Nazareth, Jesse and Leo laugh. Harder than they should, as if it’s the funniest, most joyous thing they’ve ever heard. They calm down, then share a glance, not one of tension, but as if relieved.
“Naw, V.” Nazareth winks at me. “You’ll never be normal.”
I think that’s good, but then I don’t remember why that’s good and then I don’t remember why I should be happy. I have a brain tumor.
I glance over at Jesse, and I’m surprised to see him sitting there. “When’s the surgery?”
VERONICA
She’s dead.
I wake with a start and my hands shake.
Mom, I was dreaming of Mom. Her beautiful laugh, her beaming smile, the way she always made me feel better on my worst days. I glance around the room and she’s not here. If she was really a ghost, she’d be here. Period. Which means she wasn’t real. She was never real.
And she’s gone.
I try to sit up, but the IV in my arm yanks. Pain, and I flinch.
“Are you okay?” Dad jumps from his spot next to me in the chair. His finger on the red emergency button next to the hospital bed.
Tears burn my eyes, my chest aches and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I place a hand over my heart as it hurts. Hurts so bad. Pins and needles, it’s ripping apart.
Dad presses the button over and over again as he watches me. “Tell me what hurts. Is it your chest? Can you breathe?” He pushes and keeps pushing and the sliding glass door of my ICU room opens so quickly that it startles me.
Two nurses walk in, one immediately taking her stethoscope from around her neck. “What’s going on, V? Are you in pain?”
“Yes.” I can barely make out the words, choking with the lack of air.
“Where does it hurt? Your head?”
“My…” I can’t suck in air. “My chest.”
“Her chest?” Dad’s worry causes my heart to jump. “Is it a clot?”
Calm and emotionless, the nurse pushes another red button on the wall. One nurse checks my vitals, my blood pressure cuff tightening on my arm as the first nurse leans me forward and listens to my lungs. “Can you take in a breath for me, V?”
I shake my head as my body starts to tremble. I try to breathe in, but it’s hard to do. “It hurts.”
“I know, honey, and we’re trying to figure out why.”
Why? I know the why. “She’s dead. Mom is dead. She’s dead. She’s been dead and—” I choke on the next word as hot tears fog my vision. The two nurses glance at each other as Dad seems to sadly be filled with relief.
“Panic attack?” one of the nurses says, and the other nods as she continues to listen to my chest.
She takes the stethoscope out of her ears. “The doctor had some medicine prescribed in case we ran into something like this. We can put it in your IV. How does that sound?”
“Do it,” Dad says, and he takes one of the nurses’ spots next to my bed. They both leave, and he takes the hand I have pressed against my chest in both of his.
I try to suck in a breath, but it hurts too much. “Mom’s dead.”
Tears glisten in his eyes. “She’s dead.”
For days, my thoughts have felt like bubbles blown by a child. My emotions have felt distant, as if I’ve been separated from them by a glass wall. But now, it’s like the wall shattered and I’m being cut open by the shards of glass. The grief—it’s overwhelming. Like being blasted by heat after standing in a freezer.
“She was dead, but she came back,” I try to say, but the words are sobs. “She came back so I wouldn’t be alone. She’s the one who called for you that night. You came down because she yelled for you.”
“No, peanut, you yelled for me.”
“Mom yelled your name!” I shout, feeling like a two-year-old stomping her feet.
“You yelled my name.”
I shake my head too fast and Dad drops my hand to capture my face in his hands to keep it still. “You yelled my name, V. You. Not your mom. When I came down you were talking for both you and her. You were carrying the conversation. Sawyer heard you do the same thing a few nights before I took you to the ER. It was the tumor. A hallucination. Your mom’s gone, V. I’m sorry, she’s gone.”
My throat constricts, my entire body trembles and I