Please Don't Die by Lurlene McDaniel
A feeling of déjà vu crept over Katie with Jeff’s last words. Hadn’t it been only yesterday that she’d wished Amanda could escape to the same place?
“I love it,” Amanda said, gazing up at the mobile. “Thanks.”
He bowed from the waist. “There are others where that came from.”
“Where’s that?”
“From me.” Jeff’s words made Amanda smile her beautiful smile, and Katie wanted to throw her own arms around him for making Amanda so happy. Yet she knew better than to say a word.
It was Lacey who broke the spell. “I need to leave for a minute,” she said.
Katie took one look at her and went cold with alarm. Lacey’s face was the color of paste, and she looked wobbly. Katie knew instantly that Lacey was having an insulin reaction. She swiftly went to Lacey’s side and put her arm around her, saying as nonchalantly as possible, “I’ll go with you. We’ve hogged Amanda all morning. It’s time to share her. Back in a bit,” she called over her shoulder as she helped Lacey out of the room as discreetly as she could.
Katie got them to a lounge area and settled Lacey on the sofa. By now, Lacey’s breath was coming in gasps, and she was as white as a sheet. “How can I help?” Katie asked urgently.
“S-sugar …” Lacey mumbled.
Katie tore over to a table where someone had set up a coffee station. She grabbed several packets of sugar, ran back to Lacey, ripped them open and sprinkled the contents on her friend’s tongue. Lacey’s head lolled back against the sofa, but she sucked on the sugar, and slowly, color began to return to her cheeks.
Katie’s heart pounded. She took Lacey’s hand. It felt cold and clammy and was trembling, but after several minutes, the shaking stopped. Lacey raised her head. Although her eyes looked glassy, she managed a weak smile. “I guess I forgot to eat lunch.”
Katie’s voice quivered as she spoke. “I’ll run down to the cafeteria and buy you something.”
“Thanks for covering for me,” Lacey said.
Katie stood and dug in her pocket for the five-dollar bill she’d stuffed in that morning. “No problem.”
Suddenly, Jeff’s voice cut sharply through the air. “All right, you two. What are you up to now?”
Sixteen
LACEY DUCKED HER head, and Katie felt an intense desire to protect her. “We’re not up to anything,” she said. “We were just leaving you and Amanda alone together.”
“Don’t you mean Amanda, Chelsea, and me?” Jeff’s eyes narrowed as he studied Lacey’s face. “You look like you don’t feel good.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
Jeff stepped around Katie, lowered himself to the sofa, and took Lacey’s hand. “You’re cold as ice.” She tried to pull away, but he refused to let go. “What’s wrong?” His tone softened.
“A little insulin reaction,” Katie blurted, although Lacey shot her a look that said to hush up. “Well, there’s no use pretending,” Katie exclaimed. “It’s a fact of your life.”
“Are you all right?” Jeff’s voice was edged with concern.
“I told you, I’m fine. I forgot to eat lunch, and my blood sugar got a little low. It’s nothing.”
Katie saw that Lacey’s face was pinched with pain, and she realized that the reaction had given her friend a headache. “I was headed down to the cafeteria for a sandwich,” she told Jeff.
Jeff stood. “I’ll go. Stay with her, Katie.”
“But Amanda—” Lacey started.
“Will be fine until I get back,” he interrupted.
“I’m not an invalid,” Lacey insisted. “I’m not really sick.”
“You have diabetes,” Jeff said. “It has its own set of built-in problems. Stop pretending nothing’s wrong with you.”
“And you stop treating me like a baby.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
Katie felt caught in their crossfire. “Just go get her something to eat,” she interjected. “She needs food.”
When he’d hurried off down the hall, Lacey flopped her head back against the sofa and said through clenched teeth, “I hate diabetes! I really hate it.”
Katie saw a tear of frustration squeeze from the corner of Lacey’s eye. “I understand,” she said in total empathy. “I remember how I hated it when my heart got the virus that destroyed it. All my life, I was perfectly healthy, and then—BAM!—without warning, this virus moves in and eats away at my heart. I couldn’t even walk across the room without gasping for air.”
