wish I’d run screaming from Malcolm Fairchild twenty years ago and married a regular guy named Joe. I wish all these things, but the genie in the bottle is fresh out of wishes.
Besides, without Malcolm there would be no Anne and no Freddie, and I don’t wish that.
Freddie smooths my hair back with her small hand. “You’re going to get better soon, right?”
“Sure, baby girl. Sure I am.”
“I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,” she whispers in my ear. “And I’ll make everyone perfect.”
I smile at this, but it’s a thin line of a smile, forced and dry. “You can be anything you want.”
“Promise?” Freddie says, still close.
“Cross my heart.”
“And?”
“And that’s all, Frederica. Cross my heart.” I’m not interested in the second half of the promise.
My mother locks eyes with me, then turns to the nurse who has just walked in to sponge me off and dab my lips with some oily substance that keeps them from cracking. She mouths a silent question to the woman. The woman mouths something back. It looks like “Soon.”
“I want to go home,” I say.
The nurse nods, understanding. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then, to Freddie: “How about we go get some hot cocoa? I’ve got the good kind, lots of marshmallows.” Freddie follows her out, one tiny hand holding on. I think this woman in white must be some kind of genius.
I’ve never thought much about what my girls would do without me, where they would live, who would take the parent baton if I had to pass it along. Malcolm’s and my wills name my parents as guardians, but only in the far-fetched case of both of us dying at the same time. Malcolm, as far as I know, isn’t going to die, but I imagine the place he is going won’t be somewhere he can take his children. So, my parents. Tag. You’re it, Mom.
Still, this reality is fresh. My mother’s eyes tell me so.
Dad signs the papers while two orderlies work on shifting my body to a gurney, my temporary bed until I reach the one in my parents’ house, and then, later, a more permanent bed. My body feels light in their arms, ghost-like. The gown falls away, revealing skin stretched over bones. I think I hear my mother let out a horrified gasp.
While I continue to be in this lucid state, various people visit. My doctor. A social worker. The representative from our local hospice. Papers get signed, and instructions are recited while another nurse disconnects me from the monitors. I feel naked without all that plastic. There’s no arguing about who rides in which car; Dad announces he’ll drive Oma and Freddie home while my mother and Anne ride along in the ambulance. No sirens this time, no need for them. Sirens are for situations that can be fixed.
One final document needs my signature, and I scratch it out as if I’m signing a check, or the receipt for a delivery of groceries.
This, I suppose, is the dull and dry business of dying.
SEVENTY-SIX
SOON:
Bright hospital lights and the constant bleep of the machinery that has been keeping me alive are gone. In their place, a white ceiling and the rustle of leaves outside my window keep me company while I dream.
I can’t know what will happen in these next days and weeks and months, but I can speculate. My mind is still very much at work, even if my body has started to power down.
Madeleine Sinclair, convicted of multiple charges of misappropriation of funds, perjury, fraud, and every other type of political death sentence, will trade her tailored blue suit for a new look: institutional gray, which is a perfect match for the one Malcolm will be wearing when my father takes the girls to see him on visiting days. The Genics Institute’s stockholders will be left with worthless paper, and Petra Peller—according to the rumors—will attempt to leave the country with whatever remains in the coffers. I think she’ll get caught at the border.
Handsome Alex Cartmill, convicted of the kinds of crimes for which