فصل چهارم

CHAPTER 4

WILL

I rub my eyes sleepily, clicking on another video, my half-eaten tray of eggs and bacon sitting cold on the table next to me. I’ve been up all night watching her videos, one after the other. It’s been a Stella Grant marathon, even with the lame CF content.

Scanning the sidebar, I click on the next one.

This one’s from last year, the lighting ridiculously dark, except for the bright flash of her phone’s camera. It looks like a fundraising event, held at a dimly lit bar. There’s a huge banner dangling over a stage reading: SAVE THE PLANET—SUPPORT EARTH DAY.

The camera focuses on a man playing an acoustic guitar, sitting casually on a wooden stool, while a curly-brown-haired girl sings. I recognize them both from all the videos I’ve watched.

Stella’s dad and her sister, Abby.

The view spins onto Stella, a big smile on her face, her teeth as white and even as I predicted. She’s wearing makeup, and I cough in surprise at how different she looks. It’s not the makeup, though. She’s happier. Calmer. Not like she’s been in person.

Even the nose cannula looks good on her when she smiles like that.

“Dad and Abby! Stealing the show! If I die before I’m twenty-one, at least I’ve been in a bar.” She swings the camera to show an older woman with the same long brown hair sitting next to her in a bright-red booth. “Say hi, Mom!” The woman waves, giving the camera a big grin.

A waitress passes by their table and Stella waves her down. “Ah, yes. I’ll take a bourbon, please. Neat.” I snort as her mom’s voice screams out a “No, she won’t!”

“Ahh, nice try, Stella,” I say, laughing as a bright light comes on, illuminating their faces.

The song in the background ends and Stella begins clapping manically, turning the camera to show her sister, Abby, smiling at her from the stage.

“So, my little sister, Stella, is here tonight,” she says, pointing directly at Stella. “As if fighting for her own life isn’t enough, she’s going to save the planet, too! Come show ‘em whatcha got, Stella!” Stella’s voice comes through my speakers, confused and shocked. “Uh, did you guys plan this?” The camera swings back to her mom, who grins. Yep.

“Go on, baby. I’ll film it!” her mom says, and everything swings out of focus as Stella hands over the phone.

Everyone in the room cheers as she pulls her portable oxygen concentrator onto the stage, her sister, Abby, helping her maneuver up the steps and into the spotlight. She adjusts her cannula nervously as her dad hands her a microphone, before she turns to the crowd and speaks. “This is a first for me. In front of a crowd, anyway. Don’t laugh!” So, naturally, everyone laughs, including Stella. Only, her laugh is filled with nerves.

She looks over at her sister warily. Abby says something to her that the microphone just barely picks up.

“Bushel and a peck.”

What does that mean?

It works, though, and like magic the nervousness melts away from Stella’s face.

Her dad starts to strum away at his guitar and I hum along before my brain even consciously registers what they’re singing. Everyone in the audience is swaying along too, heads moving left and right, feet tapping with the beat.

“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord . . .”

Wow. They both can sing.

Her sister is rocking this clear and strong and powerful voice, while Stella’s is breathy and soft, smooth in all the right ways.

I hit pause as the camera closes in on Stella’s face, all her features coming alive in the glow of the spotlight. Carefree, and smiling, and happy, up there onstage next to her sister and her dad. I wonder what made her so . . . uptight yesterday.

I run my fingers through my hair, taking in her long hair, the shadow of her collarbone, the way her brown eyes shine when she smiles. Her adrenaline gives her face a twinge of color, her cheeks a bright, exhilarated pink.

Not gonna lie. She’s pretty.

Really pretty.

I look away and—wait a second. There’s no way. I highlight the number with my cursor.

“A hundred thousand views? Are you kidding me?”

Who is this girl?

Not even an hour later, my first post-all-nighter nap was interrupted by a blaring alarm down the hall, and then my second attempt was foiled later by my mom and Dr. Hamid busting into my room for an evening visit. Bored, I stifle a yawn and stare out at the empty courtyard, the cold winds and the forecast of snow driving everyone inside.

Snow. At least that’s something to look forward to.

I rest my head against the cool glass, eager for the world outside to be covered in a blanket of white. I haven’t touched snow since the first time my mom shipped me off to a top-of-the-line treatment facility to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug to fight B. cepacia. It was in Sweden, and they’d been perfecting this thing for half a decade.

Clearly, it wasn’t “perfected” enough, because I was out of there and back home in about two weeks flat.

