by S. K. Falls
“Oh.” I stood and closed the book, meaning to put it back on the shelf and go get their coffee and snacks.
“So, MS, huh?”
Startled, I jerked my head toward him. “What?”
“Your book.” He nodded toward it. “You have MS?”
I blinked once. Twice. Grasped the book to my chest. “Um, yes. I do.”
There wasn’t a trace of pity in his smile. “Then you’ll love TIDD. We have some great people, all in their late teens and early twenties. Come on.” He turned and headed down the hall.
After only a brief moment of hesitation, I followed.
* * *
Room 3 was much smaller than and not nearly as fancy as the first meeting room. The walls were still glass, but there was no fireplace and no giant bookshelves. The guy was right. There were three other people sitting in chairs in a circle. One was a college-aged girl. The other two were young guys—one was bald and in a wheelchair, and the other wore a face mask so only his eyes were visible. I took a seat between the girl and the tall guy I’d talked to.
He smiled at me. “So, welcome to your first group meeting. We meet once a month, alternating between Monday mornings and Thursday evenings. You’ll find we’re a pretty friendly, social group. TIDD is where all the younger, cooler people hang.”
There were a few chuckles. I nodded and glanced at the others, then out the door. If Linda decided to check on me in spite of being “swamped,” it would be over.
But I wanted to ask, had to ask. I’d leave in a minute. “What does TIDD stand for, again? They told me, but I forgot.”
The girl snorted. “Don’t worry, even I forget sometimes and I’ve been in it for about six months. It stands for Terminal Illness and Degenerative Diseases.”
Terminal Illness. Degenerative Diseases. The phrases circled in my mind, two black crows vying for closer inspection.
“Why don’t we go around the circle and introduce ourselves?” the boy with the cane said. “I’ll go first. I’m Andrew Dean, but everyone calls me Drew. I have FA. If you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad—not a lot of people know about Friedreich’s ataxia. It’s a degenerative disease. I was diagnosed two years ago, when I was nineteen.” He looked at the bald, birdlike boy in the wheelchair next to him.
“I’m Carson. I have T-PLL, a kind of leukemia. They’ve given me six months to live.” A deep breath. “Definitely wasn’t ready to hear that.” Drew put a hand on his shoulder.
The Asian guy in the mask next to Carson smoothed his black hair off his forehead. “I’m Pierce. And don’t worry. This mask is for my protection, not yours.” Laughter went around the room. I forced a smile. “I have AIDS.”
The smile froze on my face. AIDS. The word fell like a block of lead from his mouth to the floor. What could I say to that? It was such a forthright dissemination of information: AIDS. There was no sadness or disbelief like when Carson had told me about his illness.
The girl next to me spoke, saving me from having to respond. “I’m Zee Rothman. I have breast cancer.” She grabbed her breasts and squeezed dramatically. “These babies aren’t real!”
The guys burst out laughing and I snickered along. Finally, they fell silent and turned to me.
I cleared my throat. Now was the time to tell them about the big misunderstanding. They’d laugh, I’d laugh. I’d get them their snacks and go on my merry way. I glanced outside the glass walls. The hallway was empty.
My mouth opened and words began to come out, feeling completely disconnected from me. It was like I was watching myself from a distance. “I’m Saylor. And I… I have multiple sclerosis.”
Zee put her arm around me. “Welcome,” she said, her breath cool and fresh against my cheek.
Chapter Eight
“Anyone want to share first?” Drew looked around at the rest of the group.
I kept my hands fisted in my lap, afraid to even finger my syringe while I was in there. I felt like I’d burst out with something completely inappropriate, like who I really was or what I had wrong with me. My brain burned feverish and bright, my thoughts congealing into a glistening ball in the center of my skull.
Pierce spoke. “My mom’s going nuts. Practically every time we have a conversation, she starts crying. It’s all, ‘Pierce, why did you have to go and be gay and get this horrible disease?’ ‘Pierce, you’ve lost so much weight. You’re not eating enough!’ ”
Everyone murmured and shook their heads, apparently sympathizing with the situation.
