Going Bovine

Rachel: Pig. Stop talking about my future girlfriend that way.

Kyle: That could totally be like, one of those last wish things, though. Do it. Put in for hot nurse sex before you kick.

Kevin: They hooking you up with good meds? My uncle went in for gallbladder surgery and they gave him, like, Make-Me-See-God-Ocontin or something. It was the only week he wasn’t a complete ass**le. We wanted to put it in his water supply.

Rachel: Did you hear? The student council is selling gold ribbons to raise money and everything. Whole school’s wearing ’em. Mrs. Rector dipped into her margarita money to buy one, and she doesn’t even like you.

Kevin: It was supposed to be black-and-white, you know, like a cow pattern? But that was already taken for some other disease.

Kyle: Sorry you’ve gotta be in the hospital, dude.

Rachel: Sucks.

Kevin: Yeah, definitely the big suckage.

They nod in unison.

Kevin: Speaking of suckage, ask Kyle what he’s doing this summer.

Kyle: Shut up, Kevin.

Rachel: Summer School City, man. Shithenge didn’t cut it after all.

Kyle: I said, shut up.

Kevin: I told you I woulda hooked you up with a paper off the Internet, dude. I know sites the teaching bots never even think of checking. Oh! We brought you the new Director’s Cut of Star Fighter, episodes one through four—

Kyle: The only ones worth watching—

Rachel:—Sorry the plastic’s off, but we tested ’em out last night. Figured you wouldn’t mind. Dude, the print is so clear, you can see everything. Like when Star Fighter is battling it out with Dark—

Kevin:—Matter? The glow of his ultimate peace weapon doesn’t even look computer-generated. Awesome.

Rachel and Kyle: Yeah. Awesome.

They leave the boxed set on the end of my bed, where it balances on my toes.

Rachel: So. Dude. Seriously. Before you croak, you think you could put in a word for me with that nurse?

DAY ELEVEN

The door opens and a tiny bird of an old lady shuffles in, using her IV pole like a cane.

“Um, I think you’re in the wrong—” I start.

She puts her finger to her lips, silencing me. “They won’t look for me here.”

“Who?”

Her eyes widen. “Them! I’m going to get out of here. I’m running away.”

Her hair is a long tangle of wiry gray down the front of her hospital gown, and I wonder if she’s an Alzheimer’s patient or something and if I should call for the nurse. I feel around for the call button but it’s just out of reach. She doubles over, coughing, and I recognize that cough from across the hall.

She settles into the chair beside my bed and puts her bony hand on my arm. “This is not how I’m supposed to die.”

“So how are you supposed to die?”

Her eyes take on a faraway sheen. “In a house by the sea in an upstairs bedroom. It’s late spring, and the open window lets in the smell of lily of the valley. And there’s a garden outside. It’s decorated with paper lanterns, and the children, the children chase after fireflies while their parents laugh and talk as if they have all the time in the world. In a house by the sea, it will end, and I will slip from this life as if it were no more than a sweater grown too large and threadbare with years, something no longer needed. That is how it should be. Not here. Never here.” She fixes me with her gaze. “I don’t think you should die before you’re ready. Until you’ve wrung out every last bit of living you can.”

This lady is, like, ninety, if she’s a day. I’d say she’s pretty well wrung it. I want to yell at her for having had that long. “Well, I guess there’s not much we can do about that,” I say bitterly.

“Bullshit! That’s what they say so you’ll give up without a fight.” She leans in so close I can smell the old-person odor on her—musty and old-fashioned, like a room no one goes into much anymore. “I’ve seen them outside, burning on the lawn. Tall as houses and so bright, so bright.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. “You’ve seen those freaky fire giants?”

She nods, her eyes wide and fearful.

“What are they?” I whisper.

“They are chaos. Destruction. The end of hope. Oh, these are frightening times. I have to get away!”

An orderly appears in the doorway. “Mrs. Morae, come on, now. You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“I’ll go where I like!” she snaps.

“Now, Mrs. M, don’t be like that.” The orderly comes closer, looming like a shadow, and for a second, in that shadow, I see the outline of something terrible, and then it changes. It’s just a dark blur against the blandness of the wall.