No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I get it now.”

“The important thing is that you spoke up and defended yourself.”

“Sure.”

I finally found a spot and parked the car. I then turned around in my seat to look at her. “Can I see your drawings so I know what I’m fighting for on Monday morning?”

She passed me her open sketchbook, and the first thing I saw was a woman bleeding all over the floor. When I flipped through the pictures, which were really good for any age, I immediately saw the theme. It had to be her mother, over and over, dying in lots of ways that included absolutely buckets of blood.

I lifted my gaze from the pages to her face. “You know an aortic dissection is all inside your body, right? Nothing comes out, like, no blood. It doesn’t look like this at all.”

She was listening intently, studying my face, trying to figure something out.

“I know you must’ve asked somebody what it was, and they told you a dissection is like a big cut, so you figured it meant blood all over the place, right?”

The smallest nod answered my question.

“An aortic dissection is different. There’s nothing outside your body.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I apprised her, using the gentlest tone I could manage. It was heartbreaking that she was fumbling around in the darkness, trying to figure things out for herself. I could help her if she’d let me.

“Are you sure?”

“I am,” I told her, unclipping my seat belt and turning all the way around. “I have a friend, he’s a surgeon in Chicago, we can Skype him if you want, and he can tell you all about it.”

She unclipped her seat belt and climbed over into the front seat, then sat facing me. “I tried to read stuff about what happened to my mom, but the books in the library that I checked out were hard to figure out, and I can’t look it up on the internet because where I wanna go my dad has it all blocked.”

I gestured at her. “Well, yeah, of course, ’cause you’re eight.”

“But every time I try and ask a question, people think I’m sad, and I am sad, but I’m not just sad anymore. I wanna know stuff.”

“Of course you do.”

She searched my face, making the same decisions about me that her sister had, whether to trust me or not, have faith in me or not. “Everyone tells me to be happy ’cause Mommy’s in heaven, but I don’t wanna talk about heaven. I need to know what happened. I wanna know if it hurt when she died. I wanna know if it took a long time and if she was super sad and if she was crying because she knew she was gonna die and knew she was gonna miss us.”

I shook my head. “What if it makes you sadder when you find out the answers?”

“Don’t I get to decide?”

“Nope,” I replied honestly. “That’s up to your dad because he’s the grown-up and you’re the kid. It’s his job to tell you stuff, and your job to listen.”

She shook her head. “But if he just tells me to wait ’til I’m older, then I’ll be the same as I am now.”

“And that’s a valid argument, but he might want that.”

“I want to talk to your friend.”

“We’ll ask and see what your father says,” and then I continued quickly when she opened her mouth to protest. “I think he’ll say yes, because he wants you to understand, but if he’s maybe not ready, you gotta be okay with that.”

“I’ll try.”

“Well, your dad’s a teacher, right? He wants you to know stuff.”

It was unnerving how hard she was staring at me, like she was trying to see inside my head and make a decision.

“I know you’re sad, and you’ll probably stay sad for a long time, but it’s okay if you’re not sometimes too, ’cause your mom would want to hear you laugh and stuff.”

“I don’t believe in heaven,” she informed me. “I don’t think she’s up in the clouds staring down at me, waiting to hear me having fun.”

“I don’t either,” I agreed. “But I do think she’s in your heart, and I think she’s around in the things you guys liked to do, and not like a ghost or something, but you know, with you.”

Her eyes filled fast, and I was not ready for her to launch herself at me.

She hit me hard, and I had to scramble to grab her and had just enough time to tuck her tightly against my chest before the dam broke.

All I could do was hug her as she sobbed into my hoodie, loud, racking sobs that shook her small body hard. She couldn’t breathe, and I was worried for a second that she was hyperventilating, but her air came back in a rush and with it more crying that sounded almost like screaming, as high-pitched and broken as it was.