by Lori L. Otto
“Sweet? I don’t think we’re talking about the same girl,” I tease, then shake my head to let her know I’m kidding. “We write for The Columbia Daily Witness together.”
“He’s my editor, Ms. H,” she explains.
“Is she not the best poet you’ve ever met?”
“She’s one-of-a-kind,” I agree.
“I bet she writes you some love poems.” Henrietta winks, and finally Coley turns a shade of red that almost rivals my own crimson hues.
“It’s not like that,” Coley says. “He has a–”
“Hard time getting her to focus on anything other than our newspaper,” I interrupt, completing her sentence in a way that surprises her. “Most of the poetry I’ve seen from her has been work-related. I have a hard time getting her to focus on anything else,” I finish.
“She’s always been such a hard worker.”
“Definitely a good quality.”
“Definitely. Especially when it comes to her brother. It takes hard work and patience with Nyall. And a lot of unconditional love. She’s got it all.”
“You’re too sweet, Ms. H,” Coley says, thanking her.
“I think they’re ready for you.”
“Should I wait out here?” I ask.
Both the women look at me, then at each other, then back at me. In sync, they shake their heads.
“Nyall needs exposure to outside people,” Coley tells me. “He may not like it, but it’s good for him. I think you’ll be good for him.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
Side-by-side, we walk down a long, nondescript hallway together where the only thing that distinguishes one door from the next is the number above it, embossed in white paint on a gray plaque. Looking in the square windows that are centered in each door about five feet from the floor and only a foot squared, I can see the rooms themselves are not so different, either. The comforters are all the same color, and the beds are made. Small, pine desks sit on the opposite walls. Above them, pictures are taped to the wall. It’s the only space in the room that differentiates one from the next, from what I can tell. Each room has three small windows allowing light to come in, but they’re even smaller than the window in the door and they’re up too high for anyone to see out without moving furniture to stand on.
I doubt the furniture can be moved, either.
As far as I can tell, this is barely an upgrade from prison. From what Coley has told me, Nyall would likely be in jail if he wasn’t in here, anyway.
After turning down a few other hallways, we end up in a large room divided into six different sections. Each one has a different pastel-colored rug beneath a matching couch that faces two chairs. A long, narrow ottoman separates the seats. A few of the areas are filled with people sitting around, talking. At the blue one in the far corner sit a brown-haired guy and a middle-aged woman on the couch. Two burly men in scrubs lean against the wall, both taking an intimidating stance with their arms crossed. I notice the addition of some sort of utility belts to their uniforms.
The woman stands up, but the man stays seated, his legs on the couch as he leans against the armrest.
“Coley,” she says, shaking my friend’s hand.
“Hi, Dr. Schubert. This is Trey. I mentioned he might come.”
“Of course, welcome.”
“Nyall,” Coley says as she leans down to give him a hug. I watch their interaction, noticing how tightly she embraces him and how he barely lifts his hands to touch her arms. I also see the two men step closer, taking a more defensive posture. “How are you?”
“Why didn’t Joel come?” he asks, clearly upset. I set my bag down between the two chairs but remain standing, myself nervous with the tense situation.
“Nyall,” his doctor says, “I told you that your brother couldn’t get away from his schoolwork today.”
“Oh, but he sent you these,” Coley says, unzipping her backpack and pulling out a plastic container of something. “They’re homemade potato chips. Your favorite.”
“Thanks.” She sets her bag down next to mine.
“Nyall, this is my friend, Trey Holland.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say as I step forward and hold my hand out to shake his. I mistakenly think he’s going to take it, but instead he starts signing something to my friend. Looking exasperated, she finally takes a seat, and I follow suit.
She signs something back to him quickly, the expression on her face showing her stress and frustration. I look at his doctor, who’s letting them communicate, but I notice how intently she’s watching their hands. I presume she knows ASL.
“He’s signing because he doesn’t want you to know what he’s saying,” Coley explains.
“That part didn’t need a translation,” I tell her sarcastically, earning a chuckle from Nyall. I look up at him and shrug my shoulders. “I can go wait–“
While her brother nods, Coley interrupts. “No, he doesn’t make the rules here, unfortunately. He wanted to know why your name sounded familiar.” Nyall rolls his eyes as she relates what they were talking about in silence. “I explained that you were Jack Holland’s son, and he said that couldn’t be… that you were just a little kid.” She turns to me. “They have very limited TV choices here and no Internet. No magazines either. Just books and approved shows and movies. It’s been a few years since he’s seen pictures of you, I’m sure.”
“Do you read a lot?” I ask him. He shakes his head. “Have you read any of Coley’s articles? They’re pretty special,” I tell him.
“No, she’s never showed me any of those.”
I look over at her, wondering why she wouldn’t share them. “I’ll send you copies,” she promises, but it doesn’t sound sincere to me. “What have you done this week?”
“Sleep. Eat. Exercise. Therapy. Eighties sitcom reruns. Repeat.”
“Did you see Mom and Dad?”
“Mom on Tuesday; Dad on Thursday. Same thing every week.”
