The Accidental Human

by Dakota Cassidy

  Now that she’d gone and fucked up a really potentially great thing, she needed a cigarette.

  CHAPTER 16

  “What in the fuck are you doing, Wanda?”

  Wanda held up the cigarette, letting the plume of gray smoke drift toward Nina and Marty, who’d called a hundred times tonight, apparently had gotten fed up, and decided to ambush her, no longer caring what they thought—or if they knew she’d once been a dirty smoker. “I think it’s obvious. I’m devising a plan for world peace. It’s a big job—stressful, but someone has to do it—I figured I deserved a cigarette while I pondered.” She took a long drag. God, that was good.There was a freedom in this dying game to be had. She already had cancer—she couldn’t get more cancered.

  Nina grabbed it from her fingers, by the lit end. “Wow, you’re one mouthy chick lately. Enough with your snark—don’t be offhand with me. Give me that fucking thing and knock it off. You don’t smoke.” She flicked it into the kitchen sink and flipped on the tap.

  No. Not for some time now. But she had, and tonight, after Heath had left, the craving for one, something she’d fallen back on hundreds of times in the past due to stress, had grown. In the midst of sobbing uncontrollable tears of self-pity, tears for the hurt she’d caused the man she’d ridiculously, unexpectedly found herself in love with, she’d driven to the deli and bought first a pack, then two—because she could. “Oh, but I did. I smoked nearly two packs a day—it was before you guys knew me. I gave it up after I got a divorce from the puke.”

  Marty waved her hands in the air to rid the kitchen of the acrid smell. “So? Last we checked you were still divorced, and you’ve decided to begin smoking again? Why, Wanda?” Marty asked.

  “Because I forgot just how much I loved it. I quit so I could be healthier. Now that’s not so important.” Because she was dying, dying, dying, for the love of Christ!

  Nina rounded on her, yanking a chair out from the table and sitting in it with an abrupt drop. “Okay, enough of the bullshit, Wanda.We’re here, and you’re going to spill. I told Marty tonight that if you don’t fucking tell us what’s going on once and for all, I’m going to beat it out of you. Stop playing stupid with us. Stop acting as if we’re the ones who’re nuts and overreacting. I don’t need a degree in Oprah to see something just ain’t kosher. I’m tired of worrying about you. I’m tired of Marty telling me to shut it when I’m all set to make you give me an answer.You’ve lost a lot of weight since I met you. Mostly in the last five or six months. I know what size you are, because I’ve held the clothes you yank off the rack when we do that stupid designer clothes-shopping shit, and it isn’t the same as it was six months ago. And you always look tired. Even when you have on makeup, you look beat down. Now, tell me, or things get freaky.”

  “Ovarian cancer.” Bam—just like that. She dumped the filth of that word at their unsuspecting, unwarned feet.Terror, cold, clammy, heart-thumping grabbed her with fists of iron and clung—tight.

  Nina averted her gaze away from Wanda’s, stilled instantly by Wanda’s words. “Christ . . .”

  Wanda inhaled on a shaky breath. “There’s more. I’m in stage four. It’s terminal.”

  Marty’s head, a moment ago hanging low, popped up, her eyes rimmed with disbelief. “What? Says who?”

  “My doctor. The tests. It’s true.”

  Nina gripped the edge of the table. “And how long have you known about this?”

  “Almost a month now.”

  Marty’s face contorted. “A month? You’ve known for a flippin’ month, and you didn’t say anything to us? Why, Wanda?” She held up her hand to stop Wanda from speaking, her incredulous expression giving way to more disbelief. “Wait, you mean all this time we’ve been asking if you were okay, why you were losing so much weight and look so tired all the time, and you’ve known what was wrong all along?”

  Wanda’s head dipped low, tears rimming her eyes. She nodded. “Yes. But please, please let me explain, okay. I didn’t know anything was seriously wrong. I really didn’t. I told you guys about my partial hysterectomy, right? They took everything but my ovaries and after that, I never wanted to see another doctor again. I did all the right things, went for checkups and all that jazz post-op. But I guess, well, I guess time just got away from me once it was over. All of a sudden I was getting divorced, and then I found you guys and Bobbie-Sue . . . I was working and getting out and learning to make my own way and going to see the va-jay-jay doctor just wasn’t on my list of things to do. Until I started to lose weight and sometimes I felt bloated—I guess I just felt like something was wrong. I didn’t feel bad, just not right, ya know?” She looked at Marty and Nina for understanding, both silent, both so still.

