Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “What’s the verdict?” he asks me after.

  “Breaking into a public pool after midnight.”

  “Well, that sounds like a good way to murder someone.”

  “This is why you gotta talk to people,” I say. “Everyone is actually so weird.”

  “Plus, now we have an idea for what to do the next time we hang out.”

  “Sure, active, athletic activity. Sounds like us.”

  He swipes his key in the elevator and we take it up to the fourth floor. The elevator’s creaky and crimson carpeted. He leads me down a skinny hallway and unlocks his front door.

  “It’s a mess,” he says. “Just to warn you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  It’s not really a mess, though, it’s more…disheveled. There are little kids’ soccer cleats stacked unevenly at the front door, and coats thrown over a chair in the living room instead of put away, and books flopped open on the kitchen table. The rooms are small, but it’s a four-bedroom apartment in New York, so it’s a palace.

  “So, living room, which is kind of uninhabitable right now, thanks to Nadia’s science project.” He gestures at a bunch of poster board and half-full plastic bottles. “It’s an acids and bases thing. Don’t drink them. And then I’m down the hall.” He knocks on the closed door across the hall and says, “Nadi, I’m back,” and shrugs at me when he doesn’t get an answer.

  “This is me,” he says, opening the next door. He has a plaid bedspread and a small TV and blinds instead of curtains. It’s very generic teenage boy, if you ignore the oxygen tank tucked into a corner and the collection of pill bottles on his nightstand. I keep mine hidden away in the medicine cabinet.

  Which reminds me. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  “Oh, it’s…” He leads me back out of the room and past the living room. “Sorry, it’s kind of a walk. Here.”

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “What?”

  “You have a bath tub.” And it’s not just any bath tub. It’s a claw-foot and huge and deep enough to cover my knees. Or their knees. It’s not mine. It would cover a person’s knees.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t have one,” I say. “We just…my bathroom’s small, so we just have a shower. Whenever I’m at a hotel or something I get really excited about the bathtub.”

  “Do you want to take a bath?” he asks me.

  “Ha.”

  “I’m serious,” he says. “You can take a bath.”

  “What, like right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  I look at him.

  “It’s not a trick,” he says. “There’s a second bathroom. It’s not like you’d be inconveniencing anyone.”

  “Well, what would you do?”

  He pushes his hair back from his face. “Take a nap, probably.”

  “Are we being serious right now?”

  “Yeah. There are towels under the sink. And also—hang on.” He roots around under the sink, says “Aha” quietly to himself, which is for some reason so goddamn charming, and hands me a bottle of bubble bath. “Here.”

  “I can’t believe I’m about to take a bath the first time I’m at a guy’s house.”

  “There’s a lock on the door,” he says.

  “No, I’m sorry—it’s not that I don’t—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” he says. “There’s a lock on the door.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just wake me up when you’re done. Don’t be too quick. I’m tired.”

  I laugh a little. “Okay.”

  He leaves. I lock the door and take off my clothes, feeling really naked in that special way you feel naked when you’re changing at the doctor’s office. I run the bath as hot as it will go. This is going to take forever to fill up. I should have kept my clothes on.

  The bathroom actually is pretty small and dominated by the tub, not that I’m complaining. It’s tiled in white to make it look bigger, but the grout is gray at this point, and some of the tiles are chipped. There’s a big gouge in one of the tiles by the sink where someone must have hit it with something. The sink itself is covered in stuff—toothbrushes, deodorant sticks, contact lens solution, more pill bottles—all crammed together and leaning against the wall to stay balanced like some kind of art installation.

  It looks like people live here.

  I use just a little of the bubble bath—I’m guessing this is his sister’s, since it’s vanilla scented and Sasha didn’t seem to share my bath enthusiasm—and get in once I’m too cold to wait anymore. I sink below the water and try not to moan.

  You stop noticing pain, is the thing.

  You notice it when it’s really bad, or when it’s different, but…on the rare occasion someone asks me what it’s like to live with RA, I don’t ever know what to say. They ask me if it’s painful, and I say yes because I know intellectually it must be, because the idea of doing some of the things that other people do without thinking fills me with dread and panic, but I always think about it mechanically. I can’t do x. I don’t want to do y. I don’t continue the thought into I can’t do that because it would hurt. I don’t want to do that because then I would be in pain.

  You can’t live like that. There’s only so much you can carry quietly by yourself, so you turn an illness into a list of rules instead of a list of symptoms, and you take pills that don’t help, and you do the stretches, and you think instead of feeling. You think.

  And you don’t soak in hot water and feel the tension bleed out of your joints because it’s just going to remind you that it will come right back.

  I wipe my face off with wet hands.

  But just for right now…I close my eyes. Just for right now, I’m good.

