If I Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

think I could handle it. But now I don’t even have that option. What kind of screwed-up world is this, when the doctor can stand there and tell a seventeen-year-old that her insides are so messed up that she can’t support life. Ever. And they can’t even tell me why. That’s the real bitch.”
    I nodded for lack of a better response, oddly relieved to find her anger outshining her grief. “They don’t know what happened?”
    She shook her head miserably. “They have more tests to run, but all they know now is that this morning I was pregnant, and now I’m not, and I lost a ton of blood in the process.That doesn’t usually happen in a first trimester miscarriage, according to the doc, but I needed a transfusion.”
    She got quiet then, with her head against the pillow, and I thought she was falling asleep.
    Last chance, Kaylee …
    “Danica, who was the father?” I whispered, leaning forward in my chair again.
    “Doesn’t matter,” she whispered back, her eyes closed. “Not anymore.” She fumbled for the controller and pressed a button to lower the head of the bed again. “I need to sleep now,” she mumbled, clearly exhausted by the visit. “Thanks for coming…”
    I stood and watched her doze for a second, then I was heading for the door when Danica groaned, and I glanced back at her.
    “Maybe this would have happened later anyway,” she mumbled, so low I could barely hear her. “Maybe I wasn’t meant to have kids. But I wanted this one…”
     
    “Visiting hours were over two hours ago,” a sharp female voice barked as I closed Danica’s door, and I spun around to find an elderly nurse—her name tag read Debbie Nolan, RN—in pale purple scrubs frowning at me.
    Oops . Busted…
    “Sorry. I didn’t get off work in time to visit, and she’s my cousin, so…” I was almost disturbed by how easily the lie flowed. When had I gotten so good at that?
    “Oh…” Nurse Nolan’s frown melted into a bruising look of sympathy. “I’m sorry. It’s so sad, with her so young.” She glanced behind her, like someone might be watching, then gestured for me to come closer as her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you want to see your aunt, too, while you’re here?”
    “My…?”
    My aunt was suffering an eternity of torture in the Netherworld at the hands of the hellion she’d sold her soul to. But Nurse Nolan meant Danica’s mom. When Danica said her mother was sick, I’d assumed from the way she said it that “sick” was a euphemism for drunk, or stoned, or psychotic.
    “Sure…” I said at last, hoping the nurse hadn’t followed the progression of my thoughts across my expression. What kind of fake cousin would I be if I didn’t visit my fake aunt while I was there?
    “Room 348, at the end of the hall,” she said, still whispering. “I’ll give you ten minutes, if you promise not to tell….”
    “Of course. Thank you.” I’d hoped to sneak out when she went back to the nurse’s station, but I never got the opportunity because she escorted me down the hall to a perfect stranger’s hospital room, while my heart pumped panic-fueled fire through my veins.
    How the hell am I going to explain this to my not-aunt? If Mrs. Sussman ratted me out, my dad was going to be pissed. Especially considering I hadn’t yet told him about the gruesome miscarriage or my nonhuman math teacher, or Sabine’s theory about a possible connection between the two. I wonder if encroaching death is a plausible excuse for temporary insanity?
    I held my breath as Nolan opened the door, scrambling for some way to explain and excuse my intrusion. But if hearing about Danica’s private pain and loss was heartbreaking, meeting her mother was downright creepy.
    Mrs. Sussman—Amanda, according to the bracelet on her wrist—was sleeping. Deeply. So deeply that her chest barely moved with each breath.
    “How long has she been like this?” I asked, and the nurse looked at me strangely, like I