At this point I don’t remember much from that particular stay. The only thing I remember from most of my hospital trips is white. White hospital sheets, white walls, white lab coats, all running together. But I do remember the mountains and mountains of snow that fell while I was there, the same white, only beautiful, less sterile. Real. I’d been dreaming of going skiing in the Alps, lung function be damned. But the only snow I got to touch was on the roof of my mom’s Mercedes rental.

“Will,” my mother’s voice says, sternly, cutting right through my daydream of fresh powder. “Are you listening?” Is she kidding?

I turn my head to look at her and Dr. Hamid, and nod like a bobblehead even though I haven’t heard a single word this entire time. They’re going over my first test results since I started the trial a week or so ago, and as usual, nothing’s changed.

“We need to be patient,” Dr. Hamid says. “The first phase of clinical trials on humans started just eighteen months ago.” I eye my mother, watching her nod eagerly, her short blond bob moving up and down at the doctor’s words.

I wonder how many strings she had to pull and how much money she had to throw away to get me into this.

“We’re monitoring him, but Will needs to help us. He needs to keep the variables in his life to a minimum.” Her eyes focus on me, her thin face serious. “Will. The risks of cross-infection are even higher now so—” I cut her off. “Don’t cough on any other CFers. Got it.”

Her black eyebrows jut down as she frowns. “Don’t get close enough to touch them. For their safety, and yours.” I hold up my hand in mock pledge, reciting what could probably be the CF motto by this point, “Six feet at all times.” She nods. “You got it.”

“What I’ve got is B. cepacia, making this conversation and void.” That’s not going to change anytime soon.

“Nothing is impossible!” Dr. Hamid says enthusiastically. My mom eats this line up. “I believe that. You need to believe it too.” I pair an over-the-top smile with a thumbs-up, before turning it into a thumbs-down and shaking my head, the smile slipping off my face. It’s such bullshit.

Dr. Hamid clears her throat, looking at my mom. “Right. I’ll leave this to you.” “Thank you, Dr. Hamid,” my mom says, shaking her hand eagerly, like she just managed to sign a contract for her most burdensome client.

Dr. Hamid gives me a final thin-lipped smile before leaving. My mom spins around to look at me, her blue eyes piercing, voice biting. “It took a lot of effort to get you into this program, Will.” If by “effort” she means writing a check that could send a small village to college, then she definitely put in quite a bit of effort just so I could be a human petri dish.

“What do you want? A thank-you for shoving me in another hospital, wasting more of my time?” I stand up, walking over to face her. “In two weeks I’ll be eighteen. A legal adult. You won’t hold the reins anymore.” For a second she looks taken aback, then her eyes narrow at me. She grabs her latest Prada trench coat off the chair by the door, pulling it on and glancing back to look at me. “I’ll see you on your birthday.” I lean out the doorway, watching her go, her heels clicking off down the hallway. She stops at the nurses’ station, where Barb is flipping through some papers.

“Barb, right? Let me give you my cell,” I hear her say as she opens her purse, grabbing her wallet from inside. “If the Cevaflomalin doesn’t work, Will may . . . become a handful.” When Barb doesn’t say anything, she pulls a business card out of her wallet. “He’s been disappointed so many times already, and he’s expecting to be disappointed again. If he’s not complying, you’ll call me?” She flicks the business card onto the counter before tossing a hundred on top of it like this is some fancy restaurant and I’m a table that needs to be fawned over. Wow. That’s just great.

Barb stares at the money, raising her eyebrows at my mother.

“That was inappropriate, wasn’t it? I’m sorry. We’ve been to so many . . .”

Her voice trails off, and I watch as Barb takes the business card and the money off the counter, meeting my mother’s gaze with the same look of determination she gives me when she’s forcing me to take some medicine. “Don’t worry. He’s in good hands.” She presses the hundred back into my mother’s hand, pocketing the business card and looking past my mother to meet my eyes.

I duck back inside my room, closing the door behind me and tugging at the neck of my T-shirt. I pace over to the window, and then back over to sit down on my bed, and then back over to the window, pushing back the blinds as the walls start to close in on me.

I need to get outside. I need air that’s not filled with antiseptic.

I throw open my closet door to grab a hoodie, pulling it on and peering out at the nurses’ station to see if the coast is clear.

No sign of Barb or my mom anymore, but Julie’s on the phone behind the desk, in between me and the exit door that will take me straight to the only stairwell in this building that leads to the roof.

I close my door quietly, creeping down the hall. I try to duck down lower than the nurses’ station, but a six-foot dude attempting to stay low and sneak around is about as subtle as a blindfolded elephant. Julie looks up at me and I press my back up against the wall, pretending to camouflage myself. Her eyes narrow at me as she moves the phone away from her mouth. “Where do you think you’re going?” I mime walking with my fingers.

