by Cylin Busby
It was time for checks, but after that, I knew that Olivia would be in to see me. She had heard what Kim said to the doctor, and I was sure she wanted to gloat; she wouldn’t pass up that opportunity. But after the carts went up and down the hall and were parked back at the nurses’ station, still the divider stayed closed. She didn’t come.
The afternoon bled into evening, and the next person in my room was Mom. I must have dozed off because she woke me asking, “Does it smell like cigarettes in here, or is that my imagination?” She sniffed the air, then leaned in close to my face, smelling around my head. As if I could be smoking. “Well, as long as it wasn’t you,” she said, and grinned at me. “I guess I have bigger things to worry about than my teenage son smoking, don’t I?” She sighed and pulled the chair closer to the bed. “So the plan is that I’ll see you tomorrow night, then Wednesday morning, I’ll be here for the transport. Not sure yet if I’m going with you in the ambulance or if your dad and I will just follow behind. The ambulance isn’t going to be racing along, sirens blaring, by the way, it will just be driving normally, so you don’t have to worry about your mom being able to keep up!”
I could picture her in the old Volvo wagon, pedal all the way down, leaning into the steering wheel. It was funny, but the sad part was I knew she would do it for me. I imagine she drove like that the day when I had the accident. When she was on her way to the hospital, probably wondering if I was even alive. I felt like shit for all I’d put her though. I just wanted to get out of here, get everything right again, make it up to her. As if she could read my thoughts, she leaned in and whispered, “So this is it, huh? This is it, we’re really doing this.”
As she spoke, I had this sudden awful vision of Olivia in her room, standing right behind the divider, listening, waiting for the chance to open the door and step in, my medical charts in her hand, ready to talk to Mom, ready to talk her out of it at the last second.
Mom kept talking, but I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. “I don’t have a lot of time tonight. I’m taking Wednesday and the rest of the week off, so I have to finish up this proposal tonight and get it in tomorrow.” Mom looked out the window, like she was mostly talking to herself. “I just wanted to come by and say hello to my sweet boy.” She smiled at me and put her hand on my forehead for a moment.
“They’ll take your blood tomorrow, just to make sure everything is okay, but I know it will be. You don’t have to worry about that.” She took my hand and sat there, holding it for what felt like the longest time. “Oh my, I’m just lost in thought here, I’d better go home,” she said finally, tucking my hand back under the covers and pulling the blanket up to my shoulders. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, kissing me on the head. “First thing after surgery, we are getting you a haircut!” she joked, pushing my hair back again. As she left the room, I listened carefully, waiting to hear Olivia move from her room, to follow Mom down the hall. I had this terrible feeling she was going to do it, try to catch my mom at some moment and confront her, convince her. But instead I heard Mom’s voice at the nurses’ station, talking to Norris on her way out, a laugh, then quiet.
Once I knew she had gone, I was able to relax. Maybe Olivia wouldn’t do that; maybe she was coming around to my side of thinking. Maybe she had listened to me after all, had listened to what I wanted.
Still, I waited for her after Mom was gone, I waited for her to come in and confront me about what she had heard earlier. About what Kim had seen, and what that might mean. But when Norris came in with my night meds, she still hadn’t come. She had to come tonight, she had to. Tomorrow would be my last day here. She had to come. There just wasn’t any other way.
Chapter 19
My last day at the hospital passed just like all the others, except without Olivia. The blond-haired nurse gave me a sponge bath in the morning, put a fresh robe on me, and made my hair incredibly dorky by combing it straight back and parting it on the side. The young doctor who had been in with Kim the day before was true to his word and came in to look me over. He spent about five seconds looking at my chart, then bent my leg quickly under the sheet, extending it out a few times before just putting it down. He flashed a penlight into my eyes. “Looking good,” he said as he jotted something on the chart, then left. I was sort of dying to see what he’d written. What did “looking good” mean? But the only person I could ask would be Olivia.