“What’d they bring you for dinner?” Coley asks, struggling to get him to talk more.
“Nothing memorable.”
“Well… at least you have Joel’s chips. That’s memorable, right?”
“Yeah, these’ll last me an hour.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, feeling bad.
“What do you do around here to exercise?” I ask him, trying to think of something to talk about.
“They have an indoor pool.”
“Nyall’s the reason I love to swim like I do,” Coley tells me. “He taught me everything I know. He was the YMCA champion every year in his age group.”
“Yeah?” I ask him. “I swim, too. I was a lifeguard when I was in high school.”
“He’s on the roster at Columbia. He made it his freshman year. Lucky.”
“I bet I swim faster than you do,” he says.
I laugh. Not many people do.
“Maybe we can test that out over spring break,” Coley suggests.
“We provide swimming suits here,” Dr. Schubert says. “I’m sure we have something that fits you. Nyall’s one of the few that utilizes the lap pool, too. Coley, you, too.”
I look at Nyall first, whose eyes have come to life for the first time today. Grinning, I glance over at my friend to see if she’s game.
“Do you want to, Nyall?” she asks her brother.
“You’d come swimming with me?”
“I never turn down a chance to go swimming,” I tell him.
“I haven’t practiced this weekend,” Coley says. “And I’d love to show you how much I’ve improved.”
I follow the doctor’s eyes as she looks at the nurses. They don’t look thrilled, but they both nod minutely and approach Nyall on the couch. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, raring to go, and follows them down the hall to his room.
“I’ll show you to the locker room,” she tells me and Coley. “Nyall will meet you at the pool.”
Coley’s shivering outside as we’re waitin
g for the car to come. After I take a few pictures of the facility, I return to her side and put my arm across her shoulders in an effort to warm her up. She already has my coat, so there’s not much more I can do. “They should have hair dryers there,” I say to her as I comb through wet strands of her long blonde hair.
“Well, it’s not a gym,” she comments.
“True.”
“They don’t like anything with long cords.”
“Right.”
“So how many times did my brother beat you fair and square?” she asks, looking up at me and squinting in the mid-day sun.
I grin as I look down at her. “None. But did you see how happy he was? And he was a damn good swimmer. Not a bad competitor at all. Give him a year with my coach, and he could beat me.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I’m only competitive when I need to be. I was just having fun today. But you, Coley. Shit, you’ll definitely make the team this year.”
“Don’t get my hopes up.”
“You’re better than half the women they currently have. I know, I see them practice all the time. I see their times, and I clocked you once or twice. I wouldn't lie to you.”
The limo pulls up moments later. I don’t wait for the driver, ushering Coley into the backseat so she doesn’t have to stand outside any longer. It’s warm inside, but I sit next to her anyway and kick my feet up on the seat across from us. I’m about to ask her about her brother when I realize she’s crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“Leaving him is hard. Every time. Knowing what he has to look forward to in the coming weeks. How monotonous must it be in there?” she asks.
I shake my head and link my arm through hers. “I don’t know, Coley. If you weren’t crazy before going in there, I think it would drive you to the brink. But maybe it’s not so bad from his perspective. We know certain freedoms that he’s never had. He lived with your parents and went to live with other guardians.”
“My parents were never that strict. And they were strict. We got to pick our music and read whatever books we wanted. I watched whatever I could find on cable. We didn’t have movie channels, though. Rated-R movies were off limits until I was old enough to see them. That was my one restriction.”
I laugh lightly. “I bet you have years of catching up to do.”
She smiles. “Yeah.”
“That’s a privately-run hospital?”
“Mm-hmm. Most of what my parents earn goes to pay for Nyall to be a patient there. It’s the best one in Virginia. Joel and I are both on scholarships. We both had jobs throughout high school to save up for incidentals while we’re in college. That’s why I never argue when you offer to pay for things,” she admits.
“Well, that’s just common sense. How else does the hospital get its money? Donors?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“I’m going to do a blog post,” I announce, my mind already made up.
“Shouldn’t you have asked permission when you talked to people there? Or took pictures?”
“It’ll have a limited audience,” I explain. “I’ll protect it and give the password to two people.”
“Who?”
“Jack and Emi Holland,” I tell her. If anyone will be moved to help that hospital, it will be my parents. “This is right up their alley, laureate.”
“How so?”
“Because I made a friend there today. They can never say no when I make friends.”
Her tears fall faster. “He really liked you, Trey. He never likes anyone, but he genuinely appreciated you. I haven’t seen him that excited since before he was checked in there. It was like the old Nyall was back with us. Like he forgot to be sad and angry and hurt.”
“Thanks for inviting me, Coley. I had just as much fun as he did. Trust me. Maybe I can come back the next time Joel’s tied up with school.”
“You’ll be first on my list of invitees. And I know Nyall would really like that. Maybe you can even come with me and Joel sometime.”
“At this point, Joel seems like he may be harder to impress,” I joke with her.
“Joel’s just like me–only he has a penis.”
“Whoa!” I burst out laughing and make eye contact with our driver, whose smirk is clearly visible from the backseat. “Good to know. Then I guess I’ll end up liking him very much–maybe in different ways.”
