Sloth

by James, Ella

  “Why would you want to write and sell a book?”

  “Maybe I was thinking of writing my memoir.”

  Kellan doesn’t need a memoir. Nothing’s wrong with him. I want to believe it so badly, I could almost convince myself. So I resent the nurse beside me, telling me about the unit’s rules. Arethea, her name is, and she’s pretty. She’s got brown hair, brown eyes, and this soft voice, with a lovely accent I can’t place.

  So it’s strange that I kind of want to throttle her. Doesn’t she know all this is bullshit? I would never let Kellan have cancer. I wouldn’t let him die. He’s perfect Kellan. He’s mine.

  You know Manning texted me? That girl is not his fucking girlfriend. She was Lyon’s girlfriend. Now she’s in medical school at Emory, which explains why she popped up in the parking deck that day.

  After she and Kellan’s Uncle Pace showed up at Kellan’s house—an intervention, where they begged him to seek treatment—Manning said Kellan was worried I’d find out. He wanted me to go away. He wanted to protect me. So he made up the bit about the pregnant girlfriend.

  “Cleo? Your hands seem clean to me,” Arethea says kindly. I look over my shoulder at her and find her face is tranquil. Kind and patient. Maybe even sympathetic. Something in me recoils.

  “You want to go inside?” she asks, passing a paper towel. “I think he’s sleeping.”

  It’s horrible, the stepping through the door. With every cell I have, I protest. My stomach twists into a knot. My forehead sweats. My heart hammers so hard I barely notice my surroundings: teeny tiny hallway, widening into a larger room with blue walls.

  He’s not in here. He’s not! I would believe that if I could. If I didn’t want to see him so badly. But I do. I want it more intensely than I fear it.

  I take soft steps down the tiny hall. I pause at the mouth of the room so I can listen to the beeping, breathe the strange, cool air. It smells like plastic, and some sort of cleaner.

  “Why is Daddy in that bed? It has a rail like Olive’s baby bed.”

  “He’s sleeping, honey.”

  “Will he sleep forever?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another long, slow step, and here I am. I blink at the wall of windows in front of me, then look left, at the TV mounted on the wall, beside an ocean print. Under the TV, there is a door. Maybe the bathroom. I suck a desperate breath back. I can feel gravity pulling harder on my body as I swing my gaze to the right.

  Kellan’s bed is empty. My throat tightens as I see the sheets tucked neatly, as if it’s not been used.

  He isn’t here? I knew it! That’s what my heart screams.

  But I see an IV pole. With IV bags hanging from the top. I see a rolling table with a newspaper, a black thermos. Both things are right beside a recliner. The plastic-textured chair is angled toward the room’s right wall. I can see the foot-rest part is out—and something wrapped in white on it.

  I walk closer. Hard to breathe.

  I don’t know what I think I’ll find, but as I come to stand in front of the recliner, I’m shocked and not surprised at all to find that the white bundle is Kellan’s legs… My eyes race over him, and down and up again, taking it in. Kellan lying on his right side, bundled up in sheets. They sag down his left bicep, so I can see how bruised his shoulder is.

  I blink a few times. Blurry. There are pillows propped behind his back and left side, cushioning him in this position, so all his weight is on the right side of his body. I can’t see under the sheet, but his ribs are hurt just like his shoulder. I remember from the ambulance.

  I rub my palm against my lips and blink, and his swollen shoulder blurs, as if the bruising is nothing but a watercolor. I could reach my fingers out and smudge it all away…

  And still, it’s easier to look there than at his face. Solemn face, closed eyes… His cheekbone and the skin around his left eye are bruised deep purple, almost black.

  Anger bubbles up in me, even as I step around the chair and sink into a crouch beside the right arm. My face is level with his now. When he opens his eyes, he’ll see me.

  Breathe, Cleo.

  The IV lines droop from the pole and trail beside me, disappearing into the sheets pulled up to Kellan’s throat. I check him over from this angle. He’s so still… His face so pale. Why is there a patch of gauze tapped at the base of his throat.

  Fuck. I suck another breath in.

  I watch his eyelids, watch his mouth. I can see his pulse throb over his brow.

