Bullyville (15 page)

O
NE AFTERNOON, A
few weeks before spring break, I went to see Nola and she wasn't in her room.

Not only was her bed empty, but it looked as if she'd moved out. The stuffed animals were gone, and there was nothing there but the empty bed and the yellow walls that Nola claimed that she'd turned yellow to match. My first thought was that Nola was cured and they'd sent her home. I wondered if I would still be allowed to visit her, if we could still be friends. Even though I'd hoped
she would recover, somehow I'd never planned for the possibility that she might not be in the hospital forever, and that our friendship wouldn't go on exactly the way it was.

Then another thought occurred to me, and suddenly I was afraid that Nola had died. I was shaking so hard that, before I left the room, I had to go into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face because I thought I was going to throw up.

I ran to Mrs. Straus's office.

“Oh, Bart,” she said. “I'm so sorry. I've been trying to reach you all day, but I think I must have the wrong number for you.”

I turned my phone on and flipped it open: six missed calls.

“We're not allowed to keep our phones on at school,” I said.

“Oh, dear, I wish you had gotten the message,” she said. “Because I would have told you not to come.”

“Where's Nola?”

“She's had a little setback,” said Mrs. Straus. “She's been moved to the pediatric step-down unit.”

“What's a step-down unit?” I asked.

“It's a place where the nurses can watch the kids more closely,” said Mrs. Straus.

“Why do they need to watch her?”

“She was having some trouble breathing. Nothing serious, nothing that hasn't happened before—”

“What do you mean,
trouble
?”

Mrs. Straus put her arm around my shoulders.

“Bart, honey,” she said, “maybe you should just go home this afternoon. I'm not sure they'll let you see her in the unit. In fact, I'm almost positive they won't. I'll keep in touch with you by phone. I promise I'll call. I'll let you know how she's doing. And as soon as this little crisis is over, you can come visit her again.”

I didn't like the sound of it. I didn't like it at all.

“When is it going to be over?” I asked.

“What?” said Mrs. Straus.

“Nola's setback,” I said.

“That's hard to predict,” said Mrs. Straus.

“So how do you know it
will
be over?”

Mrs. Straus sighed. “Because this isn't the first time. It's happened before. And she's always pulled through. Nola's a strong girl.”

That made me feel a little better. But not much.

“I want to see her,” I said. “I'm not going home till I see her.”

“Okay, said Mrs. Straus. “You two are such good buddies, it might make Nola feel better to see you. But I can't promise anything. And if they
do
let you see her, it will only be for a few minutes.”

“Fine,” I said. “A few minutes will be fine. I just want to say hi.”

Mrs. Straus led me down the corridor to another wing of the hospital. And I could tell—just as I could tell about the visitors getting off at the different floors that first day in the elevator—
that things were more serious here, sadder and more dangerous. No one looked at anyone else, no one smiled, and the waiting room was filled with family members talking quietly on their cell phones, or holding on to one another, or dozing on the chairs, under blankets, as if they'd been there for days. As if they'd left their homes and moved into the waiting room and were camped out, waiting for some signal that would allow them to go see a desperately sick relative.

Mrs. Straus flashed her ID badge at a sensor on the wall, and a door swung open. I could feel the eyes of the waiting-room families drilling into the back of my head. Who were
we
to be getting this special privilege? No one, I wanted to tell them. Just a kid who trashed another kid's SUV and was getting punished, I realized now, in a way that was much more painful than anything Tyro's dad or the school could have dreamed up to make me pay.

Nola's bed was in a room with four other beds. In the bed nearest the window lay a kid who kept
yelling and groaning, Nola was hooked up to more tubes than she had been before. She had an oxygen mask over her face, and up above her bed were all sorts of monitors with charts and readouts and digital numbers that kept rising and falling. My first thought was that this was all a big mistake, that Nola didn't belong here, that she was supposed to be back in her room with the goofy stuffed animals and get-well cards.

