Page 3 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

My husband, Alex, the absolute love of my life, knows how to make me laugh. One of his favorite pranks is to sneak into my phone and change his name in my contacts. Today his timing was off. I stifled the laugh and answered the phone.

“I heard,” I said, throwing on my coat. “I’m on my way.”

“I’m at the pond,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

How was I holding up?I wanted to take him in my arms and say, “You run the damn hospital. Can you find out if some klutz in the lab spilled their Red Bull all over my last blood test, or am I a dead woman walking?”

But nothing sours Alex faster than a whiny patient having an “I know I’m going to die” episode. I let it go.

“It’s going to take us at least a week to get back to normal,” I said, “but I managed to get the County Environmental Commission to send two generator trucks, so I have the equipment I need to keep our little shitstorm from overflowing into the Hudson River.”

“Great. You can play that up when you run for reelection.”

Reelection. More dark humor. God was working overtime today.

“What’s going on at the pond?” I asked.

“A few dozen people braved the storm in the beginning, but the rain is finally starting to let up, and the crowd behind the yellow tape is starting to build.”

“Tell Chief Vanderbergen to take pictures. They’re all suspects.”

“I doubt it. I saw the body. No sign of trauma. I don’t think we’re looking at a homicide, Maggie.”

“Suicide?” I said.

“Not my call,” he said. “That’s for the medical examiner to decide.”

“Alex...”

“What?”

“How areyouholding up?”

He let out a long exhale. “Minna Schultz has been a roadblock to everything we’re trying to do here at the hospital. That’s over now, but I would feel a whole lot better if we beat her in court. This... this just leaves a stain on the whole project.”

“If she did commit suicide, that would be her motive,” I said. “She knew she couldn’t win, so rather than lose publicly, she decided to piss all over your victory on her way out.”

“You sound like a lawyer.”

“A lawyer in desperate need of a hug,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten. Love you.”

“What an incredible coincidence,” he said. “I love me too.”

It was a tired old line, but it always made me smile.

I hung up, looked down, and it caught my eye. The gauze bandage that Rachel had taped to my arm.

I peeled it off and tossed it. But I couldn’t ignore it. It was a graphic reminder that I had been getting ready for this day for more than half my life.

The first time I found out I was a candidate for an early grave, I was seventeen. You’d think it would have destroyed me. Just the opposite. It was the perfect excuse to break away from my poster-child-for-teenage-excellence image. I was still president of my class, snagging straight As, going to church on Sundays, and rocking the SATs with a 1500, but once Dr. Byrne told me I had the markers for a fatal inflammatory blood disease, I developed an instant case of the fuck-its.

Sex, drugs, alcohol, rule-breaking, risk-taking? Fuck it. If I was going to die young, I was going to live life as hard as I can.

Of course, I couldn’t compete with my best friend, Misty Sinclair, a one-woman wrecking ball who’d call me and say, “Let’s crank shit up to eleven and break off the knob.” But I ran a pretty strong second. Because, hey... what the hell did I have to lose?

And then I met Alex Dunn, and suddenly I had an anchor in the insanity of my life. Three years later, when I gave birth to Kevin and Katie, my Mommy genes kicked in, and I found a purpose beyond the adrenaline rush of survival.

Dying young was no longer all about me. It was about them. What would happen to them if I died?

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