I hadn’t seen Olivia in three days, though it felt like longer. It was like I could feel her anger through the wall; she was still stewing about it. I had figured a day or two and she’d be back. But she wasn’t. She could hold a grudge—I knew this already, from how she treated her mom. Sometimes her mom would come to visit, and if Olivia was mad at her she just wouldn’t speak to her. I don’t know if she pretended to be asleep or if she just lay there defiantly in her bed, but I know she didn’t talk when she was here. She would also sometimes give nurses and even doctors the silent treatment. When I first got here, one of the nurses had mentioned Olivia’s terrible behavior, her temperament, saying something like “she’s a piece of work.” Or were they talking about her mom? I couldn’t remember now, but it suited her perfectly. A piece of work.
I was trying hard not to let it get to me, but I missed her and I felt like I needed to see her before I left for surgery. Seeing her and feeling her support would probably help me get through things, but I tried to tell myself I didn’t need it, that I would do okay either way. Because I knew it was going to work. And then I was coming back here, on my own two feet, and she was going to be blown away. Besides, everything she thought—that the surgery wasn’t going to work, that I was going to leave her or forget about her—everything she was worried about was going to be pointless, and then she wouldn’t be mad anymore. How could she be?
Instead of focusing on the fact that she was still pissed at me, I used my secret biking technique of thinking positive thoughts. I had learned about positive imagery in my tenth-grade psychology class. The teacher, Ms. Lunn, was a total loony tune, but there was something about this unit on the power of the human brain that really stuck with me. Ms. Lunn told us this saying: If you think you can’t, then you can’t. Which just means that if you convince yourself that you can’t do something, then of course you’re not going to be able to do it. I read the chapter called “Think Into Being” in our textbook twice; it was about using the power of your mind to make things happen in the real world. There was a visualization technique in the book that I started doing, too. Whenever I was trying to get a new bike routine down before a competition, I would practice it over and over again in my head.
I would sit quietly somewhere, close my eyes, and picture every step of the routine—every move, where to pedal fast, where to slow down, how to lean my body—and I would watch it like a movie in my mind. I was always careful to picture the finish, too—that last moment when I would cross the line. It was important to picture that, to soak in that good feeling that you get when you’ve executed something perfectly. I would go so far as to picture the judges’ scores sometimes; what numbers I would see, what numbers I wanted to see.
I never told Mike about this technique, but I did start to see some changes on the track. The more I focused on what I wanted to have happen, the more it happened. It wasn’t magic—more like confidence building. You can only spend so much time on the track, but the more you do a routine, the better you feel about it. So picturing it every day, even on days when I couldn’t get on my bike, gave me more practice time, in a way. When there was a really tough move I thought I couldn’t get, I would focus on just that trick, over and over in my head, until I could do it in real life. I noticed at the last competition, I just felt more confident while I was riding: I’ve done this before, and it goes great. It was like I had tricked my brain.
For the past couple of days, I had been trying to picture Olivia coming into my room, sliding open the divider door, her bashful way of looking down at her feet, how she would smile at me. But no matter how
much I pictured it, it didn’t happen. Then I realized something. You can’t use your mind to make anyone else do anything; you can only work on you. So I decided to change my thinking and focus on the surgery. I tried to run through the whole thing, every step of what would happen, what was going to happen from the moment I opened my eyes. I would be able to reach up and touch my own face. I would be able to move my legs. I didn’t know what type of physical therapy I would be in for afterward, so I couldn’t really picture that. Instead I just saw myself walking. I saw myself with Olivia, visiting her here, holding her. I saw myself coming into the hospital, through the sliding doors by the nurses’ station, and how happy Nurse Norris would be to see me standing, walking, healthy—the way I used to be, the way I would be again.
The movie playing in my head was interrupted only a few times—a nurse came in and tied off one arm. I knew what came next, and now that I could feel it a bit, I did dread it. But maybe this would be the last time. “Just a little prick,” she murmured as she drew a few vials of blood. The mean nurse came in later and checked my chart, my pulse. She didn’t speak to me. Then in the evening, Mom showed up as planned, just around the time the night nurses came on. “I’ve got something special for you,” she said, digging into her bag.
