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I forget what that’s like, she says.
“What? Tests?”
Moving.
“Oh. Right.” Even though I’m here with her so much, sometimes I forget too.
We’re both quiet for a while, but I know what Julia’s thinking about. She’s remembering that time when we were five years old, and she beat me twenty-four times in a row running down the street outside our house. I can feel her gloating.
I tell her, “Look, you beat me that one time—”
It was twenty-four times, Evan.
This is an old argument.
“Fine. You beat me on that one day. But I never let you beat me again,” I remind her.
What neither of us says is that we didn’t have many races after that day when we were five. Running became too difficult for either of us, and the following year, it was apparent that very few of our organs were growing at the proper rate.
Relax, Evan, she says. You’ve won forever now.
I don’t answer her because that’s a horrible thing to say. If we were having one of our competitions to see who could say the most despicable thing, she would totally win.
Oh shit, are you crying? I didn’t mean it. I was only joking!
I put my hand over Julia’s heart, and then I put Julia’s cool, limp hand over mine. It’s possible that I am crying, but there’s no reason to dwell on it.
In that calm way of hers, Julia tells me, We shared a womb, Evan, and a crib, and a room for the first six years of our lives. Now we’ll share more things. It will be okay.
Possibly you have never heard of semi-identical twins, so let me explain. Semi-identicals happen when two sperm fertilize the same egg. (I really hope you already know what sperm and eggs are, because I don’t want to be the one who has to tell you.) At some point after this cellular three-way, Mother Nature realizes that something is not right, and the egg splits into two, which in our case meant that it split into me, Evan, and her, Julia. But it’s not quite as simple as that. There are some mixed-up DNA signals with semi-identicals. Some become intersex (boy parts and girl parts), and some have other glitches in the embryo-formation process. We had none of those issues—our problem is that our hearts and livers and several other organs never learned how to grow to full size, even though the rest of us made a go of it.
I’m taller than you are, Julia helpfully points out as I float toward sleep.
She’s taller by about an eighth of an inch, by the way. Fifty percent of our DNA is identical—from the egg we both shared.
And the other fifty percent, from the sperm, is not identical, but it comes from the same person (our father, unless our mom has really been hiding stuff from us). So we’re as closely matched as any boy and girl can be.
But around our thirteenth birthday, Julia’s organs started lagging behind worse than mine did. At first, for months and months, she was just tired. Then she was just asleep. Then it wasn’t really sleep anymore, and she was in the hospital and the machines were brought in to keep her alive. And now she is on this bed, silent to everyone but me. Vegetative is what they call it, as if she is a stalk of wheat or a spear of asparagus. This sucks so deeply that there aren’t really words. This is as close as I can come:
That’s me in the middle, drowning.
I fall asleep next to Julia and I wake up when I hear voices in my own room. At first I think it’s nurses who’ve come to give me a second rectal exam—just to make sure—but that’s not who it is. It’s my mother, and a man—not my father. This man has a different voice entirely, smooth and deep and sort of … stirring, I guess you could say. Except that he’s using it to argue with my mother, and almost immediately I know exactly who the voice belongs to.
Don’t keep me in suspense! Julia says, startling me. I didn’t think she was awake. Who is it?
“It’s that weird minister Mom’s been talking to all month. I’ve heard his voice when she’s talking to him on the phone.”
Oh, yeah. She keeps mentioning things “the Reverend” says. I didn’t even know we were Christian until Mom started having all these Jesus feelings.
“I’m not sure Reverend Tadd even is Christian,” I whisper to her, still trying to hear what they’re arguing about.
His name is Reverend Tadd? Julia asks skeptically. Is that his first name or his last name?
“I don’t know. But I do know that he’s an asshole. The way he speaks—it’s like Jesus was his roommate at summer camp and if you’re lucky he’ll introduce you.”
How does Mom even know him?
“She wanted someone to ‘guide her to the right choices’—about us, I guess. I heard her tell Dad. They argued and Dad won, but Mom said she still needed to talk to someone. And talking people out of medical procedures is, like, Reverend Tadd’s thing.”
“Wait! You look angry.” Our mother’s voice rises suddenly on the other side of the door. “We’ve had beautiful discussions, and I said you could come bless them, but I don’t want you to argue—”
The door from my room to Julia’s room flies open a moment later, and the man is in the room with us, trailing our mother. He approaches the hospital bed, one hand raised, with a finger directed upward, as if he has a personal, finger-pointing connection straight to heaven and he’s calling in a favor.
“You!” he says, his eyes locking onto me where I lie next to my sister. I’m not ashamed to say he’s scary, because he is scary; his eyes are wild and his face is screwed up with outrage, but he’s also …
Much younger and better-looking than I thought he would be, Julia says calmly.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. The Reverend is young, perhaps only in his late twenties. He has thick, wavy black hair that falls over his forehead, and piercing dark eyes that are alight with passion.