  Wake up, baby. Look at me…

  My fingers flex. I need to touch him. Stroke his messy hair. He hasn’t shaved. He looks swarthy, like a wounded pirate. Does that mean he’s too hurt to get up? I blink quickly, and a tear drops down my cheek.

  His mouth tautens. It’s just a flicker of expression, there then gone, but it’s enough to make my hand reach out and grip the chair’s arm.

  I lean closer to the chair and mouth his name. I don’t mean to speak, but my throat is so tight, the sound comes out.

  His eyes stay closed, but he shifts his shoulders, the tiny movement just enough to make the white sheet droop. I can see his chest now. Pretty throat, his collarbone, and…shit. The sheet falls lower still, and I can see his chest. The IV lines join up at a small, white tube that’s punched into his chest, over his pec.

  Fuck!

  The IV tubes are threaded through his fingers, and his palm is pressed above his pec, as if he’s holding himself together.

  I tip my forehead toward the chair and sit there with my head bowed, hot tears dripping out my eyes.

  I’m in a knot. I want to scream.

  My palm trembles over his arm. I lean a little closer, till our faces are so close I feel his breath on my cheek.

  * * *

  Kellan

  Cleo is here. I might be dreaming, but... I think I’m not.

  I smell her tea perfume. I hear her voice. I try to.

  I have a fever. I can’t think because...the IV. If she’s here, then she can see me. I float up from where I’ve been and I can hear the beeps of the pulse ox machine.

  Pain flashes all through me. My face, my shoulder, ribs... My hips and back.

  I feel Cleo’s hand. I twitch, and I can feel the IV tubing tug. My chest is sore from where they put it in...

  Regret and shame.

  She knows.

  I can feel her fingers in my hair. Her fingers... being nice. Making me tired. But if I fall asleep, I’ll miss her. I peek and— fuck. Cleo—right here.

  I can see her see me, see her face go soft and sad. She murmurs, “Sweetheart.” Gentle fingers dance across my brow. “You’re sleepy, huh? You’ve got the good drugs going. That’s good.” She strokes my temple. My chest goes heavy with pleasure.

  “I wanted to tell you, Kell...I figured out about the letters. And R. I wanted to say...I understand. It’s crazy...like, a big surprise. But I’m not upset with you or anything.” Her cool fingers, sifting through my hair. “I talked to Manning just a little. It’s amazing, what you guys are doing. You’re amazing. I came to visit, but—” Her fingers dance like fog over my skin. I feel her face come up against mine, feel the warm rub of her cheek, and I’m surprised that she would…get so close. “I’m really here because...I think I’d like to stay with you. Umm...for a while.”

  I must be dreaming.

  I think Cleo’s crying, even as her soft hands stroke my hair. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t know. About all this, and R. I’m sorry I’m crying. I’ll be fine. I’m just...”

  I shut my eyes. I try not to feel her hands, so I won’t feel them when she goes.

  I float a little. All the Dilaudid. I try to stay, though. To stay near her.

  But I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see...her look at me.

  “Can you look at me, baby? I just want to see your eyes.” Her voice cracks. “If I can help you over to the bed... I want to lie down with you. You seem sort of uncomfortable in the chair.”

  My eyes drift open—I
see her, close but blurry—then they sink back shut...because Dilaudid. I want her. I want to lie with her. To have her touch me, but...I’m sweaty. So messed up. The last few days...have gotten bad…with pain.

  She strokes my cheek, and my throat aches with want.

  “I can help you get to the bed, or even call a nurse if you want. If you don’t want to snuggle, I’ll just leave you alone. Your shoulder, the left one, is it hurting? You keep moving it.”

  I do?

  She kisses my hair. I feel a sob build in my throat. She’s going to go soon. Godddamn.

  I sit up, gritting my teeth against the pain of my cracked ribs. I forget to hold the IV lines. They pull from where they’re threaded into my chest.

  I curl over my lap, holding my throbbing head. My heart pounds hard.

  “You...need to go.” My eyes roll toward her, the words slurring.

  I reach back for the IV pole, and miss it.

  “Hey…hang on.” She touches me. I shrink away. “Just let me put the leg-rest down, okay?”

