The One Thing (33 page)

Silence swallowed up the line. Finally the woman said, “I’m sorry, but since you aren’t a relative, I’m not at liberty to give you that information. I’ll let the
family know you’ve received their message. Good-bye.”

“Wait!” I yelled. “Ben Milton—is he okay?”

No answer.

“Hello?”

She was gone. The line was dead.

My fingers went cold. I couldn’t release my grip on the phone. Seconds ticked by. I knew I had to think, knew I had to do something, but the woman’s words were still ringing shrilly
inside my skull, a terrifying echo. Finally, I forced my fingers to bend, to find Mason’s number in my phone. My call went straight to voice mail.

Slowly, and with sharp articulation, I said to Clarissa, “We have to get to Saint Jude’s.”

And then slowly, and with sharp articulation, I thought,
Ben is dying
.

“Saint Jude’s,” Clarissa repeated woodenly.

I fell to my knees and swept my hands back and forth on the tile, frantically searching for my shoes. “Yes, it’s a hospital.”

Clarissa cleared her throat. “Right. That’s what I thought. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Dad mention it before. And every time I ride the bus, I—”

“Can you call him? Your dad? And see if he can give us a ride?”

“He’s in surgery this afternoon,” Clarissa said. The cadence and tone of her speech were all wrong. Flat and uniform. “Can you call your parents?”

“No,” I said quickly, finally finding one shoe. I crawled forward, searching for the other one, banging my head into the kitchen cabinet. “No. I’m grounded,
remember?”

“Your grandpa?”

“Out of town. At the horse races.”

“Okay,” Clarissa said in that same foreign tone. “Then we’ll take the bus. You live in Bedford Estates, right? Do you know how to get to the bus stop on Sycamore? Bus
Seven routes through there every twenty minutes.”

I used to play soccer at a park on Sycamore when I was little. I’d seen that bus stop probably a thousand times in my life. It was two blocks from my house. “Yeah. I can find
it,” I said as I found my other shoe. I lurched up and jammed it on my foot.

“Okay, I’m pretty sure Bus Seven stops at Saint Jude’s.”

“You’re
pretty sure
?” I screeched.

I heard Clarissa swallow. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the bus driver call out the stop before, and there can’t be two Saint Jude’s, right?”

“Right. Let’s go.” Pushing back my anxiety as much as possible, I concentrated on each step—getting out of the house, making my way down the driveway, finding the
sidewalk, crossing the first intersection, rounding the corner to Sycamore.

The bus stop was eerily quiet. Standing by the curb, I listened desperately for an approaching bus and punched in Mason’s number again and again.

Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail.

I stuffed my phone back in my shorts and pressed the round button on the face of my watch. Two fifteen.

Stay alive, Ben.

“How do you know Bus Seven even comes through here?” I blurted, starting to panic.

“O and M,” Clarissa said, and I wanted to shake her and tell her to speak normally. “I’ve had heaps of sessions here. Wait—I think the bus is coming.”

The bus’s brakes shrieked as it halted at the curb. Clarissa snatched my hand and dragged me along the length of the bus, presumably looking for the door. Coming to a quick halt, she said,
“Excuse me, this is Bus Seven, right?” When a rumbly-voiced male made an affirmative noise, she yanked me on board, paid the driver, and moved skillfully down the aisle, apologizing
occasionally to the other passengers as she tapped her way down the walkway and found two empty seats.

Say what you would about Clarissa, but she knew what she was doing.

“How’d you learn to do all this?” I asked as we sat down.

Her leg bounced up and down beside mine. “O and M taught me the basics. But that only takes you so far. So once I got out on my own, I mostly learned by screwing up.” Her hyper,
manic tone was back, just a little, and I exhaled at the sound of it. “I mean, you take the wrong bus, go the wrong direction a few times, look idiotic once in a while, but you figure it out.
Kind of like life, I guess?”

Yeah. Kind of like life.

