I'll Be Seeing You

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “It’s all right. I—I really don’t mind.” Another lie! “But you know what I think would be better?”

  “What?”

  “I think it would be better to wait until you can actually see my face for yourself. Yes, that’s what I want. I want to greet you face-to-face once your bandages come off.”

  He didn’t say a word right away. He only held her hand and brushed his thumb repeatedly across her knuckles. “Even when the bandages come off, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to see again.”

  “But I think you will,” she insisted. “And because I think so, I want you to wait until you can see me with your own eyes.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Then you can touch away.”

  He slumped back in the chair.

  She disliked bringing Kyle’s mood from happy to glum; it wasn’t a nice way to treat him. But she’d been desperate to take his mind off the idea of exploring her face with his touch. What a disaster it would have been. She didn’t understand why it was so important to her that he maintain his illusions about her looks, but it was.

  “Do you know what?” she asked brightly. “The orderly will be here any minute to take me down to PT.” She told him another lie. She wasn’t scheduled for another PT session until Monday morning.

  “I’ll go back to my room.” Kyle stood.

  “Let me walk with you.”

  “How? You’re on crutches, remember?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “Then let me take your elbow and follow about a half step behind. That’s the way I was taught to have someone lead me.”

  Carley let him grasp her right elbow and slowly she began to take small steps with her crutches so that he could keep up. Back in his room again, he climbed into the bed. “I think I’ll listen to another one of those books you loaned me. I’m not much good at doing anything but listening.”

  “I have more,” she said, eager to make up for any distress she might have caused him. “Mom and Dad brought me a bunch of new ones today.”

  “Will you come visit me later?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “My parents are coming this afternoon. I’d like for them to meet you.”

  “Um—all right,” she declared, knowing full well that she’d find something to keep her busy and away from her room so that she wouldn’t have to meet them.

  Carley returned to her room, grateful to be out of her awkward situation. How had she gotten herself into this mess? Was it wrong of her to want to protect herself from his discovering what she really looked like? Was it wrong to want him to believe that she was normal, even pretty?

  Later, when she figured Kyle’s parents might be on their way up, Carley went to visit Reba. The girl was still recovering from her surgery, but fortunately she was alone in her room. IVs hung by her bed, and tubes leading from her stomach were partially concealed by bedcovers.

  “For drainage,” she explained to Carley.

  “Are you in pain?” Carley might have felt revulsion if she hadn’t been through so much medical trauma herself.

  “Not much,” Reba said. Her voice sounded soft and she spoke slowly, but at least she was lucid. She nodded toward a small machine next to her bed with its IV line threaded into her arm. “Morphine dispenser,” she said. “If I start to hurt too bad, I can make the drip come faster.”

  “How long before you’re able to get up?”

  “Don’t know.” Reba’s eyes closed, but soon opened again. “Talk to me. Take my mind off this stuff.”

  Carley told her about Kyle’s visit and him wanting to touch her face.

  “Wow,” Reba mumbled. “Close call.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s getting harder and harder to keep my secret.”

  “What if he asks one of the nurses about you?”

  “Don’t think I’m not worried about it. But they’re professionals. So if one does tell him about me, I hope she’ll be kind and won’t say, ‘Carley? You mean the dog-faced girl?’ ”

  Reba grimaced. “No one would ever say that about you.”

  “You’re wrong, Reba. Someone did say it.”

  “Who?”

  “Jon, my sister’s boyfriend.”

  “That’s so mean!”

  Carley patted Reba’s arm. “Don’t get worked up about it. It happened months ago. I was cutting through the gym at school and I heard some guys talking and heard one of them mention Janelle’s name. Naturally I stopped and eavesdropped. They were telling Jon how lucky he was to have a babe like Janelle for a steady date. And too bad she didn’t have a sister. And Jon said, ‘She does—it’s Carley, the dog-faced sophomore girl.’