  I grit my teeth as she does, and my legs lower. My hips… I brace against the chair’s arms, grunting as I stand. I shuffle as quickly as I can to the bed, but the rail is up. I have to move a lot to lay down. Ahh. It hurts…

  I feel the cold linen under my fever-warm body and curl up, shivering. I put my hand up to my face. I tell myself that anyone would go. She came, at least…

  And then I feel the mattress indent. My eyes lift slowly open. Cleo’s right in front of me. She melds herself around me, so my face is near her neck.

  “It’s okay,” she murmurs, one arm wrapping lightly around my back. Her hand curves around the back of my head. “Just go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  NINE

  Cleo

  If you’ve never been here, you can’t understand. How bad it hurts to watch someone you care for suffer so much.

  That first day, we don’t ever really talk. I hold Kellan, my arms encircling his shoulders, as the transplant team bustles around us, coming up with plans, adding and subtracting to and from his bloodstream via the three IV lumens that dangle from his chest. Arethea works around me when she checks his vitals and changes IV bags.

  And Kellan sleeps.

  I’m told they’re giving him a strong painkiller called Dilaudid. It makes his breathing weird and unsteady. Sometimes his eyelids flutter and he blinks at me with glassy eyes.

  Sometime later in the day, Arethea brings a wheelchair and I’m inducted into hospital hell when we take Kellan—and his IV bags—to a “procedure room” where he has to lie on his sore chest, his face in a pillow, his hands in mine, while a doctor does a bone marrow biopsy, digging into his back with this awful little metal rod until Kellan’s body tightens and trembles.

  He pushes his face into the white pillow and grips my hands. The doctor murmurs “almost there,” and Kellan moans. I can see the doctor move the little rod. Kellan’s hands around mine are tight enough to hurt.

  I squeeze his hands and bow my body over his. It doesn’t help. I can’t protect him. His little moans into the pillow make me feel ill, too.

  When they help him off the awful little cot, his face is bone white, his hair is sweaty, and he’s so sore, I think he almost cries moving back into the wheelchair.

  Back up in his room, it takes both Arethea and me to help him up onto the bed. Right after I crawl up beside him and start tucking the blankets around him, a whole team of new faces comes into the room.

  One of them, a tall, wide-shouldered man with salt and pepper hair and a blunt-featured face, is Dr. Willard, the leader of the transplant team, a native Texan who managed the pediatric ward when Kellan had his first bone marrow transplant here in 2011.

  He prods Kellan’s sore hips, eliciting a single, punchy sob from writhing Kellan.

  “What the fuck?” I gape, then glare at him. The fucking bastard.

  “Move over a little,” Dr. Willard tells me in his slow, low, Texan drawl. I scoot down by Kellan’s feet, sweating with rage.

  But then I watch the doctor crouch beside the bed and talk softly to Kellan. Dr. Willard clasps his forehead with a gentle hand and urges him to try another transplant—and another chemo trial.

  Kellan reaches for the doctor, and the doctor clasps his hand, and as they talk in murmurs, I realize how much I don’t know. What happened here last time? Manning told me Lyon died here. He’d been discharged already, but Kellan was still sick, so Lyon dropped by for a visit, I gathered.

  Why?

  And how?

  Why and how, any of this shit?

  It’s difficult to believe that the guy curled up in the bed is Kellan who disarmed me, strung me up from ropes, made me spiked hot chocolate.

  How the hell did he do all that with cancer running rampant, and the awful weight of not planning to treat it?

  What the fuck did he do? To deserve this?

  I know him—he’s strong and brave. He didn’t want to come back here. Would rather die first.

  I’m wondering what made him agree to fly to New York this time—if he even had a choice—when I hear the doctor talking about the different chemo drugs. Kellan asks something I can’t hear, despite being right by him, and the doctor murmurs, “Two are different. One’s Bleisic.”

  “Will it...be...like last time?” Kellan’s words are hoarse and slightly slurred, just barely loud enough for me to hear.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll send you on a good ole Dil vacation and this sweet girl—” the doctor nods at me— “will rub your back.”

