Last Summer at Mars Hill Read Online Free PDF

shiny new white wing grafted on. Ariel and Moony walked through a gleaming steel-and-glass door set in the expanse of glittering concrete. But they ended up in a tired office on the far end of the old wing, where the squeak of rubber wheels on worn linoleum played counterpoint to a loudly echoing, ominous drip-drip that never ceased the whole time they were there.
    “Ms. Rising. Please, come in.”
    Ariel squeezed her daughter’s hand, then followed the doctor into her office. It was a small bright room, a hearty wreath of living ivy trained around its single grimy window in defiance of the lack of sunlight and, perhaps, the black weight of despair that Ariel felt everywhere, chairs, desk, floor, walls.
    “I received your records from New York,” the doctor said. She was a slight fine-boned young woman with sleek straight hair and a silk dress more expensive than what you usually saw in Maine. The little metal name-tag on her breast might have been an odd bit of heirloom jewelry. “You realize that even as of three weeks ago, the cancer had spread to the point where our treatment options are now quite limited.”
    Ariel nodded, her arms crossed protectively across her chest. She felt strange, light-headed. She hadn’t been able to eat much the last day or two, that morning had swallowed a mouthful of coffee and a stale muffin to satisfy Moony but that was all. “I know,” she said heavily. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
    “Frankly, I don’t know either,” the doctor replied. “If you had optioned for some kind of intervention oh, even two months ago; but now…”
    Ariel tilted her head, surprised at how sharp the other woman’s tone was. The doctor went on, “It’s a great burden to put on your daughter—” She looked in the direction of the office door, then glanced down at the charts in her hand. “Other children?”
    Ariel shook her head. “No.”
    The doctor paused, gently slapping the sheaf of charts and records against her open palm. Finally she said, “Well. Let’s examine you, then.”
    An hour later Ariel slipped back into the waiting room. Moony looked up from a magazine. Her gray eyes were bleary and her tired expression hastily congealed into the mask of affronted resentment with which she faced Ariel these days.
    “So?” she asked as they retraced their steps back through cinder-block corridors to the hospital exit. “What’d she say?”
    Ariel stared straight ahead, through the glass doors to where the summer afternoon waited to pounce on them. Exhaustion had seeped into her like heat; like the drugs the doctor had offered and Ariel had refused, the contents of crystal vials that could buy a few more weeks, maybe even months if she was lucky, enough time to make a graceful farewell to the world. But Ariel didn’t want weeks or months, and she sure as hell didn’t want graceful goodbyes. She wanted years, decades. A cantankerous or dreamy old age, aggravating the shit out of her grandchildren with her talk about her own sunflower youth. Failing that, she wanted screaming and gnashing of teeth, her friends tearing their hair out over her death, and Moony…
    And Moony. Ariel stopped in front of a window, one hand out to press against the smooth cool glass. Grief and horror hit her like a stone, struck her between the eyes so that she gasped and drew her hands to her face.
    “Mom!” Moony cried, shocked. “Mom, what is it, are you all right?—”
    Ariel nodded, tears burning down her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she said, and gave a twisted smile. “Really, I’m—”
    “What did she say?” demanded Moony. “The doctor, what did she tell you, what is it ?”
    Ariel wiped her eyes, a black line of mascara smeared across her finger. “Nothing. Really, Moony, nothing’s changed. It’s just—it’s just hard. Being this sick. It’s hard, that’s all.”
    She could see in her daughter’s face confusion, despair, but also relief. Ariel hadn’t said death , she hadn’t said