Page 112 of Wish Upon A Star

Kneeling

Westley

When I wake up, she’s burning with fever.

She won’t wake up.

I call an ambulance first, and her parents second.

I find myself singing “One Day More” under my breath, in a cracked, breaking voice.

The chaos of EMS arriving,and her parents, her grandmother, Bethany and Macy—it washes over me.

I move sluggishly, dazed, as through a dense fog, as if my limbs are bound in thick gel.

Her parents take over. I find myself in the back of the ambulance, holding her hand. She’s got a mask over her nose. The medics are…I don’t know what they’re doing.

We’re in a room,in a hospital.

She’s suddenly so small, and there are so many wires, tubes, monitors, machines.

“Wes.” Her grandmother. “Westley?”

I blink, and sort of awaken. “Hmm.” It’s a noncommittal grunt—not even a word or word-sound.

“Come.” She takes my hand—hers is small and dry and wrinkly and cool. Steady.

She leads me to a waiting room. No, a chapel. Front row. Facing a wooden cross, empty, lit by stained glass in burnished hues of violet and crimson. Her grandmother—do I even know her name? Just Grandma. She slowly, laboriously moves to her knees, clasps her hands in front of her.

I haven’t been in a church in years.

But I’m kneeling with her.

She whispers under her breath. I can’t make out the words, but her tone is…urgent.

Desperate. Pleading. Intense.

I can’t think of what to pray.

Except…

Please.

More Everything, And Nothing At All

Westley

Days pass.

She clings to life.

They tell us to expect the end soon. Any hour, any day.

Time ceases to have meaning. Morning, night—hours, days. It’s all a blur.

There’s cafeteria coffee and puck-like burgers I don’t even taste. Hard chairs in the hall while others have time with her. Hours in the waiting room, or her room.

Things beep and hiss, whir and pump and drip.