Page 72 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“Ellery and I waited at Iris’s apartment for a very long time…”
Chapter 24
MAGNOLIA
2011
The table was set as beautifully as I could manage, and I’d found an assortment of cheeses in Iris’s fridge and arranged them nicely on a wooden board. Ellery and I puttered about nervously, bumping into each other and hugging and kissing before breaking apart with guilty giggles. When my phone finally rang, I pounced on it and said, “Oh my god, what’s taking so long? We’ve been here nearly an hour!”
“Is this Magnolia Chen?” a man said.
“Oh. Yes, hi. Who is this?”
“Ma’am, my name is Morgan Bartz. I’m calling from the Huntington Hospital. Your sister, Iris Chen, was involved in an accident.”
“What?” I said stupidly. None of his words made any sense.
“Could you come down to the hospital right now?”
“What?” I said again.
He repeated the words, and still my mind refused tocomprehend them. Ellery, who’d been standing next to me, gently pried the phone from my hand and pressed it to her ear. “Hi,” she said, “could you repeat that, please?” She listened, then uttered a short gasp. “All right. I understand. We’ll be right there.”
I was barely aware of Ellery taking me by the arm.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll drive us.” She grabbed my jacket and draped it around my shoulders as we hurried out the door.
The entire drive to the hospital, I kept saying stupid crap like “This isn’t happening, right? It’s going to be fine, right? Right?”
And each time, Ellery would nod and say, “I’m sure it’s all going to be okay, baby.”
“Why didn’t Iris call me herself though? Do you think she’s okay? Maybe she was just busy? Do you think Hazel—”
“Shh, don’t think about that right now.” Ellery took her eyes off the road just long enough to squeeze my arm. “They’ll both be okay.”
When we got there, I ran inside, and once I gave my name, the receptionist’s face fell, and I knew then. I knew that nothing was going to be fine. In a daze, I was led down a hallway, where I met with the surgeon on call outside of the hospital room.
I don’t remember much of that conversation. There was mention of organ failure and loss of blood. None of it made any sense. Then he said, “She doesn’t have long. Would you like to say goodbye?”
Ellery caught up with me then. It had taken her a while after dropping me off at the entrance to find parking. “Magnolia,” she said. I looked at her and she must’ve seen it on my face. Her own face crumpled and she pulled me into a hug.
“I need to—I have to go inside.”
“Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Do you want me to…?”
“I think I need to do this alone.”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
I pushed open the door. There she was. My badass older sister who’d always been larger than life. Only two times in my life I’d seen her looking tiny and fragile. The first time was when I found her outside my gate. This was the second and final time. She looked so impossibly small in the hospital bed, covered up in thick layers of gauze, tubes sticking out of her. I took another step and my legs gave out from underneath me. I stumbled but kept going.
“Iris,” I choked out. I was at her side, and this couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be looking down at my sister while she lay dying. “Iris, I’m here. It’s me, Magnolia.” I leaned down and kissed her cheek, my tears dripping onto her skin. Wildly, stupidly, for a fleeting moment, I imagined we were in a Disney movie and that my tears would somehow heal her.
One eye fluttered open. The other one, swollen beyond recognition, remained closed. “Mag…” she wheezed.
“Iris,” I sobbed. I didn’t know what else to say. “I love you, Iris. I love you, I love you.”
She closed her eye and opened it again. I knew she was saying it back to me. Then she whispered, “Hazel.”
