Invincible (10 page)

HarperCollins Publishers

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“IT'S A GOOD SIGN THAT SHE'S STILL IN HER ROOM,” CALEB says. “They haven't had to take her to . . .” His voice trails off midsentence and his eyes are confused, searching.

I put my hand on his arm. “Caleb?”

After a few moments, he's able to make eye contact and come back to me. “Sorry,” he says. “I got stuck.”

“Don't be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Just a few seconds.”

“I must look like such a freak.”

“Not at all. And you're right, by the way. When you said it's a good sign that Stella's still in her room.” I can always count on Caleb to see the positive in everything, even if his brain isn't fully working.

We've been sitting in my room watching TV for the last hour. The meeting with our parents was cut short by Stella's emergency, then everyone was distracted, so I guess we've avoided punishment for now. I saw the relief in Kasey's eyes when my parents came in and she knew her shift with me had ended. She does not have endurance for things like this. She has not been woken in the middle of the night by the loudspeakers calling “Code Blue”; she has not had to witness parents finding out their kid didn't make it through surgery; she has never seen a stretcher wheeled down the hall carrying the too-tiny sheeted figure.

But that doesn't make it easier for us. It doesn't make it less painful. Just less shocking. There is a place inside us already ready for this kind of pain. But it is still pain.

Will called from baseball practice, but even he couldn't quite figure out what to say. What is a guy—even one as sweet as Will—supposed to say to his girlfriend when her secret best friend forgets how to breathe? My parents were kind enough to hold off on the lecture when they found out about Stella, and went home early to have dinner with Jenica. Now Caleb and I are just waiting for someone to tell us something, even though we know they're not allowed to because of some stupid patient privacy law that does not recognize the need-to-know of best friends.

Around seven, Nurse Suzanne comes in. Caleb jumps up and gives her a hug. “Hey, buddy,” she says. “Rough day, huh?”

“Have you heard anything?” I say.

“She's doing okay,” she says. “You know I can't tell you any more than that.”

“Can—,” Caleb says, then pauses for a long time with his mouth open as his brain tries to find where it hid the next word. “See?” he finally says.

Suzanne puts her hand on Caleb's shoulder. “Maybe tomorrow,” she says. “I told her only one visitor tonight and she's asking for Evie. Sorry, kid.”

He nods, smiling so sweetly I can almost believe his feelings aren't hurt.

The first thing Stella says when Suzanne wheels me into her room is, “I look like Gollum.”

“Space Gollum,” I say. Tubes stick out of her nose and the portacath in her chest, connecting to various machines and bags of fluids. Her bald head is bare. “You look like a cyborg.” She is half machine. The monitor shows her heartbeat. The beep of her pulse harmonizes with the wet sucking of her oxygen machine.

“Space Gollum,” she chuckles. As well as someone with tubes in her nose can chuckle. “You're funny, Cheerleader.”

“Why aren't you wearing your hat?”

“Don't feel like it.”

Stella's propped up in bed, her hospital gown hanging off her thin frame. Her shoulder sticks out, barely as thick as a golf ball. In all these months we've been in and out of the hospital together, I've never seen her in a hospital gown. She has never let herself look this sick.

“Nice dress,” I say. First rule of being a Cancer Kid: we have to say the obvious things everyone else is too afraid to say.

“They cut off my favorite jeans,” she says. “Can you believe that? They didn't even have to do anything to me below the waist, but they cut them anyway. These assholes in here are always trying to get me naked.”

“'Cause you're hot.”

“Are you flirting with me? Better not. Cole will kick your ass. Ha-ha.” Her voice breaks and her eyes get shiny. “Fuck!” she says, rubbing her eyes. Even though she is weak, her voice manages enough anger to push the sadness away. “My fucking parents. They told the hospital not to let Cole visit me. He's never seen me in here. He can't come now. I won't see him before—” She covers her face with her beautiful hands, but her long fingers are too thin to hide behind. “Fuck!”

“We'll sneak him in,” I say. “Give me his number.”

“No.” She shakes her head. She looks up at me and smiles. “It's okay. Don't worry about me. You worry about enough people already.”

Just when I think the silence will consume us, Stella says, “They got me on some good drugs.”

“Yeah?”

“I basically feel like a giant marshmallow.”

“That's good.” I look around Stella's room and see so much familiar—the counter and sink, the tiny closet, the computer and monitors, the blood pressure machine, the TV on the wall, the bed with all its rails and buttons, the other half of the room where it's all repeated.

“Where's your roommate?” I ask.

“They moved her in with Gwyn down the hall. Good riddance is what I say. When that girl wasn't crying, she was snoring. And her mom smelled like hot dogs.”

Neither of us acknowledges what we know the move really means. They only make someone change rooms if they think their roommate is dying.

Stella hasn't decorated her side of the room like most of us long-term patients. There are no pictures of Cole or her friends and bandmates, none of whom her parents approve of. Stella wouldn't let them baby her with stuffed animals or, god forbid, religious paraphernalia. The only sign of her is her hat, alone, on the bedside table.

“You know what's weird?” Stella says. “You never come to my room. I always come to yours. You've always been the sickest one. We've always had to come to you.” I don't know what to say
to that. “Now look at you,” she says, smiling. “You're going to be running in a few days. Or what is it you do? Cheerleading? Can that be a verb? You're going to be cheerleading in no time.”

“I'm not sure that's the first thing I'd do if I could walk.”

“Oh yeah, you'd have to screw that cutie boyfriend of yours.”

“Stella!”

“That's what I'd do. Except not your boyfriend. Mine.”

