Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (A Sal and Gabi Novel)

by Carlos Hernandez

  Three rooms were unoccupied. The fourth had an incubator next to a bed. The incubator had armholes with built-in gloves so people could reach the very tiny person inside without popping the top.

  In the center of the incubator lay the tiniest pair of footie pajamas I had ever seen, yellow and fluffy like a baby chick’s feathers. It was hard to tell from here, but I was pretty sure those itty-bitty jammies had a baby inside them.

  Gabi marched over to the fourth room’s door with her hands in the air, her eyes as hard as a statue’s. I walked with my hands in the air and followed her, as serious as a surgeon.

  Gabi used her elbow to push down the door’s handle and, walking backward, opened the door with her butt. She gestured with both raised hands for me to hurry up and come in. After I did, she closed the door with her foot.

  We both peered down into the incubator.

  “Sal,” she said, “I would like you to meet my little brother, Ignacio Reál. Everybody calls him Iggy. He is thirty days old. Today is his one-month birthday.”

  Iggy lay asleep on his back. His eyes and mouth were thin, unbroken lines, with no eyelashes I could see. He had a fluffy yellow hat that matched his fluffy yellow footie pajamas. They were also handsie pajamas; the sleeves had no wrist holes. It looked like maybe he was making fists inside the sleeves.

  He was so small. I had never seen a baby before, except on TV, and those babies were Christmas hams compared to this kiddo. He looked like a microwaved version of a TV baby, shrunken, wrinkled, and, judging by his flushed cheeks, hot to the touch. His face was a web of red veins. His mouth was covered with white stuff, like he had just eaten a powdered doughnut.

  A wave of weakness shot through me. This baby looked like he could die at any second. He was so small. It was hard to tell if he was breathing, even. I wanted to tap the incubator to see if he would move, just to be sure he was okay.

  I didn’t, of course. Gabi would have killed me. And if she somehow failed, Nurse Sotolongo would have finished the job.

  “You okay?” Gabi asked. Only then did I realize how long I’d been staring at Iggy with my mouth open.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, and even I didn’t believe me. He was so small. “What’s on his mouth?”

  Gabi stood on tiptoe for a better look. “It’s either spit-up or thrush. I hope it’s spit-up.”

  “What’s thrush?”

  “A yeast infection. People with weak immune systems get it.”

  “Iggy has a weak immune system?”

  She nodded, just a little, looking away. It was one of those nods you use to keep yourself from crying.

  Iggy stretched. He kicked with both legs together. He yawned. Then he went still.

  I must have made a noise or something, because Gabi squeezed my shoulder, the way a coach comforts a pitcher who’s just given up three runs. “Hey,” she said. “It’s okay. Iggy’s doing all right. They’re doing everything they can for him. That kid’s so full of antibiotics right now, we could flush him down a toilet and he wouldn’t get sick.”

  She laughed, which meant I could laugh, too. “Then why are we wearing masks and holding our hands in the air, Gabi?”

  Her eyes were smiling. “I like masks. They help me get in character.”

  We both turned back to watch Iggy do nothing. After a while I asked, “Is there a cure?”

  “Maybe,” said Gabi. “They’re ‘exploring options.’ Stem cells. Gene therapy. Bone marrow transplant.”

  “Are the odds good?”

  Gabi looked at the ceiling camera as she answered. “Anytime someone says ‘bone marrow transplant is an option for your infant,’ the odds aren’t great.”

  The room air purifier exhaled like a giant. I started. I felt jittery, paranoid, vaguely unhappy. The world felt like it was full of invisible enemies.

  No, not “like.” The world is full of invisible enemies. Like diabetes. I had to pay attention to sugar levels every day of my life. I had to poke my skin full of holes and stay on a strict diet and pump my veins full of insulin. Or else.

  But that was nothing compared to tiny, tiny Iggy. Poor kid didn’t even know he was alive yet. Or that he was already so sick. Why did the world allow newborns to enter the world with broken immune systems?

  “So unfair,” I said out loud, after a long time of only the room breathing.

