Page 53 of Roadrunner

I love you too, I thought, to a house I wasn’t going to walk into. I’m sorry. I don’t know yet how sorry, but I will.

Then I put the Jeep in drive and made myself stop looking in the mirror.

I drove home, packed two suitcases, and let my parents take me back to California. I did not let myself think about that vest again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Alex

Now

The doctor’s name was Patel. He was young for someone who delivered news like this. He had the careful eyes of a man who had learned, probably early, how to say devastating things without flinching.

I respected that, in an abstract way.

“The intracranial pressure has increased significantly since our last conversation,” he said. “We’ve done what we can to manage it. At this point, the brain activity we’re seeing is—” He paused. “It’s minimal, Missus MacAfee. I want to be straightforward with you.”

“Please,” I said.

“We’re looking at a situation where continued life support is sustaining bodily functions, but the cognitive activity required for any meaningful recovery—” Another pause. “It’s not there. It may not come back.”

I looked at Joshua through the glass.

The tube in his throat. The monitors. The stillness of him, which was unnatural in a man who had never once been still.

“What are my options?” I asked.

Dr. Patel folded his hands. “You can continue as we are and wait. Sometimes, in cases like this, there are unexpected improvements. It’s rare, but it happens.” He looked at me steadily. “Or you can consider withdrawing life support. We would make him comfortable. It would be peaceful.”

I looked at him through the glass.

“There’s no right answer,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“I know.”

“Take whatever time you need.”

“I’m not taking him off anything,” I said, when Dr. Patel came back for the chart. “His body started this on Tenth Street. His body can finish it. I’m not going to be the hand on the switch. Arthur’s father is in that bed. I won’t make myself the last thing he loses.”

He nodded. “We continue, then.”

I did not ask about the switch again.

Martina brought coffee she’d gotten from the machine down the hall. It tasted like hot brown water. We drank it anyway.

“He wouldn’t want this,” she said.

“I know.”

“You know that, Alex. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t someone who would want to be kept alive by a machine.”

“I know that too.”

She watched me. “But?”

I wrapped both hands around the paper cup. “Arthur.”

She was quiet.