Breathing Room

by Marsha Hayles

  Then the biggest change happened. On December 1, Sarah was taken from our room—we thought to get a pneumo treatment. But when she didn’t come back by evening, we knew something else was going on. I spent half my time imagining the worst, the other half hounding Dena to find out news for us.

  A day and a half later, Dena dropped a crumpled piece of paper on my bed. “Someone handed me this.”

  I looked at the words “Tell Eve I’m like Adam” and saw a drawing of a simple clockface. I recognized Sarah’s handwriting at once.

  “It’s from Sarah,” I said, pleased to be the Eve of her message.

  Dena sat down on the edge of my bed. “Yeah, I figured, but what does it mean?”

  I read the message again, this time as if Sarah were inside my head, coaching me. Think about Adam. “Dena, isn’t there some operation where they remove a rib?”

  “Sure, it’s called a thoracoplasty. The doctors pull out a rib—or a couple of them—and collapse the lung to let it heal.”

  I thought again, then handed the message back to Dena. “I think Sarah had a thoracoplasty. That’s how she’s like Adam from the Bible—losing a rib.”

  “Yeah, I get it now,” Dena said, looking at the note. “Pretty smart, Eve-vy.”

  I wasn’t sure who Dena thought was smart—Sarah for thinking it up or me for solving it.

  Dena arched an eyebrow in my direction. “One of the old-timers around here has had eleven of his ribs cut out.”

  “Eleven?! How many ribs do people have to begin with?”

  “Twenty-four, twelve on each side,” Dena answered.

  “Don’t worry, Evvy. It took’em along time to take all those ribs out.”

  I wondered how a person would look without one rib, let alone eleven. “How come he doesn’t just bend in two without ribs to hold him up?”

  “’Cause he always wears some gizmo strapped around his chest for support.”

  “Like a brassiere?” I said, blushing as I remembered the lopsided man I’d seen on my first day at Loon Lake.

  Dena chuckled. “Yeah, I guess, but don’t tell him that.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, then pointed back to Sarah’s note. “But why the clock?”

  Dena looked more closely at Sarah’s little drawing. “One eighteen—that’s just before the Cure Hour starts.”

  “Or maybe,” I said with a sudden sense of knowing, “it’s her new room number.”

  “Yeah, could be a private room.” Dena started to go to her bed, then paused and said, “Ya know, Evvy, maybe it’s better that’s she’s not in our room for a while.”

  Had I heard Dena right? “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  Dena turned to face me. “I don’t see her getting well with you two talking all the time.”

  “So it’s my fault Sarah’s sick? Is that what you think?” It was one thing to have Nurse Marshall get after me, but something altogether different to have Dena telling me how to behave. “You’re the one always barking about the stupid rules around here!”

  “Yeah, the rules are stupid, but so are people sometimes. Maybe if you’d let Sarah rest once in a while, she’d have half a chance to get better!”

  I stood and snatched Sarah’s note from her hands. “And maybe”—I felt something coming untied inside me—“maybe you’d understand, Dena, if you’d ever had a best friend!”

  Dena narrowed her eyes. “You don’t understand any—” She stopped midsentence, then dropped her empty hands in disgust. “Forget it,” she said. “Just forget it!” She moved away from me, as if our anger had become as contagious as our disease.

  My shoulders slumped. I stared down at Sarah’s note. The little face on her hand-drawn clock seemed to look up at me disapprovingly. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  Dena got up and walked over to her bedside table and opened the drawer. She came back, her mouth cutting a straight line across her face, and handed me a picture. “That’s my brother, Mickey—my best friend.”

  I studied the photo of a boyish face like Dena’s. He had a scruff of hair and a playful look in his eye that seemed devilish and friendly at once. “You two look more alike than Abe and me, and we’re twins.”

  She took back the photo, her face unchanged. “They kept us next to each other when we got to Loon Lake. Over on the little kids’ ward. I made Mickey promise we’d stick together no matter what. So at night, we’d hold hands. That way they couldn’t take one of us away without waking the other one up.”