Her eyes were closed. She was sleeping, breathing through the oxygen mask. I didn't want to wake her, I didn't want to see her here, and I didn't think she wanted me to see her like this. She looked sicker, frailer, even more yellow—

Suddenly Mrs. Straus piped up in her supercheery voice, “Nola! Look who's here to see you!”

Nola opened her eyes, and she was Nola again. She raised one eyebrow and motioned for me to come closer. She slipped the oxygen mask off her mouth and whispered in my ear, “Get me out of here! Now!”

“I'm working on it,” I said.

And I was. My brain was going a mile a minute, trying to come up with some new escape plan: Let's see. We might have to bop that nurse over the head, and steal her uniform, and…But that wouldn't work.

“Excuse me, young man, but are you a member of the immediate family?” It was a nurse.

I'm her brother, I wanted to say. I knew that would have been okay with Nola. But it would have felt weird, lying in front of Mrs. Straus, so I just shook my head no.

“I'm sorry,” said the nurse, “but only immediate family are allowed in the unit, and only for the first ten minutes after the hour.”

“We understand,” said Mrs. Straus. “Bart's a friend. He just wanted a word with Nola. We're leaving right away.”

“See you tomorrow,” I told Nola, though I suddenly remembered that the next day was Saturday. Even if I could sneak into the unit, how would I get to the hospital?

“See you tomorrow,” Nola said. “Don't forget, okay?” And she winked.

 

That night, at dinner, I started telling Mom about what had happened with Nola that day, and I started crying. It was really embarrassing. Because ever since September, I'd been trying not to break down around Mom, no matter what.

People were doing enough crying in those days, and I felt that seeing me cry would only make things worse for Mom. But I couldn't help it, I kept seeing Nola in that room, with the kid yelling and moaning and the two other kids I couldn't even look at. I kept seeing her raise her eyebrow, and I recalled her asking me to get her out of there, even though we both knew that I couldn't get her out, I couldn't do anything, there was no way I could help her. Then I would remember her telling me not to forget about coming to see her tomorrow.

“I want to see her,” I told Mom.

“We can go tomorrow,” said Mom. “I'll drive
you to the hospital.”

“You don't need to come upstairs if you don't want to,” I said. It seemed like the wrong moment to introduce Mom to Nola. Mom would never know what Nola had really been like. The picture she'd have in her mind was Nola tied up to the tubes and monitors and hardly able to talk. And that wasn't Nola at all.

“Fine,” Mom said. “I'm sure there's a cafeteria. I'll get a cup of coffee and wait for you. I don't think they'll let you stay very long, anyway.”

“You're the greatest,” I told her.

“No,” said Mom. “
You
are. And I want you to know I'm really proud of you. I'm proud I raised a person like you.”

I wanted to thank her, to tell her it was because she was the way
she
was, but now it was all
much
too embarrassing, and I mumbled something and left the table.

“Put your dish in the sink,” said Mom, and somehow I knew that she knew what I wanted to say, and couldn't.

That night, I couldn't sleep. I kept having crazy dreams. You'd think I would have had hospital nightmares, after the day I'd had. But my dreams were full of bright colors and exotic animals and tropical sunsets. I woke in the middle of the night and thought: I'm dreaming Nola's dreams. It should have made me feel better, as if we were still in communication. But it only made me feel more frightened and alone.

T
HE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY
, Mom drove me to the hospital, just as she'd promised. I was worried that she'd forget she'd offered to wait in the cafeteria, and that she might insist on coming with me. I knew she'd want to be with me in case I had to deal with something difficult or painful. But she headed off to the cafeteria, saying, “Take as long as you want. As long as they let you. But don't get in anyone's way. I'll be here whenever you get back. Don't worry, I've got a book.”

For a moment I was afraid that I wouldn't be
able to find the room where they'd taken Nola, because I'd been so upset yesterday, and Mrs. Straus had led me—well, practically dragged me—to the right place. But in fact I found my way straight there, or at least to the waiting room, where, because it was the weekend, there were even more families than the day before. I hovered around by the locked door until a nurse went in, and I followed her. What did I have to lose? If they caught me, all they could do was kick me out.