“It's weird you call him your boyfriend.”

“Why? That's what he is.”

“Sorry, it's kind of confusing to me.”

“Maybe it's good to be confused sometimes.”

“You never seem confused.”

She considers this for a moment. “I get confused sometimes. About all sorts of things. But I just don't let it win. I figure it's better to make a decision and do something rather than just sitting around thinking about it forever. Even if it turns out to be the wrong decision. Then at least I'll be moving. At least I'll learn something, right? You don't learn much sitting on your ass waiting for a sure thing.”

“You are very wise, Space Gollum,” I say as I take her hand in mine, even though I know she hates mushy stuff.

“Shut up,” she says, swatting my hand away. “I don't need you pining away at my sickbed. Suzanne!” she shouts into her intercom, shockingly loud for someone who needs tubes in her nose to breathe. “Come take this wench away. I need my beauty sleep.”

Suzanne appears seconds later. “Bye, wench,” Stella says as she pushes the button to lower the head of her bed. “Smell you later. Seriously, you should get that cast checked out. I think there's a dead rat in there.”

“I love you, Stella,” I say as Suzanne wheels me out of the room.

I expect a witty comeback, but what I think I hear are sobs.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I'M WAITING FOR MY PARENTS TO GO HOME SO CALEB and I can go through with our surprise for Stella, but they won't leave. They're too worked up about today's visit with Dr. Jacobs.

“She's gaining strength,” Dr. Jacobs told them in his professional passionless monotone. “I know the plan was to send Evie home as soon as her pain stabilized, but if it's all right with you, I'd like to keep her in here a few more days so we run some tests just to see what's going on.
If
anything's going on.”

“I thought you said I was done with tests,” I said. “I thought you said the goal was to minimize my suffering now.”

“Well, that's the thing,” Dr. Jacobs said, addressing my parents even though it was me who asked the question. “Evie is doing a lot better than anyone thought possible. She seems to have turned a corner. Very suddenly, I might add. She seems to be getting stronger even though her condition should be quickly deteriorating.”

I heard Mom gasp.

“But I don't want anyone to get too excited just yet,” Dr. Jacobs continued. “She's probably just feeling better because we stopped the chemo. I'm afraid if we let her go home right now, she might push herself too hard because of a false sense of wellness and end up accelerating her decline.”

Despite Dr. Jacobs' attempt to rein in their hope, of course my parents jumped at the opportunity. No one even asked me what I wanted. So they sucked my blood and sent me off to radiology for a bone scan. Mom and Dad are working themselves into a tizzy, even though they should know by now it's going to hurt more later when the tests show I still have the same broken body as before.

For so long, my life was on hold. Now my death is on hold, and it's just as irritating. What a bizarre thing for life to feel so inconvenient. How unnatural to want to get it over with.

“How's Stella doing?” Mom says now, trying to make conversation. “I wanted to say hi earlier but she was sleeping.”

“I don't know,” I say. “She's okay, I guess.”

“Her parents were livid in the meeting yesterday,” Dad says. “It's like she can't do anything right in their eyes.”

“Poor girl,” Mom says, shaking her head. I don't know if she's referring to the cancer or her parents, but either way, she's right. “You know I love Stella, but sometimes I'm afraid she just doesn't think.”

“You're wrong,” I say, my voice trembling with an unfamiliar feeling. “It was a gift.” I feel like I've been possessed by something foreign, something outside myself. I am shocked to realize it is anger pulsing through my body, sharp and vivid, like a drug. I can see how people could crave it. It's like what Stella said about the music, about the women singing. My anger makes me strong.

“What was a gift, honey?”

“What Stella did. Taking me outside. She thought it through. She did it for me.” My voice shakes with a desperate need to be understood. “You don't know what it's like being stuck in here. Trapped, like a prisoner. She wanted me to get off of hospital grounds once before I died, so I could feel freedom again, just for a second.”

“Oh, honey,” Mom says. “It was very sweet, in her way. But I wish she would stop to think about how her actions affect others, that's all. What you two did was kind of selfish, Evie. We were really scared.”

Again, that taste of anger. Ever since I got sick, all I've done is think about how everyone else is feeling. All I've done is try to protect them from their fear, protect them from mine.

But my rage dissipates as quickly as it came, leaving only sadness in its wake. “Are you mad at me?” I say. As intoxicating as it is, I don't want anger, theirs or mine. All it does is create conflict. All it does is tear people apart.

“Oh, Evie,” Mom says, grabbing my hand.

Dad puts his arms around me and squeezes tight. “Sweetheart,” he says. “We could never be mad at you.”

My parents finally leave and I immediately call Caleb's room and tell him to come over.

“Did you bring everything?” I ask when he gets here.

“Laptop, check,” he says. “Giant piece of red velvet cake from the cafeteria, check.”

“I made a bouquet out of my best flowers,” I say. “I think that's everything. Is she awake?”

“Yeah, I walked by her room and the door's open and the lights are on.”

“Did she see you?”

“I don't think so.”

My surprise for Stella isn't nearly as epic as hers was for me, but it's the best I can do with limited time and resources. Caleb carries the supplies as I wheel myself down the hall. Nurse Suzanne gives us the thumbs-up from where she's sitting at the nurses' station. It's sweet how seriously Caleb is taking this, tiptoeing down the hall in a semi-crouched position. He flattens himself against the wall outside Stella's door, then looks at me and nods. I nod back in the silent language of covert operations. He reaches his arm in and turns the dimmer down on the lights. I open the laptop and punch some keys to get it ready.