  “No one said life is fair,” said Gabi, repeating what someone must have said to her once, trying to be helpful. It probably hadn’t made her feel any better, either.

  I made two fists. “It should be.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize Gabi was staring at me. “What?” I asked her. “It should be. I hate how unfair life is. Especially to kids.” I couldn’t look at her anymore, so I rested my hands on the incubator and looked at fluffy yellow Ignacio instead.

  I could feel Gabi decide something just then. She bumped me a little out of her way with her hip and put her hand into one of the incubator’s armholes. She wriggled her fingers until they were all the way inside the glove. “You do the other one,” she said. Her eyes were full of thanks.

  I’d been wanting to stick my arm in the incubator since I’d gotten here, so I didn’t think twice. I slid my hand into the other built-in glove.

  “Put your finger near his hand,” Gabi told me. “Sometimes he’ll grab it.”

  Nothing I’d experienced in my life so far made me as nervous as Gabi’s suggestion that I put a finger, even one protected by a massive glove, anywhere near little Iggy. So I deflected. “I can’t even see his hand, Gabi.”

  “It’s at the end of his arm,” she deadpanned. “That’s where humans keep their hands.”

  “Ha-ha. Very funny.” Okay, so deflection wasn’t going to work. Perhaps a little honesty. “But, Gabi, really. It’s…it’s okay?”

  With no sarcasm at all she said, “It’s okay, Sal.”

  Right. I exhaled, then maneuvered the glove over to where I thought Ignacio’s hand would be. Oh so carefully, I placed my pinkie finger on that spot on his sleeve.

  Immediately, his little mittened hand grabbed my finger. He was stronger than he looked. But his hand was so small. This poor kiddo.

  Gabi and I stood there for a long time. We just stood there and let the whole universe revolve around Ignacio’s fist and my pinkie finger.

  THE HOSPITAL CLOCK read 5:06 a.m. It was tomorrow. Finally.

  Papi and American Stepmom were awake. The second they saw I was, too, they were all over me. They asked me how I felt. They said I could stay home from school. They said I should stay home from school. In fact, there was no question. I most definitely was staying home from school.

  Believe me, after the Wednesday I’d had, that sounded great. I could see it now: sleeping in, squeezing in a couple hundred rounds of Poocha Lucha Libre, reading some Terry Pratchett—why didn’t they assign his books in English class?—and working on my Flying Tarantula trick. It was only nine days before its debut. I needed to practice!

  But all that fun would have to wait for the weekend. I had to go to school. No choice. I had to find out what Gabi’s article in the school paper said about me.

  I mean, even after she’d shared the life-and-death struggle her baby brother was going through, she still wouldn’t give me one little hint about the story she had written. I’d done everything but beg her to tell me.

  Okay, I did beg her. She wouldn’t crack. In fact, I’m pretty sure she was enjoying watching me squirm. Still getting me back for the GOTCHA! stamp, I think. That girl could hold a grudge like a Disney witch.

  So, in my hospital room at 5:07 in the morning, I did the unthinkable. I pleaded with the padres to let me go to school instead of staying home.

  The padres kept saying, “No!” and I kept saying, “Please!” and they said, “No!” and I said, “Please!” and eventually American Stepmom winked at Papi and said to me, “Well, we’ll see what the doctor says.”

  They thought the doctor was going to side with them, but—ha!—
Nurse Sotolongo came in with him. When she heard the question, she responded like the big sister I never had: “What, is Chacumbele here trying to fake his way out of school?”

  “No, no, certainly he can go to school,” the doctor replied. He looked, I swear, exactly like a garden gnome come to life. He just needed the pointy hat and the creepy, gnomey grin. But alas, no hat, and judging from his frown lines, the last time this guy smiled people were still complaining about how bad mastodon farts stink.

  Dr. Grumpgnome pressed the back of his hand to my forehead—why? I’d never had a fever—and said, “He’ll be fine. Just take it easy today, okay, son?”

  I couldn’t help myself. Guy got under my skin.

  I perked up like a child actor selling waffles on TV and said, “Oh boy, will I, Doctor! I will make sure to care for my person, just like you would want me to if you were my father and I were your son, as you just implied by calling me son. Thank you so much for everything, Father—I mean, Doctor!”

