The Kaleidoscope Sisters

by Ronnie K. Stephens

  * * *

  Quinn was yanked from sleep by a shrill alarm. She jumped from the chair, immediately checking the various readouts to see what was wrong with Riley. Her heart rate was in the fifties: bradycardia. Jane was already at the door, shouting for a doctor. Quinn tried to rouse Riley, but she couldn’t get her sister to open her eyes or answer her pleas. They had seen low heart rates before, almost always in the day or two before a procedure. This time felt different, though. This time, everyone was aware that Riley wouldn’t have a procedure. She would have to bounce back on her own.

  Nurses rushed into the room, clearing Jane and Quinn away from the hospital bed. They strained to see over the nurses, who were fast at work. One tapped Riley repeatedly on the cheek and spoke to her in a loud voice. Another cleared her chest of clothing and placed two leads on either side of her heart. Quinn had long been impressed with how efficiently nurses work. They had to trust each other completely, at least in moments of crisis. Quinn knew this because the nurses rarely spoke when they were trying to revive a patient.

  A woman entered the room wearing a white coat. She introduced herself quickly, not even taking the time to glance at Quinn and Jane as she assessed the situation. Riley was still in bradycardia. The doctor ordered one of the nurses to inject something into Riley’s IV, then pressed her stethoscope between the leads. She looked at her watch while she listened, then moved her fingers to the edge of the stethoscope. She felt around for what seemed like an eternity, listening at each place her fingers had been. By the time she turned to look at Jane, Riley was awake and her heart rate was climbing back into the seventies.

  “Are you aware of the stenosis?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Then I assume you’re familiar with the term bradycardia. We’ve stabilized Riley with blood thinners, but this is a temporary solution. She’ll need a procedure to correct the issue; otherwise, her heart rate will remain low, and she’ll be at risk for further cardiac distress. The procedure is called a valvuloplasty. I’ll make a note of that on the chart for her pediatrician.”

  “Thank you,” Jane interrupted.

  Quinn could tell from the sound of her voice that Jane was trying not to be rude, but her frustration was showing through. Whenever a new doctor worked with Riley, they went over the same information. Dr. Howe was meticulous with his notes, which made Jane even more upset when doctors appeared oblivious to Riley’s medical condition and history.

  “Well that’s a heck of a way to wake up.” Riley laughed, then began to cough violently.

  “Quiet, sweetie. Give yourself a minute,” Jane said.

  Quinn offered to go to the cafeteria and hunt down a decent cereal for them. She slipped on her shoes, grabbing a disposable toothbrush on her way out the door. The hospital was enormous, with the children’s wing on the opposite end from the cafeteria. Quinn didn’t really understand the design; kids usually had more visitors than older patients, which meant more people who would eventually want something to eat. She preferred walking the first floor, the maintenance floor, since most of the people she encountered were working and tended to leave her alone. She enjoyed seeing how long she could hold her breath as she passed by the laundry area; the air smelled like disinfectant and burned her eyes, so the game was born out of necessity. Her personal record was seventy-five steps, which she had later timed at roughly two minutes. Two minutes without oxygen before her head began to swim.

  * * *

  Quinn reentered the room to see Dr. Howe sitting with his hand on Jane’s shoulder. Riley ignored them, flipping through channels on the television. Quinn spread out three cereal options before Riley even though they both knew which cereal Riley would choose: Cinnamon Toast Crunch, her absolute favorite. Quinn emptied the contents into a paper bowl her mother had brought, poured milk from a bottle they kept stashed in the hospital refrigerator, and dropped into the chair closest to Riley. She wanted to hear what Dr. Howe was saying, but didn’t want to leave her sister by herself.

  She tried to watch the television, but she couldn’t focus. So she retrieved the shopping bag her mother had brought and began unpacking the supplies for the egg experiment that she and Riley were going to build that afternoon. She laid out the pieces by type: balsa wood in one stack, cotton balls in another, then toothpicks, and finally the hot-glue gun from home. Quinn had no idea how to construct an escape pod from the items before her. If she were being honest, she didn’t really care about the grade. She just thought that building something with Riley would be a good distraction, and they could secretly drop the pod from a hospital window when they were ready to test their design.