After a few moments of trying to look like I knew where I was going, I found Nola's room. The kid by the window was still crying out in pain. I recognized the other two kids.

But now there was someone else in Nola's bed.

“Where is she?” I asked the nurse.

“Who?” the nurse said.

“Nola,” I said, and at that moment I realized that, after all this time, I didn't even know her last name. How would I find her? I felt as if I had lost her and I would never see her again.

“Oh, right,” said the nurse. “I remember you. You're the kid who was here yesterday when you weren't supposed to be. The friend.”

“That's me,” I said. “The friend.”

“She's been moved to the ICU,” said the nurse.

“What's that?” I said, though I sort of knew.

“The intensive care unit.”

“What do you mean? Has she gotten worse? Is she okay?”

The nurse just stared at me, sympathetic and impatient at the same time. She had work to do. What part of “intensive care unit” was I not understanding?

“Is she going to get better?” I asked.

She said, “We hope so.”

“Where's the ICU?” I asked.

“Up on the fifteenth floor. But they're not going to let you in. For one thing—”

“Thanks,” I said, not wanting to waste the time it would take her to tell me why I wasn't going to be allowed to see Nola.

The elevator was taking forever to come. I gave up and ran up the stairs, so I was sweaty and panting by the time I got to the fifteenth floor. I found the locked door, and I waited till a guy in a white coat went in, and I sneaked in behind him. I was getting good at this, though it was a skill I hoped never to have to use again.

Once more I tried to look as if I knew what I was doing and where I was going, as if I was a close family member. I peeked into every cubicle I passed, but I couldn't see Nola. Most of the patients were ancient, and every one of them seemed to be in bad shape.

Finally, just as I turned a corner at the end of the hall, I saw something so shocking that I stopped dead because I simply could not understand, could not compute, what I was seeing. Gathered around one of the beds was a group of people I recognized. I knew them from somewhere, but it took me a really long time to figure out who they were.

It was Tyro and his family, his mother and
father, and a girl, a little younger than Tyro. They stood around a bed, looking down, and though my first impulse was to back away, I was still so confused that I went closer.

In the bed was Nola. Her eyes were shut, her chin was nearly touching her chest. She was breathing very rapidly and shallowly. And I knew, without anyone having to tell me, that she was dying.

But there were a lot of other things that I didn't know. Mysteries and riddles. All sorts of questions ran through my mind, and I wondered if I would ever find out the answers. Had the Bergens known that I was visiting Nola? Did Tyro know? Had Nola been aware that I was the person who'd scratched up her brother's Escalade? And all this time I'd imagined that I was the only one with secrets….

Just at that moment, the family spotted me. They looked surprised but not half so surprised as I was. I saw Tyro clench his fists and then unclench them as he looked at me. Then Tyro's
mom reached out and drew me in and pulled me to her side, and everyone began weeping softly.

“We're so grateful, Bart,” Tyro's mom said. “Nola told us all about your friendship.”

But Nola hadn't told me about
them
. She must have known the whole story, not at first, but maybe after she mentioned to her family she had a new friend, a visitor on some punishment detail for having done something bad at his school, and they'd put two and two together. It all added up, because maybe the experience of having a daughter in the hospital had made Tyro's dad think of the Reach Out program in the first place. But why hadn't anyone let me in on the truth?

Maybe Nola wanted it kept secret. Maybe she was afraid that if I knew she was Tyro's sister, after what he'd done to me—and maybe she knew what he was like, how mean he could be—I wouldn't want to be her friend or visit her anymore.

“You helped her so much,” Tyro's dad said. “You—” He couldn't go on. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. I didn't ever want to see
someone like Tyro's dad cry!

