There’s no response, and I shake her, hard, too hard, need her to answer. “Mom! Wake up! I need you to wake up right now.” I’m crying because the terrible sound doesn’t stop, the rasping precursor to death. I knew this was coming. I should have been prepared for this, but I’m not. I’m not.
I’ll never be ready to lose her.
I stare blankly at the still form under the covers, the sound of her sawing breath like a blade against my heart. The realization comes to me slowly, that she won’t die this second. Or the next. The panic fades to a dull ache of grief. My hands are shaking as I find my cell phone in the mess of blankets, still warm from where I’d been sleeping, rumpled from where I’d startled awake.
The nurse is only downstairs, probably preparing a light lunch that my mother will never eat. In the same house, but I don’t think I could yell for her. I can barely speak into my phone when she answers. “I think it’s time.”
The ambulance arrives without its lights flashing. This isn’t an emergency. This has been painstakingly prepared. This is the Death Plan. The one I never could bear to read.
I guess I’ll find out what it says.
Freida was right about that—I couldn’t avoid it forever. She stands with me, holding my hand while the EMTs move my mother’s still-breathing body onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. I follow them down the stairs, a cold sweat breaking out over my skin.
Avery meets us at the hospital, which means Freida must have called her right after the ambulance. Part of the Death Plan, no doubt. The plan that’s supposed to make this easy. Or at least, not hard.
She grasps me in a hard hug that I barely feel. I’m going numb, the tips of my fingers already gone, a frost spreading from the outside in. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, squeezing tighter. It would probably hurt, but I’m too far gone. “What can I do, sweetie? We’re here for you.”
That makes me look up, and I see that Gabriel is with her, looking stern and faintly sympathetic, a dark slash of suit against the sterile white hospital backdrop. He gives me a nod, which makes me want to punch him in the face. Does he know how much Avery worried while he was gone? He should just have a heart attack right now and spare her the agony of a slow death later.
I’m being totally irrational, and I break out into tears on the shoulder of my old friend. “I’m sorry,” I gasp, clinging to her. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t want Gabriel to have a heart attack.”
Gabriel coughs. “I appreciate that,” he says, his voice grave.
“Do you want to go sit down?” Avery asks. “Gabriel will make sure your mom has everything she needs. You should take a little break.”
I shake my head, eyes closed tight. “The hospital already has the Death Plan.”
Avery pulls back, her hazel eyes searching and sympathetic, not even a little bit jarred by the words Death Plan. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Wait. Have you read the Death Plan?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice overly reasonable. “I had a meeting with your mother.”
“Is there a section titled People To Console Harper?”
“No.” Her voice does a high-pitched thing at the end which means I hit close to the mark.
Footfalls approach from behind me, and I whirl around to face Sutton. He looks warm and empathetic, and I take a step back as he nears, bumping into Avery, afraid that he’ll melt the ice around me, and then what would happen? I would feel everything. All the pain. All the loss. Those blue eyes hold a wealth of understanding. “I can go if you want,” he says softly.
“No,” I say even though I don’t know what I want.
A good daughter would already know what’s on the Death Plan. I should have been the one to call the ambulance and gather everyone. A good daughter would have forgiven her mother for being terrible at love, even though I didn’t realize until this second how angry I was.
Why didn’t she make it work with my father? Why did she have to choose someone so rich and emotionally unavailable in the first place? Why couldn’t she ever settle down? Surely there was a man somewhere in the country who would have loved and cherished a beautiful woman, even if she would never be accepted by the rich society wives.
I had to experience love to understand the impossibility of it. I had to stumble so that I could forgive my mother for falling again and again. We don’t mean to; we don’t want to. The ground opens up underneath us, and there’s nowhere to go but down.
“Where is it?” I say, my voice shaky but sure.
Sutton looks concerned. “Where’s what?”
“The Death Plan. I need to see the Death Plan. I should have read it when she first asked me to, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I read it now.”
A notch forms between Avery’s eyebrows. “You don’t need to worry about that,” she says in what I assume is a soothing tone. “Freida and the hospital have everything taken care of.”
“I still need to see it.”
There is a grace in accepting defeat that I haven’t acquired. I only know how to fight, how to protest, how to stage an event so big that an entire city bands together to save a library.
Right now I’m surrounded by the things my mother dislikes the most—the smell of antiseptic and doctors. Because she learned how to accept death with grace.
A piece of paper appears in front of me, a little crinkled from its journey, darkened spots appearing where my tears mar the ink. I struggle to hold it steady enough to read.
Now I understand how much bravery it took for her to write down what she wanted to feel, to hear, to see. Now I understand what it means to surrender—not weakness but strength.
I swallow hard, turning away from Avery and Gabriel.
Turning away from Sutton.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell them because I feel an immense gratitude. And the incredible certainty that I’m going to be alone. “According to this we’ll be here for some time… waiting. You don’t have to wait here. I’m sure she didn’t want that.”
Which isn’t exactly what the Death Plan says.
“Harper.” Avery whispers my name, her voice pained.
She already knows what’s on the paper. My mother made sure that I wouldn’t be alone for this. She knows I love Avery like a sister. And she knows I have feelings for Sutton.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Sutton says because he doesn’t know.
My throat aches. “Most of her organs are torn up by the cancer. But her eyes are fine. She’s donating her corneas to someone who needs them.”
“It’s a good thing,” Avery says, but she doesn’t sound sure.
“It means she has to die in the hospital, because they have to remove them right away. So we have to stay here until it happens. It could take hours. Days. Weeks.”
“Jesus, Harper.” Sutton sounds angry, which strikes me as odd. Nothing much makes him angry, except maybe loving Christopher. “She’s going to make you watch her die?”
That makes me turn to look at him, a sad smile turning my lips. “What do you think I’ve been doing? It started before I even came to Tanglewood, before I even saw the library—the cancer that would kill her. There was only one way for this to end.”