In a town where guys like Ryan and Chris wore polos with khakis or faded designer jeans, he stood out. His square-toed black shoes, where the other guys wore sneakers. His dark jeans that weren’t loose or emo-tight, but fit him perfectly. These things set him apart from the typical male East Laker, but they were oddly comforting in the hospital. Familiar.
Besides, who needed visitors when I had a continual drip of hospital personnel flowing through my room? There were too many nurses to keep track of, so I started giving them code names. There was Mary Poppins Nurse, who had a singsong British accent. Business Nurse, who marched in, did her thing, and left. Nurse Hollywood, who left me copies of US Weekly and brimmed with celebrity gossip. Nurse Snoopy, who wore cartoon scrubs and stayed to talk if she had a minute. She was my favorite.
Doctor Kevin wore gloves as he attached the bag to the pole, then connected it to my port. I stared at it, imagining it contained tiny soldiers—each one armed to attack and destroy my white blood cells.
“Well, Mia, now we start the process of getting you better. Are you ready?” Dr. Kevin was unwaveringly cheerful. If he were thirty years younger, thirty pounds thinner, and female, he’d make a great addition to the squad.
No, I wasn’t ready to be filled with toxins. I was terrified of how I’d be affected. I twirled a blond strand of hair around my finger and prayed, please don’t let it fall out. Tearing my eyes away from the orangey poison-slash-medicine, I looked from his optimistic face to my parents’ determined smiles.
I flashed him my best cheerleader grin and gave the required answer: “Let’s do this.”
Gyver was better at hiding his emotions than my parents, but I could read the tension in his rigid posture and attentive eyes. “Can I get you anything? How are you feeling?”
“I still don’t need anything or feel different than five minutes ago. Promise I’ll tell you if I think of something. It’s not often you agree to be my slave; I plan to milk it.” I poked his knee.
Business Nurse entered. Gyver startled and slid his chair backward a few inches. I was getting used to the zero privacy of the hospital. I didn’t like it, but I’d come to expect every nearly normal moment would be interrupted by a blood test, meds delivery, or questions about how I was feeling. This time it was an IV change. The new bag was yellow orange and smaller than my typical fluids. I wasn’t due for more chemo yet. The first dose hadn’t been awful, but I’d been warned the effects didn’t show up right away.
“What’s that?” I asked as she flushed my port, cleaning and sanitizing it so she could stick in a new needle.
“Plasma. Your count was low.” Her voice was business too.
“Blood?”
She nodded, oblivious to my stiffened posture and rapid breathing. Gyver wasn’t; he leaned in and put a hand on my arm.
“But that’s someone else’s blood. I don’t want it in me. It’s not mine.” My hand closed around my necklace, squeezing the clover charm.
“Doctor Kevin ordered it. Please move your hand so I can get to your port.” Her voice wasn’t as patient as her words.
“I don’t want it.” I looked at Gyver with tear-glazed eyes. He was the only one here. Mom had gone home for a “real” shower, and I’d sent Dad to get me a milkshake from Scoops, my favorite ice cream place.
“You need it, Mi. Look the other way and hold my hand.”
Gyver’s steady gaze eased my anxiety. I took a deep breath and gave him my hand.
I squeezed his fingers as the needle slid in; he squeezed back.
There were other cancer patients in the pediatric ward, but I did everything I could not to meet them, acknowledge them, learn their names. I refused to participate in any of the groups or counseling—I didn’t need to vent about how awful this was; I needed to endure it and move on. Besides, I didn’t belong there.
The ones who were bald—not like me. The ones with transplant scars—not like me. The ones with radiation treatments—not like me. The ones who’d grown up on this floor, diagnosed at four and celebrating their birthdays and Christmases in the depressing lounge—not like me. The ones without visitors, the ones whose rooms overflowed with visitors, the ones who welcomed volunteers dressed as clowns and cartoon characters—not like me. The ones who played video games or watched movies in the lounge and laughed like they forgot the battles fought within their cells—not like me. The ones who died—not like me.
