Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Fourteen Months

I woke Aunt Dot with one hand on her door, and she was out of bed before I finished the sentence.

We ran down Quarry Road in our coats, with the frost crunching under our shoes and her flashlight bouncing on the gravel.

He was at the mailbox with the owl painted on it, holding a red bike upright by the handlebars.

His cheeks were pink from the cold, his hair was flat with sweat, and his jacket was zipped wrong.

"Hi," Dylan said.

Aunt Dot dropped to a crouch and put a hand against his chest, and then she looked at his face.

"You rode here? Forty-five minutes?"

"Fifty-two. I stopped to look at the map."

"Are you in pain? Are you dizzy?"

"No."

"Does anything hurt?"

"My legs." He grinned, a startled little grin. "That's all. My legs are really, really tired. It's the best feeling."

She stared at him.

Then she picked up the bike with one hand, took Dylan's arm with the other, and walked us both to the house.

In the kitchen she made hot chocolate and put a quilt on his shoulders.

He drank the whole mug.

I sat across from him and watched his breathing, and it was perfectly regular.

"I need to tell you something," he said. "Both of you. And I need you to let me say it all the way to the end."

"Go ahead," Aunt Dot said.

"I'm not sick."

He looked at the table when he said it.

"I haven't been sick for fourteen months. I'm not supposed to say that, and I've never said it. I'm saying it now."

Nobody moved.

The refrigerator hummed.

"After my second surgery I got better," Dylan said, fast. "My heart got fixed. It's called a repair. They did a big test the August before last, a stress test, where I ran on a treadmill, and the doctor said I was done. He called it unrestricted. He wrote a letter. He said I could do anything, soccer, swimming, anything."

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