Lacey sniffed. “It must have been awful.”
“They told me I was going to die. I was only sixteen. I sure didn’t want to die.”
“That’s what going to happen to Chelsea, isn’t it?”
“Without a transplant, probably so,” Katie said ruefully.
“Life stinks!”
“No, it doesn’t,” Katie replied emphatically. “Life is wonderful. Especially when you have to fight so hard for it.”
Lacey stared up at the ceiling, her mouth forming a bitter line. “If only I’d never come here this summer.”
Her comment shocked Katie. Of course, Lacey had been a pain at first, but she’d turned out to be a good friend to Amanda, and in spite of everything, Katie liked Lacey immensely. “You seemed to be having a better time lately,” she said. “I thought you were enjoying being at Jenny House.”
“That’s the problem.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to care about any of you. I really tried hard not to. But ever since that day Amanda took us up on the mountain to watch the sunset …”
So, Lacey had felt something extraordinary that day too, Katie thought. “Well, like it or not, you’re here,” Katie told her. “We’re all in this together.”
“Why did Amanda have to get sick?” Lacey whispered. “Why did Jeff—” Lacey stopped abruptly.
“Go on,” Katie said.
“Nothing.”
Katie studied her closely, then felt a dawning sensation spread through her. “Wait a minute—”
Before she could complete her thought, Jeff came loping up to them. “I hope you like tuna salad. It’s all they had.” He thrust a cellophane-wrapped sandwich into Lacey’s hands. “And I got you a soda too.”
“Thanks,” Lacey mumbled. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot while she pulled off the wrapper. She snapped, “I can eat this without an audience, you know.”
“Feel free,” Jeff countered. He glared at her, and for a moment, Katie thought he was going to yell. He didn’t, but with much control, he turned toward Katie and said, “Katie, she’s all yours. Stay with her—in case she chokes. I’ll be in Amanda’s room.” He turned on his heel and marched off down the hall.
Taken aback, Katie could only mumble, “What’s wrong with the two of you? Why do you always end up fighting?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Lacey insisted. She gathered up the sandwich and soda. “I’m going to eat this in the bathroom.”
“But—”
“I’ll meet you in Amanda’s room after he’s gone.”
Stunned, Katie watched Lacey hurry to the ladies’ room. She shook her head, attempting to clear it, to make sense of Lacey’s renewed hostility. “I’ll never figure that girl out,” she muttered under her breath, and forcing Lacey and Jeff out of her mind, she returned to visit with Amanda.
“Do you really think he likes me?” Amanda asked when she was alone with Katie, Chelsea, and Lacey. “He stayed around all afternoon, didn’t he?” Lacey asked. “You think a guy like Jeff hasn’t got anything better to do? Of course he likes you.” Katie flashed Lacey a look that said to cool it, but the pretty blonde ignored her. “He’s stuck on you.”
“And just when things are looking up for me, I have to go into isolation. This is so unfair.” Amanda pounded her small fists into the mattress.
“The mobile is dynamite,” Chelsea commented, fingering the rainbow. “When I get stuck in the hospital again, will you make me one?”
“Who do I look like—an expert in origami
They all burst out laughing, and when Amanda’s parents arrived at the room a few minutes later, they were still making jokes and giggling. When it was time to leave, Amanda’s mother walked Katie, Lacey, and Chelsea to the elevator, took each of their hands, and said, “Thank you for being such good friends to our little girl. I can’t tell you what it means to us to see her smiling.”
Katie noticed the worry lines on Mrs. Burdick’s face. “This new drug is supposed to do the trick, isn’t it?” Katie asked. “I mean, after a few weeks on it, she’ll be better again, won’t she?”
Mrs. Burdick leaned wearily against the wall. “Frankly, we don’t know what to expect. They told us that it’ll make her very sick. You see, it’s highly toxic.”
“Toxic? But that’s like poisonous.”
“In a way it is poisonous. The trick is to poison the cancer cells and leave the other cells as unaffected as possible.”
