I Took Her Seriously

Sienna Hart said her heart was failing because she expected me to be the punch line. I called 911. By the time the paramedics arrived, no one was laughing—and my boyfriend was looking at me as if I had ruined something that belonged to him.

Chapter 1

My name is Mara Bennett. I was twenty-six, living in Chicago, and had what Ethan. Cole's friends considered a hilarious defect: I believed people when they spoke.

If someone said the elevator was broken, I took the stairs. If a coworker said a deadline had moved up, I stayed late. When Ethan once told me he could not eat shellfish, I spent three years reading labels even though I later watched him steal shrimp from somebody else's plate.

I never thought of it as stupidity. Words were supposed to mean something. That was the basic deal.

Ethan called it my “sweet, literal streak” when we first started dating. Later, around his friends, he made it a joke.

The party was in a private room at a River North karaoke lounge.

when I gave the dispatcher the address, I said we were on the third floor, Room Seven.

That detail mattered because she was claiming a possible heart attack.

Before that, the night had followed its usual shape. Ethan's friends filled the couches. I knew maybe four of them. Sienna sat on his right while I sat on his left, which had somehow become the usual arrangement whenever she appeared.

She had known Ethan since childhood. They were “like family,” everyone said. Sienna usually called him Ethan in front of strangers, but after a drink or whenever she wanted something, she stretched his name into a practiced little-sister whine. She also liked to announce that he was her honorary big brother.

“I can't drink that,” she told him when someone passed her a cocktail. “You know how sensitive I am.”

Ethan took the glass from her and set it beside mine. “Then don't.”

It was a small gesture, but it looked rehearsed.. Sienna rewarded him with a smile. Across the table, someone caught my eye and looked away too slowly.

I had spent years being told I was imagining the tension between them. Sienna was his female best friend.

She was practically his sister, not a threat. If I objected when she used our spare key, curled beneath our throw blanket, or called after midnight, Ethan asked whether I was really jealous of a woman he regarded as a sister.

That evening, someone suggested truth or dare. Sienna drew a dare.

“Flirt with Ethan,” a man named Ryan said.

The room burst into  laughter. Ethan made a show of protesting, but he was smiling.

Sienna turned toward him.

Her eyes went soft. “Ethan,” she breathed, “you'd never make me do something I don't want to do, would you?”

People glanced at me. That was the real entertainment. Not the dare. Me.

I asked, “Is that the whole dare?”

Ryan grinned. “Why? You worried?”

“No. I wanted to understand the rules.”

That made them laugh harder.

Sienna pressed one hand to her chest. “Oh,” she whispered.

Ethan leaned toward her. “What is it?”

“My heart.” Her face tightened with delicate pain. “It hurts. I think—Ethan, I think something's wrong.”

The laughter faded..

Nobody moved.

Sienna clutched Ethan's sleeve and let her eyes shine. Everyone waited for me to look foolish—perhaps to demand that she stop touching him, perhaps to prove I was the humorless girlfriend who could not take a joke.

Instead, I took out my phone.

“What are you doing?” Ethan asked.

“Calling 911.”

Sienna froze.

The dispatcher answered. I reported a possible heart attack, gave the location, and described Sienna's symptoms. I stayed calm because panic would not help a sick person.

“Mara, hang up,” Ethan snapped.

I covered the microphone. “She says her heart hurts.”

“She's kidding.”

“She hasn't said that.”

Sienna's hand hovered above her chest. The tears she had summoned did not fall.

The private room became so quiet that I could hear the ventilation fan humming.

I finished the call and told Sienna not to stand. “Help is coming.”

Her expression cracked first. Not fear. Rage.

Seven minutes later, two paramedics pushed through the door with a stretcher. The room that had been waiting to laugh at me suddenly could not find anywhere to look.