Lauren Hoffman was looking out a window, rolling her head, and she turned and walked over to her husband and took a stool next to him and leaned over and bumped his shoulder with hers and folded her hands in front of herself and looked at her son. “I’m sorry,” Ethan,” she said. Her neck was extended a bit, her chin up a bit, her eyes not on him. Every once in a while, he would realize how smart his parents were. How much smarter his mother was than he was, and how she was smart enough to use her smarts in the most thoughtful way.

“Can you tell us what you talked about? If you want to? And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. I mean it.”

Ethan stepped back to the counter behind him, the one running to the refrigerator, leaned against it, looked down at the floor. Had he been chastised? He thought about that and no, he hadn’t. Not really. He’d got his sister out of the hospital and drove her around in a car and had her gone four hours or so. All the time he thought – he was sure Vanessa thought – it was a little risky, a little grandiose, a little defiant, but so what? Ethan figure it was time for a time-out and his sister did, too.

“She was comfortable,” Ethan said. “I kept asking her and she kept saying, ‘yeah, I’m okay,’ like, why do I keep on asking her that. And I had the heater on.” He raised his eyes and made eye contact. “I had it on just a little bit to be sure and I asked her if that was okay and she said it was, and let me tell you, she was happy to be in the car just riding around. You should have seen the smile on her face. You should have seen it. She was the real Vanessa. And I’d just drive and look over and she seemed to be so laid back and relaxed and …” He paused, eyes still feeling that way. “I promise you, I kept asking her if she was okay and, I asked her so much she got miffed, you know. So we get to Marquette, and I parked down in that one lot, the one way out in front of the lodge. Across the road from the lodge. You know. You can’t see the whole river but you can see what you can see.” Another pause. “She just jumped right in and started talking about how she feels and how she’s been feeling. She pepped up, I think. And she’s telling me she’s tired of it all, which is not easy to hear, okay?” He stopped and swallowed. “She’s telling me about these studies she’s in, and I didn’t know anything about that stuff. Did you guys?” Wide-eyed, Ethan surveyed his parents. Studies? His sister is being studied? For what?

Of course, Paul and Lauren Hoffman knew. Consent required. Vanessa’s consent, as well. They tell you it’s all for the best. That’s what the doctors say. Every doctor said that, or said something close, or hinted at it.

“So, she told me what she thinks is going to happen after she dies. While she’s dying. And I’m scared hearing this mom, I swear to God.” Ethan had to stop for a moment. Tight in the throat. Eyes down and he won’t look up. “She asks me if it’s okay if she talks like that and I say ‘sure’ and she just goes on like she’s talking about … I don’t know … school, or a movie, or something. Simple and calm. And she’s holding up a hand, like, ‘don’t interrupt me’ so I don’t, and when she’s done, she looks at me and says ‘I’m not looking forward to it, I don’t want to sound like that, but I’m close and I know it. I think I’m getting prepared.” Ethan coughs, glances up, down, swallows, straightens up and pulls his hands up and crosses his arms across his chest. “This is weird,” he said, “but she said, ‘I think I’m being shown the way’ and I didn’t know what to say or what that meant, and I look over at her, and she’s staring at me, and I guess I looked like I was shocked or something. You know. Not shocked. Not really. Confused, though. Worried.” A long sigh. “You know … mom, dad …” and here he can’t help it anymore and his eyes get hot, “it ain’t like I wanted to hear any of that.”

Ethan pushes himself away from the counter, hangs his head, takes a breath, looks up. “Vanessa’s done a lot of thinking,” he said. “We get back to the hospital and they all come running and they’re all bent out of shape – maybe that’s good, I don’t know – and there’s some security guy there and someone is telling me to call you guys. But I stay with Vanessa. They get her in a wheelchair and that’s okay, that’s smart, but I want to be the one that pushes the wheelchair, and I think I say that, something like that. And somehow, they let me do that, and we get her back to her room, and they get her all settled back down, and she’s so patient, mom. Really patient. I mean, they’re yacking away and asking her stuff. So I wait. They’re giving me some dirty looks. At least that’s what I think. And a doctor comes in, I think he was just coming by or something, and they talk and then it all settles down and I’m going to go and Vanessa says, ‘wait a minute’ and she kinda looks at the nurses and she’s looking at me, kinda pointing at me. She’s saying it to me, you know, ‘wait a minute.’”

Ethan Hoffman shrugged, inhaled and exhaled, pushed his chin out and rolled his shoulders. “Vanessa says, ‘thank you’ and …” and Ethan Hoffman looks away, and his eyes get spongy, and that pepper-feel is in his nose, and he sniffles it back and wipes at his eyes and raises his gaze and looks at his parents. His mother has stood up. “I don’t regret it,” he said. “I don’t care if it was stupid. Vanessa told me, on the way there and on the way back, she told me, she said ‘we’re gonna catch hell’ and she laughed. She did, mom. She laughed out loud. She said that and I said I don’t care and she said, ‘I don’t care either.’

His mother took a step, started to come around the counter to her boy.

“She’s not dying,” Ethan said. He turned and looked into the living room and out through the windows where the sun was still shining, which was a relief. “She’s not dying,” he said again, and he looked at his mom and then at his dad and said, “Not yet. I mean it. She’s wrong. Vanessa is wrong. She’s not dying yet, but what makes this so bad is she thinks she is.” Ethan scrunches his nose, raises his chin, looks up until he can say it without stumbling, “She’s not afraid of dying. She said that. To me. Today.” Ethan is shaking his head, frowning. “Like I want to hear something like that.”

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.