  “Then I heard a couple of the guys make barking noises and Jon say, ‘Man, I can hardly stand to look at her, she’s so ugly.’ I stopped listening then. I ran out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t cry until I got home, but to this day I can’t stand to be around Jon.”

  Reba’s eyes grew wide as Carley talked. “Did you ever tell your sister?”

  “ ’Course not. It’s too babyish to whine about it to her. I mean, what am I going to say? ‘Your boyfriend called me a dog. I think you should dump him.’ I need to be tough, Reba. Kids are always saying mean things about me. Dumb things. They don’t know what it’s like to look at this face in the mirror every day. People who are normal haven’t got a clue about how badly words hurt. Worse than rocks sometimes.”

  Reba nodded. “Why can’t people understand that no one likes being different. But people who are different still have feelings.”

  Carley realized that Reba, most of all, understood what she was saying. All her life Reba would be confined to a wheelchair. She was simply somebody that medical science couldn’t make normal. A lump of tears lodged in Carley’s throat. Tears for Reba. Tears for herself.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve let this whole thing with Kyle get out of hand,” Carley said slowly. “I mean, why didn’t I just come clean with him from the beginning? You told me to.” Tears swam in her eyes.

  “What do I know?” Reba offered a smile.

  “You knew more than me. I guess it was just so nice to have a boy like me. And he liked me in spite of the way I looked. And now I can’t seem to stop pretending with him.”

  “You could if you wanted to.”

  Carley shook her head. “No. I don’t want to. I keep thinking that soon I’ll get out of here and get back to my life.”

  “But once he gets out, he might come looking for you.”

  “But if he can’t ever see me, it won’t matter.”

  Reba blinked. “Do you hear what you’re saying, Carley? It’s almost as if you don’t want him to get his eyesight back again.”

  Carley bowed her head. What Reba had said was true. She dreaded Kyle regaining his vision. And yet it was wrong to wish him confined to a lifetime of darkness simply because she didn’t want him knowing she was disfigured. “He’s the first guy who’s ever been nice to me, Reba. The only one since before I was twelve.”

  “And you don’t think he’ll be nice to you once he knows what you look like?”

  “No,” Carley said miserably. “I live in the real world. And in the real world guys don’t stick around for girls who look like me.”

  Just before bedtime Carley’s phone rang.

  “Where were you tonight?” Kyle’s voice sounded hurt. “I told you my folks were coming and that I wanted you to meet them. Why did you run off?”

  “I went to visit Reba. I hadn’t seen her since her surgery and I didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten about her,” she explained quickly.

  “Oh.” His voice lost its edginess. “How she’s doing?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Carley, I didn’t mean to sound off at you. It’s just that I’ve been talking about you to my friends and parents a lot. I’ve been telling them about this terrific girl I’ve met and they want to meet you too. Except that you’re never around, so everybody thinks yo
u’re a figment of my imagination. Or worse, that I’m a liar.”

  Recalling Reba’s admonition to come clean with Kyle, Carley took a deep breath. “Kyle, I think we should talk. I need to tell you something.”

  “Can you tell me tomorrow? The nurse just gave me a sleeping pill,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  “Sure … tomorrow’s fine.” She felt relieved. She really didn’t want to confess everything tonight.

  “Listen, my two best friends are coming tomorrow afternoon and I want them to meet you.”

  She wondered if this fetish of his to introduce her to his friends and family was ever going to end. “You’re putting me on the spot, Kyle.”

  “Why? Just because I want my friends to meet the person who’s making this whole ordeal bearable for me?”

  She didn’t know what to tell him and she didn’t want to argue about it on the phone either. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, sounding drowsy. “But I promise we’ll be next door to see you, so don’t run off. Because if you do, we’ll go looking for you if we have to search every floor of the hospital.”

  Nine

  “You want what? Are you out of your mind?”