  It stops feeling awkward as soon as the heat fully takes me over, but I still drag myself out after twenty minutes and dry off and put my clothes back on. I come out of the bathroom, and a girl sitting in the living room turns her head to look at me. She’s found a sliver of the couch that isn’t taken up by science project supplies and is curled up with a book.

  “Hi,” I say. “You must be Nadia.”

  “Hi,” she says.

  “I’m Isabel. I was…taking a bath at your house. I guess that’s pretty weird.”

  She shrugs. “Sasha told me.”

  “What are you reading?”

  She holds up her book. I go over and look.

  “You smell like my bubble bath,” she says.

  “I do. In my defense, your brother told me it was okay.”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s fine.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  She’s reading The Fellowship of the Ring. “I never actually read that one,” I say. “I love the movies, though.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to read them because I like the movies so much. They’re…a lot different.”

  “Aren’t all the characters, like, sixty?”

  “Yeah! And if I wanted to read about a sixty-year-old, I’d just read…”

  “Literally anything they assign for school, yeah.”

  “I’m trying to not think about that,” she says. “I mean, they live to be, like, a million, so I guess proportionately their sixty is our…whatever.”

  “Sure,” I say. “It’s like the Torah. Jacob lived to be like a hundred and fifty, and we’re supposed to treat him like he’s not some kind of cyborg.”

  “That would make the Torah a lot more interesting.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” I say. “All right, I’m supposed to wake your brother up.”

  She laughs. “Good luck with that.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I know anemia makes you tired, but I don’t think it makes it harder to be woken up,” she says. “I think that’s just him trying to make me late for shit
.”

  I can’t imagine my dad ever mentioning something about my illness casually like that. Wild. “All right, I’ll get creative,” I say. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Bye.”

  I head to Sasha’s room. His door’s slightly open, but I knock anyway, then push it open slowly when he doesn’t answer. He’s asleep on the bed, on top of the covers, his body sprawled out like a starfish. I smile a little.

  Once I get closer to him, I can see what he was talking about the other night with his stomach. It’s swollen and sticking out through his shirt. I wonder if it hurts. Probably not—he said he was a wimp about pain. Good.

  I squeeze my hair out onto his face.

  He jerks awake, reaches behind him for his pillow, and smacks me with it. “I hate you,” he says.

  “I know.”

  He rubs his eyes and sits up. “Good bath?”

  “Amazing. Thank you.”

  “Sure, any time.”

  I sit on the foot of the bed. “I met your sister.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, she’s sweet.”

  “She is, right?”

  “Mmmhmm. And I love your house.”

  “This place?”

  “Do you have another house?”

  He laughs. “It’s a mess.”

  “No, it’s…alive.”

  “Like a monster? Okay, maybe I like it more, then.”

  I scoot myself up the bed and lie down next to him. “Everything is monsters with you.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  There’s a knock on the door and I sit up quickly. It’s Sasha’s dad, with a suit jacket slung over his arm and his tie loose around his neck. “Oh, hey,” Sasha says. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi there.”

  “I’m Isabel,” I say.

  “Oh, right! Sasha’s mentioned you.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Sasha says. “He’s a pathological liar. He’s not even really my father. Who is this man? Call the police.”

  “Sorry about my son,” he says. “I’m Dmitri.”

  I laugh a little. “That’s all right. Hi.”

  “Is it cool if she stays for dinner?” Sasha says.

  “Of course, but I actually just left Nadi money for pizza.”

  “You’re going out,” Sasha says.

  “I am. How are you feeling?”

  He does a so-so hand. “Tired.”

  “You look a little bit like shit.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I can’t believe this conversation is happening. It’s like I’ve stepped into some alternate dimension where people talk about things. Or some culture outside teenagers on Tumblr and me and Sasha where being sick isn’t something to bury and talk around.

  He has no idea how lucky he is, which is a strange thing to think about a boy born with a genetic illness, but there you go.

  So when his dad asks, “Where did you two meet, again?” and Sasha says, “At the hospital,” I chime in with “I have RA,” like it’s a completely natural thing to add.

  And Dmitri just acts like it is. “Oh, my friend has that,” he says. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m…” I’m great. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. “I’m doing okay,” I say.

  “Glad to hear it. Well, thanks for coming by and sorry I’m such an awful host. Come over another night, and I’ll make dinner. I’ll make brick chicken!”

  I have no idea what that is, but how do you say no to brick chicken? “Sounds great,” I say.

  “Take it easy tonight,” he says to Sasha. “Don’t go throwing any wild parties.”

  “Damn, there go our plans.”

  “I’ll have my phone,” he says. “It was nice meeting you, Isabel.”

  “You too.”

  “Door open or closed?”

  “Closed,” Sasha says. “Thanks.” Once it’s closed, he says, “So, that’s my dad.”

  “He seems really nice.”

