Night Road

Jude stood beside the gurney, holding Mia’s hand. She knew there was commotion going on all around her: people coming and going, the team members talking about “the harvest” as if Jude were deaf. There was a boy that desperately needed Mia’s strong, loving heart, only a year younger than her daughter, and another boy who dreamed of playing baseball … a mother of four who was dying of kidney failure and just wanted to be strong enough to walk to school with her children. The stories were heartbreaking and should have comforted Jude. She’d always cared about things like that. But not now.

Let Miles find peace in these donations. She did not. Neither did they upset or offend her. She just didn’t care.

There was nothing inside of her but pain; she kept it trapped inside, behind pursed lips. God help her if she started screaming.

At her back, she heard a door open and she knew who it was. Miles had brought Zach to say good-bye to his twin sister. The door closed quietly behind them.

It was the four of them now, just the family. All those doctors and specialists were outside, waiting.

“Something’s wrong with Mia,” Zach said. “I can’t feel her. ”

Miles went pale at that. “Yeah,” he said. “Mia … didn’t survive, Zach,” Miles said at last.

Jude knew she should go to her son, be there for him, but she couldn’t make herself let go of Mia’s hand, couldn’t move. If she let go, Mia would be gone, and the idea of that loss was overwhelming, so she held it away.

“She d-died?” Zach said.

“They did everything they could. Her injuries were too extensive. ”

Zach started ripping the bandages off his eyes. “I need to see her—”

Miles pulled their son into an embrace. “Don’t do that,” he said, and by the end of his breath, they were both crying. “She’s right here. We knew you’d want to say good-bye. ” He led their burned, bandaged son to the gurney, where his sister lay strapped down, her body covered in white and kept alive by wheeled machines.

Zach felt for his sister’s hand and held it. As always, they came together like puzzle pieces. He bowed forward, let his bandaged head rest on his sister’s chest. He whispered the nickname from their babyhood, “Me-my…,” and said something Jude didn’t understand; probably it was a word from long ago, forgotten until now, a word from the twin language that was theirs alone. It had always been Zach chattering back then, talking for his sister … and it was that way again.

Behind them, someone knocked on the door.

Miles took his son by the shoulders, eased him back from the gurney. “They have to take her now, son. ”

“Don’t put her in the dark,” Zach said in a hoarse voice. “I’m not really the one who was afraid. It was her. ” His voice cracked. “She didn’t want anyone to know. ”

At that little reminder of who they were, who they’d been—the twins—Jude felt the last tiny bit of courage crumble away.

Don’t put her in the dark.

Jude squeezed Mia’s hand tightly, clinging to her daughter for as long as she possibly could.

Miles and Zach came up around her, reached out. They held one another upright, the three of them, the family that was left.

The knock at the door came again.

“Jude,” Miles said, his face wet with tears. “It’s time. She’s gone. ”

Jude knew what she had to do, what they all were waiting for. She’d rather cut out her own heart. But she had no choice.

She let go of her daughter’s hand and stepped back.

Thirteen

Jude crouched in the hallway near the OR door. At some point, she’d lost her footing and fallen to the cold linoleum floor, and she stayed there, her face pressed to the wall. She could hear people coming and going around her, rushing from one trauma to the next. Sometimes they stopped and talked to her. She looked up into their faces—frowning and compassionate and a little distracted—and she tried to understand whatever it was they were saying, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her whole body shook with cold and her vision was cloudy and she couldn’t hear anything except the reluctant beating of her heart.

No. I do not forgive you.

We’ll talk tomorrow.

These were the words that ran in an endless loop through her mind.

“Judith?”