Read Online While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky - Free Book Online

friends the night after she ran Duluth?”
    Kathryn stared. “Robin doesn't drink.”
    “Robin does. I've driven her home afterward.”
    “And you
let
her drink?” Kathryn asked, shifting the blame. “And why didn't she tell
me
about Duluth?”
    “Because you're her
mother
, and you
hate
drinking.” Molly took pity because Kathryn looked truly distraught. “Oh Mom, I wouldn't have said anything if you hadn't been so adamant that Robin wouldn't lie. Duluth was a blip. No harm came of it. I'm sure that if you'd asked her outright whether she'd ever been drunk, she'd have told you. But she didn't want to disappoint you. She swore me to secrecy.”
    “You should have honored that.”
    Molly hung her head. She couldn't win. Discouraged, she looked at Kathryn again. “All I'm saying is that Robin didn't tell you everything. She was human, like the rest of us.”
    “
Was
human? Past tense?”
    Charlie held up a hand. At the same time, from the door came a gentle, “Excuse me?” It was the nurse. “We have people gathering in the lounge down the hall. They say they're Robin's friends.”
    Kathryn's eyes went wide. “How do they know she's here?”
    “I told Jenny Fiske,” Molly said. Her mother was already angry; a little more couldn't make it worse.
    Kathryn sagged. “Oh, Molly.”
    “It's okay,” Charlie said. “Jenny's a friend. Molly did what she felt was best.”
    “Robin would want Jenny to know,” Molly tried. She was actually sure about this. “She's always been right out there with her friends. I think she'd want Jenny here. And she'd want that EEG, too. She liked knowing the score
—likes
knowing the score,
likes
knowing what she's up against. I mean, think of the way she studies the competition before every major race. She wants to psych it all out—who'll run how on a given course, whether they'll break early, how they'll take hills, when they'll fade. She's a strategizer. But she can't strategize for
this
race unless she knows what's going on.”
    When Kathryn continued to stare at her, Molly figured she had pushed as far as she could. And Jenny was in the lounge. The last thing Molly wanted was to have to be the one to talk with her. Plus she was worried about the nurse's reference to friends, plural.
    Feeling responsible, she set off to do damage control.
    KATHRYN wondered if Molly was right. Robin might want to know what she faced. The problem was that Kathryn didn't. She wanted to see improvement first, which was why Molly's spreading the word wasn't good. “Why did she have to tell Jenny?”
    Charlie drew up a chair. “Because we put her in an untenable position. How can she talk with a friend of Robin's and not tell her Robin is sick? Really, Kath, there's nothing wrong with what she's done. What happened to Robin isn't a disgrace. It's a medical crisis. We could use people's prayers.”
    This time, Kathryn didn't argue about prayers. She had begunsaying a few herself. Doctors had been in and out all morning examining Robin, and they never actually denied Kathryn hope, simply gave her little to hold onto. Same with the respiratory therapist, who checked by every hour and refused to say whether he saw any change in Robin's breathing. And the nurses? As compassionate as they were, repeatedly testing Robin's responsiveness, they were cautious in answering Kathryn's questions. Once too often she had been told that patients didn't come back from the kind of brain damage Robin had suffered.
    Charlie took her hand. “Molly's right, y'know. Not knowing is the worst.”
    Kathryn knew where he was headed. “You want the EEG.”
    “I don't want
any
of this,” he said in a burst so rare that it carried more weight. “But we can't go back,” he added sadly. “The Robin we knew is gone.”
    Kathryn's eyes teared as she looked at her daughter again. Robin had been an active infant, an energetic toddler, an irrepressible child. “I can't accept that,” she whispered.
    “You may have to. Think