“All right,” he says. “Let’s say, theoretically, that that’s true. So what? The amount of pain you’d be in would not be fun for you.”
“Yeah, but…”
“And also—sorry, but you told me I didn’t have to shut up anymore, so I’m not—it’s, y’know, not true, and you have an illness, and it might not have caused your leg to fall off or your spine to break in half, but your hands are all swollen, and your leg is next to me here, and I can feel how hot your knee is, and that’s not some kind of euphemism. And that’s not even to mention that I’m kind of the poster child for the fact that, even if you looked completely normal, even if your hands were perfect and your knee was…knee-temperature, that doesn’t mean you’re healthy, necessarily, because invisible illnesses are a thing. I look fine most of the time. Stunning, in fact. C’mon, you’re a doctor’s kid! You volunteer at the hospital! You know this.”
“Yeah, but…”
“You just said it yourself,” he says gently. “You’re not an exception.”
I sigh. He flops back on his pillows, looking annoyingly triumphant and also casual and also hot, with his broken arm lazily over his head and that sleepy smile on his face.
“So don’t go skiing,” he says.
“I’m just gonna drink hot chocolate.”
“Hang out with me instead. I’ll be out of here. We can go out somewhere. We’ll get hot chocolate.”
I roll the dice around in my hand. I think it’s my turn. “I don’t date.”
“Good,” he says. “You don’t want to be the kind of person who blows your friends off for a date.”
I’m smiling. I can’t help it. “Okay. It’s not a date.”
What are you looking
forward to?
Skiing. Are you seriously not coming? Come on, I’ll do the bunny slope with you. You can do the bunny slope! And then we can just hang out in the lodge, and there’s a hot tub, and come onnnn, it’s gonna be so fun! You can’t miss it. We’ll be so sad without you.
—Luna Williams, 16, professional lesbian and Bob Fosse enthusiast
Looking forward to today being over, honestly. I’m here for an ultrasound because they thought they saw something—this happened with my last kid, too, and she’s fine. I just want them to do that high-tech ultrasound, see that nothing’s wrong, and let me keep going to my regular OB with her, apparently, very blurry ultrasound machine. I don’t want to be in a hospital again until a baby’s coming out of me. A healthy baby.
—Jennifer James, 33, pharmaceutical rep
When you were younger, I’d look forward all year to Take Your Daughter to Work Day— What? It’s Take Your Child now? We’re supposed to not celebrate having daughters? I swear…
—John Garfinkel, 49, Physician in Chief at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital
Haunting some very choice people.
—Claire Lennon, 16, dead
In the 1970–71 season, the Fordham Rams had the best season they’ve ever had. Twenty-six wins, three losses, thanks to the spectacular coaching of Rodger Frederick Phelps, better known as Digger, nicknamed such by his father, who was a mortician. He was only with the Rams for one year, and we’ve never been able to reach that glory again. Digger Phelps retired in 1991. But I look forward to the day that he wakes up, realizes his destiny lies back with the Fordham Rams, and comes back to the Bronx to elevate New York basketball back to the number nine team we once were. I look forward to the day the Fordham Rams celebrate twenty-seven wins. It’s gonna happen.
—Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, brother
Chapter Six
I wake up at noon on Saturday feeling like I’ve been run over. My whole self is throbbing. A full-body sprained ankle.
My friends are skiing right now. I wonder if sitting in a car for three hours feeling like this would have been worth the hot tub I could be soaking in. Probably not.
“Dad?” I call, even though I know he’s at work—and even if for some reason he’s here and he answers, what am I going to say? I can’t sit up, but actually I can, it just hurts, but I don’t actually want you to do anything, because I’m fine, except I’m sort of not, but I will be, and I don’t want to comfort you about it, so let’s just say I’m fine?
I don’t even know what to do with me, and I’m expecting someone else to?
I sit up slowly and force my feet and knees into a butterfly pose and bring my forehead down to my ankles. It hurts, but it feels so much better than not stretching. My ankles are hot and swollen against my face.
I need a shower. I need to eat something.
I’m supposed to go out with Sasha tonight.
That’s not going to happen. I know it’s not going to happen, but I refuse to acknowledge that right now. I don’t want to cancel on him the first time we’re supposed to hang out. I cancel on my friends all the time—hell, I canceled on them today—and every time I cancel, I feel like I’m taking a step backward on some kind of friendship-plank, and at some point soon I’m just going to run out of chances and plunge into the water and off the ship.
The friend-ship. Ha.
Anyway. I’m not going to get into a pattern of that with him. Except that I am, but I’m refusing to acknowledge that right now.
I can go out. It’s just a series of steps, just like going to school. Shower—the hot water will feel nice. Find something to wear—I have plenty of options that don’t require messing with buttons or zippers. Makeup—I can put some of my pencil grips on my brushes to make them easier to hold. I do that sometimes. Shoes—I have flats with some support in them. And then it’s just to the train, into Manhattan, and then…and then the actual date. The not-date. And then getting home.