“How can they do that?” Chelsea wanted to know.
“I don’t believe they can. Everything gets poisoned.” Mrs. Burdick rubbed her temples. “I don’t mean to depress you three. I only want you to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” Katie asked, feeling a chill go through her.
Mrs. Burdick blinked back tears and said, “For anything.”
By the time they arrived back at Jenny House, Chelsea was too tired to eat dinner in the cafeteria, so Katie brought a plate for her up to the room. Lacey disappeared immediately after dinner, and once Chelsea was settled, Katie felt wound up in knots. She changed into her running shoes and started out the front door. On the porch, Jeff caught her arm. “Where’re you off to?” he asked.
“I need to run. It’ll be light for another couple of hours, so I’m running the woods trail.”
“Did Lacey recover from her reaction?”
“She’s fine.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to shout at her today.” He shook his head and clenched his fists. “That girl drives me nuts. She’s cold. She’s hot. She’s indifferent. I don’t know how to act around her.”
“I don’t have any answers for you, Jeff.” Katie felt sorry for him. And sorry for her part in deceiving Amanda at his expense. She liked Jeff and wanted to make things right between the two of them again. “I’m sorry that I got involved in this whole scheme with Amanda. I didn’t mean for it to get out of hand. But she really likes you, Jeff, and because she thinks you care about her … well, it makes her feel better. And gives her something to think about besides what the doctors are doing to her.”
“Katie, that’s not a problem. I admit, I was ticked off when I first found out how you and Lacey were manipulating everything, but after being with Amanda today, I’m not mad about it. Poor kid.” He ran his hand through his thick blond hair. “She’s got a lousy few weeks in front of her. If I can help take her mind off of it, then I will. Besides, she’s so sweet, how could I not like her?”
Katie felt a wave of relief. Only a guy like Jeff, a guy who’d lain in a hospital bed himself, could be so understanding. “When this is all over with, you can write her a couple of times, then do a slow fade-out. She’ll get busy in school and get interested in a guy more her age. You’ll see. It’ll work out.”
Jeff smiled. “You’re such an optimist, Katie O’Roark.”
She returned his smile. “Friends?” She held out her hand.
“Friends,” he said, shaking it. “Have a good run.”
She waved, and jogged toward the woods. She ran up the trail, enjoying the exhilaration of physical exercise. A summer breeze cooled her skin and rippled through her hair. She wished Josh were with her, and remembered the times he’d met her at the high school track and helped her train for the Transplant Olympics. She missed him terribly and found herself almost looking forward to school’s starting. Even though it would mean leaving Jenny House behind.
Katie rounded a bend in the trail and stopped. A sound had caught her attention. Puzzled, she held her breath and waited. There! It came again. Back in the trees, someone was crying. Carefully, Katie threaded her way through the thicket, following the sound of soft sobbing the way a bird follows a trail of bread crumbs.
She stepped into a clearing, and there, huddled on the ground, she saw Lacey. Her face was buried in her hands, and she was crying as if her heart were breaking in half.
Seventeen
“LACEY!” KATIE CRIED. “What’s wrong?” She jogged over and stooped down on the grassy ground.
Lacey scrambled to wipe her eyes with her fingertips. “I—I thought I was alone,” she mumbled, her voice thick with tears. “I really want to be by myself.”
“No way,” Katie declared, suddenly angry. “You always brush me off and sneak away. Well, not this time, Lacey Duval. Like it or not, I’m your friend, and I’m not going to get lost. This time, you’re going to talk to me.”
Lacey looked shocked by Katie’s outburst, but she didn’t pull back. “There’s nothing to say.”
Katie released an exasperated squeal and grabbed Lacey’s shoulder. “Listen up! I know something’s wrong. Something more than being broken up about Amanda. Talk to me, Lacey. Tell me what’s going on.”
Lacey took a deep, shuddering breath, and a look of helpless resignation crossed her face. “It’s Jeff, of course.”