She shakes her head at me, knowing I’ve been confined to the third floor since I fell asleep by the vending machines over in Building 2 last week and caused a hospital-wide manhunt. I put my hands together, making a pleading motion and hoping the desperation pouring out of my soul will convince her otherwise.

At first, nothing. Her face remains firm, her gaze unchanging. Then she rolls her eyes, throwing me a face mask before waving me along to freedom.

Thank god. I need to get out of this whitewashed hell more than I need anything.

I give her a wink. At least she’s actually human.

I leave the CF wing, pushing open the heavy door to the stairwell and taking the concrete steps by twos even though my lungs are burning after just one floor. Coughing, I pull at the metal railing, past the fourth floor, and the fifth, and then sixth, finally coming to a big red door with a huge notice stamped onto it: EMERGENCY EXIT. ALARM WILL SOUND WHEN DOOR IS OPENED.

I grab my wallet from my back pocket, taking out a tightly folded dollar that I keep in there for moments like these. I reach up and wedge the bill into the frame’s alarm switch so the alarm doesn’t go off, then I open the door just a crack and slide through onto the rooftop.

Then I bend down to put my wallet in between the door and the jamb so it doesn’t slam shut behind me. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way before.

My mom would have a heart attack if she saw I was using the Louis Vuitton wallet she got me a few months ago as a doorstop, but it was a stupid gift to give someone who never goes anywhere but hospital cafeterias.

At least as a doorstop it gets used.

I stand up, taking a deep breath and automatically coughing as the cold, harsh winter air shocks my lungs. It feels good, though, to be outside. To not be trapped inside monochrome walls.

I stretch, looking up at the pale-gray sky, the predicted snowflakes finally drifting slowly through the air and landing on my cheeks and hair. I walk slowly to the roof’s edge and take a seat on the icy stone, dangling my legs off the side. I exhale a breath I feel like I’ve been holding since I got here two weeks ago.

Everything’s beautiful from up here.

No matter what hospital I go to, I always make it a point to find a way to get to the roof.

I’ve seen parades from the one in Brazil, the people looking like brightly colored ants as they danced through the streets, wild and free. I’ve seen France sleep, the Eiffel Tower shining brightly in the distance, lights quietly shutting off in third-floor apartments, the moon drifting lazily into view. I’ve seen the beaches in California, water that goes on for miles and miles, people basking in the perfect waves first thing in the morning.

Every place is different. Every place is unique. It’s the hospitals I’m seeing them from that are the same.

This town isn’t the life of the party, but it feels sort of back-roads homey. Maybe that should make me feel more comfortable, but it’s only making me more restless. Probably because for the first time in eight months, I’m a car ride away from home. Home. Where Hope and Jason are. Where my old classmates are slowly chugging their way to finals, shooting for whatever Ivy League school their parents selected for them. Where my bedroom, my freaking life, really, sits empty and unlived in.

I watch the headlights of the cars driving past on the road next to the hospital, the twinkling holiday lights in the distance, the laughing kids sliding around on the icy pond next to a small park.

There’s something simple in that. A freedom that makes my fingertips itch.

I remember when that used to be me and Jason, sliding around on the icy pond down the street from his house, the cold sinking deep into our bones as we played. We’d be out there for hours, having contests to see who could slide farther without falling, chucking snowballs at each other, making snow angels.

We made the most of every minute until my mom inevitably showed up and dragged me back inside.

The lights flick on in the hospital courtyard, and I glance down to see a girl sitting inside her room on the third floor, typing away on a laptop, a pair of headphones sitting overtop her ears as she concentrates on her screen.

Wait a second.

I squint. Stella.

The cold wind tugs at my hair, and I put my hood up, watching her face as she types.

What could she possibly be working on? It’s a Saturday night.

She was so different in the videos I watched. I wonder what changed. Is it all of this? All of the hospital stuff? The pills and the treatments and those whitewashed walls that push in on you and suffocate you slowly, day by day.

I stand up, balancing on the edge of the roof, and peer at the courtyard seven stories down, just for a moment imagining the weightlessness, the absolute abandon of the fall. I see Stella look up through the glass and we make eye contact just as a strong gust of wind knocks the air right out of me. I try to take a breath to get it back, but my shitty lungs barely take in any oxygen.

What air I do get catches in my throat and I start to cough. Hard.

My rib cage screams as each cough pulls more and more air from my lungs, my eyes starting to water.

Finally, I start to get control of it, but—

My head swims, the edges of my vision going black.

I stumble, freaked out, whipping my head around and trying to focus on the red exit door or the ground or anything. I stare at my hands, willing the black to clear away, the world to come back into view, knowing the open air over the edge of the roof is still barely an inch away.