by Anne Eliot
The door where the professor entered pops open, making a metallic scraping sound, when I turn toward it, I’m completely undone because it’s Ellen.
My eyes go first to her ink-black hair. It’s pulled up in a messy bun instead of her trademark braid. The bun creates all these extra curling wisps around that face—oh, her face. I feel my lungs constrict. It’s the face I’ve dreamed about for months, and it’s still achingly, hauntingly beautiful.
Unable to stop myself, I begin taking a mental check of every limb on her body.
Legs. Still there.
Arms. Still there.
One foot in a black metal cast. One foot in a small sneaker.
Two hands, gripping crutches just fine.
When she turns and glances up to see me here with Professor Perry, her deep black eyes seem bigger than I remember them. And they’re about to pull me in, choke me, kill me. Because they’re frozen wide, showing me every ounce of her shock, her simmering questions, and worse, because I know her—even though we might be strangers now—I know she’s looking at me with all kinds of hope. But it’s the kind of hope my own soul, my body, my taped together and half-dead heart can’t afford her to have.
That’s because I can also tell she’s hoping we aren’t strangers.
Professor Perry, unaware that Ellen and I have turned into dysfunctional humans because of the unsaid words and permanent regrets hanging between us, calls out cheerfully, “Ellen. Do come in. We were just talking about you and your group. I’m sure you don’t need an introduction to Camden Reece, here.”
“Reece?” she whispers, brow furrowing.
“Yes. I can see you’re as surprised as I am.” Professor Perry smiles. “He has no group for the lab work hours, and because I can’t pull Harrison Shaw off your group, I was entertaining the idea of asking your group to accommodate a fifth person.”
“Oh.” Ellen’s eyes haven’t met mine since she started crutching toward us. “I’d heard the rumor, but when Cam didn’t show up, Harrison offered to step in. And”—she swallows, finally risking a glance at me—”I thought I’d actually never…but of course…if he wants to work with us…yes.”
“Harrison Shaw is in that group?” I blurt out.
“Oh, do you know him already?” Professor Perry asks. “Yes. He’s here from a high school in northern Toronto. He was sort of a lone duck when he got here. Luckily he makes friends easily.”
“He’s also going to be my roommate,” I say clearly. “I think, for that reason alone and for personal reasons, would all of you mind if I chose to work alone? I—I’ve been through a lot and I’m not used to hanging in groups anymore.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. I—understand.” He scribbles onto this clipboard holding what appears to be an attendance and grades sheet. “Camden Reece—group of one. Wonderful. Don’t worry, son, I heard you’d need some help reintegrating, and so I really want you comfortable.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
“Did you say—Harrison—that he’s your roommate?” Ellen’s face has gone completely pale. The original shreds of excitement and even the hope she showed me before has left her gaze.
Professor Perry and I step forward as she sways way too far to the right and tries to go up the one step that would get her onto Professor Perry’s teaching area. Her crutches slip out from under her arms and clatter to the ground. She quickly turns to balance herself on a long worktable. I hear her muttering, “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”
“Ellen, are you okay? You don’t look okay.” Professor Perry steps forward to hand her back the crutches.
“It’s my Cerebral Palsy. I’m having some sort of—” She glances up, looking even more pale, and possibly she’s panicked. “See…um…” she gasps out. “My left side—it’s not working how it should today. It happens sometimes, like…when I’m…tired, that’s all.”
My mind spins and fills in all the words Ellen’s left out: Her left side tanks when she’s stressed, or sad, or upset, or angry, or exhausted, or worried, or in pain! By showing up in here, I just handed her all of those things at once!
This is all my fault. My fault.
Ellen won’t raise her eyes again. By the way she’s tensed her mouth and how she’s glancing through her lashes toward the door, I can tell she wants to be through that door and not at all standing here anywhere near me.
