri
ps aren’t what this tree thing is all about. But that’s not what today was, was it?”

  I smile. “No.”

  “It was about making Frankie and Katelyn happy,” Logan says.

  I nod. “I didn’t think it would hurt if we all had a little fun in the process.”

  “You’re a really great person, Jill,” Logan says.

  “You are too, kiddo.” I pause. “You asked me earlier what I really want. How about you? What would your Make-A-Wish wish be?”

  He looks up at the moon for a long time. “For a family,” he finally says so softly that I barely hear him. “But I don’t think Make-A-Wish grants stuff like that.”

  “Maybe we don’t need Make-A-Wish to grant our wishes,” I say. I open my arms and beckon Logan over. He climbs onto my lounge chair and snuggles up against me under my blanket.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Katelyn and Frankie have sort of been your family, haven’t they? Like a big brother and sister?”

  “I guess. But I still don’t have parents.”

  “Maybe a parent doesn’t have to be someone who has legal custody of you. Maybe a parent can just be someone who loves you and would do anything for you.”

  He looks up at me, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Maybe,” I conclude, “a parent can be someone like me.”

  We try to stay awake, but our eyelids grow heavier, and just past one in the morning, as Logan and I are wishing on stars and Frankie and Katelyn are holding each other close, we drift off to sleep.

  I WAKE UP the next morning in my own bed, startled, despite myself, to realize how easily we’ve been transported back to Atlanta. I feel a pang of longing for the day the four of us shared, but Logan was right; I don’t think this gift of additional days is meant for fun and games. I think it’s meant to let us attain the things that really matter in life. And when everything is stripped away, vacations and possessions don’t mean a whole lot. The things that count are the things you hold in your heart.

  I spend the next ten repetitions of the day going through the same motions. Each day, I save Merel. Each day, I visit with Logan, and we talk about everything—our fears, our dreams, the things we’ll miss when we’re gone. Each day, I smile to myself as I watch Frankie and Katelyn grow more and more smitten with each other. I also continuously fend off Sheila’s suggestions that I need to get laid, and I avoid Dr. Frost’s office like the plague. I run into Jamie here and there, but each time, I’m careful to exchange only a few pleasant words with him, although he seems to keep materializing wherever I am. I know I’m developing feelings for him, and it scares me, because they’ll always be one-sided.