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CHAPTER 2

WILL

“All right, I’ll see you guys later,” I say, winking at Jason and closing the door to my room to give them some privacy. I come face-to-face with the empty sockets of the skull drawing on my door, an O2 mask slung over its mouth, with the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” written under it.

That should be the slogan for this hospital. Or any of the other fifty I’ve been in for the past eight months of my life.

I squint down the hallway to see the door swinging shut behind the girl I saw moving into a room down the hall earlier today, her scuffed white Converse disappearing onto the other side. She’d been by herself, lugging a duffel bag big enough for about three fully grown adults, but she actually looked kind of hot.

And, let’s be honest here. It’s not every day you see a remotely attractive girl hanging around a hospital, no more than five doors down from yours.

Looking down at my sketchbook, I shrug, rolling it up and stuffing it into my back pocket before heading down the hallway after her. It’s not like I have anything better to do, and I’m certainly not trying to stick around here for the next hour.

Pushing through the doors, I see her making her way across the gray tile floor, waving and chatting to just about everyone as she goes, like she’s putting on her own personal Thanksgiving Day Parade. She steps onto the large glass elevator, overlooking the east lobby, just past a large, decked-out Christmas tree they must’ve put up early this morning, long before the Thanksgiving leftovers were even eaten.

Heaven forbid they leave up the giant turkey display for even a minute longer.

I watch as her hands reach up to fix her face mask while she leans over to press a button, the doors slowly closing.

I start climbing the open stairs by the elevator, trying not to run into anyone as I watch it chug steadily to the fifth floor. Of course. I run up the stairs as fast as my lungs will carry me, managing to get to the fifth floor with enough time to go into a serious coughing fit and recover before she exits the elevator and disappears around a corner. I rub my chest, clearing my throat and following her down a couple of hallways and onto the wide, glass-encased bridge leading to the next building.

Even though she just got here this morning, she clearly knows where she’s going. Judging from her pace and the fact she apparently knows every single person in the building, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were actually the mayor of this place. I’ve been here two weeks, and it took me until yesterday to figure out how to sneak safely from my room to the cafeteria over in Building 2, and I am by no means directionally challenged. I’ve been in so many hospitals over the years, figuring out how to get around them is what counts as a hobby to me now.

She stops short under a set of double doors reading EAST ENTRANCE: NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT and peeks inside before she pushes them open.

The NICU.

Odd.

Having kids when you have CF falls into the super difficult category. I’ve heard of girls with CF bumming hard over it, but going to stare at the babies she might never have is a whole other level.

That’s just fucking depressing.

There are a lot of things that piss me off about CF, but that’s not one of them. Pretty much all guys with CF are infertile, which at least means I don’t have to worry about getting anyone pregnant and starting my own shit show of a family.

Bet Jason wishes he had that going for him right now.

Looking both ways, I close the gap between me and the doors, peering inside the narrow window to see her standing in front of the viewing pane, her eyes focused on a small baby inside an incubator on the other side. Its fragile arms and legs are hooked up to machines ten times its size.

Pushing open the door and sliding inside the dimly lit hallway, I smile as I watch Converse girl for a second. I can’t help but stare at her reflection, everything beyond the glass blurring as I look at her. She’s prettier close up, with her long eyelashes and her full eyebrows. She even makes a face mask look good. I watch as she brushes her wavy, sandy-brown hair out of her eyes, staring at the baby through the glass with a determined focus.

I clear my throat, getting her attention. “And here I thought this was gonna be another lame hospital filled with lame sickies. But then you show up. Lucky me.” Her eyes meet mine in the reflection of the glass, surprise filling them at first, and then almost immediately changing to something resembling disgust. She looks away, back at the baby, staying silent.

Well, that’s always a promising sign. Nothing like actual repulsion to start off on the right foot.

“I saw you moving into your room. Gonna be here awhile?”

She doesn’t say anything. If it wasn’t for the grimace, I’d think she didn’t even hear me.

“Oh, I get it. I’m so good looking you can’t even string a sentence together.” That annoys her enough to get a response.

“Shouldn’t you be procuring rooms for your ‘guests’?” she snaps, turning to face me as she angrily pulls her face mask off.

She takes me off guard for a second, and I laugh, surprised by how up-front she is.

That really pisses her off.