  Jane started to cry. Neither Riley nor Quinn could ignore the conversation any longer. They turned their attention to Dr. Howe. Then Riley pushed Dr. Howe to share the details of his talk with Jane, reminding him that she deserved to know. Quinn was shocked by Riley’s assertiveness. She took a moment to recover, then beamed with pride.

  “As I said to your mother,” Dr. Howe began, “the brief recovery we saw appears to have been an illusion. Your heart is, quite frankly, deteriorating—breaking down—from all the extra stress that your stenosis has caused. To put things another way: your heart is tired. Now we all know that you don’t qualify for a transplant, and you have too much scar tissue built up around the valve for a valvuloplasty.”

  “So I’m dying?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “How long?” she asked, her voice small and tight.

  “If I were to guess . . . days. Maybe a week.”

  Jane began to sob. Quinn just stared at the doctor, trying to figure out what to do. What he was saying didn’t make any sense. The other realm was supposed to fix problems. Had she caused Riley’s rapid deterioration? Was she to blame for bringing the heart flowers back without fully understanding them? She didn’t want to blame herself; she and her mother had been waiting for this inexorable day of quietus for seven years. All Quinn had wanted to do was give Riley a long life, let her do things like go on a date and learn to drive and get married. Quinn had ridden a giant hen, she’d chased butterflies across a desert and over a cliff and over the seas. She’d fought sharks. And for what? Riley, despite all Quinn’s efforts, was still dying.

  The frustration boiled over, causing Quinn to scream out loud. When she opened her eyes, Jane was cradling Riley in her lap. She turned to Quinn, her eyes and cheeks still flushed from the tears. Instead of the empty stare that had haunted her since her return from the other realm, Quinn saw desperation. What she felt she saw in her mother’s eyes was a plea. Jane was begging her to save Riley. She got up, grabbed her hoodie, and left the hospital.

  Quinn wasn’t sure where she was going when she walked through the sliding glass doors and into the cool, night air. She wanted to break open the sky for having the audacity to hold up everything but her sister. She cursed every god she could remember for creating a world full of grief. She cursed the other realm for giving her hope, the universe for having more questions than answers, Aimee for her nonsense about balance. What did balance have to do with saving her sister, anyway? The universe. Aimee. Balance. The rest of the conversation was suddenly clear. Quinn had been foolish. She had been reckless. And now Riley was paying the price.

  She finally understood why the heart flowers weren’t working: she had to stay in the other realm. That’s what Aimee had meant about balance. If Quinn was going to take a heart from the other realm, then she would have to leave something there. Meelie had been trying to tell her all along, but she had been too stubborn to listen. She couldn’t have both. Either she could save Riley, or she could be with her for her final days. She had to decide which daughter her mother would lose.

  * * *

  Quinn looked up to see that she had wandered right back to the hospital, through the glass doors, to Riley’s room. The lights were off, so Quinn couldn’t see what her mother and sister were doing. She cupped her hands around both eyes, peering through the glass. Inside, she saw n
othing. No one on the couch or in the bed. Even the school supplies had disappeared from the table where she’d arranged them. Where had they gone? They had to have known she was coming back. Or had her mother forgotten about her again?

  “Excuse me, are you Quinn Willow?” a nurse asked, walking up behind Quinn.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Your sister wanted me to tell you that they decided to go home. Your mother thought that that would make for a more comfortable transition. A lot of people have an easier time moving on at home—oh, listen to me—I’m so sorry, dear. I—this must be such a difficult thing for you. I’ve seen you two together. She really looks up to you, you know. If not for you, I imagine that girl would have given up a long time ago.”

  “Thank you,” was all Quinn could manage, her throat was so constricted.