So, see. Totally possible.
I make it halfway down the stairs to make a cup of tea before it becomes screamingly obvious that it is not totally possible. It doesn’t matter that the date’s six hours away. At this rate, it would take me six hours to get ready for it, and then I would have absolutely nothing left in me.
I want to feel bad about it, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything but tired. I could go to sleep right here on this skinny wooden stair.
I take out my phone and will my fingers to work.
Me: Hey, I’m really sorry, but I need to postpone tonight. I’m really not feeling great, and I just don’t think I’ll be any fun. Can we reschedule? Really sorry :(
He’ll be understanding. He’s got a disease way worse than mine. He probably cancels on people all the time.
He responds quickly.
Sasha: ok
Ok? That’s it? Not even the four-letter version? All it needs is a period at the end and that’s a text-speak fuck you.
Me: I’m really sorry
I don’t hear from him again for the rest of the weekend.
…
“So wait,” Maura says at our lockers on Monday. Her cheeks are burned red from the snow and the bridge of her nose is already starting to peel. “You blew us off to hang out with some guy?”
“No, I blew you off because…you know, I had homework to do, and my dad’s been so busy, and he had the day off on Sunday, so he wanted to actually spend time with me, and it’s not like I could have done much on the trip anyway, y’know?” None of this is technically a lie. “And then he wanted to hang out. They were, like, separate events.”
“And you said yes?”
“It wasn’t a date,” I say.
“A guy asking you to hang out is a date until proven otherwise.”
“Well, it was proven otherwise, because I said I don’t date and he said it wasn’t a date.”
She wiggles on her mascara. “That’s what boys always say when they ask you out, so that if they decide halfway through that they don’t like you enough to pay for shit, they can go, well, this isn’t really a date, so...” Maura hasn’t tr
usted a boy since Luke Schivo.
“Okay, well, it doesn’t even matter because, like I said, I didn’t go. And now he isn’t talking to me.”
“He sent you that one text and then nothing else?”
“Nothing. All weekend. And I texted him on Sunday, too.”
“Sounds like a jerk.”
“I guess. He seemed nice.”
She slings her arm around my shoulders. “C’mon. I’ll walk you to History.” The others went ahead without us because they were sick of watching Maura pick at her sunburn, and honestly, that’s fine with me. I’m good with just one person knowing about how I totally bombed my chance at the non-date I bailed on them for.
“How was skiing?” I ask.
“Oh, it was really fun. Would have been better if you were there. So this is the boy you met during your medicine thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he have the same thing you do? That’d be cute.”
“No,” I say, “And we’re not dating, so it wouldn’t be cute. It wouldn’t be anything.”
She looks at me. “Is he like for real sick, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Eesh, that must be rough,” she says. “You’re a good person. But you’re not…ugh, this sounds awful. You’re not gonna start, like, habitually ditching us for hospital friends, are you?”
“No,” I say. “C’mon. I just didn’t want to go skiing.”
“Okay. We’ll do something that’s more, like, inclusive next time.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “C’mon, I’ve spent ages at the hospital for as long as you’ve known me, and I’ve never picked hospital friends over you before, right?” I’ve never really had any hospital friends, even. There was a girl who used to volunteer with me who I liked, and that’s about it. Mostly I just hang out in my dad’s office.
“That’s true,” she says.
“So see, why would I start now?”
She squeezes my shoulders and I try not to yelp. “Okay,” she says.
We’re back in the computer lab for History class. Luna sits down next to me and says, “Maura texted me.”
Of course she did. “So what do you think?” I say.
“I’m confused. Sick Girl’s dating now?”
“No, he’s a friend.” I open up some of the Frida Kahlo websites I have saved to check out today. “Sick Girl makes friends now.”
“Sick Girl has always made friends,” Luna says sweetly.
“So what do you think?” I say. “Do I text him again?”
“No, don’t go crawling. Make him come to you.”
“It’s kind of too late for that. I sent him a bunch of texts he didn’t answer.”
“All the more reason not to go crawling,” she says.
Siobhan appears on my other side and logs on to the computer. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Free period. Bored. Thought I’d come and pretend I have a History project.”
“Or you could study,” Luna says.
She waves her away. “What’s going on?” she asks me.
Maura hasn’t texted her anything, turns out, so I fill her in on the whole situation, again trying to minimize the part where I didn’t go skiing with them.
“Did you know that skiing sucks?” Siobhan says. “It’s paying money to fall. I wish I’d had a good excuse to skip it.”
“We did it for you!” Luna says.
“Yes, and the thought that counted was very…thought,” she says.
I say, “What do you think I should do about this boy?”
“You should make that your question of the week,” Luna says. “Ask everybody.”
“Should Sick Girl date Sick Boy?” Siobhan says.
“That’s not the question,” I say. “It’s if I should text him or not.”
“So make that the question,” Siobhan says.
“Maybe I will.”
