i'm only given clues

Chapter 12

She's not sure how long she's been staring at the wall. Her eyes feel big and small at the same time and her face feels like all the muscles in it are frozen. The weirdest thing is that she feels completely numb, tingling from her head down to her toes, as she stares, past the body on the bed, at the wall.

"Where did the lilies go?" she asks and it's the first time she's aware of how disconnected her body is, how disconnected her brain is. She didn't even realize that that was what she was staring at: the distinct lack of the lilies that had been sitting there.

It's Nurse June that kneels down in front of her. She strokes Normani's hair from her face and looks at her with concern.

"They must have left them in the transplant ward," she mutters quietly as her hand shifts from Normani's hair to rub gently at her shoulder. "I could go get them for you if you want them."

Normani shakes her head slowly. "No," she says. "No, I just..." Her body feels like it's going to twitch where it's so stiff and she takes a shaky breath. "I was just thinking..." She pauses because she's not actually sure. "I was just thinking about if she would want lilies... at—at her funeral..." She blinks and it feels foreign. It almost hurts. "Do you think she'd want lilies?"

A hand falls to Nurse June's shoulder and then she's standing up. Normani doesn't pay attention, just continues to stare at where the lilies should be, on the table in the corner where they'd been when she arrived on Sunday morning. It's ridiculous that, as she sits in a room with her grandmother's body, that's the thing that feels most out of place.

Someone else kneels in front of her and her eyes narrow, at the place where the lilies should be like she's trying to figure something out, when a hand presses to her cheek. She barely feels it but she looks around anyway. It feels like she's just caught something out of the corner of her eye.

"Sweetheart," Libby whispers, and her thumb brushes backwards and forwards over Normani's cheek. It feels like wind. She looks at Libby but she doesn't see her. She sees the outline of her as she looks up at someone else and whispers. "She's going into shock."

Normani looks at her gently and it's strange how she's barely known this woman twelve hours but, at the same time, it feels like she's known her all her life. "Do you think that she'd want lilies?" she asks quietly. It feels like an important thing to ask. It feels like something that Libby would know.

Libby smiles at her and her eyes are dark, heavy. She wipes something from under Normani's eye and looks at her so gently. Normani feels like she should be able to feel it but she can't. She can't feel anything.

"You don't need to worry about that now," she whispers softly. "That's not a thing you need to be worried about. We can worry about that later."

Normani nods. "Okay," she says.

She watches as Libby's eyes flick all across her face, from her hairline to her chin. One hand slips around to the back of her head and cradles it and Normani doesn't understand why; she just lets Libby do it. She lets her kneel up in front of her as her thumb strokes backwards and forwards over her cheek. It feels like she's waiting for something and she seems to know more than Normani does so Normani doesn't question it.

"I can't feel anything," she says quietly. Libby nods. She doesn't look very concerned. Normani thinks that, as a nurse, maybe she should be more concerned.

Instead, she smiles. "I know, sweet girl," she breathes. "I know."

She watches her and Normani just stares into space, into the air around them. She wonders if her grandmother's soul is still in the room. She read once that people used to open the window to let the soul out but she's not sure if she wants to do that. She doesn't know if she wants her grandmother's soul to leave yet so she just stares into space, hoping she might see it.