The Last Leaves Falling (31 page)

“I am so, so sorry, Sora,” she says, mopping up the mess, using the cloth to wipe my chin. “I should have checked it first.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. It was careless.” She sighs, wrings the cloth between her hands, spilling drops of tea back onto the table, and looks up at me with a newly serious expression. “I should be taking better care of you.”

“It’s fine, Mama. I shouldn’t have drunk it.”

“No. I mean always . . . I spoke to my boss today about some proper time out of the office.”

I have only met my mother’s employer once, but I cannot imagine he was pleased. “No! You can’t!”

She folds a warm hand over mine. “Yes, I can.”

“But what about your job?”

“It’s fine. I’m going to work from home for a while, until . . .”

Until I do not need her.

“. . . anyway, I can manage the accounts from here. I am staying home, and that’s the end of it.”

“But—”

“The
end
of it.”

•  •  •  •

The next day, my mother does not leave for the office. She lingers just a little over her first cup of coffee, and then she sets up her computer and a stack of papers at the kitchen table.

I should be glad of it. Glad of the company and the assistance. Grateful that my mother is both willing and able to change her schedule for me. I know this. And I
am
, but still I find myself wishing for the click of our front door closing behind her.

Everything is different now, and I wish with all my heart it weren’t.

72

“Breathe in.”

I let my lungs expand until my head fizzes and my chest feels like it’s going to burst, and then I close my mouth around the tube that the doctor’s holding out for me.

“And out.”

I blow. Hard. And I deflate. I imagine all the bad things passing through me, out into this box where they can’t harm a single thing. Silence: gone. Cramps: gone. Fear: gone. Every last faulty neuron: gone.

I wish.

“Good. All right? Right. Breathe in.”

We do the test, designed to see how strong my breathing muscles are, three times. “Best of three,” the doctor says, loud and cheerful, as though he’s doing me a giant favor, sneaking me extra turns at a fairground game.

Each time my lungs expand and then contract, it hurts a little more. I’m tired, and my chest feels like I’ve just been punched. But he does not seem worried. He jots down numbers on my chart, and nods.

“Good. Okay.”

“Am I . . . normal?”

“You are anything but normal, Sora,” he says, grinning. Not funny. “But your breathing’s fine for now. A little low, perhaps, but nothing to be worried about.”

“Thank you.”

He sets down the chart, reaches for my fingers. “Your other symptoms though . . . how are you managing? Is the pain all right?”

Is the pain all right?

When is pain ever all right?

I nod. If I go home with increased medications, my mother will worry. And I do not want to make a fuss.

“Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“What will happen when I fail the breath test?”

I’ve read all this a hundred thousand times, but I need to hear it from someone who knows, not an article that could, for all I know, have been written by a first-grader.

“There is no failing, Sora. It is not an exam.” He pauses, and his eyebrows sink right down over his eyes. “But, when the time comes, there are machines to help you breathe. Respirators. And there is the possibility that further down the line we might insert a trach tube. But you’re good, for now. Let’s focus on that.”

73

“Heyy, Sora!” Mai slips into my room, with Kaito close behind her.

“Hi?” I was not expecting to see them, and for a moment I’m confused. Worried even. But Kaito flashes me a red-eared, sheepish grin, and my fears dissolve.

“Sorry, I know we didn’t plan to meet up, I hope it’s okay that we’re here?”

I smile, try to push myself upright on the bed. “Of course.” And I mean it. I have missed them. The last time I tried to log on, I had to call my mother in to press the power switch, and then I could not use the keys. Even the mouse felt fiddly and small against my touch, and navigating the forum was near impossible. I tried. And tried. And if I had the strength I would have thrown the whole machine out through a window.

Twice, I nearly asked my mother if she would do it for me; if she’d navigate through screens and type my words. But KyoToTeenz is
mine
, and I do not think she’d understand.

Mai perches on the bed beside me, grinning.

“We got you something.”

“You what?”

“Well, when you didn’t show up online, we missed you. And we figured you’d miss us, too”—she grins impishly—“so you wouldn’t be absent by choice. And we thought . . . well, here.”

She looks at Kaito, who pulls a bright pink plastic bag out from behind his back and thrusts it toward me.

“I . . .”

“Oh right, yeah.” He pulls it back and reaches inside. “Ta-da!” He pulls out a webcam and the biggest computer trackball I have ever seen. “It’s a super-sensitive “one touch” thing. You’ve got no excuse now, you
have
to come online and listen to us whine about our teachers and parents and terrible code.”