“You rent by the hour, or what?” she asks, her dark eyes narrowing.

“Ha! It was you lurking in the hall.”

“I don’t lurk,” she fires back. “You followed me here.”

It’s a valid point. But she definitely lurked first. I pretend to be taken aback and hold up my hands in mock defeat. “With the intent of introducing myself, but with that attitude—” “Let me guess,” she says, cutting me off. “You consider yourself a rebel. Ignoring the rules because it somehow makes you feel in control. Am I right?” “You’re not wrong,” I shoot back before leaning against the wall casually.

“You think it’s cute?”

I grin at her. “I mean, you must think it’s pretty adorable. You stood in the hallway an awfully long time staring.” She rolls her eyes, clearly not entertained by me. “You letting your friends borrow your room for sex isn’t cute.” Ah, so she’s a real goody two shoes.

“Sex? Oh, heavens no. They told me they would be holding a slightly rowdy book club meeting in there for the better part of an hour.” She glares at me, definitely not amused by my sarcasm.

“Ah. So that’s what this is about,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “You have something against sex.” “Of course not! I’ve had sex,” she says, her eyes widening as the words tumble out of her mouth. “It’s fine—” That is the biggest lie I’ve heard all year, and I’m practically surrounded by people who sugarcoat the fact that I’m dying.

I laugh. “ ’Fine’ isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but I’ll take common ground where I can get it.” Her thick eyebrows form a frown. “We have nothing in common.”

I wink, having way too much fun pissing her off. “Cold. I like it.” The door bangs open and Barb busts through, making both of us jump in surprise at the sudden noise. “Will Newman! What are you doing up here? You’re not supposed to leave the third floor after that stunt you pulled last week!” I look back at the girl. “There you go. A name to go with your little psych profile. And you are?” She glowers at me, quickly pulling her face mask back over her mouth before Barb notices. “Ignoring you.” Good one. Ms. Goody Two Shoes has some spunk.

“And clearly the teacher’s pet, too.”

“Six feet at all times! You both know the rules!” I realize I’m too close and take a step back as Barb reaches us, coming into the space and the tension between us. She turns to look at me, her eyes narrowing. “What do you think you’re doing up here?” “Uh,” I say, pointing at the viewing window. “Looking at babies?” She’s clearly not amused. “Get back to your room. Where is your face mask?” I reach up to touch my maskless face. “Stella, thank you for keeping your mask on.” “She didn’t five seconds ago,” I mutter. Stella glares at me over Barb’s head, and I give her back a big smile.

Stella.

Her name is Stella.

I can see Barb’s about to really ream me out, so I decide to make my exit. I’ve had more than enough lecturing for the moment.

“Lighten up, Stella,” I say, sauntering to the door. “It’s just life. It’ll be over before we know it.” I head out through the doors, across the bridge, and down C Wing. Instead of going back the long way, I hop on a much shakier, nonglass elevator, which I discovered two days ago. It spits me out right by the nurses’ station on my floor, where Julie is reading over some paperwork.

“Hey, Julie,” I say, leaning on the counter and picking up a pencil.

She glances up at me, giving me a quick look, before her eyes swing back down to the papers in her hands. “Just what were you up to?” “Eh, roaming the hospital. Pissing off Barb,” I say, shrugging and twirling the pencil around and around in my fingertips. “She’s such a hard-ass.” “Will, she’s not a hard-ass, she’s just, you know . . .”

I give her a look. “A hard-ass.”

She leans against the nurses’ station, putting a hand on her super-pregnant belly. “Firm. The rules matter. Especially to Barb. She doesn’t take chances.” I glance over to see the doors at the end of the hallway swing wide open again as Barb and the goody-goody herself step out.

Barb’s eyes narrow at me and I shrug innocently. “What? I’m talking to Julie.” She huffs, and the two of them walk off down the hallway toward Stella’s room. Stella fixes her face mask, looking back at me, her eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second.

I sigh, watching her go.

“She hates me.”

“Which one?” Julie asks, following my gaze down the hallway.

The door to Stella’s room closes behind the both of them, and I look back at Julie.

She gives me a look that I’ve seen about a million times since I got here. Her blue eyes fill with a mix between Are you crazy? and something very close to care.

Mostly Are you crazy? though.

“Don’t even think about it, Will.”

