Page 32 of Gifted & Talented

So this was not the story that Meredith told Jamie over the course of their six-hour drive, either. But I’ll leave that story for a later time, because right now Meredith’s brother has just dropped dead in the carport of their father’s house, so in terms of priorities the current moment has just reached a whole new scale of urgency.

“Oh my god,” said Eilidh, leaping back from the place Arthur had fallen between them on the floor of the carport. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god!”

“Would you get ahold of yourself,” hissed Meredith, bending to check Arthur’s pulse. “Call 911,” she added, as Eilidh fumbled gracelessly for her phone.

Oh, another thing about Meredith—she’s actually fantastic in a crisis. She’s definitely the person you want around if you ever accidentally stab yourself too close to an artery. If you would like a display of human emotion, however, you’re what the French call shit out of luck.

Case in point: “Well, fuck,” said Meredith, after determining Arthur’s pulse to be nonexistent.

“Oh my god,” said Eilidh again. (Eilidh, who has not yet acknowledged nor dealt with ninety-nine percent of her personal problems, is less helpful under conditions of catastrophe, and the thing living in her chest even less so.) “Oh my god—my brother just collapsed and he isn’t moving,” she shouted into the screen of her phone, so ostensibly someone had answered. In a moment of what seemed to be utter helplessness, she added tangentially, “And my father just died!”

Meredith was bent over Arthur, methodically performing the CPR she had learned around the age of ten, just in case.C is for chest compressions,she recited quietly to herself as she adjusted Arthur’s head,A is for opening the airway, B is for rescue breaths—

“Yes, my sister is doing that now—no, he’s only twenty-nine, he’s in completely perfect health except for—” She broke off, hesitating around the issue of uncanny electrical malfunction. “I mean, yes, he’s in perfect health—”

Meredith kept one eye on her watch, wrestling with the seconds as she pushed two inches down onto Arthur’s chest. Every twenty seconds, two rescue breaths. One, two, and back to compressions.

One, two, and back to compressions.

One, two, and back to compressions.

“—no, no history that I know of—is he breathing? Meredith—MEREDITH,” Eilidh shouted, “they want to know if he’s breathing—”

One, two, and back to compressions.

One, two, and back to compressions.

One, two—

“MEREDITH, DOES HE HAVE A PULSE?” Eilidh said. A wave of dark hair fell across Arthur’s forehead, otherworldly and serene.

Meredith straightened then with an almost eerie calmness, as if part of her brain had just shut down. “Eilidh.” She looked down over the long stretch of sightless foothill road. “I don’t think they’ll get here in time.”

Eilidh’s eyes widened, the phone all but forgotten in her hand. “Meredith, don’t fuck with me. Does Arthur have a goddamn pulse?”

She already knew the answer. Still, Meredith pressed her fingers harder into the side of Arthur’s jugular. She skewered an unpolished nail into the underside of his chin. “No. No pulse.”

“Is he dead?” Eilidh shrieked. (Unbeknownst to Meredith, the thing in Eilidh’s chest was doing kick-flips, soaring ollies off her ribs.)

“Is that 911 asking?” Meredith said.

“It’s me,” Eilidh screeched. “I’masking—they’resending someone—”

“Then yes,” said Meredith calmly. “‘Dead’ is my current diagnosis, yes.”

“Oh my god,” said Eilidh, somewhat redundantly. She didn’t seem aware that she’d already been hyperventilating for multiple minutes.

“There’s nothing we can do.” Meredith sat back wearily from Arthur’s body, pulling her knees into her chest. “Though I do hope someone checked the bushes for photographers,” she exhaled with a frown.

“How can you think about photographers right now?” Eilidh flung accusingly at her. “Our brother just died!”

“Oh, I know,” Meredith agreed from a fugue-like stupor. “I’m furious. I honestly can’t feel my face.”

If it wasn’t already clear, the seam between the Wren sisters was easily damaged, frayed as it was to a near-irreparable degree by an almost psychotic divergence in coping mechanisms. Take, for example, this conversation.

Eilidh was frantic in her distress, hysterical to the point of incoherence. “Is this—? I mean, is this…? Is it even possible for two people to dieon the same day?”

“Statistically it’s very unlikely,” Meredith said. “So, you know, maybe we’re wrong.”

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