Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks by Owen R. O'Neill, Jordan Leah Hunter Page A

said you’re not immediate family?” She dropped her eyes back to a screen Kris could not see.
    “No, I’m not. But I have to see her! She called me.”
    “And not a relative?”
    “I told you—you gotta let me go to her. They called me!”
    “They?” The woman appeared to be keying in data. Kris tried to lean over the counter to see what the woman was doing but she couldn’t, and she couldn’t remember who’d called her either. Was it Mariwen? Or was it Huron? Someone had called her, told her to come now , immediately. Mariwen was in the hospital—she was . . .
    “ . . . dying! Look—please! They told me she’s dying! I gotta see her. Please! Don’cha understand?”
    The woman refused to look up. “I’ve told them you’re here. You can wait over there, if you want. If her condition changes, someone will be out to inform you.”
    Condition? What the fuck do you mean, ‘condition’? She’s dying! I know she’s dying . . . I gotta go to her—I have to . . .
    She started to reach across the counter toward the woman, but there was no counter and she was getting up out of a plastic chair in a waiting room with cream walls and a beige stripe and these stupid fucking fake windows that showed hummingbirds and shit, big gaudy flowers and scenes like that weird toy one of her schoolmates had when she was six—you shook it and these white flecks swirled around some little thing that looked like a dwelling—“It’s snow,” the girl had said—“That’s snow?” Kris had asked and the girl who was eight laughed at her and she got really angry—and a door with a frosted-glass pane filling the upper half opened and this young guy with an old-style pad was there—there was something weirdly familiar about him—looking at her and then at the pad.
    “Are you Loralynn Kennakris?” She nodded. “Come with me, please.”
    She stood up . . . into Mariwen’s room. The room was full of people—so full they crushed against her on all sides—doctors, techs, nurses, all moving, talking, jostling—and in the middle of it all, Mariwen in a huge bed with a sheet pulled up to the neck and her hair loose all around—long dark waves of it fanned out across the pillows—and the bed was surrounded by racks and racks of machines, all blinking and beeping, and everyone was talking loud to be heard over the noise. She turned sideways to squeeze through the press, a sharp elbow poking her in the ribs. The bed had side rails and Mariwen was still—so still—and the skin of her perfect face wasn’t its normal rich, warm, dark caramel at all but looked like white glass. What the fuck? What’s happened to her? The bed was white too—an impossible white—and she reached out a hand—the bed was so large she had to really stretch—and she could not feel any breath at all and Mariwen’s lips were turning blue . . .
    “She’s dying,” Kris said, looking to the nearest doctor. He was facing away, intent on some traces on his obsolete pad. She reached for his arm—“She’s dying !”—but he slid away into the crowd. She turned to a nurse who was talking to a tech— Don’t you fucking understand? Her lips are blue! She’s not breathing! —but she couldn’t reach the woman as a knot of people, talking nonsensically, pushed between them, cramming her back against the side rails.
    Kris shoved her way into the mass of bodies. Why couldn’t they hear her? Why weren’t they paying attention? Mariwen wasn’t breathing! Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? She kept turning but all she saw was the backs of coats and hospital uniforms and where was the door? Where was the fucking door? She had to get out—she had to get someone—someone who’d listen—who’d do something . . . and the strange young man grabbed her elbow.
    “You don’t understand.” She wanted to reply, to say— anything —but the words would not come. “Don’t you know why you’re here?”
    Why I’m here? I’m here to