I’ve surprised her. Of course I have. Worse, I think she doesn’t want me anywhere near her. Although it’s painful to realize it, I think it’s the only reaction that is fair. I’ve already decided that Ellen, staying as far away from me as possible, is the only way I’m going to be able to survive the next six weeks anyhow, so I can actually accept and support this reaction, no problem.
Ellen shakes her head as though she’s trying to clear it. “I’m sorry, Professor Perry. I think I’m also getting sick. Fever in addition to my CP. Because…I feel really…off right now.” She seems to shrink in on herself right in front of us, adding, “I should go. I need to go…shouldn’t stay…here. I’m sorry.”
“No. By all means, Ellen. Please don’t stay if you feel sick.” Professor Perry crosses to the edge of his desk. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Her eyes skate back up to mine with this wild look, and I get this sensation that she’s wondering if she’s having one of those really bad nightmares where you are at school and everything is wrong and you can’t wake up. She turns on her crutches to leave. After one heavy and laborious step where it appears she can hardly lift the metal boot—the boot that is on the leg that I’m thoroughly responsible for breaking—Professor Perry and I share a startled look.
It seems like she actually can’t walk!
She’s begun shaking top to bottom, and her next step shows that she’s dragging both legs. She’s also leaning on the crutches with left arm gone completely limp as though it, too, has become a dead weight. I get right she’s trying not to cry.
Damn her CP for holding her hostage, but it’s more than that. I think she’s actually trying not to collapse in front of us. My heart breaks, because I can feel shards of it cutting me from the inside out. The back of my throat chokes up, because I get that she’d rather die than ask me for help.
Nothing in my whole life has prepared me for the pain that idea causes me.
As she sways again, Professor Perry leaps forward and places his arm on her shoulder to steady her. Ellen leans on him and gasps as though she’s actually startled herself with how incapacitated she’s become. “Ellen, you’re scaring me, and I don’t scare easily.”
“I swear. This is normal for me. It…happens…s-s-sometimes. Embarrassing, mostly.” Her voice has gone mouse-small, the last word ending on a breath that sounds like she’ll never be able to speak again after this.
Professor Perry sends me a look over Ellen’s head without noticing that my lungs have turned into water-filled bricks, or noting that my legs are also shaking so badly I now think I can’t walk. But this is not allowed to be about me, so I pull myself together and manage to lock on a mask as I take a step in their direction.
The guy jerks his head at the side door, just as students have begun piling into the room from the doors located at the top tiers of the room.
“Camden, do you think you can escort her to the nurse’s station? It’s near the dining hall.” He glances at the clock. “They’re on duty at nine. I’ll excuse you. However long it takes—even if you miss your first class, it will be fine. We’re simply commenting on shots from the last project. It’s possibly for the best you aren’t here so you won’t learn how I graded the shots before you turn yours in tonight. Can you help her? Stay with her as long as she needs?”
I nod.
But I don’t mean it.
I want to scream at this guy that I absolutely can’t do this because she obviously doesn’t want me. But he doesn’t understand that for me, helping Ellen Foster is exactly how all of this horrible pain started. He also doesn’t understand that if I step in and “help” her
again, she will ultimately hurt way worse than she does now.
“Ellen. Are you okay with this plan? You do know each other, after all.” Ellen moves her head. It’s not a yes or a no, but the professor smiles and says, “Good. Good. Off with you two, then.”
Suddenly, twenty or so kids have piled into this room and are watching us like this lower area is some sort of stage. Ellen sways even more precariously than she did before. Because I know she hates when people stare at her, I say, mostly to her, “I’ve got this. I know what to do.”
And then I simply step forward and place myself next to her in the spot I know is best for her to lean on me. My body seems to remember hers, and even though my mind is fried, frayed, and burned, I realize that I do know exactly what to do. In less than two seconds I’ve taken the crutch out from under her weaker left side so I can gingerly place my arm around her waist to take up her weight.
