Chapter 4

In the silent apartment, I set down my phone.

This time, I don't call back.

Fifty thousand dollars. I call every relative, every friend I can think of. I scrape together thirty thousand.

I cut my waist-length hair to my shoulders and sell it. Two hundred bucks.

Then I go to the hospital and sign up for a high-risk clinical drug trial. I negotiate an upfront payment of eighteen thousand.

That's barely enough to cover the surgery.

Outside the operating room, I lean against the cold wall.

In the glass reflection, I see my choppy new hair, my hollow face.

"Lucas. You owe me. And it's time to pay up."

Mom makes it through surgery. Out of danger.

Between staying at the hospital with her and the drug trial side effects, I go two full nights without sleep. By the time I get home, I can barely stand.

I collapse on the couch the second I walk in. Fever hits hard.

I'm out for two days.

Until I hear frantic footsteps in the living room.

"Quick! Get the equipment out!" Lucas sounds panicked.

"Dad, is Sage gonna be okay?" Oliver is crying.

I force my eyes open. Lucas is holding a blood draw kit, needles, tubes, a collection bag. Stuff he brought back from the other side.

"What are you doing..." I try to crawl backward.

"Sage got infected by contaminated water while scavenging!"

Lucas grabs me off the couch, his eyes wild and red. He holds up the needle.

"The doctor in the safe zone says she needs a full blood transfusion, clean, uninfected, same blood type. It's the only thing that can save her!"

"You and Sage are both Rh-negative. You're the only match I have!"

I'm burning up. I try to fight him off.

"Let go of me... I have a fever... I just did a drug trial..."

The needle is an inch from my vein.

I use every bit of strength I have to pull my arm back.

Then Oliver charges at me, and sinks his teeth into my wrist.

"Don't move, you evil woman! Sage is dying and you won't even give a little blood! I hate you! Why don't you just die instead of her!"

The pain shoots straight from my wrist into my chest. I stop fighting.

I look at my husband pinning me down. My son biting into my flesh.

Something inside me goes quiet, finally dead.

The blood bag fills up fast.

Lucas rips the needle out the second it's done. Blood streams freely from the puncture wound. He doesn't even glance at it.

"Nia, once Sage is stable, I'll come back and buy you some supplements or something."

He grabs Oliver's hand and sprints for the mirror.

"Ollie, the plague is about to hit. We have to get this blood to her now."

Then they're gone. The apartment goes silent.

I lie on the couch.

Blood from the needle hole mixes with the blood seeping from the bite mark on my wrist.

I don't cry.

I just force myself upright, through the blood loss, through the fever.

The sledgehammer is heavy. It takes everything I have left to pull it out of the shoe cabinet.

Inside the mirror, that tiny world is still running. I can see Lucas hanging the blood bag by Sage's bed. Oliver is crying at her side.

What a touching little family.

What a cozy little shelter.

"Lucas. Since you love it there so much..."

I lift the hammer and take one deep breath.

"Then let me do you a favor. Stay in your apocalypse. Forever."

The hammer swings down.