“Where’ve you been? I thought you were coming from work—didn’t your shift end an hour ago?” I’d worried his tardiness was a sign he was tired of visiting.
Gyver laughed. “That’s an intense greeting.”
“Someone’s a bit bored today.” Nurse Snoopy smiled as she checked my chart.
“Very bored. I felt gross this morning, but I’m okay now and I’ve been dying for you to get here.”
He leaned in to give me a hug, but I held him off. “What happened to your arm?” The crook of his elbow was iodine orange and bandaged.
“She’s a perceptive little bug, isn’t she?” The nurse patted my knee on her way out.
“I stopped to donate blood. You have to be nice to me today—see?” He pointed to a sticker on his shirt proclaiming the same fact.
“You did? Why?”
“Well, I am the universal donor: O-negative. What are you?” He looked at my hospital bracelet. “It figures, you’re an A-plus. Do you ever do anything that’s not perfect?”
“I’ve got about a billion mutant white blood cells.”
“Yeah, the first nonperfect thing about you, and we’ve got to destroy it. I figured if you had to get blood, some of it might as well be mine.”
“The song,” I muttered, thinking out loud.
“What song? Do you need a new playlist? I’m working on Ballads for Battling Blasts. It’s all eighties bands like Aerosmith, Danger*Us, Whitesnake, and Foreigner. I’ll bring my laptop tomorrow and put it on your iPod.”
“No, the song from that night. ‘I’m willing to bleed for days … so you don’t hurt so much.’ It really was a sign.”
“Mi!” Gyver groaned and slid his grip from my bracelet to my hand. “No more superstitious crap. I mean it.”
Day four of chemo was worse. It hurt. Like frostbite in my veins. I writhed, but it didn’t help. Lying still didn’t help. Holding Gyver’s hand didn’t help. Prayed for sleep. It didn’t come. Asked for sleep meds. Those helped.
My head was heavy. The room was bright. Shut eyes. “Mom?”
“Right here, kitten.”
“Gyver?”
“I’m here, Mi.”
“Okay.”
Sleep.
Wake. Tired. Tried to eat. Too tired. Sleep.
“Where’s your handsome boyfriend?” Nurse Hollywood attached another bag of chemo. I flinched, though this part didn’t hurt.
“What?” Her words startled me. I’d been thinking about Ryan. My life was throwing up, sweating through stacks of the organic pajamas Mom bought me, and feeling too weak to get out of bed or focus on conversations. And I wasn’t in the “bad” stage yet. I was grateful Ryan couldn’t see what a mess I’d become.
“Gyver. Where’s he today?”
“He’s coming … after work.” It took a long time for the words to move from my brain to my lips.
“Where’s he work?” She was making polite conversation. I’d already failed to know any of the celebrity gossip she’d mentioned.
My mom sat at my bedside and flipped through a magazine—lately she couldn’t look at me. And when she did, she couldn’t look away. She’d always been a shopper, but now Dad was showing up with boxes nearly every day—the organic pajamas; chemical-free soap, shampoo, and body lotion; a white-noise machine; an air purifier. She ordered anything and everything she thought might help, and I did my best to sound enthusiastic whenever she unearthed another holistic whatever from bubble wrap and held it up to be admired.
“Me?” Dad asked from the doorway. Gyver was right behind him. He handed today’
s packages to Mom and then joined Gyver at the sink for the hand-scrubbing ritual. “I’m a Realtor. How are you doing, kiddo?”
I gave him a weak thumbs-up, not lifting my hand from the sheet. Dad kissed Mom’s cheek and settled into a chair on my left.
Gyver took his usual edge-of-my-bed perch, pulled out his ubiquitous guitar pick, and began rolling it across the backs of his fingers. “Jinx is good, but she misses you.”
“It’s been a rough day,” Nurse Hollywood informed them. To me, she asked, “Who’s Jinx?”
“My cat.” It was a Herculean effort to say the words.
“Gyver gave her to Mia years ago. Named her too.” Dad chuckled.
Gyver shrugged. “I figured the best way to cure her of being superstitious was to give her a black cat named Jinx on a Friday the Thirteenth.”
