Page 78 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘Billy,’ she said, looking down at the keys, her hand balling into a fist around the sharp metal, because it could, because it still worked. ‘I can’t drive.’

Billy’s eyes hooked onto hers. Blue and hazel and fear.

‘I know how much you love that truck.’

He stretched out his arm, opened his hand, palm up.

Jet took a breath, held it.

No other choice.

She dropped her keys into his waiting hand.

17

‘Sorry about the wait.’

Dr Lee strolled into the room, letting the door swing shut behind her, heels clipping the polished floor, the smell of bleach hanging low in the air.

Jet straightened up, her hospital gown bunching around her knees, right arm dangling lifeless off the bed. Was Dr Lee really sorry about the wait, or was she sorry about something else?

Billy had been sitting beside Jet, the thin mattress sighing now as he stood up, bowed his head.

‘I’ve had a look at the images from your CT scan, with the radiologist,’ Dr Lee said, a file gripped in her hands. ‘And.’ She stopped, cleared her throat.

‘Can I see?’ Jet asked.

The doctor nodded, eyes heavy, mouth set.

She opened her file and pulled out a thin sheet of plastic, walked around the bed to hold it up against the light streaming in through the window.

Another grid of pale blue images, the inside of Jet’s head. She’d been conscious this time, aware of every second as she was fed into that giant metal circle, the machine whirring around her, dissecting her brain.

There was something new this time.

‘You see this white mass here,’ Dr Lee said, circling it with her finger.

‘Is that the aneurysm?’

‘That’s the aneurysm.’

Jet swallowed, too tacky in her dried-out throat, gouges her heart had left behind.

‘Guess you were right, doc.’

What, had Jet seriously thought there was any chance the doctor could have been wrong, that she wouldn’t die after all? Stop asking like that, because – because maybe she’d started to, just a little bit, last night in the bar with Billy, when she forgot for a few minutes, forgot that she was dying because she’d been distracted by living. Before, it had just been awhat if, a theoretical time bomb ticking away, and here it was, made real and tangible, a white shape against the gray mass of her brain. Jet swallowed again, her very last bit of hope.

‘Looks big,’ she said instead.

Dr Lee nodded. ‘It’s a large aneurysm. Twenty-three millimeters across. Just two away from being classified a giant aneurysm.’

‘Well, that’s good, I guess.’ Jet sniffed. ‘At least it’s a high-achieving aneurysm.’

Dr Lee didn’t smile. Neither did Billy, his eyes swimming.

‘The other symptoms you’ve described – the headaches, the pain above your eye, the double vision, that dilated pupil,’ Dr Lee said, ‘those are all typical symptoms of an unruptured aneurysm of this size. You may experience others, such as weakness, loss of balance, difficulty concentrating, numbness in one side of your face.’

Jet looked at Billy; she’d forgotten to mention her cheek. Another one checked off the list.