“Hey,” I say, reaching up to cup his cheek. There’s an IV sticking out of my wrist. He has white gauze on his face and I have blood under my fingernails. I let my hand drop. “I’m so sorry, baby. I swear I didn’t know it was you.”
“I know,” he whispers, bringing my hand to his mouth and kissing it. “I know you didn’t.” He rests his forehead against the space he just kissed. “I thought you were dying, Lilith.”
“What happened?”
“You had a seizure,” he replies, looking up at me again with tears in his eyes. “You collapsed and just started bleeding from your nose, your eyes, your mouth… it was fucking horrific.”
I touch my upper lip but find nothing there. “Why?”
“That’s for me to explain.” It’s the kind doctor that gave me the CT scan after my accident in Nok’s truck. He looks at Nokosi. “You should step outside now.”
I grab Nok’s hand, I don’t want him to leave.
“We need to talk, in private, Lilith.”
I sigh and nod. “Go on.”
Nokosi grumbles his way out of the room, muttering about getting a coffee.
“I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks,” the doctor states gently. “You haven’t answered your phone. I even called the schools in the area, but you’ve hardly been attending.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been busy looking after my sister and getting laid,” I jest despite the fact this is not a time to be joking. “What’s wrong with me, Doc?”
He sits on the side of my bed as I pull myself further up, feeling sick and dizzy.
He places his hand on my knee as his calming blue eyes make me feel at ease. “When we gave you the scan before, it showed something alarming. A mass on your frontal lobe and deeper into your brain, as though your brain had simply grown around it.”
My lips part and my already dry mouth becomes lead. “That can’t be right.”
“I know, I checked, I thought maybe there was something wrong with the machine because I can’t fathom how you’re still alive with something so huge and dominating beyond your skull.” He gives my knee a squeeze and wets his lips before reaching for something on the table beside the bed. I sip water that he offers, trying to wrap my head around this… no pun intended. “I didn’t want to take any chances that I could be wrong so the moment you arrived I did some more tests. A more in-depth scan of your brain.”
“This has to be wrong,” I breathe, feeling my chest constrict with pain and panic. “My twin is the sick one. She has the tumor.”
“Your identical twin?”
“Yeah, Willow,” I reply.
“We’ve been trying to contact her and your mother since you arrived five hours ago. I have the police locating them both now. Your friend out there said your mom works for LEG Energy? The police will track her down I’m sure.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, needing my sister beside me, though in all honesty, I’m craving Nokosi more. “How does this happen? How do I have the same thing as my twin?”
“It could be that you were both born with a tiny seed of mass in your head and it has just grown with you over time. It has been known to happen with identical twins but nothing like this from what I know of.”
Fuck. This isn’t happening.
“So… am I the same as her? What does this mean?” Tears fall down my cheeks and my lower lip trembles. “Am I dying?”
He looks as devastated as I feel. And then he nods. “Yes. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do. Removing the mass will kill you for sure. What we can focus on now is keeping you comfortable in your final weeks, until your brain just shuts down and your body with it.”
“Weeks?” I choke, suddenly feeling dry again. “No chemotherapy? No radiation?”
“At this point it’s already too big. They’ll stop its growth, but the side effects will kill you. You don’t look it, or feel it, for whatever reason, but you’re very weak. Your blood pressure, heart rate, nothing is quite as it should be.”
The door swings open, the same one Nokosi left through. Tears are falling from his eyes, leaving shining trails down his dark cheeks. “So you’re just going to give up on her?”
“Nok,” I say, reaching for him as he glares angrily at the doctor.
“You’re going to do nothing and just what? Watch her die?”
“Nokosi,” I snap, trying to keep myself composed. “Please, stop shouting.”
He looks at me, his eyes distraught. “What about the cabin? The money you gave me today to pay for it for our future.” His voice cracks and he wipes his eyes with the heels of his palms. “What fucking future?”
I hold out my hand to him but he doesn’t take it. “Please.”
He doesn’t meet my eyes, as though he’s incapable of looking at me.
“I have sent your scans to colleagues of mine who are going to give a second, third, twentieth opinion,” the doctor assures me, standing and putting his hand on my shoulder. He looks at Nokosi. “She needs support right now. Not this. I know it’s hard—”
“Hard is running sixteen miles without a break, not saying goodbye to the love of your fucking life at age eighteen,” Nokosi grits bitterly. “That’s not hard, it’s impossible. I can’t watch this.”
“Nok,” I whisper, pleading for him to come to me. “Please. Not now. Don’t do this now.”
He rips a hand through his hair that has fallen out of its tie. “I can’t be here. I need to leave.”
“No,” I beg. If he’d just hold me, tell me that it’s going to be okay. “I need you to be my rock right now.”
“AND I NEED YOU TO BE MINE FOREVER!” he bellows, his nostrils flaring, spit flying from his mouth. “I need you forever… not for a handful of fucking weeks.”
With that parting gift he turns and walks away, slamming the door behind him and yelling a roar of anguish as he goes. My heart is breaking.
“I don’t want to die,” I admit quietly. “But I probably deserve it.”
The moment the doctor leaves after filling my broken head with more shit than I can handle about waiting on blood results and responses from neurosurgeons and whatever the fuck else, I yank out my IV and exit the hospital, stealing somebody’s jacket on the way out.
I need my sister. I need my mom.
Willow
“Can I help you?” I ask, smiling at the man on my doorstep in his beige uniform, a badge clipped to his chest, a gun holstered at his hip. “How can I help you?”
“I’ve been trying to contact you and your mom for the past few hours. Is she home?”
I shake my head. “Mom’s at work.”
“Where does she work?”
“LEG Energy,” I respond.
“Funny,” he replies, looking behind me and into the house. “Because I checked at LEG Energy and they’d never heard of her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I reply, eyeing him warily.
“It’s probably an error.” He looks around me again and into the house. What is his deal?