Before our mother can stop him (which, to be honest, she is making only a very feeble attempt at) he’s on his knees at the side of the bed, his eyes beseeching me. I’m startled by his sudden presence, but it’s hard to be too startled when Julia is with me.
“You,” he says, bowing his head over his hands briefly, as if to let me and Julia know that he’s not too proud to beg—in fact, that he relishes this opportunity to beg.
“Reverend,” our mother says, without much force. “It’s been decided. And this is family business.”
Ignoring her, he looks at me and says, “You know there’s still time.”
I should be cringing away from him, but I’m so tired of the sympathetic looks from nurses and my parents that his energy fascinates me.
“Time for what?” I ask him, propping myself up onto my elbows.
Don’t ask! Julia says. She has understood immediately what sort of man he is. Why would you encourage him?
“Time for ev-er-y-thing.” (That’s exactly how it sounds.) “You’re a young man now, a person.” He’s gripping the railing of the bed in his zeal. “If you do this thing, Evan Weary, you will become something that’s not meant to be.”
His voice and his certainty are mesmerizing. I feel as though he has pressed something sharp into my malfunctioning heart. The Reverend Tadd-not-sure-if-it’s-his-first-or-last-name sees that he’s gotten to me, and he follows up immediately.
“Do you want to turn yourself into a demon? A life-devouring creature?” he asks me, his face getting close enough to mine that his minty breath washes over me. “Is that your goal?”
Do you know the sensation when you’ve been injured but the pain hasn’t reached you yet? I am having that feeling now. I think it was his use of the word life-devouring.
I know resistance is called for. “Um … I don’t know if I even believe in demons—” I begin, but he rides right over me.
“You don’t want to be one! That’s the answer. No good person wants that!”
I can feel Julia’s outrage that I’m taking these insults lying down. Roll over and kick him in the nuts! she tells me.
But I don’t have to, because our mother has finally found her courage, and she grabs the Reverend Tadd by his shoulders.
“You have to leave now,” she tells him, her voice quaveringbut firm. When he doesn’t budge, she puts her hands on her hips and says, “If you don’t leave, I will call the nurses—and security! I mean it, Reverend.”
He stands up, unrushed, as if he were done anyway and is leaving only because it’s his own choice. He brushes off his pants and stares down at me and Julia, calmer now that he’s succeeded in calling me a demon—or, I guess, a soon-to-be-demon. The full demonification hasn’t happened quite yet, as he has thoughtfully pointed out.
“Reverend!” our mother says, warning him against further pronouncements.
Close-lipped, Reverend Tadd walks to the hospital room door, yet before we’re rid of him, he looks back at me and takes another stab. “You don’t have to do this selfish thing,” he says.
Selfish. It’s the word that’s always there, in the back of my mind. How did he know?
Sensing that I have become paralyzed before this man, Julia steps in. Can’t you see it’s already eating Evan up? she yells at him. If Jesus were here, He’d slap you! You—you—creep!
But Reverend Tadd, of course, has not heard her, and he’s already left the room.
“I’m so sorry, Evan,” our mother says. “I said he could say a prayer here, that’s all.” She’s leaning against the closed door and has dissolved into tears, which, actually, has been her most common state over the past few months.
What’s Mom crying about? Julia asks, still half yelling. She’s the one who let him in here. Oh, Evan … are you crying too?
I wake up and know that my parents have tricked me, or rather, that they had the nurses drug me. I’m in my own hospital bed, even though I don’t remember moving back. Sunlight is pouring in my window. It’s morning. The Day.
“Julia,” I say as my eyes open.
The room is full, but empty of her. Nurses are crowding in with prep carts and rubbing alcohol and IVs. They’re checking my vitals, slipping tubes into my veins, talking to me with that impersonal friendliness they must learn in nursing school.
I catch sight of my father, so tall that it feels like he’s in the way, even though he’s standing in the corner to stay clear of the bustle. He smiles benignly at me.
“It’s okay, Evan. She’s gone on ahead of you.”
“Julia!” I say again, louder this time.
The nurse closest to my face makes little noises that are half shushing, half consoling. Well, mostly shushing.
I hear Julia very distantly. Evan. Evan. That’s all there is, only the ghost of her voice from somewhere far below me in the hospital. Evan …
It is … I’m not sure how many days later. Maybe four?
They took Julia’s heart while I was unconscious, and then, inside my chest cavity, they used her “compatible tissue” to rebuild my own heart, and then they jolted the super-heart into action, and (I heard later) they all clapped when it began pumping blood. Pictures were taken. A day later they did the kidneys, the liver, and everything else that required renovation.
I have a line of metal staples down the middle of my chest. They look pretty badass, like Dr. Frankenstein was given free rein to close me up. There are stitches and staples in lots of other places too. Supposedly, modern medicine is excellent at minimizing scars, but my nurses assure me that mine will still be amazing after they heal. I’ll look like a scattered train track for the rest of my life. It feels like the train on that broken track hit me, then backed up to finish the job. Except … even with all the pain, I actually feel better. My heart is beating strongly and regularly, my body seems lighter. How crazy is that?
