The moment carbon monoxide poisoning made me convulse and cough up blood, my mother was on the other side of the door, gently coaxing me to sleep.
My parents were the town's most celebrated philanthropists. They'd adopted Harrison Chavez—the orphaned son of a fellow patient who'd died of a terminal illness. To help heal his trauma, they didn't even dare raise their voices around him.
Then came the day the blizzard sealed the mountain roads, and I—a severe asthmatic—spiked a high fever.
Harrison said he wanted to see what I'd look like smoked black as charcoal. He smashed the oxygen concentrator I depended on to survive, dragged a burning coal stove filled with cheap briquettes into my tiny, windowless bedroom, and locked the door from the outside.
The thick smoke choked me until I was vomiting blood. All I could do was pound on the door and beg for help.
My mother's voice floated through from the other side, soft as a lullaby. "Be good, Libby Chavez. Your brother just wants to keep you warm. He means well. You mustn't lose your temper and hurt his feelings."
My father sighed through the door. "This girl gets more ungrateful the older she gets. Let her stay in there and think about what she's done."
I stopped pounding.
I let the carbon monoxide strip my consciousness away, piece by piece.
In the moment my eyes fell shut, I thought: Tomorrow, at least, I won't have to watch the three of them play happy family without me.
……
In the last second before everything dissolved, I heard Harrison laughing outside the door.
"Big sister's warming herself by the fire in her ice castle! She's about to turn into Cinderella!"
Then everything went quiet.
My body felt weightless, drifting above the spare bedroom that reeked of scorched coal. Smoke no longer seeped through the crack under the door. Inside the sealed room, the fumes had settled, coating the walls in a layer of black grime.
I looked down at the body curled on the floor.
It was me—shriveled into a tight ball from the heat.
The cotton blanket over me had burned through in several places, exposing skin blackened with soot. Shattered pieces of the oxygen concentrator lay scattered everywhere, its plastic casing melted into a hardened puddle.
I tried to move but realized I couldn't feel any pain. That was fine, too.
Voices carried through the wall from outside the door. Every word came through perfectly clear. My mother was on the phone.
"Yes, cancel it. We're not doing the lung rejection surgery tomorrow. Give that private sterile room to Harry instead."
She kept her voice deliberately low against the receiver, her tone dripping with sincerity.
"It's fine. Libby's always been tough—a few more days won't kill her. Harry lost his birth parents. As his adoptive parents, we have to give him the highest level of security and comfort. Don't you think?"
But that surgery was the anti-rejection procedure I'd waited seven months for.
My respiratory system was failing a little more each day. My doctor had said that if we delayed any longer, I might not make it to spring.
She knew. She knew all of it.
Harrison's voice drifted in from the living room.
"Mommy, look! I sealed up all the cracks around the door!"
He ran to my bedroom door holding a can of industrial expanding foam sealant, spraying it along every gap and vent.
White foam expanded and hardened, sealing off the last of the air.
"Trapping the poison gas inside!"
He clapped his hands, bouncing with excitement.
My father walked over and ruffled his hair.
"Harry's so clever—he even knows about soundproofing. Now your sister can throw all the tantrums she wants in there without keeping you up."
Harrison pouted and burrowed into my father's arms.
"Daddy, are you gonna write that article today? The one that says nice things about our family?"
My father smiled.
He opened his laptop and typed a headline into the backend of the neighborhood Facebook page: "Let Love Melt the Snow: One Hundred Days and Nights of Adopting a Terminally Ill Orphan."
The cover photo was that picture-perfect family portrait from the living room. Harrison beamed in my father's arms. My mother stood beside them, gazing at him adoringly.
I wasn't in the photo.
But I was in the article.
"Our eldest daughter, Libby, fully supports our decision to adopt Harry. She says she's thrilled to finally have a little brother, and it makes her happy every single day."