Nurse Hollywood smiled at him. “I was just asking Mia when her boyfriend would show up. She’s lucky to have such a devoted guy.”
Gyver dropped the pick and looked at me—eyebrows raised. Dad coughed and excused himself to go find water.
Mom paused with a page half-turned. “Mia and Gyver? They’re practically brother and sister. Mia’s dating Ryan, the captain of the soccer and basketball teams.”
“Ryan’s not …”
Gyver’s words were sharp. “We’re not dating. We’re friends. Just friends.”
“I’m sorry. I assumed …”
“It’s okay,” Gyver cut her off.
I shut my eyes, planning to pretend to sleep, but real sleep tumbled in.
Fevers.
Night sweats.
IV nutrition when I threw up too much.
Treatment continued. And continued to suck.
Without questions about cheerleading, my plans for the night, my friends, Ryan, or school, my parents were at a loss for conversation topics. “How was your day?” was out because we spent our days together—making my hospital room claustrophobically small.
Dad was on his third or fourth Sudoku puzzle, Mom was napping in a chair, and I was skimming a magazine while texting lies to Ally when a pair of shrieking girls scrambled through my door.
“What! What’s going on?” Mom jerked awake, blustering and glaring at the tiny bald-headed pair. They were grinning and hiding giggles behind IV-bruised hands.
“Shh!” The taller one whispered, “It’s hide and seek and Suzie’s it. Don’t give us away!”
Dad smiled indulgently and resumed his puzzle, but Mom opened the door and pointed into the hallway. “Out! This is a hospital, not a playground. Can’t you see she’s resting? Out!”
The girls looked at each other, at me, at Mom, and then left. I was glad the younger one stuck out her tongue and wasn’t surprised when Mom followed up by paging Nurse Snoopy and complaining.
“Children shouldn’t be running wild. It upset Mia—she has little enough privacy as it is. She should be able to nap without yelling and intrusions. That’s unacceptable.”
“Now, dear, to be fair, Mia wasn’t napping,” said Dad.
“Stay out of this! Couldn’t you have told them to leave? You always make me play the bad guy.”
Rather than argue, Dad excused himself to “go pick out something for dinner,” and headed to the nurses’ station to study the binder of take-out menus—though he probably had them memorized by now. I’d heard Mom and Dad’s origin story a million times—how he’d been Mom’s statistics tutor in college. “Forty-nine percent of me adored her, the other fifty-one was terrified of her,” he liked to joke. Twenty years later, it didn’t feel like those stats had changed.
The nurse turned to me. “I’m sorry if they disturbed you.”
“It’s okay. They were fine.”
“No, it’s not okay. We’re paying for a private room for a reason,” said Mom.
Nurse Snoopy nodded sympathetically. “Are you getting out of your room more? Have you met the other patients yet? You’d benefit from making some friends and getting involved.”
“Why?” answered Mom. “Those kids were seven—what could they possibly have in common? Mia’s not here to babysit. She’s here to recover.”
The nurse squeezed my arm. “Just think about it.”
I did. About how Mom acted like the hospital was a spa and my stint here was supposed to be rejuvenating. How she didn’t seem to get the scope of my treatment—this wasn’t one month and done. And most of all, how she missed the big thing those seven-year-olds and I had in common: cancer.
But that didn’t mean I wanted my room to be a stop on their scavenger hunts.
This was temporary. I knew it was more than a blip, but it wasn’t permanent. I’d recover—then reclaim my life. There was no need to put down roots or make connections; these people wouldn’t fit in my postleukemia world.
Hil called on a bad day. If my thoughts had been less muddled, I wouldn’t have answered. Her voice sounded full of points and pinpricks; it hurt my head and distracted me from her words.
“So it happened. But I’m okay. Really. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.”
“What?” I asked, having comprehended nothing after hello.
“I saw Keith. At the grocery store, of all places. At least I wasn’t buying something embarrassing like tampons. He was with his mom and she wanted to chat.”
“Chat?”