  She pulled in another deep breath, her eyes burned, her head throbbed, but it felt so good to just say it. Out loud. “I still don’t feel horrible. I’ve only had a couple of really bad days since I found out. Anyway I went and saw my gynecologist who suspected it, then he sent me to another doctor. Dr. Eckert did a biopsy, and the day I found out the results of the biopsy was the day I was supposed to go shopping with you guys. It’s why I forgot our date. I feel like such an idiot. I mean, I watch TV, for God’s sake. I’ve seen a million commercials and enough talk shows about it to know that I should have seen the gynecologist a long time ago. I’m not an idiot—but I sure as hell feel like one now. And I also know early detection is crucial. But it just never occurred to me when I went in for a checkup that the diagnosis would be something this—this—”

  “Bad, Wanda?” Nina cut her off with a fierce whisper-yell. “Because this is bad.Very bad and for all the times I fucking asked you if you were okay and you dismissed me like so much aggravation, I want to wrap my hands around your scrawny neck and squeeze the life right the fuck out of you. But I don’t have to, do I, Wanda? And why is that? Know why, Wanda?” Nina had risen from the table, her face rigid and angry, her fury one you could almost taste. “I don’t have to squeeze the life out of you, because ovarian cancer’s doing it for me!” she roared, shoving the table and its contents so hard, everything scattered, tumbling to the edge of the table.

  Both Wanda and Marty jerked backward in their chairs in surprise when the ashtray crashed to the floor, scattering into plastic pieces and black ashes.

  Nina turned her back to them, her finger twisting a piece of her long, dark hair with a hand that shook. “Goddamn you,Wanda Schwartz,” her voice broke then, wobbling with a weak tremor. “God-damn-you.”

  Marty was the first to jump to her feet, straightening the mess on the table with fumbling hands. “Okay, wait. Both of you just wait and get a friggin’ grip.” She placed a hand on Nina’s shoulder, holding out the other to Wanda. “Let’s go into the living room and sit down. Just give me a minute to think clearly, and we’ll talk this out.”

  They traipsed into the living room, each taking a place on the couch. Marty sat on the loveseat, facing them, folding her hands together to form a steeple. She brought them to her mouth and took a long, shuddering breath of air. “Okay, first, isn’t there any kind of treatment, chemo, radiation, whatever to—to—pro—”

  “Prolong my life?” Wanda finished for her. She’d become really good at facing the reality of her situation as of late, and there was just no mincing words anymore.

  “Yes, anything,” Marty said on a stifled sob.

  “There is, but I’ll be miserable, and that’s really all treatment will do—prolong my misery. Why live yarking my brains up after chemo and losing all my hair, needing someone to take care of me day and night, when I can just live in semicomfort until . . .”

  Nina’d apparently caught her second wind. “Until you die, Wanda.”

  Marty grabbed at Nina’s knee, giving it a white-knuckled squeeze. “Stop, Nina. Just shut the hell up for one minute. How—how long?”

  Wanda let her head fall back on her shoulders, rolling it from side to side. Her chest expanded. She hated the number of days she’d been granted. She hated that she knew
them. Hated that she could mentally tick each one off as it passed. “Maybe as long as six months.”

  Marty’s harsh gasp, followed by Nina’s choked, dry heave made the conversation she was having starkly vivid. She was dying. She was sitting in her living room, telling her two best friends in the whole world she was dying. That she had six months to get her affairs in order, tie up loose ends, find a home for Menusha, check off the stupid entries on her Fuck It list—was drastically real. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you—because you’ll spend all your time avoiding it, trying not to hurt my feelings with words like death, and dead.You won’t want to mention plans you’ll make with each other, because I might not be around for them. It’ll be awkward, and nothing will be the same.”

  Marty cocked her head, shock written all over her face. “And it was going to be the same if you just suddenly died on us and never even let us know what was coming? Did you think we’d just go off and have brunch at Hogan’s, or maybe do a few rounds at the discount designer mall like you’d never existed? I don’t want to cast stones here, Wanda, but that’s ludicrous. Your ride on the crazy train is officially over.”