On the plane, we both get out our notes and prepare to work on the other articles we have that are due tomorrow. The takeoff is much rockier than the one in Jersey. As Coley white-knuckles the armrest, I offer her my hand to hold. She thanks me and weaves her fingers between mine, the coolth of them quickly mingling with the warmth of mine. I rub my thumb over hers, trying to soothe her through the turbulence. She closes her eyes tightly, not wanting to see the dark clouds we’ve ascended upon. There’s lightning in the distance. I keep my focus out the window, enjoying the stormy display and watching how the raindrops collect on the Plexiglas.
“It’s okay,” I tell her when we’ve finally reached our cruising altitude. I pull my hand away from hers and straighten my papers, thumbing through them haphazardly, not wanting to get back to my homework.
“Trey?”
“Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you let me tell Henrietta that you had a girlfriend earlier?” she questions me quietly. “It seemed like you cut me off, like, on purpose.”
I know she’s looking directly at me while I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering how I should respond. Shifting in my chair, I finally remove my seatbelt and turn to face her. After taking two deep breaths–one didn’t do the trick–I decide to tell her. “Because after tonight, laureate, I won’t have one anymore.”
“Do you think that’s her decision, or is it yours?”
I look directly into her eyes and nod my head. “It’s mine.”
She lifts her brows and looks at me with uncertainty. “You’re letting her fly all the way over here so you can break up with her?” she asks with uneasiness.
“There was no way I was going to do it over the phone. That’s the only reason it hasn’t happened sooner.”
She shuts her laptop, which she’d had open in front of her. “Can I ask why you’re doing it?”
“Sure. And there’s a multitude of reasons which you already know about. Over the past year and a half, things have slowly started drifting in a direction that I’m uncomfortable with. No, you know what? It’s not that I’m not comfortable with it. I’m unhappy with it. I’ve stayed with her because it was expected. What I was supposed to do. Because it’s what we’d planned. It was what I once wanted. What I thought I wanted, anyway, when I was sixteen years old, seventeen maybe.
“I feel trapped, though. And I feel awful for saying that, because she’s a beautiful girl. So smart and driven. She’ll be great for someone–but she’s not great for me.”
“Trapped from doing what?”
“Living my life the way I need to live it. She can be a little demanding. A little controlling. Standing up to her creates tension and starts fights, so I just let her have her way more often than not. But I’m tired of that. And I’ve been letting her know that. So we’ve been fighting a lot. It’s not pleasant. I mean, a little passion in a relationship’s good, but not when it’s just anger.
“I don’t need to be controlled. I’ve got my life figured out. I’ve got a good head on my shoulders. I can see where some guys might need a little micromanaging, but I’m not one of them,” I tell her.
“No,” she says. “You’re not.”
I don’t want to omit any of my reasons, choosing to be as honest with her as possible. “Coley, I really like what you and I have together. It’s never been so easy for me to get along with a girl. To feel comfortable around one. You’ve completely disarmed me. I count you among one of my best friends, and I’ve only known you, what… seven weeks? It’s taken me years to trust other people like I trust you. But there’s something about you.
�
��And these feelings continue to grow. I can’t have a relationship with another woman when I wake up every morning and my first thought is of you. Before I go to sleep at night, I force myself to remember Zaina. I’ll look at her picture. I’ll read her texts. I’ll even leave her voicemails, telling her about my day. I’ve tried so hard to divert my affections back to her, but you suffuse my dreams and hang around to greet me when I open my eyes.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed with you this past week,” she suggests.
“I don’t mean literally,” I explain. “You staying with me made everything very clear, honestly. The thought of Zaina staying with me for even a night has always made me feel like I was losing a part of myself. Not just my privacy. There was no premeditated thought when I invited you to stay. No fear before I asked and no regret after. And instead of feeling like I had lost anything, it felt like I had benefitted from your visit. I felt more comfortable. I felt safer. I actually felt more like myself.
“And I don’t want to talk to you today about what happens next. At this point, I want to believe we’ll be friends and nothing more tomorrow, too. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever be, I don’t know. If it is, it’s okay. A part of me doesn’t want things to change, anyway, because they have been really incredible. The friendship. The occasional flirting.”
I smile at her, hoping she understands, but she doesn’t notice me. She’s looking down at the makeshift workspace in front of her, doodling in her notebook. Flowers and stripes and tiny hearts.
“I just have to get through tonight,” I reiterate.
“Is she still staying with you?” she asks.
“I’m bringing her over to talk. Whether she will want to stay or go, I’ll leave that up to her. But nothing’s going to happen between us. All of that’s in the past, laureate. You have to trust me.”
She sighs.
“Listen,” I tell her, lifting her chin so she’ll look into my eyes, “if I had that much self-discipline last week, tonight’s not going to be a problem at all. Something you should know about me by now is that when I put my mind to something, it’s not changing. My parents both say I’m the most resolute person they know.”
“You don’t even owe me that promise or that explanation,” she says, “because today, we’re just friends.”