  “He is. He also used to be around more, instead of, y’know. Going-out-after-work Dad.”

  “Staying home, making brick chicken.”

  “Brick chicken is incredible,” he says. “Just wait.”

  “I will.”

  He rummages around on his nightstand and finds the remote. “Ready for a movie?”

  “Yes.” I lie back down.

  “Want a blanket?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He fishes one up from the bottom of the bed and spreads it over me. “Are you comfortable?” he asks. “You need another pillow, hang on—” He goes to the closet. “All right. Here. Pick your head up.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say while he fusses with the pillow.

  “Actually, this is part of what people do when they like someone,” he says. “So in a way I do have to. Part of the package.” His hand brushes my temple as he adjusts the pillow a little more. “There. Good?”

  “I’m good.”

  He climbs over me carefully and lies down next to me. “What are we watching?”

  “Something scary.”

  “Goooood call.”

  He scrolls through Netflix. I just watch him. He’s so focused on the screen, eyes narrowed, pale chapped lips just barely open.

  That hair curling around his ears.

  “How about this?” he says.

  I keep looking at him. “Perfect.”

  What are you thankful for?

  You know what? A lot. I have a very good life, Isabel. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a family who… They’re giving me time. They’re not upset that I’m not doing better than I am. They just want to help. I have a very good therapist. And I have a whole, whole lot of time to sort myself out, if everything goes as planned, so…so I have a lot to be thankful for. Thanks for this question. I need to think about this stuff more often.

  —Siobhan O’Brian, 17, artist

  I’m thankful for you, munchkin. What else?

  —John Garfinkel, 49, Physician in Chief at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital

  So. The year is 1867. It’s December…somethingth. I don’t remember. A young man is trying to catch a train from Cleveland to New York. He’s running late, and back then if you were late you got seated in the back of the train because…punishment, I don’t know. But! He misses it. No seat, back of the train or otherwise. He only misses it by a minute or two, but, train’s gone. And then, that very train goes on to derail on its way into New York. Only the last two cars—one of the ones he would have been sitting in. 49 people died, but not the man who missed the train, who, by the way, was none other than John Rockefeller, who went on to make a zillion dollars, donate half of it to New York, and start the first public health center in the country. So I’m very thankful that John Rockefeller missed his train so we’re all not dead of yellow fever right now. Or, honestly, he ended up giving all that money to Nazi racial studies, so maybe we should have sucked it up and died of yellow fever. It’s a good story, though!

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, historian

  I suppose I’m thankful for sixteen years on this earth. Not everyone gets that. Hell, before you turned sixteen, even I didn’t get that.

  —Claire Lennon, 16, dead

  You know what they say! As long as you have your health.

  —Lynette Davis, 59, Principal at The Markwood Academy

  Chapter Nine

  My dad blows through the door at eight thirty. I turn the volume down on the TV but stay where I am, facing away from him.

  He comes over and kisses the top of my head. “I know, I know, I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got held up in this insurance meeting. You’d think some of them would have
families… And then this patient came in who needed surgery—”

  “You’re not a surgeon.”

  “The procedure had never been performed at this hospital before. I needed to make sure it went according to plan.”

  “Sounds like Dr. Robinson’s job.”

  “It is, but… You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s just pizza, anyway.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the fridge. The oven’s preheated. Just stick it in.”

  He goes back to the kitchen, I uncharitably turn the TV up again, and we settle in for New York’s most depressing Thanksgiving ever.

  Not to get all cliché about it, but it was my mom’s favorite holiday. It’s not like she was homey, either—I was sitting in empty houses way before she left—but she’d undergo some kind of personality shift for Thanksgiving, and Dad and I would power through 364 days of cold takeout and boxed macaroni and cheese, dreaming about turkey and stuffing and pies. I guess I figured with her gone he’d step up and take the reins. Now I realize he probably thought the same thing about me.

  So here we are, sitting across the kitchen table from each other, eating reheated pizza while that stupid third chair sits there staring at us. I didn’t even make a salad. I’ve been sitting here for three hours, pouting that he didn’t come home. I couldn’t have gone to the bodega and gotten shit for a salad?

  He’s got to be thinking the same thing.

  I hate salad.

  “So, what are all your friends doing today?” he asks.

  “Luna’s with her aunt’s family in Brooklyn. Siobhan went to Denver to see her grandparents. Maura and Ashley stayed home.” Ashley’s family comes from all across the country to cram into their three-bedroom apartment for Thanksgiving every year. I don’t know why they do it, but Ashley loves it. She invited me, but I knew there wouldn’t be anywhere to sit down. Plus, I couldn’t leave Dad by himself. Maura invited both of us, but she has dogs and my dad’s allergic.

  He chews. “We could try getting it catered next year. I know people do that.”

  “Yeah, when they have big groups and everything.”