I exhaled loudly. I might’ve been getting around on my own now, too, had I put any effort into it. I’d spent so much time fighting Hilda, fighting being blind.

As if that were the worst thing out there.

I rubbed my forehead with my fist. I couldn’t just stand still anymore and let everything steamroll over me. There were people relying on me right now, things I needed to do, a life I
needed to live.

The bus lurched to a stop and the doors coughed open. “Merriweather Mall,” the bus driver drawled. In the aisle, passengers bumped slowly past me. I dialed Mason again. Voice mail.
Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I checked my watch. Two forty-five.

Time seemed to be speeding up.

“We should be there soon,” Clarissa said.

“Right,” I said, twisting my hands together in my lap and keeping them that way. There was no music in my head right now, nothing to keep my hands occupied.

“Civic Center,” the bus driver called out lazily as we slowed to a stop again. Someone wearing flowery cologne moseyed past me. I heard the door wheeze shut, but we sat there for a
painfully long time before we crept forward, seemingly one car length at a time. I tightened my grip on my cane.

Stay alive, Ben.

The thought was weak now, a guilty whisper, and I reached in my pocket and turned off my phone, suddenly terrified that Mason would call and tell me otherwise.

“Saint Jude’s,” the bus driver said, and it had no sooner come out of his mouth than I jerked to my feet and scrambled down the aisle. Clarissa called out in my wake as I
lurched down the steps and took off, leaving her behind.

I couldn’t see Saint Jude’s, but I stumbled forward anyway, snatching a passerby and pleading for help to find the lobby. Once inside, I twisted around in staggering circles, praying
for a speck of eyesight.

I saw nothing.

“Welcome to Saint Jude’s. Can I help you?” said a pleasant female voice from somewhere in front of me.

I scrambled forward, slamming hard into a counter. “ImlookingforBenMiltonsroom,” I said, my words all coming out in one breath.

“Excuse me?”

I put my palms flat on the counter. Leaned forward. “I am looking”—I paused, trying to control my inhalations, trying to calm down—“for Ben Milton’s
room.”

“Let me check,” she said haltingly. For a moment, the only sound was the snapping of computer keys. Then: “First floor. Room one-oh-two, straight past this counter, second door
on the left. Would you like some—”

I lurched away. My feet felt slow, like I was trying to trudge through deep, damp sand. People were everywhere, it seemed, wandering slowly down the corridor. Bumping into them, I apologized and
then wedged myself past. I found the wall with my left hand and kept walking, images of Ben blurring together in my mind.

Stay alive, Ben.

It wasn’t even a thought anymore. It was a prayer.

My fingers skipped over the first doorjamb. I jerked to a stop. Took a wobbly step backward. Slid a flat palm up the wall until I found the number plate for the room. My fingers skimmed over the
braille. Room 101.

Ben’s room was next door. And I still couldn’t see.

Something was clawing at my stomach, my chest, my heart. I couldn’t breathe. Tears tumbled down my cheeks. I pitched forward, running my hand along the wall until I found the next
doorjamb, the next number plate.

Room 102.

I froze. Someone was crying in the room. It was Mrs. Milton, her muffled sobs drifting out of the room and floating around me.

The moment was hopelessly huge, and it seized me so quickly, so severely, so unlike anything else I’d ever known, I felt like I’d flatten beneath the weight of it. My cane fell to
the floor. It rolled away, a long, drawn-out tinny sound trailing off behind me. I stood completely still, rooted in the emptiness, feeling as if something were crushing me, squeezing the air from
my lungs. Something massive and unyielding.

Ben was dead.

M
y knees buckled and I collapsed to the floor.

No.

I thought this as forcibly as I could, so I could make it true. Ben couldn’t be gone because I could still feel his kindness, and I could still feel his smile, and I could still feel all
the beautiful things he’d done for me. I could still feel
him
.