  Carley bit her lip, not wanting to lash out at Janelle, who stood in the hospital room wearing an incredulous expression. “Don’t get all hyper on me,” she said as soothingly as possible. “I’m not asking you to rob a bank or anything.”

  “It’s a dumb idea, Carley, and I won’t do it. I won’t pretend to be you!”

  Janelle’s stubborness was testing Carley’s patience. Didn’t her sister realize that she was desperate? And that desperate times called for desperate measures?

  Carley had come up with the scheme late the night before and called Janelle first thing Sunday morning. “Please come see me right away,” she’d begged. “Don’t even go to church first, just come straight here.”

  But when Janelle arrived and Carley revealed her plan for what she wanted Janelle to do later in the afternoon, Janelle adamantly refused. Carley glared at her sister, whose chin jutted out obstinately. “I never ever ask you for a favor, and the one time I do, you act as if I asked you to murder somebody.”

  “This is more than a favor, Carley. It’s an out-and-out lie. I can’t pretend to be you just so that you can impress some boy.”

  “This isn’t some stupid kid prank, you know. I have good reasons for Kyle’s friends to think that you’re me. Kyle and I’ve become good friends. I really like him and I don’t want his friends to tell him that I’m some kind of freak.”

  “You’re not a freak!” Janelle stamped her foot. “And if anyone says you are, I’ll deck ’em.”

  “Thanks for the show of loyalty.” Carley sighed. “But I can deck people if I choose to. The one thing I can’t do is look normal. You’re my sister and I need you to help me out here.”

  “You really like this guy?”

  Carley nodded vigorously. Was her sister about to cave in?

  “Then be honest with him. Tell him about yourself; he’ll understand.”

  Carley exploded with “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never had people stare at you. Or call you names. Don’t you see? I don’t want to take the chance that he’ll ‘understand.’ I want him to think I’m pretty. And if his friends meet you, then that’s exactly what Kyle will think.”

  Unable to look Carley straight in the eye, Janelle sagged into a nearby chair and glanced down at the floor. “This is emotional blackmail.”

  “No. It’s a favor. From one sister to another.”

  Suddenly Janelle sat upright, a gleam in her eye. “There is this small thing of your broken leg. Or do you expect me to throw myself down the stairwell?”

  “I’ve already thought about that,” Carley said, holding up her hand. “If you roll into Kyle’s room in a wheelchair with your leg stretched out and a blanket over your lap, no one will know that your leg isn’t broken. Kyle’s friends will see a pretty girl who says that her arms were hurting from using crutches. And Kyle won’t see anything at all. I’m telling you, Janelle, this will work if you put a little effort into it.”

  “What will work?”

  Both girls whipped around in the direction of the voice that had interrupted their discussion.

  “Jon!” Janelle jumped up from the chair and went toward him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I got to church and your mother said you’d come here instead, so I left and came looking for you. What’s up?” He avoided looking at Carley.

  Carley groaned and flopped back onto her pillow. Just what she needed—Jon to muddy up her plan. And just when she’d almost had Janelle persuaded.

  “What’s up is that my sister has some harebrained idea about me impersonating her for this guy she’s met in the next room.”

  Jon looked confused.

  “He’s temporarily blind,” Carley interjected, none too kindly. “So he’s never seen my face, and most likely never will. But his friends are coming to visit him this afternoon and he wants them to meet me and see what a ‘babe’ I am. But we all know that’s not the case, don’t we?”

  Jon’s face colored, but he still shook his head. “I don’t want any guy coming onto my girl.” His arm snaked around Janelle’s waist possessively.

  “Oh, puh-lease.…” Carley rolled her eyes dramatically. “Think of it as a temporary loan.”

  Even Janelle looked exasperated with him. “Cut the Neanderthal routine, Jon. I’m a person, not your property.”

  “But you’re my girl!”

  “And Carley’s my sister.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking about doing this, are you?” Jon sounded angry.