  I reached up and pulled his hand off my forehead and into a two-handed handshake. I mean, I was churning butter with his arm.

  “Yes, ahem, well, you’re welcome…young…man…” he said, struggling to free his hand. Three, four, five yanks, and—finally!—on the sixth, he pulled free. He shook his body out like a wet rooster and straightened the stethoscope around his neck.

  Then he shot my parents a dirty look—one of those Can’t you control your child? stares. “There’s some discharge paperwork,” he told them, like it was their fault or something. “Come with me.” Then he waddled out of the room as fast as his lawn-gnome legs would take him.

  The padres looked at each other, shrugged, and followed him out.

  Once the door had shut itself, Nurse Sotolongo held out her hand and gave me mal de ojo. “Hand it over.”

  How in the name of extra-large pants did she always know where to look?

  Huffing, I put the doctor’s watch in her hand and said, “I was going to give it back to him.”

  “Yeah, well, now I’m going to give it back to him.” But then her eyes got as thin as a fox’s. “Later. If he’s nice to me.”

  Oh, really? “Is he usually nice to you?” I asked.

  She tilted her head and looked at the ceiling. “Could be nicer.”

  American Stepmom drove us home like the trunk of the car was on fire. We got there a little after 5:30 a.m., and all three of us had to be out the door again by seven.

  The Coral Castle has like a billion bathrooms, which is great, but it has just one itty-bitty teeny-weeny water heater for the whole place. Even if you are the only one showering, you get about twenty-two seconds before the showerhead starts chucking icicles at you. And with three of us showering? We were about to start the next ice age.

  But none of us was going to give up a chance to shower. All three of us were washing freaks. Papi’s always been a germophobe, and American Stepmom is addicted to exactly two things in life: hot cocoa and squeaky-clean hair.

  And me? I’m a teenager. If I don’t shower, I smell like Swamp Thing.

  So as soon as American Stepmom turned off the car, the three of us looked at each other in a shifty-eyed Wild West showdown. Then it was go time! We burst out of the car and raced for the bathrooms. First one in a shower would win twenty-two seconds of steamy bliss.

  I lost. I cranked the hot-faucet knob as far as it would go and was fire-hosed in the chest by a blast of water so cold I instantly turned into a Ken doll.

  I lathered and rinsed and, through chattering teeth, washed until I was pretty sure my pits wouldn’t kill anybody at school that day. A few kids might get brain damage if I raised my hand, but I couldn’t take the cold a second longer.

  I got out, toweled off, and put on a bathrobe that was basically a rug with arm holes—a leftover from Connecticut that should have been way, way, way too hot for Miami. But I’m pretty sure just then it saved me from getting pneumonia.

  I hugged and patted myself all the way to the kitchen, where I knew there’d be hot cocoa waiting. That had been the rule since we moved here: Whoever gets the morning hot shower has to make the espresso (for Papi) and hot cocoa (for American Stepmom and me). Papi, apparently, had won: He must have taken one of his patented two-minute submarine showers, then finished the job with a hand towel soaked in rubbing alcohol. He wiped himself down with 91 percent isopropyl alcohol like it was his cologne. As he stood in the kitchen in his own rug of a bathrobe, you could almost see the air wavering around him.

  But he was holding out a mug of cocoa for me, so I wasn’t complaining. “Thanks, Papi,” I said, concentrating on keeping my hands from shaking as I cupped it. Twenty-seven grams of carbohydrates. I wouldn’t be able to have any more carbs during breakfast.

  “Ay, mijo, drink it fast, warm up, warm up!” he said. More to himself than to me he added, “We’ve got to get a new water heater in this house. You’re going to give your whole family hypothermia one day.”

  I’d already chugged half my cocoa before I answered. “I kind of like the cold showers. They’re exciting.”

  We both cocked our heads when we heard American Stepmom charging down the stairs, slapping her arms and repeating, “The brain is the queen of the body! The brain is the queen of the body!” Papi grabbed her cocoa off the counter and held it out. She zoomed into the kitchen with small, fast steps, her bathrobe rippling like a sail, and snatched the mug out of Papi’s hands. She poured it down her throat in great gulps.