All of her limbs and curves snap in to place next to me, like she’s that last lost puzzle piece I’d been searching out for so long. While her expression might be fighting this, her body seems to remember what to do next to mine. Her arm goes around me. Her hand—the bad one—tangles oh so familiarly into the far edges of my shirt.
Her small frame, her warmth, her all-too-familiar trembling is all the same, and I’ve missed the feel of this—of her—so much. But then I realize that her hair smells completely different—like vanilla mixed with flowers…or is it some sort of warm sunscreen smell?
That indefinable, unfamiliar air between us wrecks me completely.
If I hadn’t been holding her, it would have brought me to my knees.
I don’t know her anymore. She doesn’t know me…and it’s not just her shampoo…but everything has changed, hasn’t it?
Professor Perry quickly opens the door for us, muttering more directions as to how and where the nurse’s station is located, and then he shoves us into an empty hall.
After a very long moment of silence and trembling that is half mine and half hers, I try to meet her gaze.
She doesn’t try to meet mine, and though she and I are now joined together just like old times, the way she’s avoiding my eyes has me feeling further away from her than I felt when I was locked up way across the country.
“Do you really need a nurse?” I ask.
She betrays her stony mask with that same shattered but shaking voice she’d used inside the classroom. “I don’t want to see anyone like this. Patrick a-a-and L-l-aura…I’ll need to warn them. And you and I…there’s much to talk about. So…much.” She pauses, finally offering me a small glimpse of her eyes.
My nod—or possibly it’s our eyes tangling helplessly with memories and longing—crumples her face. She goes all red and gasps out this dangerous sounding sniffle-sob.
I tear my gaze away from hers, and she sniffles again, leaning her head sideways against my arm so her long bangs and my arm hide her face. “Um. The whole left side of my body is on a shutdown. I’ll use the boot and the crutch to stabilize what I can, but you’re going to have to literally handle the rest…of…me.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m also much slower than I used to be.”
“You were never slow to me, Ellen.”
“Please…don’t.” I see two tears streaming down her face.
“Don’t what?” I ask, but all I want is to get down on my knees and beg her not to cry.
She whispers, “Don’t say my name again. Please. I’m not ready to hear your voice saying my name.”
“Okay.” I nod, completely understanding that, because if she said my name right now…I have no idea what it would do to me.
“Take me to that door.” She points to the dark end of the hallway. “It’s a shortcut. Let’s just…go.”
My own eyes water dangerously as she grips on to me, because it makes me realize that somewhere deep down she must still trusts me. She’s leaning so heavily against my arm, I feel as if her life depends on it. Me.
Heat as well as tears flooding out of those eyes now soak into my T-shirt sleeve. Thankfully she doesn’t talk to me anymore. If I had to respond to her right now, the feeling of fresh air in the back of my throat would let loose my own tears in front of the few people already staring at us curiously in this small back hallway.
I adjust the grip on the crutch I’d taken from her and pull her in under my opposite arm just as close as I can and I try one step, then another. She struggles to find a decent gait with me holding her awkwardly like this, but after a few stops and starts, we’ve got it down. I get her to the door she’d pointed to. It’s marked: Staff and Handicap Access Only. She hands me her ID badge, and next to it is her set of small electronic key cards they gave us to get in and out of the buildings and dorms, only this one’s different because it’s got a blue and white wheelchair graphic on it, and the words Special Access Pass.
I hold it next to the sensor and it pops open the lock. I’m struggling some as I figure a way to stick out my leg to prop the door wide while navigating both of us through without banging her around. She seems to relax some once we’ve exited the building. After we go around the corner, I realize we’ve ended up in this cool little garden that faces the back of our dorm room hallway. “Wow. This is…nice,” I say, but my voice has betrayed me. Each word I just uttered fell out sounding wobbly and scratched.
“I have a favorite bench over…over…” she starts, her breathing and voice going more ragged than mine. The sound of it shreds the last of any strength I might have had in reserves. I’d meant to play this all cool. Say little. Interact hardly at all. Wait to see what she said first.
