That buzzing was unnatural… Quin blinked at the clock and couldn’t see the time no matter how hard she tried. She fumbled for the silence button on her phone, but it wasn’t any alarm. She rolled over as someone pounded loudly on her door.
“Quin? Quin, you need to get up.” Paxton’s voice came through the closed door.
Had she slept in? She glanced at the window and groaned at the blackness outside. “Let me be.” He wasn’t even supposed to be there until eight and he never came upstairs. The door swung open and only once he reached her bed did she think to make any noise. “What are you doing in here?”
He caught her gaze and gripped her shoulders lightly. “You need to be downstairs.”
The truth hit her, and she froze. Not now. Not when her parents were on their way, driving from Cincinnati because they hated to fly. “No…” She tossed the blankets back and made it across the small room at a run. People were moving about downstairs with a purpose, more people than she’d ever seen at Rosewood House. “What are they all…?”
Paxton touched her gently. “They’re my team. It’s how we work. We all try to be here and help each other out without making too much noise for the patient.”
“Ryla.” She dashed down the stairs, through the hall, and to the room she’d avoided the day before. The doorway didn’t stop her this time. In a moment she was next to the bed.
In the span of a few hours, Ryla had gone from sleepy, but lucid, and in a wonderful mood, to searching the room with vacant eyes and mumbling. Her chest seemed to cave with every breath.
Quin held her tears in check and reached for Ryla’s hand. “I’m here. What can I do?”
“Take care of Duggy,” she rasped and the nasal cannula slipped slightly from her nose. How had her face shrunk in the span of a few hours?
“I…” want to, but I can’t… “will.” Now was not the time for absolute truths. “What should I tell Mom and Dad?”
Ryla closed her almost translucent eyelids, and a hard breath racked her body. “Tell them you’ll take care of Rosewood.” She tried to smile but her lips stuck to her teeth.
“Get her some water,” Quin called over her shoulder.
Ryla shook her head and held tight to Quin’s hand. She closed her eyes, but the hard breathing continued, and Paxton brought in a chair for her to sit on.
“You should call your parents,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder and giving it a slight squeeze.
“I already did,” she whispered. Guilt gnawed at her. Not only had she done exactly what Ryla had asked her not to do, but they would be too late anyway. She’d almost been too late. Two days before she’d been complaining that her sister wouldn’t drive to get her at the airport.
“When will they be here?”
She hung her head and allowed the tears to come since Ryla couldn’t see her anyway. “Not in time, or at least it seems that way.” She allowed herself to look at him, but like a true professional, his features gave away nothing.
“I’m just glad you made it. I’ve seen too many people where she is with no one to sit by their bed. No one to feel anything.” He massaged her shoulders gently. “I’ll make some coffee. Do you want any?”
This time, she couldn’t refuse. Though needing coffee seemed so…normal at such an abnormal time, she still needed it. “Please.”
He circled his thumbs gently along her shoulder blade, then left the room. Jane still sat in the corner but had been so quiet Quin hadn’t even noticed she was there. She nodded and went back to reading her book. Though she didn’t seem disinterested, she was certainly not as involved as Paxton. Though, she’d always been there at night. She couldn’t know Ryla as well.
Paxton returned and set the cup of coffee on the bedside table then knelt beside her. “Is there anything you know of that your sister would want to have done? Last rights? Anything?”
They weren’t Catholic, or they hadn’t been raised that way. How sad that she couldn’t answer that question with any degree of certainty. “I…” She blinked and tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. She couldn’t go back in time and ask all the important questions.
“I’ll have the local pastor come over and wait for the next time she’s awake. It’s a comfort to a lot of patients, even if they don’t believe.”
She didn’t know if Ryla believed or not. She didn’t know much of anything important about her. Who would remember her when she was gone? Did she impact anyone? Did she mean anything to anyone? “Were you and Ryla ever… I mean, I know you said you weren’t, but I thought maybe it was because you thought I might not like it, with patient confidentiality and everything…” She was rambling, but she couldn’t help it. Ryla had to matter to someone, even if it was this someone.
He shook his head with a slight smile. “No, never. She and I weren’t close until I got the assignment to watch her. I’d met her, we were neighborly, but I didn’t get to know her until a few months ago. She talked more about you and her family than herself.”
Quin swallowed hard and bit her lip. That meant it was up to her. She had to be the one who remembered Ryla. She had to be the one to take whatever her sister left behind in this house and make sure others knew her sister too.
Jane stood and clipped an oximeter on Ryla’s finger, waited a moment, then adjusted her oxygen level. The loud hum of the machine seemed to get louder and Ryla’s breathing became more forced, harsher, like the machine was doing it for her. Jane reached in a drawer by the bed and put a clear plastic mask over Ryla’s nose and mouth.
“What’s she doing?” Quin didn’t feel comfortable questioning the woman directly.
“She’s making sure Ryla gets as much of that oxygen as possible.”
With her thin face and the mask covering the bottom half, even transparent, she didn’t look like Ryla anymore. Her eyes were sunken and dark underneath. Only her lashes seemed full where they swept across the dim smudge under her eyes.
Quin checked the clock and it read a little after six. Her parents weren’t even awake yet in Cincinnati. “Please hurry. Please don’t make me do this alone.” She bowed her head.
All her life people had said she was strong, special, talented. None of that mattered. She couldn’t use an ounce of it. Her talent had only taken her far from her family and had stolen all her time. She’d thought it was so important.
Ryla’s eyes opened and she looked frightened momentarily at the device on her face. Quin held her hand tightly. “It’s to help you.”
She shook her head one more time and slowly reached for it, then tugged it off. “I might not get to choose how long I get to stay, but I do get to choose how I feel about it.” Her hand dropped to the bed still clutching the mask. “I want the nose piece off too.”
Paxton came in behind Quin and helped Ryla lean forward so he could take the cannula off. “You know this is going to—”
She raised an eyebrow. “I know.”
“Please, Ryla. Please put it on.” The longer she wore it, the more likely she would still be here when Mom and Dad arrived.
She closed her eyes and coughed softly, though it seemed to jar her whole body. A minister came in and Quin gave up her seat for him. She moved back to the doorway and only partially listened as he spoke.
Paxton tugged her from the room out into the hall and slipped a bottle of water in her hand. “You holding up?”
Light poured in the front windows from the slowly rising sun. People on the outside were getting ready for a regular workday. Everything outside Rosewood House was normal. “I’m dealing because I have to. I’ll fall apart when no one’s around.”
He nodded gently. “You know where to find me if being alone isn’t sufficient.”
The pastor met her in the hall and shook her hand, though she couldn’t remember his name or anything he said. It didn’t matter that it seemed important, her mind simply couldn’t hold onto anything. She wandered back to her seat but before she could even sit down, Ryla was wracked with a deep cough, then a sigh, and she went limp.
“Ryla!” Quin screamed without meaning to. Paxton appeared at her side and slowly tugged her back from the bed. Helpers took over the scene and she couldn’t speak or move. Nothing seemed real.
Just that Ryla would never open her eyes again.