  “Phew, baby!” she said once the hot chocolate had warmed her up enough. “Nothing like a cold shower to remind you you’re alive!”

  Papi set his cup on the kitchen counter and enveloped American Stepmom. He hugged like an amoeba: full absorption. “I know a few other ways to remind you you’re alive,” he said to her.

  They giggled into each other’s faces, only the steamy cocoa mug between them preventing a full-blown, breakfast-ruining make-out session then and there. Then, at the same time, they remembered I was in the room. They turned to face me, looking guilty.

  I smiled at them with lots of teeth. “Oh, don’t mind me,” I said in my best British accent. “I mean, you’ve done an absolutely ’orrible job of hiding your, um, shall we say, ‘physical affection’ from me up to now. All the emotional damage your public displays of affection could possibly do to me ’as been done a long time ago! So you just go ahead and snog like two vacuums in love, and I will stand ’ere and sip my cocoa and text my psychologist for another appointment. Right? Right. Right? Right.”

  “Don’t you need to go get dressed for school?” asked American Stepmom.

  “I do indeed.” I took a long slurp of cocoa.

  American Stepmom launched a kick at my smart-aleck butt—“Missed me, nyah nyah!”—and I took off for my room.

  “Wait a second, Sal,” Papi called. I stopped in my tracks. He had spoken softly, seriously. I came back into the kitchen, softly, seriously. “Yeah?”

  He and American Stepmom looked at each other for courage, then walked a step toward me, holding hands. “We need a straight answer from you. A yes or no will do, but you can add any details you want. Did you bring your mami back on purpose?”

  “No,” I answered. It was the truth, which is maybe why I was worried they wouldn’t believe me. So I took a minute to tell them about the hallucination I’d had on the way home after almost getting hit by a car.

  Papi shook his fist in the air. “Miami drivers!” he raged.

  He was convinced I had brought Mami on accident. But American Stepmom? Not so much. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling us everything?” she asked me.

  That would be because I haven’t told you about a certain chicken in a certain bully’s locker, I did not say out loud. What I did say out loud was “Hold on. You asked a question, and I answered it. So now I get to ask a question.”

  “Fair enough,” said Papi. “Shoot.”

  I took a second to figure out the exact wording I wanted. “If your new machine
can fix holes in the cosmic membrane, does that mean I don’t have to worry about breaking the universe anymore?”

  Both my parents looked at me like they were watching a horror movie called Sal Knows What You Talked about Last Night. American Stepmom couldn’t help but laugh. She ran behind me and gave me a squeeze. “I knew you were awake. You are such a stinker! You are so grounded!”

  “No, I’m not! You have to answer my question.”

  Papi shrugged. “I have no idea if the remembranation machine will work. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. And until we know, the answer is you should be very worried about breaking the universe. You should definitely do everything in your power not to break the universe. Even one calamitron is too many, at least until we know more. Yes? ¿Comprendes? ¿Estamos de acuerdo?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, shaking off American Stepmom and stalking to my room again. “I told you I didn’t bring Mami back on purpose. What do you want from me?”

  “They want you to stop,” I said to myself in front of my bedroom mirror.

  Look, I know I’m not perfect. I never said I was a saint. But I didn’t bring Mami over on purpose this time. I’d told the padres the truth.

  But not the whole truth. I put a big fat chicken in Yasmany’s locker. Papi and American Stepmom would not be happy if they found that out. They’d say I should have known better.

  And they were right. The hole in Yasmany’s locker hadn’t closed yet. What if it never closed?

  But here’s the thing. It felt like it would close. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew, when I meditated on it, that it wouldn’t be permanent. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I had to learn quick how to listen to my body, understand it better than anyone, even my padres, and do what was best for me. I had to learn to trust my feelings.

  Same thing. I was the one who could feel the fabric of the cosmos like a stage curtain in a pitch-black theater. I could feel it, and I could do things to it. Like open it.