  Could Dena know I woke up at night sometimes to check on Sarah?

  “I kept telling Mickey we’d fight this together. I didn’t want to see how he was getting sicker and sicker. Even more of a runt than me.”

  Dena didn’t look at me or the photo. “I was holding Mickey’s hand when he died. Nothing I did kept him alive. Nothing.”

  For a moment, Mickey’s face blurred into Pearl’s in my mind. I wished I didn’t remember the Pearl slumped in Dena’s arms—only the one reading her movie magazines or telling us about Gone with the Wind. But the broken Pearl and the broken Mickey somehow fit together now, joined by Dena’s hand into one memory for me.

  “At least you tried, Dena—more than anyone else.”

  “Maybe, but maybe for the wrong reasons. I wanted to be the big hero, Evvy, the one who could save Mickey when the doctors and everyone else failed.” Now she looked straight at me. “I couldn’t save him. Or Pearl either.”

  I wiped tears on my pajama sleeve. “So we just give up. Is that it?”

  “Now, that’s funny, Evvy. Me quitting? That’s sure not going to happen. I’m just learning, that’s all. Look, if Mickey or Pearl or Marianne had lived, could I take the credit?” She answered her own question with a shake of her head. “I’d be just another jackass like Dr. Tollerud or Nurse Marshall. They don’t have all the answers. If they did, maybe they’d take the blame once in a while. You’ll never see that happen around here.”

  Dena paused, her voice dropping to a rough whisper. “If something happened to Sarah, how do you think you’d feel, Evvy?”

  My heart stumbled.

  “You’d feel lousy. Like I did about Mickey.”

  Dena was right, though her words stung. Just because Sarah wanted to talk and be with me too wouldn’t make me feel any better if something terrible happened.

  “I beat myself up about that for a long time,” Dena said. “Maybe even took some of it out on Pearl.”

  I looked over to where Sarah should have been resting, then back at Dena. “I guess we shouldn’t talk at all, then.”

  “Nah, Evvy,” Dena said with a laugh. “That’d be like trying to cork a volcano. Just use some common sense. Take care of yourself, and let Sarah take care of herself too. Help her by not helping so much.”

  I folded Sarah’s note and put it in my drawer, alongside the fan from Pearl, and thought about how Mother used to find ways to separate Abe and me. “Just because you and Abe can rely on each other all the time,” she’d say, “doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet.”

  Now Dena was trying to teach me the same lesson, only this time about Sarah.

  I felt a strange shiver inside, as if an old wire had been cut and a new one was starting to send a different current through me.

  Could I really stand on my own—just Evvy, instead of Evvy and someone else? Could I ever be that strong? Even when Sarah came back? Even without Dena here to remind me once she moved up to the adult ward?

  I wasn’t sure, but for now I listened to us both breathe. In and out, in and out—a steady rhythm. Like the sound of Mother’s metronome on our piano back home, with its thin arm swaying back and forth, setting the tempo for one of her music students.

  Now I imagined it measuring our breaths. In and out, in and out.

  That was my music—our music—now.

  CHAPTER 27

  Gifts

  I TRIED TO get into the holiday spirit, but my letters home must have let on how I was re
ally feeling since my family sent my gifts almost two weeks early. I was glad to get them. But until I actually held those presents in my hands, I hadn’t realized how much I’d secretly been hoping to be discharged by Christmas. I knew I wasn’t fully well yet, and I wouldn’t want to leave until Sarah was better, but still … .

  I was glad Abe had picked out the book A Tale of Two Cities to give me. He figured correctly that reading about heads being chopped off in the French Revolution would cheer me up much more than hearing about carefree children having their wishes come true. Father had sent me a collection of crossword puzzles, though I knew I’d need Sarah’s help to finish them all, especially with the harder clues about geography.

  Grandma Hoffmeister had sent me not a book but a new 1941 calendar with old-fashioned scenes from around Minnesota at the top of each month. She’d written across the front cover in her heavy black pen: “Watch the time to fly by!” The word “to” was crossed out, which made me think Abe had pointed out she didn’t need it.