I glance down at the file sitting in front of her, the name jumping out at me from the upper left-hand corner.

Stella Grant.

“Okay,” I say like it’s no big deal. “Night.”

I stroll back to 315, coughing when I get there, the mucus thick in my lungs and throat, my chest aching from my excursion. If I had known I was going to be running a half marathon all around the hospital, I might’ve bothered to bring my portable oxygen.

Eh, who am I kidding?

I check my watch to make sure it’s been an hour before pushing open the door. I flick on the light, noticing a folded note from Hope and Jason on the bleach-white standard-issue hospital sheets.

How romantic of them.

I try not to be disappointed they’re already gone. My mom pulled me out of school and switched me to homeschooling with a side of international hospital tourism when I got diagnosed with B. cepacia eight months ago. As if my life span wasn’t already going to be ridiculously short, B. cepacia will cut off another huge chunk of it by making my shitty lung function deplete even faster than it already has. And they don’t give you new lungs when you have an antibiotic-resistant bacteria running rampant inside of you.

But “incurable” is only a suggestion to my mother, and she’s determined to find the needle-in-a-haystack treatment. Even if it means cutting me off from everyone.

At least this hospital is half an hour away from Hope and Jason, so they can come visit me on a regular basis and fill me in on everything I’m missing at school. Since I got B. cepacia, I feel like they’re the only ones in my life who don’t treat me like a lab rat. They’ve always been that way; maybe that’s why they’re so perfect for each other.

I unfold the note to see a heart and, in Hope’s neat cursive, “See you soon! Two weeks till your Big 18! Hope and Jason.” And that makes me smile.

“Big 18.” Two more weeks until I’m in charge. I’ll be off this latest clinical drug trial and out of this hospital and can do something with my life, instead of letting my mom waste it.

No more hospitals. No more being stuck inside whitewashed buildings all over the world as doctors try drug after drug, treatment after treatment, none of them working.

If I’m going to die, I’d like to actually live first.

And then I’ll die.

I squint at the heart, thinking about that fateful last day. Somewhere poetic. A beach, maybe. Or a rowboat somewhere in Mississippi. Just no walls. I could sketch the landscape, draw a final cartoon of me giving the middle finger to the universe, then bite the big one.

I toss the note back onto the bed, eyeing the sheets before giving them a quick whiff to be safe. Starch and bleach. Just the regular hospital eau de cologne. Good.

I slide into the squeaky leather hospital recliner by the window and push aside a heap of colored pencils and sketchbooks, grabbing my laptop from under a bunch of photocopied 1940s political cartoons I was looking at earlier for reference. I open my browser and type Stella Grant into Google, not expecting much. She seems like the type to have only the most private of Facebook pages. Or a lame Twitter account where she retweets memes about the importance of hand washing.

The first result, though, is a YouTube page called Stella Grant’s Not-So-Secret CF Diary, filled with at least a hundred videos dating back six years or so. I squint, because the page name looks weirdly familiar. Oh my god, this is that lame channel my mom sent me a link to a few months ago in an attempt to rally me into taking my treatments seriously.

Maybe if I’d known she looked like that . . .

I scroll down to the first entry, clicking on a video with a thumbnail of a young Stella wearing a mouthful of metal and a high ponytail. I try not to laugh. I wonder what her teeth look like now, considering I’ve never seen her smile.

Probably pretty nice. She seems like the type who would actually wear her retainer at night instead of letting it collect dust on some bathroom shelf.

I don’t think mine even made it home from the orthodontist.

I hit the volume button and her voice comes pouring out of my speakers.

“Like all CFers, I was born terminal. Our bodies make too much mucus, and that mucus likes to get into our lungs and cause infections, making our lung function de-teri-orate.” The young girl stumbles over the big word before flashing the camera a big smile. “Right now, I’m at fifty percent lung function.” There’s a crappy cut, and she turns around on a set of stairs that I recognize from the main entrance of the hospital. No wonder she knows her way around here so well. She’s been coming here forever.

I smile back at the little girl even though that cut was the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen. She sits down on the steps, taking a deep breath. “Dr. Hamid says, at this rate, I’m gonna need a transplant by the time I’m in high school. A transplant’s not a cure, but it will give me more time! I’d love a few more years if I’m lucky enough to get one!” Tell me about it, Stella.

At least she’s got a shot.