“I know,” Angie says. “Her poor father, such a nice man, really doesn’t deserve—”
Saved by the buzzer. Thank God. I pick the handset back up.
“Room seven forty-two, can I help you?”
“Hi, my nurse was supposed to be here with meds a while ago, but I think she might have been abducted by aliens. Or maybe she was taken, like in the Hollywood hit Taken.”
So…that voice sounds awfully familiar.
I clear my throat. “Who’s your nurse?”
“Katherine,” he says. “She’s been great, which is why I’m concerned about the whole ‘taken’ scenario. I don’t have a special set of skills.”
“I’ll track her down.”
“Great, thank you.”
I hang up and scroll down through the patient logs, and…there it is. A. Sverdlov-Deckler, room 742. What the hell is he doing on orthopedics?
I grab Katherine when she breezes past and say, “Hey, Sasha needs his meds.”
“Ah, shit. Thanks.”
I decide not to bother him—after all, he barely knows me, and he probably looks like shit and doesn’t want unsolicited visitors—but about half an hour later, Sonia asks me to check the water refills. That’s my other major job besides answering call buttons. There’s a whole procedure to prevent contamination, where they keep big bulky cups in their rooms and I bring them thin plastic cups full of water and put them inside. Hospitals are so full of small, strict little rules. You always have to wonder what went wrong for someone to come up with them.
I get the water cart from the back of the nurses’ station and push it down the hall to the water fountain to fill up the cups. I wonder who’s going to answer the call buttons while I’m gone. Whenever it’s a nurse on that job instead of a volunteer, they’ll let their room sit there blinking on the screen for ages. I guess they have bigger things to do. And it’s a small floor; if something’s really wrong in one of the rooms, you wouldn’t need a call button to hear it.
Still, it bothers me. But it’s not my place. And anyway, I’m the one who abandoned the job because I didn’t want to sit there and listen to them gossip anymore.
I’ll do the rooms on the left side, then the ones on the right. I drop water off with two sleeping patients before I hear a muffled call from someone on the other side of the hallway.
“Isabel! Iiiiisabel!”
I turn and look, and, sure enough, that’s Sasha, lying in bed with a cast on his left arm and an oxygen cannula in his nose. He raises his eyebrows at me through the window.
I grab a water cup and push his door open.
“I knew that was your voice,” he says.
“Yeah, well, you were supposed to be patient. It’s been two days.”
“I told you I wasn’t good at being patient.” His eyes light up. “Is that water?”
“Yeah, here.” I set it up on his tray and watch him work on sitting up. “You want a hand?”
“Mmhmm, c’mere,” he says. I come around to his side, and he holds onto my arm and pulls himself up. It makes my shoulder ache a little, but it’s a productive ache, a doing-something ache.
“So what’d you do?” I say while he drinks.
“Fell off my bike. It’s no big deal. Only a flesh wound! My bones break really easy.”
“Yeah, I read that.”
He grins. “You googled me!”
“I googled you.”
“So I did that yesterday and I’m really anemic, so it just…” He gestures vaguely. “I don’t know. I’m lying here for a few days. What about you? You working here now? I thought you were an advice columnist.”
“Volunteer work.”
“You’re sick and you help the sick?”
“I know. I’m amazing. The ill Clara Barton. How are you doing, do you need anything?”
“Besides a shower? Nah, I’m okay.” I start to go, and he says, “No, hey hey hey!”
“I have work to do!”
“Doing what, helping patients? I’m a patient, help me.” He takes his pillow and throws it on the floor. “See, look at that, I need your assistance.”
I roll my eyes and brace myself with a hand on the wall.
“What are you doing?” he says.
I kick the pillow up in the air and catch it. “Getting your pillow. Ta-da.”
He wrinkles his nose a little. “It hurts to bend down, huh? I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“Shut up. I’m fine. Lean forward,” I say, and I situate the pillow behind his back. He’s thin and cold, but he smiles at me.
“Y’know I googled you, too,” he says.
“You did?”
“Yeah, well first I had to look you up because you said your dad was the…y’know, the head guy, and I was curious. And then I found out your last name was Garfinkel and realized you must be Jewish, and so now I’m in love with you.”
“I know, after you told me your last name I realized I should have just told you I was Jewish, too. People don’t guess, with the blond hair.”
“And then,” he says, “I looked up RA because I realized I didn’t actually know very much about it.”
“Oh yeah? Learn anything?”
He coughs. “Totally. I thought it was just like, y’know, arthritis, but no! It’s a whole thing!”
I laugh. “It is, yeah. It’s a whole thing.”
“Do you want to sit?”
I pull up the armchair in the corner and unload the stuff from it. There’s a little duffel bag and a ton of board games.
“Sorry,” he says. “My brothers were here earlier. They bring board games whenever I’m in the hospital.”
“That’s okay.”