“Jeff? What about him?” A strange feeling stole over Katie, and she saw herself, Lacey, and Jeff again in the hospital waiting room earlier that afternoon. The tension had been so thick, she could have cut it with a knife, but because of Lacey’s insulin reaction, because of concentrating on Amanda, she’d let her suspicions about Lacey and Jeff slip away. “He means something to you, doesn’t he?” she asked.
Lacey nodded. “I’d give anything in the world if he didn’t, but he does.”
“Hey, he’s a great guy. What’s so wrong with your caring about him?” Lacey only shrugged. Katie searched for a way to keep her talking. “Is it because of Amanda?”
“A little.”
“Are you afraid that if you act like you care about him, he’ll ignore her? Jeff won’t do that. Amanda’s important to him, and he’d never hurt her.”
“I’m all mixed up inside. I should have never let him kiss me.”
Katie smiled. “Fireworks, huh?”
“Rockets,” Lacey confessed.
“Fireworks and rockets are nice,” Katie kidded.
“Is that the way you feel about Josh?”
Lacey’s question made Katie pause. Josh was the first real boyfriend she’d ever had, and he’d come to her in such a peculiar way. By now, being with Josh was comfortable and familiar. It was knowing what he was thinking before he even spoke. It was anticipating his moods and feelings whenever they were together. “Maybe not rockets,” Katie admitted. “I don’t know … it’s just that Josh has always been there for me. I can’t imagine my life without him.”
“Well, my life was perfectly fine until Jeff wandered into it.”
“He hardly wandered. He’s had his eye on you since day one.”
“What?” Lacey sat bolt upright. “You mean the two of you have discussed me? Talked about his feelings for me?”
Katie felt her face flame red and wished she could have eaten her words. She mumbled, “He wanted me to fix the two of you up.”
“Well, thank you very much for sharing, Katie.”
Katie didn’t want Lacey to pull her usual stunt of running off instead of talking things out. She held fast to Lacey’s elbow. “I owe you an explanation. First of all, it wasn’t a conspiracy. I was caught in the middle. Amanda liked him. He liked you. You liked—” She shrugged. “Who knows? Until Josh and I stumbled across the two of you on the Fourth of July, I was refusing to help him at all in your behalf. I told him he was on his own.”
“He made out all right.” Lacey’s tone was sarcastic.
“Stop acting that way. Face it, the thing you’re most mad about isn’t that I knew something you didn’t,
“Nothing!” Lacey said emphatically. “Absolutely nothing.”
She stood, and Katie bolted upward beside her. “Explain.”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“I have an IQ higher than a mushroom. Try me.”
Lacey turned to face Katie. Her expression was determined and lofty, the one that she used to push people away from her. “I will not be involved with a guy who’s sick. Back home in Miami, all my friends are healthy and fine. My diabetes doesn’t get in the way because I don’t allow it to. I want to be around regular kids. Kids who aren’t worried about medicine and hospitals and doctors and sickness!” She fairly spat out the last word. “Kids who aren’t going to die!”
Lacey’s anger made Katie step back, as if she’d been physically shoved. “You’re not going to give Jeff a chance because he’s a hemophiliac? That’s dumb. And prejudiced,” she added hotly. “And you’ve made me feel like a freak too.”
Lacey tossed her mane of long blond hair. “Grow up, Katie. We’re all freaks.”
Too stunned to respond, Katie watched Lacey stalk off into the surrounding woods. She stood alone while around her, shadows crept and lengthened until they closed off the daylight altogether. And although the evening air was heavy and damp with summer humidity, she shivered.
* * *
That night, Lacey surrounded herself with a wall of silence and went to bed early. Katie was grateful that poor Chelsea was too tired to notice Lacey’s behavior. As it was, Katie was concerned enough about Chelsea. Going to see Amanda daily was taking its toll on her. She determined to talk Chelsea into visiting on a less regular basis, or she’d be ending up in the hospital too. But it was Lacey Katie wanted to deal with first. So the next morning, when Chelsea had gone into the bathroom for her shower, Katie sat down on Lacey’s bed and shook her shoulder.