  The calendar also included two extra months: December 1940 and January 1942. I discovered something curious in looking at the December page: Christmas Day this year happened to coincide with Hanukkah.

  Sarah had told me a little about Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights—how it lasted eight days, and that it wasn’t the most important Jewish holiday but, because it usually fell near Christmas, people paid more attention to it. She’d also explained that Hanukkah wasn’t on the same date every year because the original Hebrew calendar didn’t match up with our modern one.

  But I liked the idea that our two holidays shared the same day this year. I wondered if Sarah knew, and hoped somehow she did.

  To my surprise, of all the books in my holiday gift box, the one I found myself reading most was Mother’s gift, a book of poems. Abe had probably complained about her choice—reading was one thing, but reading poetry would be harsh punishment in his mind. But if he did try to talk her out of the idea, I was glad Mother didn’t listen. The book was small and thin with a green cover and sat nicely in my hand. At first I made a game of thinking up a word—a fancy poetic word like “lament” or “twilight” or “dwell”—and skimming along until I found that word, then reading the whole poem. “Dwell” was a really good one, since people in poems dwelled—not lived—in houses, and lots of poets had pain or sadness dwelling in their breasts. I knew how that felt.

  An even bigger surprise was that Dena liked me to read the poems aloud to her. She didn’t say that exactly, but whenever I reached for the book, she’d point at it, then herself, and tip her head back to listen.

  In turn, she worked to find out about Sarah. Sarah was sitting up now and feeding herself—that was the good news—but she was alone in a small room with nothing more than a tree outside her window to keep her company.

  An idea edged its way into my thoughts. I knew what I had to do.

  The real question was whether I should tell Dena my plan or not.

  CHAPTER 28

  More Gifts

  ON DECEMBER 23, Dr. Keith gave me an early present: “You can be up for three hours a day and no longer need to use a wheelchair.” He put his notes in my chart, then added, “Also, you will be attending classes and Activity in January.”

  I wanted to cheer, but I settled for a thumbs-up from Dena and the secret thought that my plan would be easier to carry out now that I had permission to walk.

  I knew my family would be happy too. Abe might laugh that I saw going to school as a reward, but he would be glad to know I was doing better. This was the best gift—really the only gift—I could give them for Christmas.

  I hurried to write my family and each of my grandmothers so the letters could go out with the next mail. I needed to keep myself busy anyway, or else I’d start feeling homesick or worried about carrying out my plan. Plus, I wanted to cover the envelopes with the Christmas seals Grandma Hoffmeister had enclosed in her last letter—my way of letting her know the money she’d spent may have done me and others some good.

  Christmas morning we awoke to carolers—a group of doctors and nurses roving up and down the hall, singing. Though all were dressed in their regular hospital whites, some had added colorful scarves, others donned knit hats, and Nurse Marshall—yes, our Nurse Marshall!—wore floppy, Santa-sized boots on her feet. Dr. Tollerud himself wore a red pointed cap and conducted the singers with a wave of a large candy cane.

  Applause mingled with coughs when they sang the final note of “Good King Wenceslas” and left with a jingle of sleigh bells.

  “Now, that’s a Christmas miracle,” Dena said. “Seeing them having fun!”

  But the warm holiday glow faded along with the last jingle. I wished I’d made something for Dena for Christmas. I pulled open my drawer, as if some perfect little present might be waiting there for me to give her. Instead I stared at the fan from Pearl and remembered something else.

  “Dena, what happened to the fan Pearl bought for Nurse Gunderson?”

  “I swiped it,” Dena said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t want Miss Wanda taking it, so I stuck it in my drawer for safekeeping.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, then pointed to Sarah’s bedside table. “Sarah’s still got hers.”

  “Yeah, I know. I checked too.”

  A sad feeling seemed to fill the room, as if we’d both reached the bottom of our Christmas stockings and still hadn’t found what we’d hoped for.