“I feel ya, man,” Zee said, slumping down in her chair. There was something strange about her, with her wispy red hair in pigtails and her pale, skinny arms jutting out from her t-shirt. She seemed to symbolize sickness, and yet, there was an almost childish, spiteful sparkle in her eyes, as if she dared the world to tell her she couldn’t have fun, couldn’t be brazen and carefree with the time she had. “My dad’s going through the whole ‘let’s pretend this isn’t happening’ thing right now. He refuses to talk about anything cancer-related. When an ad for a hospital or meds or anything vaguely related to health comes on, he changes the channel. He even talks about taking a freaking vacation to Italy next summer. As if I’m going to be capable of that kind of travel in six months. If I haven’t kicked the bucket by then, of course.”
Carson flinched, but she didn’t appear to notice. Or maybe she was just used to it. Or maybe, like me, Zee reveled in it. I knew what it was like to get that stink of disapproval on you once. No matter how much you tried to clean up later, it followed you around, hung on your clothes and in your hair. You might as well enjoy it, learn to love it.
“Well, I’ve been doing all right,” Drew said. His cane was propped up against the leg of his chair. Stretching his long legs in front of him, he clasped his hands behind his head. His biceps strained against his sweater sleeves, I noticed with faint surprise. So it was just his legs that were weak, then. “Doc keeps telling me I’m going to need to watch how much I walk because my balance is supposed to get bad, fast. You guys have seen part of that.”
The others nodded.
“But I haven’t had any complaints since we last met, what, last month? That’s a lot in the FA world. Things progress quickly. From able to disabled to fucking wheelchair-bound. So I’m okay for now.” He caught my stare and half grinned. “Hey, we’re going to scare the new girl away.”
“Nah, she knows our world.” Zee turned to me. “When were you diagnosed?”
“I had to drop out of school last month,” I said. It wasn’t really the answer to her question, because her question had no answer. I was a master of manipulation, a wizard of the side step. Throw down a few startling facts, wave your hands around, and alakazam, they don’t even remember the original question. “It got so bad my mum came and got me.”
“That’s tough,” Drew said, shaking his head. “It’s gotta be tough on your mother, too.”
“She’s more angry at me than anything,” I replied.
“They go through that,” Carson said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s one of the stages your loved ones have to go through. But at least the prognosis for MS is pretty good. Your life span can be almost as long as someone without it.”
“Not the kind I have. Mine’s aggressive.” I didn’t know what possessed me to say that. It was like Carson was questioning my validity, my right to belong to this exclusive club of wasting-away adults; men who looked like little malnourished infants and women without breasts. I spewed a fact I’d just read in the book. “It’s the kind where I have symptoms almost constantly, and then I end up in a wheelchair.” I swung my gaze to Drew. “Like you.”
“Wheelchairs suck,” he said with a vehemence I admired.
“They blow,” Zee concurred.
“Down with wheelchairs. That should be our slogan.” Pierce’s eyes crinkled, like he was laughing behind his death-averting mask.
I laughed, too, the sound hollow in that big room filled with people who were barely there, barely still a par
t of this world. Wraiths, the lot of us.
Chapter Nine
I glanced at my watch. I’d been sitting in there with the group for about fifteen minutes. I heard the basement door open and shot out of my seat. I simply could not let Linda find me here, pretending to be a patient, duping the very support group members I was supposed to aid. What if they told not just Dr. Stone but my mother, too? Technically I was an adult, but there was something about having a mental illness that made people think you needed your parents as a crutch. And if I was being totally honest, I had a hand in that, too. A big one. Whenever I was sick, I turned to Mum to help me through it, to lavish me with motherly attention.
Everyone turned to stare at me. Drew looked concerned. “You okay?”
“Um, yeah. I just, I have to make a phone call. I just remembered.”
“Okay.” He nodded, but I could see that he was still confused at the way I was rushing out of there.
