toward the wall and let her head rest against the cool plaster. This wasn’t happening … it couldn’t be happening. She’d missed her chance with Chrissy. More than that she’d prayed with her castmates, and Chrissy had still died.
Bailey wasn’t sure how she stayed on her feet, how she kept from running into the bathroom and throwing up. Chrissy was dead? This couldn’t be real … it was a nightmare. That had to be it. The doctor was saying something about the pills … the white pills … and Bailey tried to focus, tried to understand him. Because Chrissy wasn’t the only one taking the pills. Bailey had seen other girls popping them. Or something similar to them. She turned around, still leaning on the wall, and clutched her stomach, her eyes on the doctor.
“We see this with dancers once in a while.” He pressed his lips together, his expression grave. “Chrissy was taking an amphetamine, an upper. A diet pill, basically. From the tests we ran, she didn’t have proper nutrients for her heart to function — not in quite a while. We aren’t sure how many pills she took, but without food in her stomach they created a deadly effect.”
“So … was it … heatstroke?” The stage manager looked worried. Bailey hated the possibility, but there was no way around it. The man was clearly trying to determine if the theater company was at fault.
“This wasn’t caused by heat.” The doctor looked grim again. “The stimulants caused her heart to go into an arrhythmia, a rhythm too fast to move the blood through her body. Someone else might’ve handled it, but Chrissy’s anorexia complicated things. In effect, when the heart is pumping that fast it’s only fluttering. She died of heart failure.”
Around her several of the girls were softly crying … Gerald and Stefano too. A couple of the guys folded their arms and stared at the floor. The doctor apologized again. “Take a few minutes. We don’t need this room for a while.” When he left, a few of the girls wailed their grief out loud, shouting that it wasn’t possible, that she couldn’t be dead.
But she was, and the reality shook Bailey like nothing in her life ever had. God had prompted her to talk in more depth to Chrissy, to pray with her, and now it was too late. She had let Chrissy down … let God down. Her troubled friend, the one so defeated by the fight of life was no more. The tears began to fall for Bailey, and slowly she dropped to the floor, pulling her knees to her face. She sat there weeping. Why, God? Why didn’t You give Chrissy a second chance? Is it all my fault? Because I didn’t pray with her? Bailey shook with grief, furious with herself and desperate to have Chrissy back. But that wasn’t going to happen. Chrissy was gone, the girl whose heart had shouted for help every time Bailey saw her.
The truth was as painful as the loss of Chrissy. Bailey had cared more about fitting in than speaking truth to a girl who desperately needed it. God, I’ve failed You … I failed Chrissy. What am I supposed to do now? She had failed at the biggest God assignment of her life, and now Bailey could only let her tears fall, let the sobs overtake her. Chrissy was gone … there would be no second chance, no time to pray for her or invite her to a Bible study. Bailey cried as she had never cried before. For a girl who had tried to take on the rigors of Broadway and failed. A girl who had starved for love — the sort of love Bailey could’ve told her about. The only love that could ever truly satisfy: God’s love. But Bailey hadn’t prayed with her or told her about the Bible or asked her the deeper questions. Her heart felt like it lay in a million pieces on the floor, because Chrissy was gone. And on top of all the ways she hadn’t told Chrissy about God’s love, she had missed something else too.
She hadn’t even remembered the girl’s last name.
Seventeen
BUTLER UNIVERSITY WAS SITUATED ON ONE OF THE MOST SCENIC campuses in all of central Indiana. But more than that, it was outside Indianapolis far enough that it felt isolated among the cornfields and sweeping panoramas. Cody took in the view as the bus pulled into the school’s parking lot. This week