She had four or five greeting cards, the first one from my uncle John and aunt Kate and the twins. It had a picture of a bear on the front, in a hospital bed in all sorts of traction and looking miserable. “I can bearly bear the thought of you in the hospital. Get better beary soon!” Mom read. “Cute, huh? I bet Benjamin and Felix picked that out.” She moved on to the next card, from Dad. He would be here tomorrow. There was a card from Mike with a hot nurse on the front.
“Well,” Mom said, blushing, “I guess he means well.” One from Allie. She had made the card herself and painted a watercolor on the front. “This is the one I just couldn’t believe; it came yesterday.” Mom held it up for me to see. A huge card with a pretty regular “get well soon” type thing on the front, but inside was covered with signatures—must have been a hundred of them—all over the back, too.
“It’s from the junior class at Marshall, can you believe that?” Mom said. “Some people wrote little notes: ‘miss you’ and ‘get well soon, cutie’—who wrote that?” Mom peered closer at the card to see the small signature.
Mom put the cards up next to the bed so I could look at them overnight. “I’ll be sure to get these in the morning, when we head out. Speaking of …” She glanced at the clock. “I have to go, we’ve got an early day tomorrow. Your surgery is at eight, so …” She leaned in and gave me a kiss. “I’ll see you in the morning. And just you remember”—she motioned to the cards—“you’ve got all these people counting on you, thinking about you. We all love you.” She grabbed her coat and bag and turned to go before I saw tears.
“Oh, Mrs. Spencer, I am so happy I got to see you tonight!” I heard Norris say just outside my room. They talked for a few minutes in the hallway, I couldn’t make out everything they were saying, but eventually I heard Mom call out, “Thanks again for everything, absolutely everything,” as she left.
A few moments later, Norris came into my room with my nighttime dosage. “So, handsome, there’s a rumor going around that you want to leave me, huh?” She smiled and gave me a wink. After she injected the contents of the syringe into the IV line, she sat next to me. I felt the drugs flow into my arm, cold and fast. I was already feeling fuzzy when she sat beside me on the bed and took one of my hands. “I am going to miss you, Mr. West, and that is no lie. But I am happy for you. Get out of here and get back out there,” she said softly, looking out the window into the darkness. “This is no place for the living.”
The last thing she said sounded in slow motion and her words rang in my head as I drifted off. I wanted to be running through my movie, my positive thinking as I fell asleep, but I couldn’t focus. I could only feel her hand, and hear her saying the word living like she was saying it over and over again.
Chapter 20
I’m at the lake, sitting up on the bluffs on a blanket. There’s a girl with me, but it’s not Olivia. It’s not Allie either. It’s a girl I’ve seen in a movie, but I can’t remember her name. She’s pretty; she’s wearing an old-fashioned bathing suit and it looks good on her. I feel like we’re in a movie together, like we’re being watched. There are cameras. “Tell me again what happened,” she says, and runs her fingers down my back, touching scars. I notice a man standing near us; he’s dressed like he works at a doctor’s office, in scrubs. Before I can ask him what he’s doing here, he says, “Let’s go.” That’s when I see another man standing on the other side of our blanket, and together they lift the whole blanket, with us on it. We tumble together, she’s laughing. “This isn’t right,” I tell her. “Let us out!” She keeps laughing; it’s all a big joke to her. I’m screaming, but they carry us and keep carrying us, to the edge, to the bluffs. I know they are going to drop us over the side. But I’m ready. When they drop the blanket, it falls open and I feel myself weightless, tumbling. The girl is gone, but I get ready. I put my arms out to dive—if I can hit the water right, I won’t break anything. I’ll be okay. But I’m falling and falling forever; it’s too far. I open my eyes, knowing that I’ll see the water far below me, and the rocks.