  For the third time in twelve hours, she weaved through the hospital and out into the darkness. If her mother had packed up their things and left without Quinn, she certainly wouldn’t miss her. But she would miss Riley. In every realm, in every version of the future that Quinn could imagine, Jane needed Riley to survive. The only real question Quinn had ever needed to answer was whether or not she could live without Riley.

  * * *

  By the time Quinn got home, Jane and Riley were asleep. She had thought to move the spare key to the front of the house, which made slipping in a bit quieter. That was the plan, anyway, but as soon as Butterfly heard the door, he came around the corner in a frenzy. This time, Quinn understood his fear. He was forgetting her, just like her mother. Her only hope of avoiding an attack was a mangled toy she’d stuffed in her backpack, one that she and Butterfly had played with when they adopted him as puppy. She had learned that memory was tied to smell, and dogs have a keener sense of smell than humans. With any luck, that meant that Butterfly might remember her if he smelled her on his toy.

  She tossed the toy into the foyer, then pulled the door closed and crouched in the hearth. Through the door, she could hear him sniffing. As soon as she heard a squeak, she knew that Butterfly had the toy in his mouth. She eased the door open a second time, bracing herself for his fury. He dropped the toy and let out a low growl, taking slow, deliberate steps toward her. She knelt down and held out her hand, shutting her eyes instinctively. Moments later, she felt his wet nose in her palm. He was whining and gazing at her with what looked like shame.

  “You’re okay, boy. I’ve made a mess of things around here. You just wanted to keep us safe. That’s your job, now. You’ve got to keep this house and your family safe.”

  Quinn took off her shoes and walked to the bedroom, smiling at the sound of Riley cooing from her bed. She looked around the room, taking stock of all the objects she and her sister had surrounded themselves with over the years. Above her desk, she had pinned school projects spanning the last ten years. When the wall had started to fill up, she decided that she would save only her favorite piece from each year. Now, they stretched out like a timeline.

  Kindergarten: a rocket ship made from toilet-paper rolls.

  First grade: the black and white newspaper mosaic of her pregnant mother.

  Second grade: a family collage with Riley’s baby pictures.

  She scanned the projects for the one she cherished most.

  Eighth grade: plaster impressions of Riley’s and her hands.

  Of all the homework assignments and all the lessons she had ever learned, Quinn most loved squishing her fingers into the wet plaster with her sister. Jane had regretted not making impressions when they were babies, so when her history teacher had assigned an intensive research project on family, Quinn decided to get a plaster kit for her visual. Jane sat at the table and watched the timer while the plaster baked, then tried not to cry as Quinn and Riley painted their impressions. She had been so worried that Quinn might break the impressions on her way to school that she had intentionally hidden them, only to deliver them herself later that morning, something she confessed to Quinn on the day she hung them above her desk.

  Quinn traced Riley’s impressions with her finger, then pressed her palms into them. She couldn’t help but laugh out loud when she remembered the fight that had broken out when Riley pulled her hands from the plaster and clapped them over Quinn’s cheeks. They had showered three times trying to get the plaster out of their hair, which eventually turned into a water fight that left the entire bathroom floor drenched. They had to use every towel in the bathroom to soak up the puddles, then snuck the load into the washer so their mother wouldn’t catch them.

  Quinn’s throat ached with sadness. Tears swelled and trickled down her cheeks. She knew that she had to leave. It was such an easy decision. What had finally settled in her was not that her family would carry on without her, but that she would have to carry on without them. Her only solace was that this time, at least, she would be able to leave her family on her terms, in her own way. She sat down beside Riley’s bed, leaning into a pillow that was hanging over the side, and closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she decided, would be her last day on this Earth.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jane called both Riley’s and Quinn’s schools during breakfast, informing them that, due to a family emergency, the girls would be out of school for at least the next two weeks. She didn’t go into detail, at least not as far as Quinn could hear. With her boss, though, Jane had to be more forthcoming. When she explained Riley’s downturn, her voice cracked and she struggled to get the words out. Finally, she requested a leave of absence. After hanging up, she told the girls that she would have to go into the office for a short time to fill out paperwork. Quinn saw her wiping tears from her face. She wanted to hug her mother, to be strong for her, but Quinn understood that their relationship didn’t exist anymore. Instead, she watched as Jane smoothed her clothes, put her hair in a bun, and left for the office.