“Anyway, yeah, I learned a lot. And I’m impressed! I’m a wimp about pain. I’m drugged to my gills right now or I’d be whining about my arm.” He coughs a little more and sips some water. “So that’s me. I stalked you.”
I lean forward onto the bed. “Want to know what I did?”
“Of course.”
“Calculated when the next time was that we’d be at infusions on the same day. The next, like, intersection of once a month and every ten days.” I can’t believe I’m admitting to this. I can’t believe I did it in the first place.
But he doesn’t seem scared off. “All right, when is it?”
“Five months from now.”
“Five months! Well, holy shit, I’m glad I broke my arm, then.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just blush and look down and play with my bracelet.
“Do you have to be on your feet all day for this job?” he asks. His voice is gentle.
“No, no. Most of it I’m sitting at the nurses’ station. I just wanted to take a break from that…” I clap my hands together. “Don’t worry about it. Reasons.”
He’s looking at me the same way he did in the drip room. Like I’m interesting. Like he’d be fine saying nothing forever and just waiting until I have something else to say.
“I really do have to get back to work, though,” I say.
“Orrrr you could stay and play Monopoly with me.”
“What if I get back to work now, and then I come back tomorrow and I play Monopoly with you? You still gonna be here tomorrow?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that, or I’m not coming back.”
He raises one eyebrow, and I deliver the rest of the water with a flutter in my chest.
…
He’s sleeping when I get there the next day. I wake him up by tossing a copy of the school paper onto his chest.
He drags his hand over his eyes. The IV catches on his eyebrow.
“Is this your column?” he says.
“Uh-huh. Your answer’s in there.”
He rips into it like it’s a birthday pre
sent. “Ha! Look at that! I’m famous. Sick Girl Wants to Know? Are you Sick Girl?”
“I am.”
“So it’s like a secret thing?”
“Nah, everyone knows it’s me.” I think about pulling the chair up, but it’s covered in games again, and it just seems like a long walk for a short drink of water, so I sit down on the edge of the bed instead. “It’s kind of like a pen name, I guess. I joined this forum online right after I got diagnosed, and it kind of…stuck, I don’t know.”
“I like it.”
“My dad’s always been horrified by it,” I say. “He doesn’t want me to define myself by my illness or whatever.”
Sasha widens his eyes. “Healthy people are so weird about that.”
“Right?”
“I don’t know how they’ve developed this fear of it,” he says. “Was there an after-school special that they all saw? Like, at some point every healthy person saw some TV show about how you shouldn’t let sick people define themselves by their illness, whatever the fuck that even means, and they were all sitting there taking notes like uh-huh, oh yes, very smart, thank you, I will not let them.”
“Well, okay,” I say. “To be fair to healthy people—”
“Ugh.”
“—you can define yourself by your illness…as long as you’re an Olympic athlete who’s overcoming it.”
“Yes! You either have to be overcoming it or you have to be completely disconnected from it. God forbid it be an important part of your identity that you’re just living with. Why is that?”
“It’s because they can’t imagine it,” I say. “They think it’s completely ridiculous that a person can just…have a sick life and be fine with it. So they have to build this story around you kicking the illness’s ass. You can’t coexist with it. You can’t incorporate it into yourself. Because they don’t. So you can’t.”
He points at me. “That’s it,” he says. “That’s exactly right.”
That makes me feel very good.
Except it also makes me feel like some kind of fraud. Because I’m sitting here talking to him like we have the same experience, but I know we don’t. He has a tube in his nose to help him get oxygen. He’s in the hospital often enough that he knows his brothers will always bring board games. And me? I haven’t stayed overnight at a hospital since I was born, unless you count the times I’ve fallen asleep on the couch in my dad’s office. Arthritis is supposed to be a footnote, not an identity. I mean, my friends forget it exists for long enough stretches to plan a ski trip. Are people around him forgetting that he’s sick? I’m going to guess not.
And I’m letting him think we’re the same.
“Ugh,” he says again. “I can’t stand healthy people. Besides my family, I just avoid them.”
“What about your friends?”
“I only have sick friends.” He adjusts the cannula in his nose. “Fuck healthy friends.”
I stare at him. “I’m so jealous right now. I only have healthy friends.”
“Well, you might be jealous, but I’m offended as hell. What about me? Do I look healthy to you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Healthy friends. Sounds exhausting.”
“Really, all yours are sick? Where do you find them?”
“Online, mostly. My only good friend in real life goes to school with me. He has cerebral palsy. I’ve known him since I was, like, six. I like you more, though, don’t worry.”
“You like me more than the friend you’ve had since you were six.”
“I said what I said.”
I laugh. “Are we playing Monopoly?”
“Yes please.” While I’m setting it up, he says, “Is this okay with your hands?”
“What?”
“Holding all the pieces and stuff. Your hands are swollen.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he says. He helps me sort out the money. “Y’know, my disease can come with arthritis. And ‘bone crises,’ which I hear are just as horrifying as they sound.”