“It’s bumpy back here, isn’t it?” Mom said. It was dark, we were moving, jerking forward. “We’ll be there soon; it’s only twenty minutes, they said.” She looked worried, her face tired and lined. From the back windows I could tell we were in the ambulance, driving. The sunrise was red and pink, bright like a grapefruit. Red sky by morning, sailor take warning. But I’m not going on a boat, I’m going into surgery. What does that red sky mean?
All at once I remembered the dream, and the feeling of being lifted. I was still pretty drugged up when the orderlies came to get me this morning, but I remembered it now: the two guys sliding me into the back of the ambulance, Mom getting in. Dad was there, too. He must be driving behind us; that’s why Mom kept checking out the back window every time we took a turn. “Almost there,” Mom whispered.
And Olivia. Was that a dream, too? No, it was real. I saw her. She came to me, like I knew she would. Last night. I woke up and she was beside me, watching me sleep, curled against me, her long hair tangled around her pale face. She said my name over and over again and touched my face until I was awake enough to see her. But it wasn’t a dream. The memory washed over me as I dozed off in the ambulance.
“I know it’s your decision to make, your life. I know that now, but I have one thing I have to ask you,” she whispered. “Come back for me. No matter what happens, come back for me.” I blinked yes quickly and watched her face. “No matter what,” she said sternly. Her eyes were almost terrifying in my dark room; I couldn’t see any emotion on her face. I blinked again and she curled up beside me, holding my hand. “You won’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here, West. Promise me.” I could hear in her voice that she was crying. “Please come back for me, come back for me.”
Most people I knew, even adults, would never admit that they were scared. Or that they missed you. Or that they really loved you. Why were people so afraid to say things like that? Why was I? It wasn’t cool. It showed weakness. But that didn’t make sense. It actually showed that you were strong, that you were real. I loved Olivia for teaching me that. And there was no way I was about to forget her, or not come back to her after the surgery, no matter what happened.
“I know you will, I know you,” she murmured as we fell asleep together. I didn’t even worry that Mom or the nurses would come in early the next morning and find her there, sleeping against me, because it didn’t matter anymore—what could they do to us?
The ambulance backed into a loading area at the hospital as Mom said, “We’re here!” brightly. She rubbed her hands over her face and glanced at her watch. “Seven thirty, plenty of time.”
When the orderlies parked, they came around and opened the doors, letting M
om get out first, then pulling me out feetfirst. They put the wheels down and rolled me through two big double doors. The guys went to talk to the hospital officials while Mom stood beside my bed. The portable ventilator must have been somewhere, under the bed or attached, because I could feel it pushing air into my lungs in a steady rhythm. Dad walked in just as the guys were ready to wheel me into the elevator. “You’ll have a chance to say good-bye upstairs,” the red-haired guy said. “But they’re ready to take him right in.”
“Okay,” Mom said. I saw her holding Dad’s hand in the elevator as we made our way up. When the doors opened, they rolled me out and down a long hallway where we ran into Dr. Louis.
“Hello, good morning, welcome, how are we doing?” he said.
“We’re nervous but ready,” Dad volunteered. I heard Mom gasp out a sob. Dad hugged her in quickly and she cried hard into his shoulder. “She’s just …”
“It’s hard, I know,” Dr. Louis said. “But remember, things are about to get much easier. This is what we have to do to move forward from this place, and you don’t like being here; you don’t like West being like this.” He looked over at me on the bed like I was a rotten steak he wanted to send back. “It’s time for us to help West, all of us. Isn’t it?”
Mom stopped crying long enough to nod her head as she wiped her nose.
“And so we will,” Dr. Louis said with a quick smile. “The nurses will show you to the waiting room, which is down the hall. You can wait there. They will also give you a beeper so we can contact you if you are on another floor; they will explain everything. In a few hours, we’ll know more.” Then the doctor turned to the person standing behind him. “Can you take him to OR, thank you.”