Revived (Cat Patrick)

a sad smile. “They don’t give healthy livers to cancer patients, Daisy.” I feel childish for suggesting it, and I’m glad when Matt’s eyes turn back to the road.
    “How long did they give her?” I ask.
    “Three years,” Matt says. “It’s been two and a half. She was okay for a while, but now she keeps having pain. She keeps going back to the hospital.”
    “Is that where she is now?” I whisper.
    “Not anymore,” Matt says. “But that’s why she didn’t call you back or whatever. After the movie on Friday, she didn’t look so good, so my parents freaked out and took her to the ER. They ran some tests and then sent her home, like usual. But they gave her painkillers, and they knock her out. She’s been sleeping all weekend.”
    I look back to the mile markers and watch them zoom past for a while. Somehow the landscape amplifies my feelings of sadness, anger, and helplessness. Again, I think of Revive; again, I’m reminded of its limitations.
    When I was seven, Mason gave me a rabbit to make me feel better for falling out of a tree and breaking my arm. I named the rabbit Ginger and took good care of her. She lived in a very clean cage in my bedroom, and I let her out for hours every day to play indoors, and sometimes outside in our fenced backyard. I don’t speak rabbit, but I believe she was happy.
    But then Ginger got cancer.
    At first, it was a small lump. In the end, her feet barely touched the cage floor because the tumor eating her from the inside out was so huge. She wobbled around like a balloon animal with no legs, which would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. And then she died.
    I pleaded with Mason to save her.
    “Give her the medicine,” I cried, facedown into my bed so that I couldn’t see the dead rabbit in the cage near the door. Mason sat next to me, patting my back.
    “Shh,” he said calmly. “I know you’re upset. I know you loved Ginger. But unfortunately, I can’t do it, Daisy.”
    “Why?” I wailed.
    “Because it won’t work on her,” he said softly.
    “How do you know? Have you ever tried?” I cried. Mason smoothed my messy hair and sighed.
    “Daisy, the rabbit had cancer. Do you know what that means?”
    “Yes!”
    “Well, we’re learning that there are certain limitations to Revive,” Mason said, like he was giving a report to his superiors, not comforting his pseudo daughter.
    “What does limitations mean?” I asked, still facedown.
    “It means that the medicine only works on certain types of bodies.”
    “People bodies?” I asked.
    “Yes, and rat bodies, too, but that’s not what I mean,” Mason said. “I mean that it only works on bodies that are healthy before they die. Bodies that die suddenly—not from a disease.”
    “What’s a disease?” I asked, rolling over and looking up at Mason. My tears stopped when my inquisitive nature took over. Mason was quiet for a moment, probably trying to decide how to boil it down for a seven-year-old.
    “A disease is a really bad sickness that—”
    “Like a cold?”
    “Shh, let me finish,” Mason said, lightly touching my hand. “It’s like a cold, but a lot worse, and usually it’s not something you can catch from someone else or fix with medicine.”
    “Am I going to get a disease?” I asked, sitting up straight. “I don’t want to die again. It hurts!”
    “No,” Mason said confidently. “You’re not going to get a disease, and you’re not going to die again. But Daisy, listen to me. Ginger had cancer. That’s a disease. An incurable one, which means it can’t be fixed. Hers is the type of body that cannot be saved with the Revive medicine. Understand?”
    I looked at the cage near the door, at the motionless rabbit inside, and said nothing.
    “Ginger had a nice life, Daisy. Knowing that should make you feel a little better.”
    “It doesn’t,” I said honestly.
    Mason gave me a weak smile. “Someday it might,” he said before leaving my room and taking Ginger the dead rabbit with him.
    Matt and I stop at a gas station about thirty miles out. Matt pumps and pays, then says he’s going inside for food. From the car, I watch him walk the aisles, scrutinizing the snacks. He holds up a pack of Twizzlers and I shake my head no. He waves some chocolate and I make a face. Finally, he holds up a bag of chips. I give him a thumbs-up and mouth Coke, too , but he doesn’t get what I’m saying, so I text him. He reads it and we make eye contact and laugh, both of us