Page 18 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘What are you talking about?’ Voice grating against her throat, against her teeth. ‘Doctor, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. She must be confused. We’re doing the surgery.’

‘No, Mom, we’re not.’

‘Yes, Jet. We are.’ Her eyes were wet but full of fire. ‘I just knew you would try to pull something like this. Scott, tell her!’

Dad didn’t move.

‘Luke.’ Mom tried again. ‘Tell your sister. Tell her she can’t do this to us.’

‘I’ll die in the surgery, Mom.’ Jet fired up at her. ‘Everyone else knows that.’

Dr Lee had known it, the way her shoulders had slumped, the weight of Jet’s death gone from them.

‘There is no hope. And if it’s die now or die later, I choose later.’ Jet kicked off the sheets, baring her legs.

‘Jet, no!’

‘It’s my catchphrase, isn’t it?’ She swung her legs out, toes dropping to the cold floor. ‘That’s what you always say, huh?I’ll do it later.Why change a habit of a lifetime? I’ll die later.’

‘Jet, you can’t do this! Scott?!’

Jet stood up, unsteady on her feet, taking one step, legs firing up.

‘Luke.’ Jet pointed. ‘Go catch the cops. Tell them to wait up.’

‘No, Luke!’ Mom shouted at him instead, snapping her fingers.

‘Luke, I’m the one that’s dying. Do me a favor, huh?’

Luke didn’t say anything, slipped out the door before anyone else could yell at him.

‘Stop it, Jet. You’ve made your point. Get back into bed.’

Jet ignored her.

‘Doc, my skull is all stitched back together, right? Brain’s not gonna fall out if I walk out the door right now?’

Dr Lee nodded, a glint in her eye, ignoring Dianne too. ‘Just change the dressings every day.’

‘Where are my clothes?’ Jet looked at her dad.

‘Evidence,’ he coughed, almost too scared to speak.

‘Jet, stop!’ Mom screamed. ‘Please stop!’

‘I can’t, Mom. I don’t want to die now.’ She was listening to her head and her heart, and they both said the same thing, throbbing in tight, panicked couplets:Not now, not now, not now.‘I choose the seven days. I want that time. I need it.’

‘For what, Jet?’ Mom snapped, and it wasn’t the words that hurt; it was the spaces between them: what Mom really meant. That Jet had had twenty-seven years of time and done nothing significant with it; what difference would a week make?

All the difference.

‘I’m finally going todosomething, Mom. Something important. And I’m going to see it through to the end. This time will be different. It has to be different, because it’s my last chance.’

‘Do something?’ Mom cried. ‘What do you mean? Do what?’

Something great.

Something no one had ever done before.

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