“Here I am,” I say.
The hospital room is empty except for me, so I can get away with talking to myself without drawing frowns from the nurses. I lay a hand across the mess of staples down my breastbone. “And here you are,” I tell Julia. “Keeping me alive.”
She doesn’t answer. It’s rainy today, and the only response I get is the patter of raindrops on the hospital window. Even if you’re one of those people who love the rain, I think you’ll agree that the things it says are, at best, extremely boring. At worst, they’re only raindrops, which are no substitute for your dead twin sister.
“Dead,” I say, trying out the word that I haven’t let myself think. I’ve shied away from it since the operations. Now that I’ve said it aloud, though, I have to ask her what I’ve been afraid to ask.
“Julia, were you dead when they took out your heart? Or did I steal it from you while you were still alive?”
She doesn’t answer. Of course, she doesn’t need to. Everyone—the doctor, my parents, the nurses—danced around this question. But I always knew the truth.
I am growing again.
It’s been twelve days since the last surgery and there’s enough oxygen in my blood, and my digestive system actually gets nutrition out of the food I eat, and and and and, you know, all the things the doctor optimistically suggested would happen, are happening. I’ve grown an eighth of an inch and gained three pounds. That eighth of an inch, by the way, makes me as tall as Julia was, though I’ll keep growing, they assure me. I might even get as tall as my father.
“Fortune has been smiling on us all this time, Evan,” my father is saying. Did I mention he was in here with me? He is. He’s helping me get into my clothes. I’m strong enough to dress myself, but I’m letting him feel useful.
My mother’s here too, though she’s outside the room, to give me privacy while I get dressed, and probably also because she feels guilty about letting Reverend Tadd crap all over the last few minutes I had with my sister.
They’re releasing me from the hospital today. Over the past several years, Julia and I have spent a combined total of over five hundred days here. During those five hundred days, I’ve imagined this final day many times. In my favorite version, we walk out the front doors, and shortly afterward, the hospital is leveled by an earthquake, and then ripped apart by a tornado, and then set on fire by roving bands of zombies. After that, if “fortune keeps smiling on us,” packs of wild dogs will urinate all over the rubble as a warning never to rebuild.
“It’s nice to see you smiling, Evan,” my dad says, when my head emerges from the sweater he’s pulling into place over my Frankenstein torso.
I decide to let him in on the daydream. “I was thinking that after we walk out of the hospital’s front doors—”
“You know we’re going to wheel you out in a wheelchair, right? No walking just yet. But soon!” he tells me cheerfully.
“Oh, right,” I say. He is so literal.
Every doctor and nurse on this floor is lining the hallway as I’m wheeled toward the elevator by my parents. Even some of the more mobile patients are standing in their doorways to watch us, the medical pioneers. My father waves and smiles at all of them. My mother is soundlessly mouthing thank you, as though she were always one hundred percent behind this whole cannibalize-your-sister’s-organs scenario.
I’m dying to hear what Julia would say about this sad parade to the elevator. Would she tell me to feign a stroke? Or clutch my heart?
“That’s right, smile,” my father says quietly. “Let them see how grateful you are.”
Am I grateful? I haven’t heard her voice for two weeks.
In the main lobby, and the world outside is visible through the huge glass doors. My mother’s gone off to pull the car around, and when we see her driving into the pickup area, my dad says, “Here we go,” and pushes me out through the doors.
“Oh!” I cry out, because the strangest thing happens the moment I cross the threshold: the super-heart stops. There’s a heartbeat, and then there is nothing, stretching out from one instant to the next and the next and the next. I cannot breathe, I cannot move. My super-heart has walked off the job without giving notice.
My father’s smile falters, and then, in a panic, he shakes me. “Evan? Evan! Is it your heart?”
There’s a thunk! in my chest as the heart starts up again. Then, thump-thump, thump-thump, it’s going—as if nothing at all went wrong. If anything, I feel a new surge of vitality.
“Evan?” he says again, frantically.
I wave him away. “My heart … is fine,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?” He looks back through the doors, ready to flag someone down.
I nod, give him an emphatic thumbs-up. My mother has pulled the car up right in front of us, so I push myself to my feet, and before he can even catch up to me, I’ve opened the back door of the minivan and climbed inside. In moments, we’re all in the car and my mother is driving away.
I watch the hospital growing smaller as we get to the end of the street. When at last I can see only a sliver of the hospital’s upper floor above neighboring buildings and it’s about to disappear from sight entirely, I think, Cue the earthquake!
Julia should laugh at that, but she doesn’t. I’m sitting in the back of the minivan alone, looking past my parents at the road ahead. Traffic and life are out there, ready to take me in.
It’s not until we are stopped at a long traffic light that I hear it. Very quietly, a voice asks, Do you want to kill all the other patients? The voice sounds not so much upset as curious, and it’s as soft as the murmur of an insect or a mouse.