God help me, but just the sight of her face back in the classroom got to me worse than any kryptonite could ever crush Superman.
And now…now? Feeling her cling to me, hearing her cry because of me, I couldn’t hide myself from this girl if someone pointed a gun at me and ordered me to try. I’m raw…exposed…completely at her mercy. From the way she seems to have lost every ounce of her own air, making her already light frame go weightless in my arms, I know she’s in the same damn terrible vacuum.
My eyes track the way a natural pathway goes around a little pond. A pond that’s complete with a tiny island and ducks. Before I search for Ellen’s favorite bench, I look for exits. Ways to run out of here should all of this get to a point where leaving Ellen alone becomes necessary. Like when her CP attack is over and she tells me to get the hell away from her, just like I deserve. I spot the two ornate rod iron gates that lead out to the main quad before searching out what bench she wants me to bring her to.
One bench is on the pathway near a sunny grassy area, a second bench is on the far side of the pond that’s got a pretty view of the quad, and the third one is almost hidden under some dwarf willow trees nearest the pond.
I don’t need to ask which bench is Ellen’s favorite.
She’ll want the bench that’s under the trees.
Ellen
I’d already begun to cry the second he touched me. I think it’s the way his hands feel so familiar on my waist—the way his arm settles around my shoulders—the way he knows just how and where to carry my weight. I’ve been trying to hold it together, trying to shove months of emotions, fears, longing, and love back down my throat so I can lock it all up and be cool and silently aloof, like I know I’m supposed to be right now.
Instead I start bawling when we make it out to the garden.
Ugly bawling.
I see nothing. I only feel.
My relief that he’s here and he seems relatively okay is what buckled my legs back in the classroom. How he looks almost unrecognizable to me—because he’s pale, and almost bald, and he’s bigger than I remember—is causing the typhoon of tears. The sound of his own ragged breaths and the way he’s pulling me tighter and tighter, as if he could fix everything that’s been missed between us for months with this one awkward embrace, is why I might not ever be able to stop crying.
*Because damn him and damn me, and damn time and…
damn…damn…damn.*
“I waited for you,” I choke out as he brings me under the trees by the pond. “But then…” I sob, “I stopped waiting. I’ve—I’ve moved on and I—and I—I’m…”
“Shh. Shh. Shh.” One of his fingers wipes away some of my tears. “That’s good. I begged you not to wait. I didn’t want you to wait. I would never expect that or want that for you.”
“I know. And that’s just what I—I—” I start sobbing incoherently again.
We get to the bench, and as we sit, he pulls me onto his lap so the top of my head is nestled under his chin, just how I used to love sitting. My cheek is resting next to his heart. As I cry and cry, he softly cradles me and says, “Ellen. God…Ellen, Ellen…Ellen.”
Even though I told him not to say my name, it’s now all I want to hear. It’s as though my name is food and someone’s starved me from hearing it. I fist my good hand into his shirt, because I’d like to pummel him for what his voice is doing to me, but I don’t. Instead, I leave my hand still because his heartbeats have startled me. They’re pounding against my hand so harshly that I can actually feel how his pain levels match mine.
I don’t need to add to it by raging at him. Cam’s always been amazing at hurting himself from the inside out, and he’s probably spent the last months carving himself up inside from guilt and his thoughts alone.
I suddenly understand the serious and desolate expression my mom always has when she shakes her head and says that line when she wants me to let things go: It’s water under the bridge, honey. Water long under the bridge.
I’d always pictured this small brook over a tiny bridge when she’d said that. One where anyone could just drop down and recover that water should they ever want it back. But now I see my mom’s bridge is bigger than the San Francisco Bay Bridge. It’s covering the kind of water rushing so fast you never even saw it go by—the kind of bridge that’s so high, and over water so deep dark and cold, that people jump into it so they can die.
That’s when I cry even more.