I’d need to make up a good excuse later, smooth things over so he and the others wouldn’t feel the need to check up on me, ask around about the weird girl with MS. And of course, I couldn’t volunteer down there anymore. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Self-loathing boiled through me. Why did I have to sabotage everything in my life? What if I couldn’t go back to the hospital to volunteer? What was I going to do about getting sick, about the hard-core medical supplies I needed that I couldn’t order from my usual website? Panic began to thrum through me, and I had to make a concentrated effort to push it into the far recesses of my mind.
I walked down the hallway to see who’d come in the basement door, expecting to run into Linda. But to my intense relief, it was just an elderly janitor, switching out trash bags. He raised one hand in a wave from the first meeting room. Returning it, I pushed open the door to the stairway and headed back upstairs to the main floor of the hospital. After I signed out at Betty’s desk, I walked outside.
It was snowing. And it wasn’t just little, wimpy, half-rain-type snow. These were the big, fat, fist-sized flakes I used to love as a kid. Sticking snow.
I glanced around me to make sure I was alone, and then, looking up at the sky, stuck my tongue out. I caught one snowflake, two, three.
“Snow is pretty delicious, but I know a really good restaurant if you’d rather have something warm.”
I snapped my mouth shut, biting the edge of my tongue. Swallowing a curse, I turned on my heel and looked at Drew. When I wasn’t completely distracted by his cane, by the beauty of his illness, it was impossible to miss just how classically handsome he was. His jaw could cut granite; stubble dotted it like a smattering of black stars on a bone sky. “Oh, that. I, um, yeah.” I looked away, the heat emanating from my cheeks enough to melt the snow a mile away.
“You got no excuse.” He laughed. “It’s okay, I like to eat the big flakes, too.” He opened his mouth, full lips parting, and caught a few of his own. When he looked at me again, there was snow on his dark eyelashes. “See?”
I nodded and looked at his cane, at his hand gripping the handle. The graceful curve of it reminded me of a swan’s neck. I felt my pulse kick up a notch.
“I really meant it, though,” he continued. “Zee and I are heading over to Sphinx. Wanna hang? You can tell us more about yourself.”
I analyzed his disarming grin, trying to find an angle.
The last time I’d been invited to hang out with anyone, no strings attached, had been in fourth grade. I’d gone to my friend Allie’s house after school. Her mom worked till five, so we had an hour and a half of alone time—a highly prized and extremely uncommon commodity among us nine-year-olds.
Allie was the cool kid in the class. Her mom let her buy her own makeup at the drugstore. She had a Hello Kitty compact mirror I coveted. So when she invited me to hang out at her place, I almost died. I told my mother about it, but managed to leave out the fact that we’d be unsupervised for ninety minutes.
We were in Allie’s living room, reading her mom’s Cosmopolitan magazines, when she’d pointed to my legs. They were crisscrossed with silver-white lines. The summer before school started, I’d found my mom’s razor blade.
“What’s up with that?” Allie asked, licking her finger and turning another page in the magazine.
She kept reading, but the air around us hummed with tension. I knew what I said next would matter. A lot. I found my brain darting from lie to lie to lie in a spastic, breathless attempt to come up with something convincing enough, something plausible enough, to tell Allie so she wouldn’t ask any more questions. But the truth was like this giant mountain in front of me; I just couldn’t see past it.
I’d seen a therapist for six weeks that summer who said it was important to be true to myself, that the friends worth having were the ones I could be myself with and not worry about what they thought. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the fumes from the nail polish we’d just splattered all over our fingernails and toes, but whatever the reason, I ended up blurting out the truth.
“I cut myself,” I said, my heart pounding so hard, my chest actually hurt from it. I was sitting on the floor, my legs crossed, and I ran my hands along the skin. I couldn’t feel the scars anymore. “With my mom’s shaver.”
Allie looked up from her magazine, her blond eyebrows meeting the fringe of her hair. “Why?”