  Riley was too weak to do much of anything, so she and Quinn huddled under a blanket, flipping through the channels until they found a game show to occupy their attention. Butterfly wedged himself between them and soon was snoring. He had been sullen since the family returned from the hospital. Boxers have a knack for intuition, often sensing and reacting to owners with chronic illness. They had adopted Butterfly because of this, but they hadn’t been prepared for the way his empathy made them feel like he was one of the family, as if he knew exactly what was happening with each of them at any given time. Many nights, he was the only one Quinn talked to about how she felt, never wanting to burden Jane or Riley. She would miss having him as a confidant, even if he did fart in his sleep and drool on her pillows.

  For a while, Quinn sat listening to Riley and Butterfly sleep, then eased from beneath the blanket to begin preparing for her departure. She would have to be careful not to leave any hint that she was running away; she was sure that they would adapt to her absence, but not if Riley and Jane believed she had abandoned them. No, she would have to make her disappearance look accidental. She didn’t want to leave any more work for her family than she had to, so she did her laundry and tidied all the common spaces. For once, she was thankful that the house had wood floors because running a vacuum would have drawn Riley’s attention. Next, she gathered a handful of clothes, things that she hadn’t worn in a while, and stuffed them into a knapsack she had gotten at school. She hated the drawstrings because they cut into her, yet every presenter who visited her school handed them out. Since she didn’t use them, Jane wouldn’t notice one missing from her room. Taking her own backpack or the projects from her wall would be an obvious sign that she had left on purpose. She would have to leave them behind, too.

  She had compiled most of her stories in a set of spiral notebooks, which she stacked neatly on her desk. She sat down to write her last story in a leather-bound journal that her mother had given her several years ago. The pages were hand-woven cotton with honeysuckle and marigold inlays. Until now, Quinn hadn’t felt that any of her stories were worth preserving in such a beautiful, permanent fashion. She spent nearly two ho
urs on the story, sometimes writing a sentence or paragraph on scratch paper, editing, then transferring the copy to the journal. If this was to be her last gift to Riley, she wanted to make sure that every letter was perfect. She kept the door cracked, listening all the while for any indication that Riley was awake, but she didn’t budge until Jane returned from work.

  “I’m sorry that took so long. I didn’t realize how much paperwork went into medical leave these days. Everything is squared away, though, so I shouldn’t have to go in again until—” Jane’s voice cracked, unable to put the inevitable into words.

  Quinn went to her and put an arm over her shoulder, then immediately regretted the gesture. She could see on her mother’s face that she was startled by the intimacy. Luckily, Riley pushed herself up from the floor and joined them in their embrace. The three of them stood there, folded together like a single prayer, none of them acknowledging the dampness on their sleeves or the heaving or the incredible weight of last times: the last Christmas together; the last birthday; the last spaghetti dinner; the last afternoon on the swing set; the last group hug. The finality of their family shifting from group to pair made Quinn’s legs buckle. She let go of them and sank to the floor.

  * * *

  After dinner, Quinn helped Riley with her bath. Any independence Riley might have craved in the months prior withered when she grew winded trying to remove her clothes. She leaned back in the bathtub with her eyes closed. Quinn watched the shallow rise and fall of her shoulders. Riley explained that she constantly felt the need to take a deep breath, but each time she tried, she would double over coughing. Her chest felt tight, her head swimmy as though she could actually feel gravity pushing against her bones. Quinn hoped that her sister didn’t expect a response because she was afraid that she would crumble if she relaxed her already-clenched jaw. Riley laid her head on Quinn’s shoulder; water soaked through Quinn’s shirt and pooled on the floor beside the tub. She started to apologize, but Quinn interrupted her.