by Lily Jenkins
I groan, my eyes blinking open in the white room, and they both become silent. Someone touches my shoulder. I try to say something, but my throat is sore. There’s something running down it too, and it feels very strange.
“Shh,” she whispers, and I recognize my mom’s voice. What the hell is she doing here? “It’s okay, Adam. You’re in a hospital.”
I try to sit up and she pushes me back down onto the bed. She doesn’t even have to be rough about it. I don’t have much fight in me. Physically, at least.
I look at my mom. Her eyes are bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles. But more than that, they look weary and full of sorrow and pain—exactly the way I didn’t want to see her. “What are you doing here?” I manage to whisper.
“I’m your mother,” she says firmly.
I am so angry right now. I look to Erica, who looks like she’s been crying as well. Her pain gives me some guilt though.
“I called her,” Erica explains, and my guilt is overshadowed by anger again. My face must give away my temper, because Erica speaks quickly before I can say anything. “We were driving. To the beach. And all of a sudden you started coughing.” She quiets her tone, and says, “You were coughing up blood.” As if it were some big secret. “After the ambulance came, they wouldn’t let me see you. I didn’t know what else to do. I had your phone and tried to call Levi”—I cringe at the thought of Levi knowing about me being sick—“and got his voicemail. The only other number you had was your mom’s, so…”
She opens her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.
I shake my head and look away from them. I feel helpless. I feel exposed and rotten and guilty and—and so fucking pissed.
“You shouldn’t have called her,” I tell Erica, not looking at her.
“I’m sorry!” she says, although from her tone she’s not sorry. “But what else was I supposed to do? I had no idea what was happening to you.” There’s an accusation in her last statement. I hear it. But I pretend not to.
“You should have left me alone,” I mumble.
She moves over the bed, into my field of vision. “You could have died,” she says, trying to make me look into her eyes.
I resist. “You should have let me,” I say. “It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“Adam!” my mother says, half in surprise, half in rebuke. “Erica saved your life. Whether you wanted that or not, you can at least show her some kindness.”
I really, really don’t like being told what to do. Especially when I realize the teller is right.
“Fuck you,” I say, to neither one in particular, but to both at the same time.
I hear my mom start to cry. Great.
“All I wanted,” she says, “was to see you again. You disappeared.” She turns to Erica. “I left for work—I’m a waitress—and when I came back, he was gone. No good-bye. No explanation. Just a note on the fridge.” She sobs. “A note that said, ‘Don’t look for me.’” She shakes her head and turns to me. “Don’t look for you? Don’t look for you?”
I roll my eyes. My mom, ladies and gentlemen. A real piece of work.
I picture for a half-second the moment when she got home, running around our little trailer. Yelling my name. Something inside of me curls tighter, and I just want to die already. I just want to die.
“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t look for me. Real simple instructions, I thought.”
There’s a moment when none of us says anything. I feel so impotent in this damn hospital bed. I’m in some sort of paper dress thing they put me in. I look around the room for my clothes. I want to leave. But I don’t know where my clothes are, and it would be worse to walk out of here in this gown than to stay here. I don’t want everyone to see me this way. I don’t want everyone to know I’m sick.
I hear Erica let out a sigh, and then feel her hand rest on top of mine. I pull my hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Adam,” she says, and I look at her for the first time since I woke up. I break down a little looking at her eyes. Then I notice her clothes. She’s wearing the same clothes that she wore when she came to me in the rain. The flowers on her blouse look wrinkled and faded now. Has she slept since all this began? Has she eaten? Look at what I’ve done to her.
I look down at my hands in shame. Then I start fiddling with the paper band they put around my wrist. There’s a tube going into my arm, just inside the elbow, and as I breathe, I feel another tube down my throat. It’s what is helping me stay alive.
A flash of fear hits me: it’s getting close. Death. And I don’t have much longer. My body can’t stay alive on its own anymore.
“Adam,” Erica repeats, her voice soft. “Why didn’t you tell me? Your mom says you’ve known all along.”
I’m silent, the guilt making me feel hot and restless.
Why didn’t I tell her? Doesn’t she get it? I didn’t even want to tell myself. And especially after all she’s been through, and the way she was so broken from loss already, how could I put her through that again?
I shake my head. “I should have kept away. I’ve been selfish. I should never have let myself meet you.”
When she doesn’t respond, I feel so uncomfortable that I have to look up.
Her face looks blank. No, not blank. It’s like the muscles are dead, and her skin is slack. She looks—she looks defeated.
“But,” she says, in the softest voice, “you did meet me.”
My insides quiver and squeeze with pain. I feel like I might cry, so I overcompensate by making my words as steady and firm as I can. “You should go.”
Her head pulls back slightly. “What?”
“Leave,” I say louder. “I want you to leave.”
Her mouth opens, and I shout over her. An image of her at my grave flashes in my head, and I feel so shitty that I just can’t take it. Who will help her cross the street now?
“Go!” I scream. “Are you stupid? Go! If you care about me at all, you’ll go and let me die in peace.”
She stands firm. “There are treatments,” she starts.
