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“If you don’t know their blood type, it doesn’t matter anyway,” I tell the girls. “We don’t know if the heart will be a match. And technically agreeing to be an organ donor at the DMV is an advance directive, but the family has to agree at time of death.”

“Facts, facts, facts,” Layla teases me, shoving my arm. “It’s just something silly to pass the time. Don’t make it all serious, or I’ll unplug your LVAD.”

“Actually . . .” My voice fades out while I ponder, and Layla leans in toward me.

“Uh-oh,” she says. “That’s the thinking face.”

“Which side?” Brandy asks.

I pull my phone back out of my waistband, tapping in some searches. “There’s a relationship between blood type and ethnic group, so if you know the race of the person in the news story we could probably take a decent stab at their blood type. I might even be able to find a distribution map of blood types in the area of the accident if I dig. Combine that with travel time from hospital to hospital, factoring out any major heart transplant facilities that are closer to the accident than we are . . . and yeah, we might actually be able to come up with a viable percentage on whether one of us gets the heart, as long as I know your blood types.”

I look up to see both of them staring at me, mouths open. “What?”

“She’s way more twisted than she looks,” Brandy says to Layla. “Or, how I imagine she looked before, you know”—she points to my scar—“that.”

“So are you going to tell me your blood type?” I ask, phone in hand.

“A positive,” Layla says.

“B positive,” Brandy says. “And I can’t tell you how many jokes I get.”

“Lucky,” I mutter under my breath, plugging in their types beside their names in my Notes app.

“Why, what’s yours?” Brandy asks.

“O neg,” I tell her, not looking up.

“O neg as in oh shit,” she says.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

There’s a tentative knock on Layla’s door and Josephine pokes her head in. “What are you guys up to?”

“Life and death situations,” Layla says. “Close the door behind you.”

We all scoot in even closer as Jo joins us on the bed.

“No knitting for you?” Brandy asks.

“Not sure I want to be around that many kids with sharp objects,” Jo says. “Plus Nadine is being a bitch today.”

“Just today?” Layla asks, then looks to me before asking her next question. I nod.

“So what’s your blood type, Jo? And don’t say Xanax.”

A ping goes off on Layla’s tablet, an alert of a fresh news story. Brandy gets to it first and flips it open, her face lighting up.

“Yes! Suicide by hanging. We can work with that.”

twenty-eight

Heath shows up about fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to start meditating, so any kind of zen I might have achieved is instantly screwed. I’m in the common room in an overstuffed chair, my legs hanging off one side. Layla sits on the couch next to me, reading another trashy romance that her mom brought her. I’m swiping through my notes and running averages on blood types in my head when he finds me.

“Hey,” he says, setting my clarinet case on the floor by the chair.

“Hey,” I say back, and sit up. I still have on the tank, since they keep the heat pumped pretty high in here for the comfort of everyone with poor circulation. I know my chest scar is bright and eye-catching, but I still hate that it’s the first place his eyes go.

“You, uh . . . you doing okay?” He points at it like I don’t know what he’s referencing.