  Kellan says something. The doctor looks around the room, at several younger doctors in white coats, and Arethea and a woman changing out the garbage can. “Everyone, we need a minute, just the two of us. And maybe her.” Dr. Willard nods at me.

  Kellan says something about, “hurt her,” but I can’t hear him as the room clears out.

  “She came here on her own, right?” the doctor asks him. Willard’s eyes flick to me, and Kellan nods once. “If she’s half as tough as you, she’ll do alright,” the doctor tells him.

  “You’re late to the ballgame,” Dr. Willard continues, “and I know you’re in a lot of pain right now, but once I get you in remission, all the bone pain will be gone. If it goes real bad, I’ll make sure you’re comfortable—but I think we can do this.”

  A few soft words from Kellan, and the doctor presses Kellan’s hand between his, arches his brows at me, and runs a finger over his wet eyes. And I know I should go.

  I’m scared and I should go. Protect myself. But that’s not what I do.

  TEN

  Cleo

  They start chemo while he sleeps that night. Arethea tells me he’s getting a huge dose of steroids with it, and I should expect him to be restless. I guess restless for someone on a Morphine-like painkiller is occasional twitching and a few soft moans.

  Sometime after Arethea’s 2 AM vitals check, he stirs behind me. He runs his hands over my arm and sides, the motion light and reverent.

  I’m breathless for a long moment as he settles around me. I think I understand. Why all great things are sad. Why silence aches. Why people lose their way. Why when I see a lone figure, I wonder who she’s missing and not who she’ll meet. Why babies die when they’re not touched. Why young girls cradle letters from strange boys with nameless pain upon their hearts.

  We’re not meant to be alone. We’re made with holes inside our souls. The only way to survive is to fill them. I think the catch is, you don’t get to choose with what.

  * * *

  Kellan

  I open my eyes. I think I opened my eyes... but I’m dreaming. Because I’m back at Sloan Kettering. I blink slowly in the dream and look around the room. The wrong room. The corner room. But dreams are like that.

  I inhale. Shut my eyes. It smells like... antiseptic. And the sheets. Hospital sheets with their smell: the stale, papery smell. That fucking smell sends a jolt of terror through me.

  Breathe.


  I have these dreams sometimes. I have to close my eyes and breathe.

  It’s not real, Kelly. It’s just a dream. My inner monologue is always Ly’s voice. Thinking of him...that hurts, too.

  I open my eyes. There’s the wall, TV, rocking chair.

  Cold fear sweeps me. My body tightens and...my legs. My hips and back... They hurt.

  Fuck. Fuck me. All the sweat and... I’m wet. Water. I can see it spray over the windshield.

  Cleo. Cleo...water.

  I look down, but I know already what I’ll see. It’s not my old line. Not my old line in my chest. This central line is new.

  I start to pant. I can feel the pain of each breath in my ribs. My sore cheek. I’m on my side. I’m in a bed. Hospital bed.

  “Oh God.” I think I’m going to be sick. I try to get up off the bed. I try to throw my legs over the side but something’s—

  “Kellan?”

  Cleo.

  Her hands cup my cheeks. My chest pumps, each deep breath a lance of pain. I look down at my panting chest.

  Cleo’s fingers skate over my sore jaw. Her eyes shine in the dark. “Are you okay?”

  I inhale against her hair and pull her closer. I don’t mean to, but I moan. “This room.”

  My fingers play with the silky fabric of my football jersey... I feel my brother climb into bed. His thin hands on my neck and shoulders. “The day before...” he died “he said he loved me.” He was worried about me. Lyon was better. I was sick. That’s why they came that day. To play checkers...

  I look down at Cleo, pressed against my chest, and raise my knees around her, pinning her between my thighs so she won’t go anywhere.

  I don’t know whose mouth finds whose...but our lips, our tongues are mingling. I stroke her velvet cheek and tangle with her tongue and clutch her head and pull her closer. I can smell her breath, it smells like peppermint. Her tiny fingers play at my nape. I deepen the kiss. I’m damp with sweat, my eyes are wet... I can’t stop. Can’t stop kissing her. She can’t stop kissing me. I’m dizzy.