Even Meredith cracked up at this. And Mrs. Flower’s high, flutelike laughter sounded above all the rest.
* * *
Elena felt that the stream of doctors who came to goggle at her and ask rude questions would never end. She had begun to think of some rude standard answers when the flow finally abated. An authoritative ICU nurse told her to rest.
“But I don’t feel like resting,” Elena said to Meredith and Bonnie. She bounced slightly on her hospital bed. “I feel like getting up and going to my afternoon classes.”
“You,” Bonnie informed her kindly, “are nuts.”
“But I’m going to get behind in Algebra, and be even more confused than ever. And I need to do homework for Nonfiction and Memoir Writing. How can I do homework here?”
“Well, I’ll miss Trig and Micro-Economics today,” Meredith said, her lip quirking, “but I wouldn’t be anywhere else for the world.”
“Me either,” Bonnie offered. “Even if Elena and I both flunk Algebra-for-Dummies.”
Elena gave her two friends a loving look. “Come here, both of you,” she said, holding out her free right hand, and pulling Meredith close to the bed. Meredith snagged Bonnie, who leaned in to touch Elena’s other hand. The three girls formed a rough triangle.
“I don’t know what happened to me last night,” Elena said, “but I know I’d never have survived it without my friends. How can I thank you?”
“By getting well as soon as possible,” Meredith said earnestly. Bonnie scrambled up over the railing onto the bed’s flat lower half. She perched there, light as any elf, but she looked sober. “And by never making us go through what we did last night, right, Meredith?”
“I didn’t get some strange disease just to annoy you,” Elena said, laughing.
“And,” Bonnie said her mood turning one-hundred-and-eighty degrees around, “by throwing us a ginormous ‘I’m-well’ party when you’re all better again!”
“Bonnie!” scolded Meredith, but Elena was already giggling and saying “Of course! It’s the least I can do for you after all your worry.”
“We’ll have the time of our lives—just in case we end up dead the next day,” Bonnie said serenely. “Romantic theme, huh?”
“Oh, charming,” Meredith said grimly. “Now can we drop it?” Her dark eyes were fixed on Bonnie’s. Elena felt something heavy hanging in the air between them.
“What is it?” she said, and when neither girl answered, she said, “No, I mean, really; I want to know.”
“It’s nothing to fret about,” Meredith said gently.
Bonnie climbed back off the bed, looking subdued again, and Elena realized that her cheer had been forced. “What?” she demanded. She knew that Meredith couldn’t be compelled to answer any question she had decided was better left alone; the tall, olive-skinned girl with gray eyes was as stubborn as Elena—almost. Bonnie, on the other hand . . .
“Bonnie!” Elena said quickly, plaintively. “If you know something about me, about my health, that I don’t know, it’s only fair to tell me. Did you call Mary?” Bonnie’s older sister Mary was a nurse.
Bonnie glanced at her sideways. Her brown eyes, already swollen, were filling with new tears.
“Yes, but the doctors here know better—and you’re all right now. Anyone can see that.”
“Maybe, but she told you something, didn’t she? Is it a disease? Is this just the beginning of something awful?” Elena felt a chilly wind; they kept the ICU so cold. She could ring for the nurse and ask for another heated blanket, but she didn’t want to be a bother, and anyway, she couldn’t let Bonnie slip off the hook. “Please just tell me,” she said, trying to sound well-balanced and ready to handle anything but hearing the quaver in her own voice. “I mean, I’m not dying or anything, right?” She forced a laugh.
“Yes, you are.”
Shocked and frozen, Elena tried to make sense of the words that Bonnie had just spoken. She could still hear them in the echo chambers of her mind, but her body seemed far away and she could barely chart her emotional response.
She heard herself make a tiny, involuntary noise.
“Bonnie!” Meredith exploded. She and Elena both found themselves staring at the back of Bonnie’s curly head. The room lights had been dimmed ever since the doctors had finished doing their rounds. The strawberry glow of Bonni
e’s hair had dimmed, too, and her small body seemed oddly stiff. She had retreated so she faced the corner of the room like a child being punished.
“Everyone in this room is going to die,” she intoned. “But Elena will be the first.”
“Bonnie! Turn around and apologize to Elena this instant!” Meredith cried. Elena wanted to say, “Don’t tell her to turn around,” but her vocal cords were paralyzed along with the rest of her.