  “Dena?”

  She looked up at me, her bangs hanging dark over her eyes.

  “Would you maybe—I mean, would you want to do a fan club again?”

  I knew it was silly to ask. Even when Pearl was alive, all we did was open our fans, wave them about, laugh, and drink our milk or hot chocolate together.

  Dena answered by opening her drawer. She lifted her fan and spread it open, her own head directly above the dragon’s. I had to laugh at the sight.

  “Yeah, I know,” Dena said, laughing with me. “This is my real twin.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Plan

  FINALLY, WE WERE on our way to the dining hall for our special Christmas dinner. I took a few steps on tiptoe, then some long strides to test out my legs, until Dena said, “Cut out the ballet and just walk.” But I couldn’t help myself. I was just so glad to be moving on my own and not in a wheelchair.

  We stepped into a hall decorated with green boughs and gold ribbon, silver stars and poinsettias, and a brightly lit Christmas tree in the corner.

  “Merry Christmas!” Dena said, more as a comment than a greeting.

  Then she poked me with an elbow. “Check to see if she’s here. She might be well enough to come to dinner.”

  “Sarah?” I said as my eyes swept the room.

  “Not Sarah,” Dena corrected me. “Nurse Gunderson.”

  I looked for them both. “It might help if everyone around here didn’t wear white!” Then I had an idea. “Look for Dr. Keith. We should be able to spot his hair easily enough, and I bet he’ll have her nearby.”

  We both kept an eye out but didn’t spot Dr. Keith, Nurse Gunderson, or Sarah.

  I ate everything on my plate, probably too fast, and managed to get gravy on my sleeve in my hurry to be finished. At last the dishes got cleared, and the nurse at our table slid her chair back and sipped a cup of coffee in the leisurely way Father might on a quiet evening back home. Several of the orderlies pushed a piano into the room through the large double doors, and I saw a woman setting up some music stands alongside it. Folded cards on the table told us that after a concert of holiday music, dessert would be served.

  Now was my chance. People were still busy clearing the tables, and if I was lucky, no one would notice or care if I went off to the bathroom.

  I caught the nurse’s eye and got permission, then made my way out the door. I felt bad not telling Dena the truth, but someone would have noticed two of us leaving.

  Outside in the hallway, more people were bustling about. One woman was carrying a v
iolin; a man had his arm wrapped around a cello like it was his date. No one paid any attention to me.

  I headed toward the bathroom but turned down another hallway instead, thinking if anyone stopped me, I’d pretend to be lost.

  I scooted along the wall and watched as the numbers on each door told me I was getting closer to what I hoped was Sarah’s room. My cheeks felt flushed, my neck warm. Was that from nervousness? Excitement? Too much exercise? I couldn’t worry about that now. Not when I was at her door.

  I paused. What if they’d moved her and I didn’t get to see her? What if this wasn’t her room?

  I took a deep breath and stepped inside. Sarah was resting, her eyes closed, her bed facing the window. I glanced to see her tree. A few brown leaves still trembled on the branches as if trying to hold on despite the wind and snow.

  I tiptoed to her bed and took out the gift I’d tucked under my bathrobe. It was a poem copied from my new green book. I hadn’t wanted to write “Happy Hanukkah” at the top for fear of revealing Sarah’s secret. But I had drawn lots of small blue six-sided stars—the kind Sarah called the Star of David—to decorate the edge of the paper, then added a half moon as an afterthought. I hadn’t signed my name—she would know it was from me. I reached over to slide it under her pillow.

  I wanted to wake her, to see her change from this pale, sick girl back into Sarah. I didn’t want to go without at least saying hello. But I knew I shouldn’t. Just as I stepped away, she twisted in bed, lifting one shoulder up off the sheet, and woke up. Her eyes froze on me with a startled look.

  “Evvy!” she called in a thin voice, and reached for my arm.

  She was awake! Bandages crinkled as she moved.

  “I came to wish you a happy Hanukkah, Sarah,” I whispered.