“Girls?” It’s Mr. Mattrapolis. Oh, right, we’re supposed to be working. We all smile at him.
He comes up behind our computers. “What do you have for me?”
Luna rambles on about Bob Fosse for a while, with hand gestures and a couple of tap dance moves and a little bit of vibrato, and Mattrapolis smiles in a way that’s probably supposed to look indulgent, but you can tell he’s actually entertained and just trying to act disconnected.
He turns to me. “What’s the plan, Isabel?”
“Frida,” I say.
“She’s a big topic. What are you thinking of focusing on?”
“The bus accident,” I say. “How that changed what she was planning to do. Shaped the rest of her life. And the love affair with Diego.”
“Connecting the two?”
I nod. “Trying to do something with the way chronic pain affected her. How it made her…not suited for relationships.”
“Good,” Mattrapolis says. “Keep it up.”
He walks away to check on someone else, and Siobhan and Luna stare at me from either side, like curious lesbian bookends.
Luna says, “Is that why you—”
“No,” I say. “That is not why I don’t date.”
…
I don’t get a consensus on whether or not to text Sasha, so I don’t do it. And he doesn’t text me, either. And honestly, maybe that’s fine. If he’s so insensitive that he can’t even respond well to an apology, he’s not someone I need in my life. I’m always just going to be worried about disappointing him, and I have enough people I worry about disappointing without throwing a whole new one into the mix. I’ll run into him in five months when our infusions overlap, and I’ll pretend to be asleep, and then I won’t have to think about him for another five months. And that’s fine.
Except on Wednesday I’m at the nurses’ station, today on the pediatric surgery wing, and I look up, and there he is.
“You know how hard it was to find you?” he says. “There are a lot of nurses’ stations in this hospital. Do we really need that many nurses?”
He has more color in his cheeks than he has the other times I’ve seen him. It’s also amazing how healthy not having an oxygen cannula in your nose can make a person look. He looks just like anybody else. Just a normal jerk.
A normal jerk who came here looking for me.
“I wouldn’t say that so loudly if I were you.” I act like I’m really busy with some paperwork.
“Hmm. Fair point.” He leans down on the counter. “Working hard?”
“Mmhmm.”
“What’s wrong?”
I stop shuffling papers for no reason and look up at him. “What’s wrong? Ok, that’s what’s wrong.”
He looks confused.
“I had to cancel on you, and I sent you a really nice apology, and all you said back was ok, and then you didn’t talk to me for four days. Can you not stand there like you don’t know why I’m upset?”
“I’m not—”
“And you know what, I really thought you would be more understanding. You talk a lot of shit about healthy people for someone who goes and acts exactly like one of them.”
“Isabel,” he says.
“What?”
“I was not acting like a healthy person. Can you let me explain?”
“Not…not here.” I can feel all the nurses leaning in and listening. This is going to give them gossip fodder for weeks. I guess I should be grateful they have something else to talk about besides me and my poor little dad. Now they can speculate about my pathetic non–love life.
We find a little nook close to the elevators. He says, “I was an idiot to make those plans in the first place. I got home from the hospital, and I was a fucking zombie. I’m gonna say that I would have canceled on you if you hadn’t canceled on me, except I’m honestly not sure I was
awake enough to remember that we had plans. I’ve barely been awake for four days. That’s why I haven’t texted you.”
“Oh,” is all I can think of to say.
He’s not a jerk. He’s sick.
“I’m not pissed at you for canceling,” he says. “I understand, c’mon. How could I not understand? Canceling on people is my middle name.”
“Sasha Canceling on People Sverdlov-Deckler.”
“Aleksandr,” he says. “Spelled the Russian way. See, it’s even worse. Aleksandr Canceling on People Sverdlov-Deckler. You can see why I didn’t tell you ahead of time. It’s just too many syllables.”
His dimples are a goddamn nightmare.
“I understand,” he says. “And you understand me being too tired to function.”
“Of course,” I say. “I just didn’t… My brain didn’t go there, I guess.”
“Of course it didn’t, you don’t have sick friends.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so, we’re good? This actually isn’t something we need to be off in a corner fighting about? Because I would really rather hang out with you than fight.”
I smile a little bit.
He takes my hands. “I am awake now. And I came here to make new plans. And you seem okay. Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“All right then. How about this Saturday. Do you have plans?”
“I don’t have plans.”
His eyes are so sparkly. “Good,” he says. “This Saturday. Unless it turns out you need to cancel.”
“I’m not going to cancel.”
“Good.”
“Unless I do.”
He smiles. “Exactly.”
What’s your favorite
subway line?
I like the 4 a lot because you get right up close to Yankee Stadium, but honestly I’m never up there, so it’s gotta be the N/Q. Reliable, as long as it’s not late night and you’re not trying to take it actually into Queens, which honestly I think is kind of ridiculous. You’re gonna name something Q and then shortchange Queens? Pick a different letter. Queens gets shortchanged enough as it is. I mean, it could be worse. We could be Staten Island.
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