How About No
Page 8

“I’m sure that you think the Hills are good people,” Kourt started. “But they’re not. They’re awful people.”
I frowned. “I haven’t had many dealings with them. I know I was upset when they didn’t visit Landry in the hospital when she was donating bone marrow to her sister. Sure, I see them around town. Actually, saw Lina recently. Was it this morning?”
“Oh, yeah, you saw her this morning. I know all about that visit with Lina,” Kourt rumbled.
I would’ve snorted had I had the energy.
At this point, I had just enough to keep my eyes open and that was it.
“How about I tell you how we met, and we’ll go from there,” he explained, sensing my tiredness. “It all began when we found each other online. We were in an online community for bone marrow donors. Landry and I were the only members of that forum who had endured what we had experienced, and that was probably why we’d latched onto each other so fast.
“Everybody else was so proud of themselves, telling everyone that they felt so good about donating, while Landry and I…weren’t.” He laughed bitterly, his eyes going far away like he was no longer seeing what was right in front of him. “We bonded over an infection that we both got after one of our donations, and from there we became great friends. She became my sounding board, and I became the only person who understood how much—and why—she hated her family, because I felt exactly the same way.”
I closed my eyes and felt another stab of guilt go through me.
I hadn’t intended for that to happen. I hadn’t intended to make her think that Lina should come first.
I’d only been thinking about how Lina might die if she didn’t get the bone marrow transplant that she needed. Sure, she’d voiced the fact that she didn’t want to do the transplant, but I honestly couldn’t get over the letting her sister die part just because she had a couple of bad experiences donating.
God, I was such a fucking dumbass sometimes.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m telling you this because you need to understand exactly where she’s coming from so you’ll know how to fix it,” he explained.
I nodded once. “Keep going.”
“While we were becoming friends, we bonded over how shitty our parents were. I’ll save my story for another time, and just go ahead and tell you exactly what she told me,” he explained. “They had Landry for the sole reason of helping to keep her sister, Lina alive.” He paused. “Lina had been fighting leukemia since she was an infant. Landry was two years old when she first donated bone marrow to Lina. This was when they moved to Mexico, because no doctor in the United States would conduct a harvest from a donor as young as Landry. They found a doctor in Mexico who was willing, and from there Landry became their unwilling donor any time that Lina needed it, which was too much for her. I’m not saying that Lina hasn’t suffered, because she has, but it was different for Landry. She suffered tremendously, and she was robbed of her childhood, all without her consent.”
Bayou shifted, drawing my attention briefly before I returned it to Kourt.
“What else?”
Kourt shrugged. “The usual. She was treated like a commodity, brought to this Earth solely for the purpose of providing stem cells for her sister. In between donations, Landry was allowed to get an education. However, she was not allowed to play sports—because sports could be dangerous and could possibly hurt Landry—and Lina by association.” I looked down at my hands as Kourt continued. “She wasn’t allowed to eat anything other than what was provided for her. It was strictly monitored so she was the healthiest she could be. All of this was planned so she would be ready if Lina needed a transfusion. But, everyone deserves a treat or a special meal now and then, and Landry never got that. If by chance, Landry put anything her parents deemed ‘unhealthy’ in her mouth, her mother punished her for it, severely.”
I remembered the cake at our wedding. How Landry had sat for hours and tasted each and every flavor.
How annoyed I’d been at the end because she couldn’t choose.
And now I felt like an even bigger pile of shit.
God, I’d really fucked up.
Who didn’t allow their child to eat junk once in a while?
“Forget about going to normal places that kids went, like the movies or roller skating, or doing normal things with friends, like sleepovers or birthday parties, because she didn’t have any. She was homeschooled and the only person that she ever talked to was her tutor. Her parents didn’t spare her a second of their time, and neither did her sister when she was healthy. There was no warmth, no affection, no love in her life from them at all, ever. Honestly, I think Lina hated Landry because Landry was healthy, and she wasn’t. Which is kind of ironic, really, because Landry hated Lina for the same reason.” He paused. “This is where it starts getting tough, you ready?”
I laughed humorlessly. “That other stuff wasn’t tough enough?”
He looked at me like I was naïve.
“A couple of years before I came into the picture, Landry started to show signs of depression. She stopped eating altogether, and she became very unhealthy. She was anorexic because that was literally the only thing she could control—what she put into her body. There were times over the years that her mother and father had her force-fed with an NG tube—a little tube that goes down your nose, down your throat, and straight into your stomach. Then she couldn’t even control that anymore.” He frowned. “It was at that point that she considered suicide. Considered it until she turned seventeen when she actually thought seriously about attempting it.”
I felt my eyes sting.
Who could blame her?
“That’s where I came in. I’d been in medical school for a little over three years at that point. Took me two hours to get there. Broke into her place through a side window. Fortunately, she was holding the bottle of pills in her hands and hadn’t taken any yet. I don’t think either of us truly realized that she was so much younger than me until I arrived and saved her. Her parents didn’t even try to help her with counseling so, I continued to monitor her and talked to her every day. They were pissed as hell, though. The last year that she lived with them was torture for her. When she turned eighteen, she followed me here where I was doing my residency, and we’ve been with each other ever since…until you. When you came in the picture, I was completely and utterly forgotten. It was the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever witnessed.”
And I’d hurt her.
“You were her saving grace. Her miracle. The man who was always supposed to put her first…and then you chose Lina over her, and she just…broke.”
When he put it like that, after everything he’d just told me, I couldn’t blame her one bit for leaving.
Didn’t blame her at all.
At least not anymore.
“I can see you’re hurting.” Kourt stood and went for the pain pump that was at my side. “Press the button in your left hand.”
I hadn’t even realized that I had a button in my left hand, but after glancing down and seeing that I did, indeed, have the button in my hand, I pressed it.
“I’m sure that you’re going to have questions,” he said softly. “Don’t hesitate to ask. We work opposite shifts, and I’m normally here when she’s at home. I’m at home when she’s at work. I’ll leave my cell phone number here in your phone.” He informed me as he picked my phone up and typed his information in without asking.
With that, he left and didn’t once look back.
If he had, he’d have seen the devastation that his words left me with written plain as day on my face.
I felt utterly broken.
“I think we both failed her, man,” Bayou said softly.
Yeah, I think we—I—did, too.
Chapter 5
Fool me once, fuck you forever.
-Text from Landry to Wade
Landry
My hand hurt.
My hand hurt really bad.
In fact, on a pain scale of one to ten, I’d rank it at about a seventy.
“You okay?”