A sharp lump rises in my throat, and I know that if I speak, my voice will croak, and crack, and break, and that will be the end. I swallow and swallow again, until finally my throat opens enough to whisper, “Thank you.”

Mai’s cheeks redden, and she shakes her head. “We really,
really
missed you.”

“Yeah. It’s not the same without you, dude.” Then, “Shall we set it up?”

I nod. “Yes, please.”

He turns on the computer and rips open the packaging, and Mai moves up the bed, leaning her head against my pillow.

“I can’t work with you watching me!” Kai mutters, tugging at his fringe.

“Okay, then how about a story?” She had insisted on taking the half-finished book home with her, “to practice,” and now she pulls it from her bag and settles herself in to read some more.

74

“Hey, dude.” Kaito’s face slides across my screen and settles clear.

“Hi.”

“I don’t see you. Turn your camera on.”

I move the cursor to
turn camera on
and click, and my face joins his.

I look like an idiot.

“Heyyy!” he cheers. “Looks great, huh?”

“Yes. Thanks. Best idea ever.”

He bows theatrically, and I laugh.

“How was your day?”

“Uuuuuh, Sora, I am
not good
at the pretty stuff for websites.”

“It just takes practice, surely?”

“Yeah. But it’s. So. Slow. And I want to be better at it noooww.”

“Hahahaha. Patience, young grasshopper.”

He pouts, but then Mai signs in and joins us, and he cannot help but grin.

“Hiiiii!” Her camera loads before she sits down, and there is a second, before she bounces into view, where there is just a chair and cream-white walls behind it.

Kaito’s walls are blue, and behind him are two posters: one of Kirby, bright pink and jolly, and the other dark and ominous, a shadow in the mist, with the tag
FIND HIM, BEFORE HE FINDS YOU
stamped across the bottom.

I feel like a little boy, my nose pressed up against the windows to see what is inside, to guess who lives there, what they do, imagine myself sitting at their tables, eating from their larder, lying in their beds. And it is wonderful.

75

During the final stages of illness, utmost care shall be taken to ensure the patient’s comfort and minimal suffering for the patient and their families.

I’ve been reading. Hospital policies and everything that I can find on Peaceful Death. Mostly, I’ve discovered that it rarely is. It’s desperate. People desperate to let go. Family desperate to help, worn down by watching as their loved ones suffer.

I don’t want that. I do not want my mother left with those decisions.

I imagine tracking my eyes across a screen, spelling out one single word: please.

I imagine Mama watching, breaking, cracking further every day until finally, finally she can’t bear it any longer and she snaps and reaches for a pillow or a cable tie or pulls the plug on the machines.

And I picture her standing over me, watching my last ragged breath escape and
knowing
that she took it, and suddenly I cannot bear it anymore. My eyes itch with the words I’ve made them see, and I taste the bitterness of bile at my throat as my stomach heaves. I call out for my mother before I even know what I am doing, and I only just have time to switch off the screen before she rushes in.

I retch and retch and retch again, and my mother holds a bag before my face and rubs my back until finally it stops.

“All right?” she says.

I nod.

“Okay. I’m going to call the doctor. If you’re coming down with something, I think he ought to know.”

“No, Mama, I’m fine. Honestly, much better.”

She frowns, but she hesitates.

“Please?”

She puts a hand to my forehead and sucks her breath in through her teeth as she thinks.

“You’re not warm. Perhaps you
are
all right.” She reaches for my wrist, feels for a pulse. I’m sure she does not know what she is looking for, but if it makes her feel better and means I don’t have to explain or see a doctor, I am not saying anything. “All right. But if it starts again, no arguments.”

“Yes, Mama.”

I won’t think about it. I won’t.

But as my mother helps me to clean up, I cannot help seeing the imagined faces from all those cases; wondering what life they left behind, what they were giving up.

“Mama?”

“Mmmm?” She pulls my arm free of its sleeve and reaches for the other. “Left arm.”

“When I was small, what did you dream I’d become?”

She stops, frowning, and my half-pulled sleeve flaps gently at the end of my arm.

“I don’t know.”

“A doctor? Surgeon? Pilot?”

“I don’t
know
, Sora.”

“But you have to know!”

She is silent, and I know she wants to use the line that every parent gives: “As long as he is healthy, I don’t care.” But I cannot even give her that.