“She’s not getting better,” the doctor said. “It is only a matter of time.” Jade stood on the left side of the bed, Mercedes’s parents on the right. The doctor, surrounded by a sea of white faces and uniforms, stood at the foot of the bed looking like the captain of a sinking ship.
“There’s nothing you can do?” Mercedes’s mom asked. Or something like it. Her vocal cords were choked with tears. Her father didn’t speak.
The doctor said nothing more. He handed the chart to a young face behind him. What could this child know about death? Mercedes wondered, but then she realized she could ask the same question of herself. Death stole childhood from everyone touched by it.
“The damage the bullet did to her brain—” the intern started. Each word stabbed Mercedes. While she wanted an answer, this wasn’t the question: not how was her sister dying, but why. What led her to the perilous corner while Mercedes was drawn to the basketball court? Same parents, just three years apart. She knew the answer as clearly as she had on any calculus test: Callie had found Robert, and she had found Jade.
As the intern talked of pulling the plug, Mercedes stared at the white line threatening to flatline and the machine’s red lights no longer blinking.
The doctor finally spoke again. “It’s your decision.” He’d washed his hands when he entered the room, Mercedes thought, and he’s doing it again.
Mercedes took a step toward the bed, reached down, and touched Callie’s face. Nurses, or someone, had cleared the makeup off her skin, removed her long false eyelashes, and detached the gold extensions from her hair. Callie looked more innocent than she had in years.
“Goodbye,” Mercedes whispered, and she bent over to kiss her sister’s forehead. It seemed cold, the shock of the sensation momentarily freezing Mercedes’s quivering lips.