I yank open the heavy door and rush in. It’s so dark inside, I don’t see him at first. He’s curled in a ball in the corner. I yell at him, grab his hand, smack his face, but his eyelids don’t even flutter. How can I get him out of here if he won’t wake up?
The door opens, and I jump up. I don’t want my back turned to Klara, sisterly fantasies or no. But she just sticks her head in the door.
“You may as well have this. It’s of no use to me anymore.” She tosses something at me. It skitters a few inches across the floor like an ungainly insect. Her stick man of Jack. “I took the hair off.”
And she’s gone. I don’t know what she means about the hair, but I take the doll. Should I break it? I decide it’s Jack’s, not mine, and I stick it inside his plaid shirt. I get kind of frantic about tying the ends of the shirt so it stays in, and so I don’t notice at first that Jack is stirring.
“Lucy?” The words are slurred but there.
“Jack! Oh, thank God, Jack!” Relief makes me weak and giddy, though I know we aren’t out of the woods yet. “Can you sit up?” I slide my arm under him and try to help while he props himself against the wall.
“Oh, man. I feel like crap.” I can see memory returning to him, and with it, panic. “We have to get out of here. We have to—”
“I know.” I hold both of his hands, try to hold his eyes with my own. “I think she’ll let you go now. Let’s just see if you can walk.”
Walking is a tall order. Jack can hardly stay awake. But he can crawl— just—so that’s what we do. I stand up to open the door, and then I crawl beside him, trying to make sure he doesn’t suddenly land on his face.
The Match Girl—Klara—is not in her usual spot. I scan quickly and spot her across the street. She’s walking slowly toward an alley, an alley swirling with mist that no longer looks sooty and sinister. It’s shot with pearly light and hints of rose and gold, and I find myself wishing, just a bit, that I could go with her.
“Klara!” I call. Jack looks at me like I’m crazy, but… she’s my sister.
She glances over her shoulder, a little impatient.
“I hope you find her,” I say. “You deserve to be happy.”
She nods, a solemn acknowledgment, and gives me a little wave that makes her seem like a child again. And she steps into the mist.
“Okay, off we go, Jack. Just a little farther, love.”
Jack toils down the street, stopping every few feet to rest. If we aren’t home by the time we reach the end, I don’t think we’ll get home at all.
Home. Oh geez. “Jack, you’re not at home!”
“Wha’?” He’s barely able to speak, maybe not able to comprehend. It’s taking everything he’s got just to keep moving.
“You’re at the hospital. It might be important to know that.” Who knows how it works? What if his…whatever we are now goes back to his living room and his body’s not there?
And then everything goes black, and I’m sitting cross-legged in Jack’s bedroom in front of a burned-out candle, stiff and chilly but definitely back on Earth.
I heard the voices first.
“C’mon, Bente, it’s only been a few minutes since the last test.”
“I know, but Guy, why isn’t it coming down? They’re pouring insulin right into his veins, and it’s not budging.”
“I know. I don’t know.”
They sounded beyond worried, really scared, and even though I wanted to just rest for a while and wallow in the relief that I wasn’t dead, I had to let them know I was okay. I pried my eyes open and squinted against the glare of hospital fluorescents. Obnoxious modern lighting had never looked so good. I tried out my voice.
“Hey…”
You’d think I was the ghost, the way they stared at me. Then my mother burst into tears and threw herself on me; my dad, with a sound like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, grabbed my hand in both of his and then actually kissed it.
“Guy, get the nurse!” My mom was fumbling with my meter, fitting in a new strip and extracting my hand from Dad’s paw.
“Let me,” I said. “You suck at it.” Her laugh was halfway to a sob, but I could tell she felt a bit reassured. I was still shaky, and in the end she had to steady my hand as I applied the strip. She gasped when she saw the result.
“Twenty-two? You were still off the scale ten minutes ago!”
Five minutes later, Dad returned with a nurse in tow. She pulled out her industrial-grade meter—the kind with lancets that feel like paper punches—and drilled a hole in my finger.
“18.3.” We stared at each other as the new worry surfaced.
“He’s dropping too fast. He needs—”
“Glucose.” The nurse cut my mom off briskly. “The doctor left standing orders.” She was fiddling with my IV leads as she spoke, taking away one bag, replacing it with another. “No more insulin for you, young man. And welcome to the land of the living.”
After she left, a hush descended, like we didn’t know where to begin. Finally, my mom couldn’t wait any longer.
“Jack, what hap—”
“Shh, Bente.” My dad walked over and put his arm around her. “Let the boy get back on his feet first.” He reached over and grabbed my hand again. “But you scared the very piss out of us, Jack, and that’s the truth.”
“I know. Me too.” Soon I would have to decide what to tell them, but for now I had a reprieve. I didn’t want to even think about the inquisition that would follow with my new doctor. God, I could picture it now: the lecture on taking responsibility, the social worker asking earnestly if I had made a “cry for help.” I lay back and closed my eyes—and as memory sharpened, anxiety clenched my gut.
“Where’s Lucy?” I bolted up in the bed. What if she didn’t make it? “Did she get home?”
Mom looked guilty. “We left her at the house. I should have checked in with her.” Her hand shot up to her mouth. “And Noah! Is he still at the team party? What time is it?”
“I’ll call him.” Dad was dialing when a new nurse showed up at the door. She frowned at me.
“There a young woman at the desk who wants to see you. She says her name is—”
“Lucy.” Lucy looked worn out but hadn’t lost any of her attitude. She ducked around the nurse and launched herself at me. More tears. Finally we let go, and she took a good look at me. “Not awesome, but a lot better than last time I saw you.”
And we both knew where that had been. I pulled her back into another hug and whispered in her ear, “Thank you. Thank you for coming after me.” I was full of questions about how she’d managed it, but they would have to wait.