  “You know, Wanda, right now I’m so fucking pissed at you, I wanna jam my fist—no wait, both fists, down your skinny throat. Jesus! Did you plan to just slink off and die? Die, Wanda. Die. And never tell us a thing. You’ve known for a month. Were you just going to let us live forever—and we will live forever—knowing these were our last days with you and not speak up? What the fuck kind of friend are you? This is all very dramatic and brave and all that other bullshit. Very Lifetime movie channel valiant.”

  Nina placed her fist against her eye and rubbed.When she spoke again, her words were soft, but tainted with a harsh revelation. “That you would leave this world without looking back—without ever thinking both me and Marty would spend an eternity mourning you . . . well, I gotta say, if I still had a beating heart, it’d be broken. Seeing as all I have is a dead organ, I’m just going to go with a sadness I can’t quite explain, but I can feel it right down to my bones. Dude, that hurts me like almost nothing I’ve felt since Lou’s brush with death.” Nina’s beloved grandmother, Lou, had come close to dying, and it had torn Nina apart at the time.

  And the idea that she’d caused this much pain made Wanda jump up, steadying herself by clinging to the arm of her couch. “Nina, I—”

  Nina’s eyes cast downward, but not before she held up a pale palm. “Don’t.You being this sick isn’t just about you,Wanda.Yeah, to a degree, it’s all about you. But your suffering ends when you leave this earth. Ours? Not so much. Maybe it’s selfish of me to want to be with you, but for fuck’s sake, Wanda Schwartz, to just keep this all to yourself and want to slink off to some hospital room and die? Fuck you and fuck that! Because there are people you’re going to leave behind and this is about them, too. People who need you. I need you, okay? I’ve got but two friends in my life, and losing one who was just gonna leave me some lame-assed good-bye note or whatever you planned to do, sucks.” Nina’s head bent to her chest, her eyes focused firmly on her shaking fists in her lap, her silence so clearly thick with grief Wanda had to fight to keep from screaming her anguish.

  Marty’s blue eyes suddenly filled with salty tears, her mouth opened to speak, but only gasping puffs of air came out. Her intake of breath shook and rattled with a wheeze. “Wanda . . . oh, God . . . okay—I . . . I think I can’t keep my shit together anymore. I need to cry. I’m a fucking hormonal mess these days as it is.There’s no doubt this is definitely about you, but I need a second to catch my breath. For all this time we’ve suspected something just wasn’t right . . . but to have it be this? I just need . . .” Marty paused, gulping and clearly fighting for composure. “Just give me a minute, okay? I’m going to go outside and bawl like the big, honkin’ girl I am for you—with you—because I love you, and I know if I don’t get this out of the way now, I’ll be good for shit. I’m going to scream my fear. I’m going to out-swear Nina like a champion. I’m going to rage at whatever I can get my hands on—at how fucking unfair life is.Then I’m going to come back inside and do whatever you need me to do. I just need a minute—just one.”

  She rose from the couch with stiff legs, taking jerky steps to the back door that led to Wanda’s postage stamp-sized backyard. Opening it, she let herself out, the door closing with a hush.

  Wanda slid back down onto the couch beside Nina, who jerkily grabbed for her hand, squeezing it so tight she thought it might break.

  But it didn’t matter. She clung to the cool flesh of her friend’s hand anyway.

  And they both listened to Marty howl into the screech of the wind. Scream her pain, curse the injustice of Wanda’s dying with huge gulping sobs. Her gut-wrenching tears, torn from her throat, slammed against Wanda’s kitchen windows, echoed in her ears, vibrated in her chest.

  Nina jammed her free fist back into her eye again, her face a mask of emotion after emotion that Wanda had never witnessed until now. Each gasp of air Marty took into her lungs made Nina cling tighter, each wretched sob of bleating agony made her body jump.

  Tears fell freely from Wanda’s eyes, streaming to pool in her lap, but she held fast to Nina, welcoming the shooting stabs of pain in her knuckles, for it affirmed the little bit of life she had left.

