Page 44 of When Hearts Collide

“Mommy?” I bury my face on top of her chest as Dad cries in the background. The machines beep and hum in the hospital room. Everything smells strange. Sterile. I hate this smell.

“Sweetie pie,” Mommy whispers, her thin, bony hands stroking my hair. “Don’t be sad. Mommy is going to heaven. It’s beautiful and Mommy won’t be sick anymore.”

Dad makes a choking sound. He called Adrian a few minutes ago. He’s coming from his job at the supermarket.

Tears spring from my eyes as I clutch her skinny body. She doesn’t smell like Mommy anymore. She’s barely warm. I shake my head hard. “No, Mommy. I don’t want you to go to heaven. I want you to stay with us. I want more bedtime stories and kisses.”

Her voice is weak, and she coughs, her entire body shaking, like coughing is making her very, very tired. “I…I want to stay here with you too, sweetie pie,” her voice is thick, and I hear her sniffle, “but…it’s my time to go. My turn. Just like you do at school, right? Take turns. But I’ll be watching over you, Adrian, and Daddy, and I’ll love you forever and ever. Be brave, Millie. Take care of Adrian and Daddy for me. They need you to be strong. Give them the kisses and smiles, okay, honey?”

I cover her with my body and press kisses on her chilly face. Please don’t leave us, Mommy.

Jocelyn’s weeping brings me back to the present but the memories of Mom’s last day on earth are sharp, the pain so cutting, so painful, it feels as if it happened yesterday.

“We’ll get through this, Joss,” I murmur, my voice thick as I’m assaulted by the memories of the past. “Have you talked to your professors? Maybe they’ll give you an extension?”

“I asked! They all said there was nothing they could do.” Her face crumbles. “Apparently, too many students used family emergencies as excuses in the past, so now they’re no longer able to give out extensions.”

Shit. There must be a way to help her.

“I’ll help you study. We’ll cram the knowledge into your brain if it’s the last thing we do.”

Jocelyn shakes her head, her shoulders slumped. “I-I don’t know if I can do this.”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I grab her hand and pull her off the bed before dragging her to the living room. I need to help her…to help the little girl who is crying by her mother’s bedside.

I gently push her onto the sofa and grab my bag from the dining table. “You can. For your mom. You have to do this. We have no time to lose.”

Pulling out my notes and textbooks from the class, I heave out a deep breath. She can’t disappoint her dying mother. It’ll be her biggest regret.

She slouches on her seat, her posture defeated.

“Joss! We got this, okay?” I lean down and hold her clammy hands in mine. “We got this.”

She nods and she whispers, “Yes. I got this.”

I walk through the first set of notes with her. Her eyes are glazed over, but I see her trying to pay attention.

“The most important theories he’ll probably cover are these…”

We spend hours reviewing the materials and taking practice exams online and from the back of the textbooks. By the time midnight rolls around, I’ve polished off two cups of coffee, a sandwich, and a bag of gummy bears. Jocelyn nibbles on her sandwich as tears slip down her face. She shakes her head in defeat.

She isn’t doing well. Her best score has been a C minus so far.

“What am I going to do? I can’t do this, Millie. I might have retained a third of what you just went over with me.” Her face crumbles and she sets aside her half-eaten meal.

I fist my hands on my lap and take a seat next to her. “Try your best. Just try your best. We’ll continue studying. Pull an all-nighter. We can do this.”

Jocelyn pleas, her watery eyes staring into mine, “I don’t want to ask this, but I’m desperate, Millie.” She takes a deep breath. “For the exam, can we sit in the back? You take your test and I take mine, but if I need to…and I’ll try not to, maybe I can peek at your answers?”

What? Shock tears through me. Seeing my frozen expression, she sits up, her voice urgent. “But I’ll try not to…I really will. But I need help, Millie. I have no one else to go to.”

“But that’s wrong, Joss. It’s not right. Isn’t that cheating?” And he will be so angry. He hates cheaters and rule breakers.

Jocelyn shakes her head vehemently. “It isn’t cheating! Well, not completely, right? If anything, I’m the cheater and not you. You aren’t taking the test for me…but I might need help with a question or two. It’ll be a safety net for me.”

Her brown eyes light up for the first time since I got home earlier. “Maybe I won’t need help. But please, I need this safety net, Millie. There are two hundred of us in the classroom. No one will focus on us. No one will know.”

Her bottom lip wobbles and she repeats, “And you’re not taking the test for me, right? You’re taking the test for yourself. Please, Millie. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I wasn’t desperate.”

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