They Let Me Bleed Out for My Sister's Show novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Boxes

Ivy goes home to pack and finds her room turned into Cora's studio. She hands back her monitor in front of the neighbors and her father offers her access back. At the car Cora whispers that she cannot do Saturday without her.

The hospital let me go on Wednesday with a crutch and a bottle of pills.

I could not drive on a right leg with twelve stitches, so Rafe drove me home in his truck.

He had offered once, and when I started to say no he opened the passenger door instead.

"What are you?" he had asked me, and I still had no answer.

I had told him so on the ride, and he had only nodded and kept his eyes on the road.

"Then we find out," he said. "Ten minutes. I'll wait at the curb."

The Garrick house sat at the end of Pine Hollow Road with every window lit.

Three of our neighbors were on their porches pretending to water plants.

News about the clinic had traveled fast. Cora's stream had ended early, and a clip of my father's voice had been going around the territory since Monday.

I went up the front steps one at a time on the crutch.

My old bedroom was at the top of the stairs. I opened the door and stopped.

The bed was gone.

In its place stood two ring lights, a rack of sparkly collars and a velvet backdrop pinned to the wall.

My shelves of first-aid manuals had been packed into a plastic bin by the window.

"Your things are in the hall closet," my mother said from behind me. "We needed the light in here for Cora's channel, and you were away."

"I was in the hospital for three days."

"And we didn't want you coming back to a mess."

She was holding a cup of tea out to me.

I took it, because my hands wanted something to do, and I did not drink it.

The hall closet had four cardboard boxes in it, and one of them was labeled IVY - MISC in my sister's handwriting.

I carried them down one at a time while my mother watched from the landing and my father came out of his study.

He had changed into a fresh suit.

"Put those down," he said. "Nobody is asking you to leave."

"I'm not asking anyone's permission."

I set the last box on the porch, where the neighbors could see it.

The council clerk was coming up the walk with a folder under her arm. She had been sent, I guessed, to talk about Saturday.

She slowed when she saw the boxes and my father's face.

I unclasped the monitor from my left wrist.

It was gray and scuffed from nine years of wear, and it was still warm.

"This belongs to the clinic," I said, and I held it out to my father in front of all of them.

He did not take it.

"Ivy, don't be dramatic. The monitor is how we keep you safe."

"It kept the clinic safe," I said. "It sent my vitals to you for forty-seven minutes. Nobody came."

The clerk's pen had stopped moving.

My father lowered his voice, and it went soft and reasonable.

"I'll restore your access tonight. I'll make you lead assistant. You have no idea how much the clinic depends on your records."

"Then you'll have to read them yourself."

"Ivy." That was my mother, bright and quick. "The January batch sheets. Nobody else understands the numbering. You can't just take that with you."

I looked at her.

The January batch sheets were the lab's own papers, and I had only ever filed them.

I had never seen how they were made.

"Ask Cora," I said. "She's the one who goes first."

I set the monitor on the porch rail between the boxes and my father's polished shoes.

Then I went down the steps and put my first box into Rafe's truck.

He took the others without a word, and when he lifted the heaviest one he glanced at my leg and then at my face.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure."

He nodded and shut the tailgate.

I was reaching for the passenger door when I heard bare feet on the gravel.

Cora ran down the drive in a sweatshirt, her blond hair loose and her face scrubbed clean of everything.

She had no phone in her hand. I could not remember the last time I had seen her without it.

She caught my sleeve before I could climb in.

"Ivy, please," she whispered. "Don't go."

"Cora, I can't stay."

"I know." Her fingers were cold. "But Saturday is the big one, the first full public shift. I can't do it without you."

"Cora."

"Just come to the stage," she said, and her eyes were wet. "I'll never ask you for anything again."

Behind her my mother had come out onto the porch.

She was watching us with her tea in both hands, and she did not call my sister's name this time.

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