Chapter 5

Evan POV

The apple is cold in my hand and the peeling comes off in long, unbroken ribbons if I'm careful about the angle of the knife. I've been doing this since we were kids — Lily always said she couldn't taste the difference between a peeled apple and an unpeeled one, but she let me do it anyway, and somewhere along the way it became a thing I do with my hands when I don't know what to do with them.

Four days have passed since I walked out of that private room at the Blue Tear and took the elevator back down to the floor and worked the rest of my shift without dropping anything. Four days of the card sitting in my pants pocket, moving from one pair to the next each morning when I changed, which I did not examine too closely as a habit.

The ward is quiet in the mid-afternoon. The nurse on this floor has learned to leave the curtain open a few inches when I'm here, because Lily gets better color with the light coming in from the hallway.

She is sitting up against the pillows with a textbook balanced on her knees — macroeconomics, the same chapter she was on last week — and she has not turned a page in the twenty minutes since I arrived, which means she is reading it very carefully or not reading it at all.

"You don't have to do that," she says, without looking up.

"I know."

"I can eat an apple with the skin on."

"I know that too."

She lets it go, which is how I know she's glad I'm here. Lily has always expressed affection through the things she doesn't say.

I finish the first long ribbon of peel and let it curl into the bowl, and for a few minutes the only sounds are the knife and the distant rhythm of the hospital corridor. Almost easy to believe we are somewhere else — a kitchen, a Sunday afternoon, a version of things where the textbook on her knees is for a class she's enrolled in and the IV line in her arm is not there.

"Did you find something?" she asks. "Work-wise."

I keep my eyes on the apple. "Yeah. Hospitality work, downtown. Private venue." The words come out smoothly, which I have mixed feelings about. "Started this week. Tips are good."

She nods, processing this with the careful expression she uses when she's deciding whether to push further. She decides against it.

"Evan." She closes the textbook and sets it beside her. "How much do we have left?"

My hand stops moving. I set the knife down in the bowl and look at her. Her face is pale in the way it has been for months, the particular pallor of someone whose heart is working harder than it should for ordinary things, and her eyes are watching me with an expression that is trying very hard to be neutral.

"Why are you asking that?"

"I want to know."

"Lily—"

"I can do the math." Her voice stays even. "I know what the ICU cost. I know you've been working since February and I know what the billing statements say, because I've seen them, Evan. I've seen your face when you open them in the parking lot."

She pauses. "You had good grades. You could have gone somewhere real. You gave that up because of me, and now — I've been thinking. What if we stopped. The expensive parts. The follow-up procedure Dr. Reyes mentioned."

She says it quietly, the way she says things she has been carrying for a long time. "You could keep that money. Use it for later. You should be building something for yourself, not spending everything on someone who might not—"

"Stop." The word comes out before I can measure it. "Don't finish that sentence."

She looks at me. Her eyes are bright, and she is holding herself very still.

"You're not a burden," I say. I lean forward and take both her hands in mine. Her fingers are cold the way they always are now. "You are not a burden. You are the only family I have, and taking care of you is not something I'm doing instead of living my life. It is my life. Right now. This is what I want to be doing."

"Evan—"

"No. Listen." I keep my voice level, because she needs level right now. "The money is hard. I'm not lying to you about that. But it's not impossible. I have work, and the accounts aren't empty, and we have time."

"Time for what?" she asks, and there is something in the question that is not accusation but is close to it — honest and exhausted. "How long are you going to keep doing this?"

"Until it's done," I say. "Dr. Reyes said the procedure has a strong success rate. She said if we get through the next few months, there's a real path to stable. Do you know what that means? It means you finish the macroeconomics chapter. It means you take the exam. It means you get to have the years after this."

She looks down at our joined hands. A tear escapes and tracks down her cheek, and I reach up and wipe it away with my thumb, and she makes a small sound that is not quite a laugh.

"You're not allowed to give up," I say. "That's the deal."

"I didn't agree to that deal."

"You agreed when you were four and I told you I'd always come get you if you were scared, and you said okay. Still in effect."

She laughs this time, properly, and leans her forehead against my shoulder and cries quietly for a few minutes, the way she allows herself to cry when she has decided it's permitted. I hold her and look at the window and say nothing.

When she pulls back, I hand her the bowl with the apple, already cut into sections. She takes a piece without comment, chews slowly, eyes back on the textbook. The thin afternoon light catches the side of her face — the pale curve of her cheek, the careful way she turns the page with one finger so as not to disturb the IV line.

She looks younger than twenty when she does that. She looks like the kid who used to fall asleep on the couch waiting for me to get home, who always pretended she hadn't been waiting at all.

I cannot lose her.

She reaches for a second slice. I watch her eat it and I think about the billing envelope sitting on my kitchen counter, and the follow-up procedure, and the specific shape of the number Dr. Reyes mentioned last week without quite meeting my eyes. Service work tips will not cover it. Three jobs running parallel will not cover it, not fast enough, not by enough.

I need money. Real money, the kind that doesn't require me to do the same math again in thirty days.

I slide my hand into my pants pocket. The card is still there, the way it has been for four days — small and stiff-edged, the corners worn slightly soft from moving between pockets. I run my thumb across the embossed lettering without taking it out.

Lily turns another page.

I keep my hand where it is.