“Go see your Pa,” he said wearily. “I’ll talk to you later.” He gave me a meaningful glance—I still owed him some serious making out. I think he also meant: Watch your back. It was dangerous for us to be here again. At last I reluctantly let go of his hand as another nurse came over, talking to Nate about getting X-rays. I looked back at him as long as I could, feeling like I was leaving something important behind.
96
OUT IN THE HALLWAY BECCA and I immediately turned left and headed up the stairs to the second floor. Pa was in his same room—he hadn’t died while we were gone, and I was so thankful. I dropped into the chair by his bedside and took one of his pale, frail hands in my bloody, dirt-encrusted ones.
“Pa,” I whispered. I was so happy to see him, had kept living just to see him again. But of course no miracle had happened while we were gone. He was still dying, would still never be the Pa I’d grown up with.
Becca pulled the other chair over. In the bright light of day, she looked like shit on a stick. I assumed that, as usual, I looked identical. She took Pa’s other hand, and I saw her lip tremble. She didn’t have to say anything. I knew what she was feeling.
I was bent wearily over Pa’s hand, trying to summon the strength to get up and walk home, when suddenly his fingers twitched in mine. That had happened a lot in the early days, but not at all lately. My eyes flew open and I almost jumped to see his calm blue eyes, looking at me.
“Pa?”
Becca sat up and looked at him, too. We hadn’t seen his eyes in months.
“My… girls.” It was a withered, dry rasp of a voice.
“Yes, Pa!” Becca said. “We’re here!”
His eyes drifted closed again as Becca and I stared at each other. Could he be getting better? I glanced at the machine, and my hopes fell. His numbers were lower than ever, his breaths fewer, his heartbeat more erratic. His blood oxygen level had never been lower; his lungs were almost nonfunctional.
“A boy… came here.” His wasted chest wheezed with the effort of speaking.
Becca and I frowned at each other. A boy? Maybe it was a new male nurse, or lab tech?
“Okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Provost’s… son.”
I sat back and exchanged another puzzled glance with my sister. Nate had been here? When? Pa would recognize him—I’d gone to school with Nate for twelve years. But I knew he hadn’t seen Nate this morning—we’d just dropped him off.
“Said… you were okay.” Pa’s words were barely audible, but his pale lips turned up just a tiny bit, at the corners. His eyes stayed shut, but his fingers moved in my hand again. “My girls… are okay.”
“Yes, Pa, we’re fine,” I assured him. “And you are, too. They say you’re getting better every day.”
“Yeah,” Becca agreed, looking deflated. “Listen, Pa—I’ve got a history test. I need to go home and learn everything there is to know about the cotton gin. But I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Pa didn’t say anything or react. It was like he’d had a burst of energy and then slipped back into his comalike state. It was so disappointing.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Pa,” I said, standing up. I leaned down to kiss his cheek and whispered, “You get better immediately, if not sooner, you hear me?”
97
BECCA
“I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT we’re doing here.” Cassie had waited till we were on the road going home before she shoved more reality at me.
“We saw Pa. We’re going home,” I said shortly. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
“No—I mean, we’ve seen a whole other existence!” she said, waving her arms. “There are other cells. There are other people. Other vocations. We now know all that. And we know that we left a bunch of innocent kids behind to get tortured and killed.”
I looked at her. “We couldn’t take everyone with us. It was risky enough.”
“I know. But can we leave them there?” Her voice was exhausted, anguished.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “We left them. They’re there.”
“Becca.” Cassie turned and faced me. “There’s nothing for us here, except Pa, and his sun is setting. And we left all those kids there. Don’t you think we need to go back and get them?”