  Menusha hopped on graceful paws to the back of the couch, curling herself around Nina’s neck, rubbing her cheek against Nina’s hair.

  Marty’s howl of tears subsided, then grew jarringly silent while the clock in Wanda’s kitchen ticked, counting down the moments she had left with painful clarity.

  The back door opened with another soft brush to the tile floor. Marty grabbed a roll of paper towels from its holder and swiped at her face, inhaling with a slow rasp, each breath growing steadier. She ran a hand over her hair, windblown and glistening with beads of the misty rain.

  When she turned around, her face held obvious resolution and her stride toward them on the couch was confident.

  Crossing her sapphire blue silk arms over her chest, she looked down at Wanda. Her first words rasped, as though she’d smoked a thousand cigarettes instead of Wanda. Her eyes were swollen and puffy, her artfully applied Bobbie-Sue makeup all but gone. “So, Wanda Schwartz, what are we going to do about this pansy-ass way you’ve chosen to leave the world?”

  Nina’s head popped up, and Wanda was convinced she was going to give Marty hell, but then she grinned.

  A sly, encouraging grin.

  “You know you don’t have to die, Wanda.”

  Oh, God.Yes, she knew, but no, no, and no. If they were thinking what she thought they were thinking, then no. She’d thought it, too. Christ knew she’d thought about it, too, but . . .

  It was wrong—she’d go to Hell and have to spend eternity in a yellow room.

  But . . . maybe she could have the life she’d set out to have when she’d married the puke if she . . .

  Fear, fear to do something so drastic, live a lifestyle she only knew on the outskirts, was maybe even scarier than dying.

  If you lived forever . . . she shook her head. With her luck, some tragic twist of fate like a designer shopping trip gone awry would occur, and she’d end up decapitated by a clothes rack, with like a wooden hanger through her heart, and then she’d definitely go to Hell. “I do. I know, Marty, but to do what you’re thinking we should do is interfering with fate. I was meant to die now. I wasn’t bitten by accident like the two of you. That was fate. But fate must somehow feel I’m undeserving of, say, a paranormal life mate. Fate sent me a guy who used to be a vampire. I have to believe that’s some kind of otherworldy message. Now, you can’t just go around biting people because you’ll miss them when they die. It’s not right. If that were the case, just imagine how many super people would be running all over the planet.” She said the words, but did she really still believe them?

  Nina vehemently shook her head. “No, Wanda. That’s not true. I’d never bite someone just because they w
anted to live forever because it might be considered cool. This lifestyle isn’t easy, not by a long shot. I’m offering to bite you because yeah, I’ll miss you and you already know what you’ll be up against if I do bite you. It’s not like you’d go into this clueless after what’s happened to me and Marty.”

  Wanda waffled—to take their offer meant she’d live—something she wanted to do more than anything else. It also involved great risk to their well-beings. And then there was the possibility of eternal Hell. After twelve years of Catholic school, you just couldn’t beat the notion of fiery pits of darkness out of her overnight. “First, it would risk you two and your standings with your—your paranormal people, and I would never, ever do that. And second, who’s to say if you or Marty bite me and I turn into a vampire or a werewolf, that there won’t be someone in my life I want to keep alive forever and I’ll do the same thing to them—and they’ll do the same thing to someone else. It’s not right.”

  Marty stooped down, eye-level with Wanda. “Know what, Wanda?”

  “What?”

  “I really don’t give a shit about what’s right. I don’t even care if Keegan freaks out on me about it. I’m just not ready to give you up. What’s not right is you dying at this age. Before you’ve had a chance to live your life. Get married again. See what happens with the hunky Heath . . .”

  Her stomach somersaulted at the mention of Heath. God, she’d so gone and done it to herself where Heath was concerned. She was falling in love all along, and she knew it. She’d tried to stop it, thought she was all hip and savvy by sending him as many signals as she could that they were just having sex, by using words like uninvolved and phrases like not too personal. But it had backfired—big. Yet, what Marty proposed—so enticing—so damned enticing, well, it meant involving people she loved who could quite possibly pay a penalty for turning her. “Lots of people die young, Marty, and they die young because that’s life. Lots of people die much younger than me because that’s the universe’s plan. Are you going to go around and chew on everyone who’s unfairly dying?”