Die Again Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF

first, since she was near a computer for the first time in days, she rushed to check her e-mail. It was the only way she’d been communicating with her mother between breaks in filming.
    Now that her dad was gone, Isabel worried daily about her mom, who’d already endured enough for any lifetime. Thirty years ago, she escaped from the tyranny of Castro’s Cuba on a raft with nothing but a few days of water and bread. When she reached Florida, she fought to build a life as a bookseller away from the sharp eyes of the immigration patrollers. Isabel was born after her mom met and married an American soldier whose ruggedness belied the softness of his heart. Their home life was cheerfully modest, filled with frequent camping trips, nature excursions, and quiet nights reading together in the family room.
    Then, when Isabel was eighteen, her mom’s younger sister—who had gotten detained in Cuba years before—tried again to escape, this time with her husband and their one-year-old son. The worst happened. The aunt and uncle she’d never met drowned in a storm, but her young cousin survived the crossing. Upon arriving in Key West, he was sheltered by her parents, raised as her brother, and called Andy instead of Andrés. Ever since, her family had lived with the omnipresent tension that he was at risk for deportation if the authorities ever figured out the truth.
    When Isabel was off shooting Wild Woman, her mom’s e-mails were her only reassurance that they were okay. A week had passed since her last log-in, so she was hoping for several messages of pretty pictures, lighthearted gossip, and new book recommendations—the usual fare.
    When she logged in, just one e-mail was waiting.
    The subject line was in all caps: CALL ASAP.
    The message in its entirety read: “This isn’t something to discuss over e-mail. I love you.”
    It was dated four days earlier.
    Without wasting a minute, she tracked down the crew’s satellite phone and dialed home. To hell with the expense and permission.
    â€œMom?” she said as soon the line picked up. Her heart was firing bullets.
    â€œIzz?” It was Andy. He sounded small and scared, not at all his unsentimental thirteen-year-old self.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Are you okay? Where’s Mom?”
    â€œShe’s in the hospital. She found a lump . . .”
    Isabel felt a rush of heat to her face. “How bad?”
    â€œStage four. Spread to lymph nodes under her armpit. She had surgery yesterday and the doctor said something about good margins. I just . . . I wish you were here.”
    â€œI’m coming.” The calmness of her voice barely masked the strain she was trying her best to hide. “Don’t worry about a thing until I get there.”
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    As soon as she got home, she learned that the situation was both reassuring and dire. Her mother’s prognosis was shockingly good: 90 percent chance of complete remission. But that was only if she went on a sophisticated new chemotherapy drug, Braxa, that specifically targeted diseased cells, rather than wiping out her whole immune system. Her recovery would be easier, faster, and practically guaranteed.
    Yet Braxa was only available through the one pharmaceutical company that had developed it. Since the drug’s recent FDA approval, intense global demand had caused the price to skyrocket. For the required three months of her mother’s treatment, it was going to cost upward of $300,000. Of course, she needed to start immediately.
    But her cheap health insurance refused to cover it, claiming that the standard regimen with the older drugs was the only approved treatment. If she went that route, according to her doctors, her prognosis would drop to 15 percent, given how aggressively her breast cancer had developed and spread.
    An 85 percent chance of death; Isabel couldn’t even contemplate it. This was her mother, the indomitable woman who had risked