I wasn’t in a hospital, unable to see. I was stuck in some horrific dream. I’d wake up any second now, roll out of bed, take a shower, have breakfast, and ask Gramps to drop me off
at Ben’s. Ben would be home and I’d see him, because he’d be alive.

A speaker system blared overhead—a page for an X-ray tech. “No,” I whispered. I felt my chin wobble, felt my lungs closing up, felt hopelessness surging in. I wrapped my arms
around my stomach and rocked back and forth on the hallway floor. If I had any sense about me, I would’ve known I was in shock. I couldn’t grasp any thoughts. They were all slippery,
dark, transient, sliding through my fingers before I could get purchase of them.

My head jerked up as I heard footsteps coming down the corridor. A gurney’s wheels on tile floor. Chatter. Banter. Laughter. Staggering slightly, I lurched to my feet, wiping the wetness
from my cheeks and glaring into the void. There were only three cards in my verbal Rolodex right now, and all of them were printed with four-letter words.

That was when I heard one voice.

One familiar voice that brought back memories of laughter and video games and Doritos and stars.

“Thera?”

The voice was horribly weak and slurred, but it was Ben’s.

I sucked in the sort of breath you take when you’re swimming and come up to the water’s surface in dire need of air. Ben was
alive
?

The gurney bumped past me and into the room. Groping for the doorjamb, I teetered there for the length of several heartbeats, confused. Dizzy. Inside the room were scuffles and grunts. More
chatter. More laughter. The nurses were doing something. Transferring Ben to his bed? Then they breezed past me in a sea of babble, taking off down the hall. Mrs. Milton captured me in a quick hug.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she blubbered.

But she was still crying.

Nothing was making sense.

Mrs. Milton let go of me, blew her nose in one loud honk, and then announced that since Ben was so groggy she was heading to the cafeteria for a quick bite.

As the hallway swallowed up her footsteps, I lurched into the room, slamming into Mason, who grunted his surprise. Taking a fistful of his shirt for balance, I hissed, “Mason, what the
hell is going on?”

“Didn’t the nurse tell you everything when she called?” Mason said, sounding confused.

My words started coming out quickly, separated by sharp breaths. “All she told me was that I needed to come to the hospital—and she wouldn’t tell me why because I’m not
family—and I couldn’t get a hold of you because your cell coverage is lousy here—and I had to find the bus stop—and then when I got here the halls were so crowded and I
couldn’t see anything—Mason,
I can’t see anything
—”

“Oh God,” he breathed. “You thought...” He was supporting my weight now. Muttering a low oath under his breath, he went on. “I
knew
I should’ve just
gone outside and called you myself instead of asking the nurse to do it. Mom convinced me to have the nurse call; she said it would be the simplest, quickest way to get you here to celebrate with
us.”

Celebrate?
“Mason, I can’t
see
.”

“That’s because Saint Jude’s is a rehab hospital.”

It was like he was speaking a foreign language. “A rehab hospital?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t know that, either, when Ben was first admitted.” He exhaled loudly. “Anyway, he got a lot of rest overnight. Between that and the
good news, he’s really starting to come around.”

“Good news?” I murmured.

Mason’s voice was dreamlike, almost hypnotic, as he said, “Ben’s lab results came back today. The surgery removed virtually all the cancer. They’re still running
tests—I mean, he just came back from some sort of scan? So I guess we’ll have to wait for those results, too, but right now things are looking good. Much better than the doctor had
expected. He’ll still need chemo, radiation, but his chances are good.”

I couldn’t let myself believe it. Not yet. I whispered, “But your mom was
crying
, Mason.”

“She’s a crier,” he explained. “Happy tears, sad tears. You name it. Maggie,” he said in my ear, and suddenly I was painfully, exquisitely aware that I was smashed
up against him. “The doctor told us that Ben’s chances of survival are seventy percent.”

“And I can’t see him,” I murmured. I could come up with only one theory for these two things occurring in tandem. A theory so perfect that I could hardly even consider it.

Something warm was mushrooming in my heart. Something like hope.