Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“I’ll take over, Rocky,” she says. “You do the blood transfusion.”
Nova looks to his sister. “We don’t know their blood types yet.”
“He’s probably a match,” she refutes. “Or Hailey is.”
I back away and let Phoebe press on the gauze.
“Hailey.” Oliver hands her the contents of the kit, and while Oliver reads the directions out loud, Hailey and I follow the instructions. I wash Trevor’s blood off my hands in the kitchen sink, and then my sister and I both prick our fingers and drip blood onto the card.
Phoebe uses a pipet from the trauma bag to suction drops of Trevor’s blood for the test.
Oliver reaches the bottom of the directions and shifts his weight.
“What is it?” I ask him.
“It’ll take ten minutes.”
“Just give him my blood,” Hailey says, not thinking this through.
“We don’t know our blood types, Hails,” I interject. “We don’t even know Mom’s—”
“She’s O negative,” Hailey says. “She told me.”
To your face?
My doubt reeks like five-week-old garbage, but I’m not releasing the stench in the room. They likely already smell it on me.
Especially as Hailey feels the need to clarify. “She was telling me a story about how she used to donate blood a lot when she was young. Before this whole lifestyle became her everything. She’s a universal donor.”
Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.
I’m not thinking straight.
Everything is muddled as hell in my brain.
Where’s the lie?
There is no lie. They wouldn’t tell us our blood types because they’d have no reason to. Just like we have no social security cards, no identification that could incriminate us.
Or incriminate them . . .
Am I lying to myself?
There is no lie.
What do I want to believe? What do I want to see?
And is what I want even the actual truth?
I sit on the coffee table. Waiting for the timer to buzz. Lost in a pool of belief and disbelief.
Oliver turns to my sister. “Hails, if your mom is O negative, then he could be O negative, too. And then that means . . . ?” He finds the answer in his head. “He can only receive O negative?”
“Yeah.” She rips open another kit. “You, Nova, and Phoebe should also do a test in case you match him.”
The triplets prick their fingers.
Ten minutes.
Turns to five minutes.
Turns to two minutes.
“Trevor.” I snap my fingers, his eyes drooping.
“Still . . . here.” He’s drifting.
The timer vibrates my phone. I check my kit. “I’m B negative. Shit,” I curse.
Hailey examines her results. “I’m O negative.” The universal donor. Thank God. Quickly, we push the coffee table closer to the couch, and Hailey lies on the surface while Nova taps her vein and starts an IV line.
We don’t need to check Trevor’s blood type, but it’s nagging me.
The doubt.
The unknown. I eye the results on the ground near Phoebe and the trauma bag.
Don’t look. I shouldn’t look. I should be like every mark and just live with rose-colored glasses. Seeing exactly what I want to see.
I’ve never wanted that to be me.
Right as I go toward my brother’s results, a timer beeps on Oliver’s phone. The triplets. Their tests are done.
Oliver checks them on the kitchen counter. He says nothing.
He’s not shocked by whatever he sees. He just moves away from the bar and watches blood flow through the narrow tube out of Hailey’s arm and into Trevor.
“What are yours?” I ask him.
“All A positive.”
Okay.
Okay.
I can’t trust myself right now. Our parents haven’t been tricking us—maybe they never have been. Maybe I’ve been wrong. This entire time.
I’ve just hated my father, and that resentment piled so high inside of me that I couldn’t see beyond the mound of hatred.
I saw what I wanted to see.
I’m just the cynic. The pessimist. I’m made to disbelieve.
With a deep breath, I comb a hand through my hair and try to focus on the dull throb of my finger that I pricked.
Phoebe sees Trevor’s results near her knee, and she picks them up. Glancing at them, she says, “He’s AB negative.”
Hailey props herself up on her elbows and peers at the test in Phoebe’s hands. “Run it again.”
I go still.
“Why?” Oliver asks.
“Th-that has to be Boyd’s blood,” Hailey stammers. “Run it again.”
Tension slips through the room like a coiled snake. No one argues, and Phoebe pricks Trevor’s finger this time instead of pipetting blood around his wound.
While we wait, I ask quietly, “What does it mean, Hailey?”
Blood slips out of the IV that Nova hooked on a coatrack—his makeshift medical IV pole. Oliver wedges a pillow under her head, but she’s staring dazed at the ceiling.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she breathes shakily, “because it can’t be right.”
“But if it is right?” Phoebe asks. “What does it mean?”
“It’s impossible for someone who’s O negative to have a child who is AB negative,” Hailey whispers like she’s reading a fact she remembers from a book she read ten years go. “If the test is right, Trevor isn’t Mom’s kid.”