I shrugged. I was beginning to feel like this had been a bad idea. It was the first time I realized therapists were full of shit. “I… I think I just wanted to try it. Shaving. I wanted to wear a bathing suit, so…”
“Nuh uh.” Allie set her magazine to the side. “That’s not from shaving. I’ve done that before and I didn’t have lines all up and down my legs. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
We locked eyes for a minute. Then I nodded. “Please don’t tell anyone at school.” My voice shook because I knew. Of course she was going to tell everyone. I would’ve if the tables had been turned.
“I won’t,” she said.
She lied. Nine-year-old girls are shit at loyalty.
* * *
I put my hands in the pockets of my hoodie. “Nah, it’s okay. I should probably head home anyway.”
“Oh, come on!”
Drew and I turned at the voice. It was Zee, walking slowly up the path from the hospital to the car lot. “I can tell you’re turning him down.” She came up to me, out of breath. “It’s not a date with this goofball—I’m gonna be there, too.” She grinned at Drew, and he rolled his eyes.
“Thanks a lot, Zee,” he said. “And anyway, I did tell her you were going to be there. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to come.”
Zee punched his arm and they laughed. It was strange, as if friendship actually meant something to these two in spite of the fact that they’d both be dead sooner rather than later. What did they talk about when they hung out together? What do young people without futures talk about?
Curiosity ignited somewhere deep inside me. We weren’t going to be at the hospital. Shelly and Linda wouldn’t accidentally run into us.
When Zee turned to me, her smile had faded and her eyes were serious. “Look, I know what it’s like to be newly diagnosed. All your usual friends look at you with that awful mixture of pity and thank-God-it’s-not-me on their faces and you have no one to hang out with. Why don’t you come out? I promise no one’ll make you talk about it unless you want to.”
“All right,” I said, a weird thrill running through me. “I’d love to.”
Chapter Ten
Zee led us to her car, a bright yellow speedy thing that looked ridiculously expensive.
“You’re getting in the back,” she said to Drew. “I need time to get to know my new best friend.”
Drew draped an arm around me, leaning in to mock-whisper a secret in my ear. Even through my heavy jacket, the parts of my back and shoulders he touched seemed to ignite with the hottest flame. I held my breath and watched his cane support his weight as leaned into me.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “She’
s this crazy with everyone. It’s not just you.”
His words curled around my ear. I wanted to close my eyes and take them in, but I pretended to laugh along with the two of them. When Drew moved away to get into the back of the car, I felt a pang of loss. “Absurd” didn’t even begin to describe what I was doing, what I already felt for this guy.
The car smelled like fresh leather and lemon cleaner. Zee ran a hand over the dashboard. “Like my new baby? Twenty-second birthday present from my parents.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. I wondered who it’d go to when she died. Did Zee think about such things constantly, thoughts about her mortality and looming death eating away at her insides like tiny termites? Was she completely hollow, made up of jokes and laughter and mirth until she was back alone in her room?
I took out my phone and texted Mum to tell her I’d be late.
“You live around here?” Drew asked.
“Yes.” I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. His blue eyes were all I could see, and flushed with the strange intimacy of the moment, I looked away. “My parents have a home in The Mills.”
“Ooh la la, very nice,” Zee said, signaling left at the stoplight. Her car tinkled. “I’m slumming it with my parents in Statestown.”
“You’re slumming it in your four-bedroom house?” Drew laughed. “I don’t even want to know what I’m doing in my downtown studio apartment.”
“You live by yourself?” I glanced at him in the rearview again before glancing away.
“Yeah. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Zee’s over there all the time, bugging me. I can never get a moment’s peace. Maybe now that she has you it’ll be different.”
I looked at the way they laughed together, their easy banter. Was there something more there, just beneath the surface?
* * *
I’d only been to Sphinx once, in high school. The casual restaurant/bar had changed in four years. The crowd was less high school teens looking to get alcohol illegally and more young adult, people in college living alone. When we walked in, several of the patrons looked up and nodded or smiled at Drew and Zee.