“You did so much to make her last days happier,” Mrs. Bergen added. Her last days! Was this another little detail that everyone but me had known all along? Did everybody know that Nola wasn't going to live very long, and I'd been the only one stupid enough to think she might get better and that we might go on being friends, and I could watch her get stronger and grow up?

I felt like they'd been plotting, and that this was a million times worse than Tyro and his gang scheming to torture or even kill me. I couldn't have said
why
it was worse, but I felt in my heart that it was, and I wanted to tell them how dishonest and selfish they'd been.

But of course I couldn't say anything like that to the grieving family of a little girl who wasn't going to live much longer. Anyway, they hadn't planned
all
of it. Who could have predicted that, of all the kids in the hospital, the one I would get close to was Nola? It could just as easily have been Ramón or Stimmer, the first kids I met. But it
couldn't
have been them, it could only have been Nola.

I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, and even under the circumstances—which, anyone would have admitted, were pretty extraordinary—the last thing in the world I wanted was to cry in front of Tyro. Even though Tyro was crying, along with everyone in his family. Even so, I would rather have died myself before I let the king of the Bullywell bullies see me dissolve in hysterics.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry” was all I could say. Then I turned and ran, back past the doctors and families, past the sick old people in their curtained alcoves. No one stopped me, no one said a word. A few nurses watched me streak past. I had the feeling that, if they'd worked there awhile, they'd seen everything. They were probably used to people tearing out of the ICU.

On the way down, the elevator stopped at every floor even though it was empty and no one got on. It seemed like another part of the plot. Only now it was a plot to keep me from reaching
my mom. Finally I found the main floor and the cafeteria, and there she was, reading her book at a table in the sunlight and looking completely beautiful.

“Bart!” she said. “Sweetheart, what's wrong?” But now I was crying too hard to talk, and at the same time I was strangely aware of the people around us at the other tables, watching me cry.

“Let's get out of here,” I told Mom.

“My thinking exactly,” Mom said.

She literally tucked me under her arm like a mother duck protecting her duckling, and whisked me out of the cafeteria and the hospital and clear across the parking lot. Neither of us said a word until we were in the car. Then I told her what had happened, how I'd gotten to the ICU and known Nola was dying, and how I'd seen her family and realized that she was Tyro's sister.

I could tell that Mom was stunned. At least
she
wasn't in on the secret. But she didn't say anything for a long time, she just kept driving calmly.

Finally she said, “None of that matters, honey.
Not Nola's parents, not Tyro. I mean,
of course
they matter. But right now, right at this moment, they're not what should matter to
you
. They're not what you should be thinking about. What's important is the friendship you had with Nola, the fact that you two cared about each other, and that you
did
make her life better, at the end when she really needed it.”

At this, I started crying again, and Mom was crying, too, but she kept on talking through her tears.

“And you'll never lose that,” she said. “It's something you'll have forever. The memory will be like your guardian angel, especially as time passes, and the painful stuff falls away, and you remember all the good things you had with that person.”

It struck me that what she was saying had something to do with her and Dad, or with me and Dad. Or with both of us and Dad.

I took a deep breath. Then I said, “Do you miss him?”

“Yes,” said Mom. “I always did. Even when I was angry. And now I'm not angry anymore. Just sad.”

“Me, too,” I said.

Mom said, “You think you'll feel like this forever. But you won't, honey. I promise. Little by little, day by day, you'll feel better. The pain will be a little duller, a tiny bit less sharp. On some days, you'll feel worse again, and you'll think it's as bad as it was at the beginning. But the next day, you'll feel a little more cheerful. And one day you'll actually feel happy again.”

“When will that be?”

“In time,” Mom said. “Time's got to pass.”

“I feel a little better already,” I said. And then we both got quiet as I tried to figure out why I'd said that. Because, in a way, it was true. And in another way, it wasn't. It felt good to finally talk about Dad with Mom. But I still missed my father, the pain hadn't dulled at all, and I knew that the sharp pain of missing Nola was only just beginning.