“Yeah, I read about that.”
“But not me,” he says. “And it’s pretty common, too. And then lung problems are pretty rare, but I got those, so I guess it all evens out.”
“Yeah, what type do you have, by the way?” I say. “Because I read that there’s three, and one of them kills you when you’re a baby, and I’m really just not interested in being friends with a dead baby.” I thought of that line a while ago. I thought he’d like it.
“Type one,” he says, and I smile a little to myself. That’s the normal-lifespan kind.
I kick his ass at Monopoly. He challenges me to a rematch tomorrow.
We exchange numbers, since he’s not a dead baby.
…
On Friday, I wake him up with frozen yogurt. “I got you gummy bears because I like you.”
He licks the spoon, then says, “Y’know, I’m going home tomorrow.”
“So you’ve mentioned.” He’s been texting me all day. “Is your family gonna be here for that? If your family’s so great, how come I never see them?”
“Because you come by at the same time every day, and so do they,” he says.
“Last night I was here for four hours.”
“Yes, and my brothers are very small and were asleep by then. My dad comes and spends the night every other night. My sister drops by before school, and the little guys come when the babysitter can bring them. They’re more enthusiastic about it when I’m really sick. No one’s gonna skip school and come weep at my bedside for a broken arm.”
“You still like this place?” I set the game up.
“Yeah. I mean, I get the un-appeal of it, but I don’t get why more people don’t appreciate the freedom to just…be sick. There’s nothing else you’re supposed to be here. You can just lie around and do it. Get taken care of. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
That’s a question I can’t really answer comfortably for very complicated reasons, so I just choose the thimble before he can and roll to see who goes first.
“I lied to you,” he says a few minutes in. “The first time we met.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.” He collects the deed for St. Charles Place. “My dad doesn’t come every time I get enzyme replacement.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I understand if that’s a deal breaker in our friendship,” he says. “If that’s something you look for in a guy.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“He used to,” he says. “Fourteen dollars.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“But this past year he started dating, and now he’s… Look, I don’t want to talk bad about him. He’s a great guy. Works really hard. He’s just got more on his plate now.”
I look up. “Your parents are divorced?”
He says, “Yeah, since I was four. They’re still best friends, though, so it’s fine.”
“Where’s your mom now?”
“She travels, her wife’s a photographer. Right now they’re in central Africa. Taking pictures of bonobos. She calls every week.” He pauses, dice in his hand. “How about your mom?”
I shake my head.
“Nothing? No mom? You spawned from the sea like Aphrodite?”
“She’s not in the picture,” I say. “She’s a nonentity.”
“And you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No.”
“It’s recent, huh?”
“It’s recent,” I say. “And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m sorry. Fifty-six dollars.”
“Fifty-six?”
“I have all three.”
“Goddamn it.” I count out my money. “I do feel like I owe you something personal, though, since you told me about
your family, and all you know about me is I’m Jewish and have RA.”
“That’s all I need to know to be in love with you,” he says.
“Y’know, if I actually took you seriously when you said that, you’d probably have a panic attack, and you already can’t breathe.”
“I can breathe! You’re very dramatic. I just take free oxygen when it’s offered.”
“Okay, something personal…” I take a Community Chest card. Second prize in a beauty contest, and it reminds me of how I met Maura. “So you know my healthy friends?”
“Yes, all of your friends.”
“Let me talk.”
He zips his lips.
“They’re going skiing this weekend. Or, we’re going skiing this weekend. Or, I’m sitting in the lodge, drinking hot chocolate while they go skiing this weekend. We’re leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning.”
He looks at me.
“Okay, you can talk,” I say.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why skiing.”
“I can’t expect them to just plan their whole lives around me.”
He waves his hand. “Yeah, sure, they’re going skiing. That’s kind of mean, but it’s not outside the realm of…whatever. Fine. But why are you going skiing?”
“Because my friends are going. They invited me, I don’t want to like…”
“All right,” he says. “I’m presuming you can’t ski. Can you ski?”
“I cannot. Or, I mean… See, that’s the thing, right? No one’s ever told me, Isabel, you cannot ski. My doctor didn’t give me a list of things I can’t do. And exercise is supposed to be good for me. And I’m sure there are plenty of people with RA who ski.”
He wrinkles his eyebrows. “But we’re not talking about them.”
“No, but I’m not, like, I don’t have some special severe form of RA. I’m the same as everybody else. And there are people out there doing all sorts of shit.”
“But it would hurt. If you went skiing. And you wouldn’t have a good time.”
“I don’t want to be, like…like stealing the experience of people who actually can’t do anything because maybe I just don’t understand how much pain is normal,” I say. “Like, most people get sore when they go skiing. They deal with it. What if it’s just that? And I’m acting like I’m some sort of…like I need accommodations that I actually don’t.”
Sick Kids In Love Page 4