“No.” I fold my arms across my chest. It tugs at the tube in my arm, but I ignore the pain. “I’m not doing that. I’m not going to be a fucking nuisance just to last another few months.”
“Nuisance?” she asks, unable to understand. Her eyes—oh fuck, her eyes. I can’t take this. She’s still talking. “It wouldn’t be… All I want is to be with you.”
I feel like my chest is ripping in two. “I don’t care.”
“But we—but I—but what about me?”
I turn to her, my lip raised in a snarl. “Erica,” I say slowly, coldly. “What you want doesn’t matter, because this isn’t about you. I’m dying. After this is over, you can go on and do whatever the fuck you feel like. I don’t care. But for me, this is it. So quit being a bitch and just leave me the fuck alone. You’ve already wasted enough of my time.”
I feel awful about it even as I’m saying it, but it’s cruel enough to work. Her mouth screws up and she gives one last look at me, and then she runs out of the room.
I hear her footsteps echo down the hall. I savor the sound. I know it’s the last I will ever hear from her.
We’re over.
I run down the hall and throw open the door to the stairwell. I have to grasp the handrail on the way down, because my feet are sliding and stumbling as I nearly fall down the stairs. My heart is pounding and the air is burning in my lungs. I throw open the door to the lobby level, push past nurses, doctors, random visitors, and find my way back to the nurses’ desk where my parents are waiting.
My mom stands at once. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
Something about her tone is reserved though, as if she knows what’s wrong. As if she is expecting Adam to be dead already.
“I want to go home,” I say.
My dad picks up our things. “What about Adam?”
“Adam doesn’t want me here,” I say. “So I don’t want to be here either. I w
ant to go home.”
My father wisely does not disagree. My mother and he usher me outside as quickly as they can and bring me to my father’s car. There’s a moment when we’re standing outside it, my father with his hand on my shoulder.
“If you want,” he says, “you can walk home with your mother.”
“No,” I say, opening the door to the back seat. “Let’s just go.”
The slam of my door wakes my dad up. He helps my mom into the front passenger seat, and then takes his own seat behind the wheel. I see him glance at me as he turns around to back out. I avoid his gaze, looking up at the side of the hospital.
My insides feel twisted, and my mind is cycling through the same thoughts again and again. He said he didn’t care about me. Not exactly, but that’s what he meant. He said I was a waste of time. How could he mean that?
We leave the parking lot and start to drive along a busy street. I don’t feel anything looking at the cars around me. I just want Adam back. I want to tell him I’m not scared of the cars anymore. If I could get over that, maybe he could—
I hunch over, a gasping sob overtaking me. I hear my mother’s voice. She’s turning around in her seat, but I’m too overwhelmed to listen. “I can’t—I can’t,” I mutter, the words blurred by my bawling.
I gave Adam everything, and he doesn’t want me. And there’s not enough time to make things right. There’s not enough time because Adam is going to die and he doesn’t want me there. He’s done with me. Done with us.
He said it was a waste of time to him.
He lied about being healthy. Did he lie about everything else too? Was it all an act? Did I ever know Adam at all?
And I weep. I weep for the Adam I thought I knew.
*
Returning home feels wrong, but my mind isn’t in a place to think of an alternative. My parents both help me up the stairs, one on either side of me. Some part of me registers the strangeness of this. They have barely spoken for the past year, and now they’re a team again? Were they that shaken by the thought of losing me? But my mind isn’t strong enough to dwell on this for long.
They set me in my bed and help me to get under the covers. My father closes my blinds, even though it is still light outside. Time has no meaning right now. I lean back into the pillow. My shoulders are still heaving with sobs, and inside I feel a strange mixture of sorrow and emptiness.
All I can do is lie here and—just lie here.
How did things get so bad so quickly?
*
The next morning my mom brings me food. It’s like we’ve had a reversal, a gloomy Freaky Friday. I’m barely able to talk, to look at her or anything, as she runs a brush through my hair. She’s talking, trying to comfort me, but I don’t hear the words. The nothingness has blackened my emotions. I can’t feel the pain. The pain would be too much. Inside I am a void.
*
Two days pass like this. I am out of bed now, sitting on the cushion of my windowsill, looking at the water in the distance. There’s something comforting about looking out at a big expanse of space. I can see why my mom liked it. I watch all morning as the sky lightens with dawn, then darkens again as a billowing cover of cloud spreads over the sky. It is just starting to rain when I hear footsteps outside my door.
Someone knocks. I don’t even bother to say anything.
When the footsteps enter, I can tell it’s my mom.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says, and takes a seat next to me. My legs are pulled up, my arms around my knees as I stare out the window. My mom sits with her back to the window, her face and shoulders toward me. I look over as she hands me something.
It’s a warm mug of tea.
“I thought you might like something to sip on,” she says. I look at her, noticing the change in her appearance. She’s no longer raggedy around the edges. She’s had a haircut. It’s clean and styled, and much shorter. She’s also wearing makeup, dark red lipstick that is applied perfectly. She looks like a mom again. Well, a mom that is getting over a long cold, perhaps. She’s still too thin. But there’s a warmth in her eyes that I haven’t seen in I don’t know how long.
I take this in, but the knowledge that she’s getting better is only recognized. I can’t feel it.