“Yeah, like I could stand there and make small talk with the guy who dumped me the night he graduated.”
“Oh.”
“I said I had to go and walked out without the cookie dough I was supposed to bring to Lauren’s. It was so strange to see him, Mia. He looked good, like he was still my Keith. I had to stop myself from hugging him …” Hil hiccuped and took a deep breath that ended in a whimper. “God, that sucked! But I’m okay. Really.”
“Really?” My brain could only hold on to her last word and parrot it while I tried to process the rest of her rapid-fire speech.
“I think so. I will be. Please come home. We miss you. I need you.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Love you, Hil.” As I hung up, I felt vaguely like I’d failed her, but my body insisted sleep was more important than figuring out how.
“Are you excited? Last day of chemo.” Nurse Hollywood smiled encouragement.
“Yeah.” My lips were dry; the word made them split and bleed.
“Then what?” It was Gyver’s voice; I turned and found him sitting in the chair to my left, flipping a pick between his fingers. He looked as exhausted as I felt.
“Then we wait for her white cells to grow back cancer free.”
“And she’ll start feeling better?”
The nurse busied herself checking the cups on my bedside table. She picked up two empties and answered as she exited, “Not right away, but in the long term.”
Gyver looked from the nurse to me. “I made you a new playlist.”
“What’s it called?”
“Notes against Nausea. It’s a good one.”
I fiddled lethargically with my necklace. “I haven’t listened to your last three. I try, but I fall asleep.”
Gyver laughed. “That’s kinda the point. They’re called Sleep Songs. Like all good playlists, they progress toward a focus track. If you weren’t asleep by the end, I failed.”
“So I shouldn’t play them on shuffle?” I teased. “What’s on them? Iron and Wine? Coldplay?”
“Some Iron and Wine, Stars, The National. Not Coldplay.”
“I like Coldplay. Are they not cool anymore?”
Gyver looked insulted. “When have I ever cared whether a band is considered cool? It’s always about finding the perfect song for the moment.”
“So then what’s your issue with Coldplay?”
He shrugged. “It’s not really an issue, just that a guy should never put Coldplay songs on a playlist for a girl. They’re the ultimate surrender band.”
“Surrender band?”
“As in, I surrender, I’m totally hopelessly in love. Not for friends.” Gyver flushed and u
nhooked my iPod from his laptop.
“Is that an everyone rule, or just a you rule?”
“Probably just me.” He passed me the iPod. “How about some Brothers K?” He pulled the book from his bag and returned his laptop. Since I was too nauseated to focus, he’d started reading our AP summer books aloud. Audiobooks couldn’t compete with his deep, soothing voice. And they wouldn’t summarize what I missed when I fell asleep.
I nodded and scooted over, making room beside me and waiting for his voice to take us out of the hospital to nineteenth-century Russia.
“Aren’t your friends even worried?” Gyver asked as he scrolled through e-mails on my laptop. He pulled up a photo of the girls sitting on the beach. There was a fourth chair between Ally and Hil, empty except for a plastic tiara. They all pouted at it.
“They don’t know they should be.” I pushed away my dinner tray. I had less than no appetite. Even the sight of food made me want to puke.
“How can they not suspect? You haven’t answered half of these and you never turn on your phone.”
“They probably don’t think anything, because they’re busy living their lives. I told them there’s lousy reception and I respond when I feel up to it.”
When I let myself think about it, the desire to claw my way out of this hospital room and back to my old life—the fourth beach chair, the parties, the lazy afternoons of laughter and chatter—was suffocatingly strong. But I wouldn’t fit like this: broken and sickly. And if I forced myself upon them, I’d ruin all their fun too.
Gyver sat on the edge of my bed and picked up my hand. I was so used to holding his hand now—when I got shots, when they drew blood, when something hurt. We’d held hands constantly when we were little. When had it turned taboo? Why hadn’t I missed it?
“You’re not alone—you have to remember that. So many people care about you. Love you, even.” Squeeze. “I’m here. Our moms are downstairs in the cafeteria. Your friends would come if you let them. You don’t have to do this on your own.”
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