  “What if I am?” Now that Janelle was on the defensive, Carley decided to keep quiet and let the two of them argue it out. Maybe Jon’s attitude was just the push Janelle needed to send her into Carley’s camp on this issue.

  “Because it’s dumb, that’s why.”

  “Yes, it’s dumb, but Carley is my sister, and she wants my help.”

  “If she asked you to jump in front of a moving car, would you do it?”

  “That is so lame. Just the kind of thing you’d tell a two-year-old. Which I’m not!” Janelle whirled around and started for the door. “I’m going to buy myself a Coke. Cool off, Jon!”

  She grabbed her purse and flounced out the door. Jon glared after her.

  “Not much fun to be called names, is it?” Carley asked him when they were alone.

  Jon gave her a sullen glance and crossed to the window, where he stood with his hands thrust into his pockets and scowled.

  Carley sat forward and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “It wouldn’t kill you to cooperate, you know. We’re talking a fifteen-minute visit that won’t mean anything to you, but will mean everything to me. And to Kyle.”

  “It’s just not right,” Jon answered.

  “Lots of things happen that aren’t right. Like getting cancer when you’re twelve and turning into a permanent sideshow. You know, someone’s idea of a joke.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Woof-woof.” She saw the back of his neck and ears flush red. He turned slowly and their gazes locked. “I’m sorry you don’t like me,” she said. “But I can’t help the way I look. And I don’t like people making fun of me.”

  “Who says I don’t like you?”

  “It’s written all over your face every time you look at me. Or rather, don’t look at me.”

  She was surprised when he said, “I really care for Janelle. She means everything to me. Are you going to ruin it for us?”

  Carley felt a sense of power and for a minute wanted to see him squirm, but the feeling passed when she remembered how urgently she needed Janelle’s help. No use causing a scene simply to get revenge. “Wrecking people’s lives isn’t my style,” she told him. “But I would appreciate a good word from you. It would help this deal go down much more easily.”

&n
bsp; Before he could respond, Janelle swept back into the room, a can of diet cola in her hand. “The vending machine hardly had anything good,” she grumbled.

  Jon took a deep breath and stepped in front of her. “I’ve been thinking while you were gone.”

  Carley resisted the urge to blurt, “That’s what you smell burning—Jon’s brain.”

  “I think you should help Carley.”

  Janelle glanced from Jon to Carley and back again to Jon. “I was gone less than ten minutes. How did she persuade you so quickly? Especially when she’s been working on me for an hour.”

  “I overreacted. What she wants is really sort of harmless.” He glanced toward Carley. “Sort of like wearing a mask for Halloween. This guy will be happy. Carley will be happy. No one will know it’s you. And then that’s the end of it.”

  Carley ignored Jon’s bad humor and nodded eagerly. “I told you, Sis, it’ll only take a few minutes, and you don’t ever have to do it again.”

  Janelle’s shoulders drooped. “I hate it when people gang up on me. Especially people I care about.”

  Carley felt a twist of guilt and vowed she’d make it up to her sister sometime. “I’ll be grateful forever.”

  Her phone rang and she grabbed the receiver. It was Kyle. “Hi,” she said cheerfully.

  “You’re in your room.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “You usually run off.”

  “Now, now,” she chided.

  “Listen, my friends Steve and Jason are here. They were cohorts in my infamous rocket-fuel stunt, except that they didn’t get hurt. Anyway we want to come by and say hello.”

  “Don’t do that!” Carley cut her eyes to Janelle and Jon, tucked the receiver beneath her chin, and pointed frantically at the wheelchair she’d confiscated earlier from the nurses’ station. “What I mean is, why don’t I come to your room? It’s a mess here and I don’t want strange boys around.” Janelle rolled her eyes. “I can be there in five minutes,” Carley added, ignoring her sister.

  “Sure, no problem,” Kyle told her. “Come soon.”

  “I can’t stay long,” she warned. “I have visitors coming too, and I want to be in my room when they arrive.”