I stood at the tall pharmacy counter and slid my debit card through the slot on the machine. I idly punched in my numbers and turned to look at Heather. She was studying a bottle of some kind of herbal medicine. She looked beautiful in her baby blue T-shirt and creamy cotton shorts. She pushed her hair to one side. She read the ingredients label off the bottle. Her lips moved as she read. She was my brilliant, ordinary sister. And a liar.
“Rejected,” said a voice from behind me.
I turned and faced the pharmacist. “Excuse me?”
“The transaction,” the pharmacist said, sliding the card toward me.
I stared down at it. How can a debit card be rejected?
“It says nonsufficient funds,” came the reply to my unspoken question.
“Non—” I began. Frozen. Donna had told me that the bank account was frozen but that she would take care of it. That was over a week ago. She must have forgotten, I thought. “Heather,” I called, not bothering to turn around.
My sister came and stood beside me. I held up my useless bank card. She looked at it, then at the pharmacist, then back at me. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet.
The two painkillers went down with water. Heather took the glass from me and put it in my sink.
She gave me a gentle push toward the living room. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”
I sank into the sofa and felt an immediate sense of relief and weariness. I closed my eyes.
She stood, looking at me. “You need me to stay?”
I shook my head. “Heather, I need the truth.”
“Truth? About what?”
“Kevin’s clothes,” I said as I opened my eyes in order to see her reaction.
Heather’s face turned to wood, an expression I couldn’t interpret. Her eyes darted back and forth like two trapped birds. She sat down hard on the sofa. I leaned toward her.
“I asked about Kevin’s missing watch at the hospital. The nurse said there was no watch. More than that, Kevin had been naked when he arrived at the hospital.”
“Watch,” Heather said in a dull whisper. She looked down at her hands.
It confirmed what I suspected. I’d never mentioned Kevin’s missing watch to Heather, but she already knew it had not been among the articles of clothing she’d brought back to me. Could I get her to tell me the truth? “The day of the funeral, I asked you to come with me to the hospital, to get his things. You said you’d go alone instead.”
“I did,” Heather said. “Then I brought them here. You were sleeping, so I put them at the bottom of the bed and left.”
I had had a dream that night, of Kevin standing over me. When I awoke, his clothes were lying at the bottom of the bed. It must have been Heather I sensed in the room.
I shook my head. “How did you manage to get his clothes from the hospital if he had been naked when he arrived there? They never had his clothes in the first place.”
Heather spread her hands out in front of her. “Obviously the nurse today got it wrong.” She placed her hands on her knees and gave me a sad smile. “Kate, you’ve had a long, rotten day. The last thing you need is to get worked up about a simple misunderstanding.”
I furrowed my brow. “She read it right off the chart.”
“So what? So someone wrote wrong information on a chart.” Heather threw her hands around. “I’ll bet it happens all the time. The clothes at the bottom of your bed were the ones Kevin was wearing that day, right?”
“Yeah …” I said in slow motion. Or, at least they could have been. I still could hardly remember anything about the morning of the day he died, including what he’d been wearing. But they were Kevin’s things. I didn’t see any point in mentioning my memory loss to Heather. I also didn’t tell her how my head was beginning to feel loose and disconnected from my body.
“Well there you go,” she said like she had just closed the case. “Whoever wrote that in the chart must have not seen Kevin until after the doctors had removed his clothes.”
I felt a rush of warmth through my limbs as all the muscles in my body seemed to relax at once. The pills were taking effect in a hurry. “Removed them?”
Heather leaned forward. “They would have needed his clothes out of the way in order to work on him. To try to save him.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes again. I tried to picture it; white coats, bright lights, hands pushing and pulling clothing out of the way, sharp voices calling urgent orders. It made sense.
A warm exhaustion filled my bones and turned my muscles to liquid. “Painkillers,” I mumbled and eased into sleep.
“You’ll sleep your life away,” Kevin said.
My eyelids drifted open, then slammed shut. My limbs were loose and indistinct. Where was I? “Where are you?” I said, my voice thick and veiled. Silence. I should have known better. Questions were a no-no. I moved my hand, but it wouldn’t move. I tried my finger, but I couldn’t feel it. “Drugs. I took drugs.”
“You’re Briar Rose, sleeping your life away.” His voice was soft, slightly mocking.
“I can’t feel anything.”
“Once, you had the flu and slept for twenty-six hours.” He sounded close, as if whispering in my ear.
I lifted my arm to touch him, but it just lay there on the couch. “I’m awake now.”
A soft laugh, like a rolling mumble. “You’re sleeping.”
“I wish I could touch you.”
“And once, you stayed up for thirty-six hours straight. I don’t know why.”
I counted my breaths, like sheep, four, five. “That was when Dad died. I couldn’t sleep.” Ten, eleven. “Is it good to be dead?”
Silence.
Eighteen, nineteen.