Revived

“Sounds like me last night,” I joke, instantly regretting making light of the situation. Matt laughs weakly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Anyway, she kept falling back to sleep, and then she’d wake up confused again. We kept having to tell her the story over and over. Finally it stayed in her brain. The next time she woke up she remembered, and she just cried. It was horrible.”

“I can’t even imagine,” I say, and it feels flimsy.

“Eventually, she was well enough to get out of the hospital. We went home and she saw a bunch of different doctors, who gave her a bunch of different options.” Matt humphs.

“What?” I ask.

“Doctors,” he says flatly. “There’s no right answer. It’s all opinion. And some of their opinions suck.”

I think of the only doctor I know: Mason. He went to medical school, but did his residency in a very different way, as part of a covert team under the umbrella of the FDA. Shaking off thoughts of Mason, I ask about the only way I know to treat cancer: “Chemo?”

“No. I guess it doesn’t work on what she has,” Matt says. “Basically her treatment is giving her some experimental drug, waiting and watching. It’s bullshit.”

It reminds me of the program’s stance on Nora. It feels weak.

“Isn’t there more they can do?” I ask, instantly pissed at Audrey’s doctors. “Surgery or something?”

“I guess her liver has too many little tumors to take out,” Matt says quietly.

“What about a liver transplant?” I offer.

Matt looks at me with a sad smile. “They don’t give healthy livers to cancer patients, Daisy.” I feel childish for suggesting it, and I’m glad when Matt’s eyes turn back to the road.

“How long did they give her?” I ask.

“Three years,” Matt says. “It’s been two and a half. She was okay for a while, but now she keeps having pain. She keeps going back to the hospital.”

“Is that where she is now?” I whisper.

“Not anymore,” Matt says. “But that’s why she didn’t call you back or whatever. After the movie on Friday, she didn’t look so good, so my parents freaked out and took her to the ER. They ran some tests and then sent her home, like usual. But they gave her painkillers, and they knock her out. She’s been sleeping all weekend.”

I look back to the mile markers and watch them zoom past for a while. Somehow the landscape amplifies my feelings of sadness, anger, and helplessness. Again, I think of Revive; again, I’m reminded of its limitations.

When I was seven, Mason gave me a rabbit to make me feel better for falling out of a tree and breaking my arm. I named the rabbit Ginger and took good care of her. She lived in a very clean cage in my bedroom, and I let her out for hours every day to play indoors, and sometimes outside in our fenced backyard. I don’t speak rabbit, but I believe she was happy.

But then Ginger got cancer.

At first, it was a small lump. In the end, her feet barely touched the cage floor because the tumor eating her from the inside out was so huge. She wobbled around like a balloon animal with no legs, which would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. And then she died.

I pleaded with Mason to save her.

“Give her the medicine,” I cried, facedown into my bed so that I couldn’t see the dead rabbit in the cage near the door. Mason sat next to me, patting my back.

“Shh,” he said calmly. “I know you’re upset. I know you loved Ginger. But unfortunately, I can’t do it, Daisy.”

“Why?” I wailed.

“Because it won’t work on her,” he said softly.

“How do you know? Have you ever tried?” I cried. Mason smoothed my messy hair and sighed.

“Daisy, the rabbit had cancer. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes!”

“Well, we’re learning that there are certain limitations to Revive,” Mason said, like he was giving a report to his superiors, not comforting his pseudo daughter.

“What does limitations mean?” I asked, still facedown.

“It means that the medicine only works on certain types of bodies.”

“People bodies?” I asked.

“Yes, and rat bodies, too, but that’s not what I mean,” Mason said. “I mean that it only works on bodies that are healthy before they die. Bodies that die suddenly—not from a disease.”

“What’s a disease?” I asked, rolling over and looking up at Mason. My tears stopped when my inquisitive nature took over. Mason was quiet for a moment, probably trying to decide how to boil it down for a seven-year- old.

“A disease is a really bad sickness that—”

“Like a cold?”

“Shh, let me finish,” Mason said, lightly touching my hand. “It’s like a cold, but a lot worse, and usually it’s not something you can catch from someone else or fix with medicine.”

“Am I going to get a disease?” I asked, sitting up straight. “I don’t want to die again. It hurts!”

“No,” Mason said confidently. “You’re not going to get a disease, and you’re not going to die again. But Daisy, listen to me. Ginger had cancer. That’s a disease. An incurable one, which means it can’t be fixed. Hers is the type of body that cannot be saved with the Revive medicine. Understand?”

I looked at the cage near the door, at the motionless rabbit inside, and said nothing.

“Ginger had a nice life, Daisy. Knowing that should make you feel a little better.”

“It doesn’t,” I said honestly.

Mason gave me a weak smile. “Someday it might,” he said before leaving my room and taking Ginger the dead rabbit with him.

Matt and I stop at a gas station about thirty miles out. Matt pumps and pays, then says he’s going inside for food. From the car, I watch him walk the aisles, scrutinizing the snacks. He holds up a pack of Twizzlers and I shake my head no. He waves some chocolate and I make a face. Finally, he holds up a bag of chips. I give him a thumbs-up and mouth Coke, too, but he doesn’t get what I’m saying, so I text him. He reads it and we make eye contact and laugh, both of us grabbing on to something meaningless like texting about junk food because the meaningful stuff is too huge.

At around five, we pull back onto the highway. Just as I’m opening the chips, my cell rings. Even though he’s not supposed to be finished with Wade for a couple of hours, I know it’s Mason calling to check in. I’m not ready to talk right now. I don’t want to lie to him about where I am, and if I tell him, he’ll try to make me come back.

“You should tell your parents where you are,” Matt says, reading my mind.

“They’ll find out eventually; I left a note.”

“Yeah, but you should tell them you’re okay. Parents worry.”

“Oh, really?” I ask. “Where do your parents think you are right now?”

Matt looks at me, then back at the road. “With you,” he says simply. “They trust me.”

“How nice for you,” I say. I hear Matt laugh a little under his breath. “What, you said, ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, I know Audrey’s sick and all, but I’m taking off to go save drunk Daisy from a stupid situation.’ ”

“Something like that,” Matt says. He’s smiling fully now and, knowing all I do about Audrey and how sad his life is right now, his smile seems precious.

“What exactly did you say to them?” I ask, taking in his profile. The golden sunset illuminates his features and makes everything else hazy. It’s as if I’m seeing him through one of those filter apps that makes your pictures look old-school. I admire his thick black eyelashes and the straight line of his nose. I sit on my left hand to keep from reaching over and touching the scar on his perfect chin.

“I said that you’re from a small town and got lost in a big city,” Matt answers, pulling me out of my imagination. “I said that you were scared and needed help and I was going to go help you.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Weren’t they mad that you weren’t staying home to be with Audrey?” I ask.