Read Online Wonder When You’ll Miss Me by Amanda Davis - Free Book Online Page B

knew she was supposed to be me.
    I took a deep breath. If I was going to be brave, then I’d better be brave. I threw my shoulders back and swallowed. “Hi!” I said to the mirror. Too cheerful. “Hello there,” I said with more tragedy in my voice.
    Â 
    The nurses’ station hummed and bustled behind me and ahead there was an empty gurney in the hall. Men and women in pale blue scrubs sauntered by. I didn’t look at them, just straight ahead, as though I knew exactly what I was doing.
    Then I reached 1216. It had a plain brown door with a high small window. I peeked in and through the crosshatched glass I could make out the foot of a hospital bed with a dark green curtain partially drawn, and beyond that, by the window, another bed. So Andrea Dutton didn’t have a private room. There were flowers on a table by the window, ordinarycheerful bouquets of bright carnations and baby’s breath with small stiff cards peeking from between their petals.
    A face stared back at me, eyes even with mine. I jumped back and froze. A blond woman in a pale yellow sweater opened the door. She had bags under her eyes and a brittle smile. “Are you a friend of Andie’s?” she said. Her voice was breathy.
    I wasn’t sure how to answer. I smiled and gave a half-nod while trying to peer around her and into the room. The green curtain moved and a nurse walked out, stepping past me into the hall.
    â€œThey were just taking blood,” the woman said. She looked like Andrea, but grown up. “Did you want to come in?”
    I nodded and she stepped aside to let me pass.
    Andrea Dutton lay small and limp, arms by her side, hooked to machines that beeped and hummed. Without the customary veil of makeup, she looked as though she were made of porcelain, except that a yellowish bruise covered part of her cheek, neck, and the collarbone that peeked through her pale gown. Her head had been shaved; her skull was bandaged.
    â€œIt’s nice that you’re visiting,” Mrs. Dutton said. “She was awake for a while today.” She sat on a chair near the bed and her small reddish hands rubbed themselves up and down on her denim thighs. “What’s your name, so I can tell Andie you stopped by?”
    The air in the room was dizzying, so bright and stale. All the energy came from the voice of machines. Over where the curtain around the next bed ended, feet, covered by a thin white sheet, poked out. I didn’t know what to say. Andrea Dutton. When I spoke my voice sounded too loud for the room.
    â€œAnnabelle. Tell her Annabelle visited.” Mrs. Dutton nodded.
    â€œShe’s feeling better?”
    Mrs. Dutton took her daughter’s limp right hand in hers. “Yes,” she said cheerily. “Maybe you heard that she got out of the ICU a week ago? The doctors say we’re right on schedule.” She smiled at me for just a moment and then her eyes focused on something behind me, high up the wall. I resisted the urge to turn around. “It just takes a long time,” she said, but now she sounded like she was talking to herself.
    â€œI really hope she feels better.”
    â€œI come every day.” Mrs. Dutton leaned forward and fluffed Andrea’s pillows. “And her brothers come after school. Her father comes when he can but I think it’s the school friends that do her the most good.”
    I looked at Andrea, who hadn’t moved at all, not even to blink or wiggle, and wondered how Mrs. Dutton could tell.
    â€œI know everyone’s worried about her.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Annabelle,” she said, smiling and wiping at one eye. She laughed. “I don’t know why I’m so wound up. Sometimes this even feels normal.” She gave a short laugh. Her eyes were incredibly sad.
    I backed towards the door. I wanted to run out of that room.
    â€œCome back soon,” she said. “If you see Missy or Jenny at school, tell them