Read Online Time to Run by John Gilstrap - Free Book Online

following the rules all the time?
    At first, she’d thought that he was just pulling her chain; taking the role of the devil’s advocate, tempting her with a wild lifestyle that they both knew she could never live. But after a few weeks of the recurring theme, she’d come to realize that he was serious. It was, she came to realize, the kind of life that Brad had chosen for himself—no fixed address, no responsibilities. Just a laptop, a few clothes, and a sense of adventure. A modern-day cowboy.
    But she couldn’t do that, she explained. Her dad needed her around; not just to make sure that there was food to eat at night, but also just to be there as company. Since Mom died, he needed company.
    Brad thought she was crazy. Family was an anchor, he’d told her. To live—to really live —she needed to be out on her own. Brad offered to be her travel guide. It was fun to think about, but totally out of the question.
    Until today. And maybe even today wouldn’t have pushed her over the edge if it hadn’t been for last night. Yesterday afternoon, actually, after her doctor’s appointment where they’d laid out a new torture they’d dreamed up for her. She was doing pretty well, they’d told her, all things considered, but to make sure that everything stayed on track, they had this nifty new technology they wanted her to play lab rat on: a pump that they would install in her gut to keep a constant flow of hormones into her system to keep the vessels in her lungs open. It was great, they told her; the next best thing to the transplants she needed, only there was one hitch—one little teensy detail that she probably should know about: It would mean a three-week hospital stay, hooked up to machines that would monitor every twitch of her heart and every squirt of her kidneys.
    No flippin’ way. Three weeks ? In the hospital ? What were they smoking? Oh, and to make it even more outrageous, there was no guarantee on the other end. The treatment might work wonders, or it might do nothing at all. The only constant—the only bet-your-ass guarantee—was that she’d lose three weeks of her fifty-two-week life span to somebody’s chemistry experiment.
    â€œAbsolutely not,” she’d told them. And when they looked stunned, she said it again. “Which part of ‘no’ confuses you?”
    And dear old Dad, God bless him, was on their side. “Honey, it’s for your own good,” he told her. “We’re only thinking of what’s best for you.”
    Yeah, well, chemo was for Mom’s own good, too. It was what was best for her, and look where it got her: she’d puked herself all the way to her grave. No one could explain to Nicki how slow poisoning in a hospital, surrounded by strangers, was a better way to die than just letting nature do her thing, surrounded by friends. Dead was dead, right?
    The doctors had all kinds of euphemisms for it all—final decisions and terminal courses and God only knew what else—but when you cut through all the bullshit, it all added up the same: she had a year left in which to live a lifetime. She could do it her way and have fun, or she could do it her dad’s way and be miserable. Did they think there was even a choice to be made?
    The argument had continued all the way out of the doctor’s office, all the way home, and all the way through the evening. It wasn’t a discussion or a presentation of opinions, it was a real argument, and her father wasn’t about to lose. “We’re not discussing this, Nicolette,” he’d said, his face red and his eyes redder. “I know you don’t think this is fair, but you don’t have a vote. You’re a minor, and you’ll do what I tell you.”
    â€œI won’t,” she’d countered. “You can’t make me. If they hook me up, I’ll just undo the leads. I’m not spending a twelfth of