The Night Olivia Fell. Christina McDonald

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      ‘Yes,’ Dr Griffith replied.

      I looked at Sarah. Her jaw worked, as if she were chewing leather.

      ‘How far along?’ I asked.

      ‘We’ll do an ultrasound to find out for sure, but the HCG hormone indicates about thirteen or fourteen weeks.’

      I thought back to what we were doing three months ago. It would’ve been July. Olivia was out of school. She was studying for her driver’s test, taking practice SAT tests, swimming, hanging out with her friends.

      We hadn’t done anything special. Money was always tight, and I was saving for the tuition I knew I’d have to pay when Olivia went to college. I couldn’t put my finger on when something might’ve changed, when she would’ve gotten pregnant. She must not have known. She would’ve told me if she’d known.

      ‘Surely the baby’s been exposed to radiation, chemicals . . . ?’ Sarah trailed off.

      Dr Griffith winced. ‘Yes. Possibly. Probably. We do a standard pregnancy test when female patients are admitted, but it was delayed by the surgery.’

      A dusty vent blew stale air into the room, the noise an obnoxious whine. Sarah and Dr Griffith had lapsed into silence.

      ‘I want to see her. Right now.’ My voice was hollow and flat.

      ‘Of course,’ Dr Griffith said immediately.

      Sarah helped me to my feet, and we followed the doctor down the corridor, toward the ICU.

      Despite the harsh reality of the stark white hallway, a part of me still clung to the faint hope that Olivia wasn’t here – that this was all some horrible mistake, some silly clerical error. Not my daughter.

      Dr Griffith walked briskly to the end of the hallway and turned left, then waved a security badge at a locked door. Inside the ICU Jen Stokes, Olivia’s best friend’s mother, hovered over a bed that was surrounded by beeping, clunking machines. A stethoscope dangled from her neck.

      ‘Dr Stokes,’ Dr Griffith greeted her.

      ‘Jen?’ I stared at my neighbor. Just a few hours ago, I’d been at a barbecue at her house, and now we were standing in the ICU. She was wearing faded jeans and an old Seahawks jersey under a lab coat. Her eyes were red, her dark curls a messy halo around a pale face. Her hands were clasped into tight fists and pressed into her belly.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

      ‘I called her,’ Sarah explained; then I remembered that Jen was the senior doctor in the emergency room here.

      ‘Abi, I’m so sorry.’ Her mouth worked as if she wanted to say more, but nothing else came. She broke eye contact and looked down.

      I followed her gaze, but it took me a moment to realize that the person she was staring at was Olivia. My daughter was as white as the sheet she lay on. Her body was too still, as if all her dynamic energy had been trapped beneath the sheet draped over her.

      A tangle of IV bags and pumps surrounded the hospital bed. So many tubes and lines I couldn’t count them: down her throat, breathing for her, up her nose, keeping her stomach empty, flowering from her chest, recording her heartbeat. The ventilator next to the bed made rhythmic blip, shhhh noises.

      Her head was swathed in white bandages, stark against her face. She had a deep cut above her right eyebrow, a sickening black and purple bruise blooming across her left temple, and a spray of scratches across her nose and cheekbones.

      I stared at my daughter, and the agony I felt wasn’t just emotional but physical. A sharp pain wrenched in my chest so it seemed my heart must’ve stopped, but I could feel it, I could hear it; it betrayed me by continuing to beat when it should have frozen in my chest. The pain and impotence were white lightning searing through me.

      My gaze drifted to Olivia’s abdomen, still flat and smooth, no hint of the baby tucked within.

      Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered Jen leaving the room. The emotions piled up, threatening to crack me open, splintering me into a billion little pieces. I reached for Olivia’s hand, wanting – no, needing – to be connected to her.

      Her wrist lay limply in my hand, but something was missing. The silver charm bracelet Olivia always wore was gone.

      In its place was a string of black and purple bruises.

4

       OLIVIA

      april

      ‘That girl. Jesus. That was creepy,’ Tyler said the Monday after our field trip to the University of Washington. We were eating lunch at our usual table in the cafeteria, the one next to the neatly stacked towers of orange chairs used for pep assemblies.

      ‘I know, right!’ Peter said. His carrot-red head bobbed in agreement. ‘What was that about? Do you have a sister we don’t know about, Liv?’

      I shook my head emphatically. ‘No way.’

      Next to me, Tyler shoved a handful of fries into his mouth. ‘She was totally your doppelgänger,’ he said. ‘My dad says everybody has one somewhere.’

      ‘I guess.’ I set my peanut butter and jelly sandwich down, my appetite suddenly gone. I didn’t want to talk about this. Why wouldn’t they just shut up?

      ‘She had the same butt chin, too,’ Peter added. ‘She looked just like you.’

      Tyler frowned at Peter. I ground my teeth together, waiting for Tyler to make some snappy clapback. Tyler always called my chin dimple a butt chin. Not in a mean way, just in a Tyler way. But I knew he wouldn’t like anybody else saying it.

      But Tyler went back to his fries. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

      Madison laughed and bit into a carrot stick. ‘Having a chin dimple doesn’t mean you’re related to somebody, you idiot.’

      ‘She’s not my sister, all right?’ I snapped. ‘I’ve never even met her before.’

      Everybody went quiet. My heart pulsed in my neck and I looked down. I felt them all exchanging looks. I was the peacemaker. I never lashed out or got involved in arguments.

      I picked at the edge of my sandwich until it was as bare as a stone. I hated the dry feel of crust in my mouth. When I was a kid my mom would cut the crusts off my sandwich, snip away the square edges, and cut a little bite-size hole in the middle so it looked like an O. I suddenly wished she were here to reassure me.

      Madison abruptly changed the subject. ‘Sooooo, my brother’s coming home next week.’

      My head snapped up and blood rushed to my cheeks. I let my hair swing in front of my face to hide it, chewing hard on a strand of hair.

      Tyler snorted and dropped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. ‘Can he score us some pot?’

      ‘Tyler!’ СКАЧАТЬ