She looks at me, and I can tell from her pity that I must look like a mess. Then she gives a calm smile. “Do you mind if I sit with you a while?” she asks.
I shrug, only my shoulders are so limp I think I shrug more with my mouth than with my body. A look that says, Whatever, it’s fine with me.
She has her own cup of tea, and she takes a tiny sip of it. I can see the steam still rising out of it. She swallows, and then looks out the window for a moment. Then she looks back at me, her face hard with concern. Her cup drops to her lap.
“Erica,” she says, “I don’t even know where to begin to apologize. I feel like I’ve been asleep for the past year, when I know I should have been here for you. You shouldn’t have had to go through this alone.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t think she expects me to.
She runs her finger over the rim of her cup. “Losing Conner was such a shock. There’s probably no way to be prepared for the loss of your son, but—I still can’t understand it.”
She takes a long sip of her drink, and then looks up at me. “When I got that call, thinking I had lost you, it woke me up. It made me realize how much there is still left to live for. I feel guilty saying that. It feels like I’m saying that I’m forgetting Conner, and I’m not. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.” Her voice becomes firm. “But Conner didn’t die to take life away from us.”
She shakes her head, and then looks out the window. “I just don’t want to see you fall into the same trap I did. I know it feels terrible, to lose someone you love. It’s hell. And it’s never going to stop hurting, not really. But I also know that you can’t face it alone. Ignoring life doesn’t make it go away.”
I look at her blankly. My mind is saying, But Adam isn’t gone yet. I haven’t lost him yet. Even though, in a way, I have. I want to cry. But I can’t. I can’t move.
My mother sets down her drink and takes mine from my hands. Then she puts both hands on my shoulders, so that I face her. “It’s okay to feel, Erica. You’ve been through a lot in the past year, and now this. It’s okay to let some of that pain out.”
She pulls me close to her, in an embrace, and starts to rub my back.
But I don’t feel comforted. I feel smothered. All this sympathy is too little, too late. I’m not ready to forgive my mother this easily. She can’t just walk back into my life after making us all feel like crap for the past year and expect things to be perfect again.
But mostly I’m not ready to feel. Not yet. Not this much.
Because feeling is admitting that I’ve lost Adam. And I’m not ready to believe that. Not yet. I—he can’t die. I can’t lose him.
I feel my eyes water and I push my mother away. She’s hurt, I can tell, but I need to be away from her right now. I say the first thing that comes to my mind.
“I have to feed my cat.” And I exit the room without looking back at her. Even though I can feel her eyes on me the entire way.
I run down the stairs and grab a can of cat food from the cabinet. I’ve already got the lid off the can by the time I’m in the garage, and then I close the door behind me, probably a little too loudly.
“Pete,” I call out. I can hear the emotion bubbling under my voice, like water rushing under a river’s frozen surface. I try to steel myself against it. “Pete!”
The damn cat won’t come out from his hiding place. I set the food down in the center of the garage and lean against the side of the boxes.
“I need you to come out,” I tell the cat. I peer behind the boxes, and there’s Pete. He looks up at me like he not only understands, but openly rejects my invitation. “I’m not asking, Pete. Come out.”
When he doesn’t budge, I push against the boxes, trying to scare him out.
He cowers and hisses, but doesn’t move. I grow frustrated.
“Fine. Let’s do this the hard way.”
I start lifting boxes off the pile, and place them so close along the opposite wall that there’s no gap for Pete to hide between. He doesn’t move until I lift the last box and set it with the others. I turn back to him, seeing him small and vulnerable in the corner of the garage. He has nowhere left to hide. His orange fur is sticking out as he arches his back, trying to make himself look bigger.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell him. “I’m trying to help you.”
He does not agree. I look at him and my anger cools. I feel absolutely miserable. “What am I doing?” I look down at the frightened little cat and feel ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry, Pete. I thought—I thought I could take care of you. But I can’t.” I nod, realizing this. “I just hurt people. I hurt everyone I love.”
I shake my head. “Not anymore.” I look back down at the cat. “I’m setting you free, Pete.” I can hear the rain outside, and that pang of guilt hits me again. “It’s raining. Just like the day I found you.”
I let out a deep sigh, and move to the back of the garage, where the switch to open the garage door is.
“Good-bye, Pete.” I press the switch. “I’m sorry.”
The garage door rises, and I pick up the tin of cat food, planning to lure Pete out one last time. But as the door lifts up, it reveals a set of feet standing in the driveway. Like a curtain lifting, first I see a set of women’s calves, then legs, then her body drenched with rain. By the time I see the face, I already know who it is. It makes sense in a way.
I put down the cat food and step outside. We stand facing each other, neither one of us noticing the rain that streams down our hair.
“Hello, Rachel.”
Her face is white and dripping wet. But she doesn’t shake. Her body looks exhausted, like she’s just completed a long, never-ending marathon. She’s wearing the same clothes as before, the hunter green top and dark pants. They’re several shades darker now because of the rain, and I realize she was probably wearing this when I called her. I remember she’s a waitress. She must have been at her work when she got the news. I wonder absently if she finished her tables. If she got fired.