Where We Fell (5 page)

9.

AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT, the day before everyone
leaves for college is the same day my ass lands in the hospital. I’d been
feeling marginally better than the week before. I felt much better than two
weeks prior. And maybe I’d lulled myself into some strange sort of complacency
about the entire thing, focusing on my ever-shortening time with Terrence,
Kayleigh and Hannah.

But mostly Hannah, I won’t lie.

So, it didn’t occur to me that while she was in my
room that day, telling me about what a nightmare it was to pack up her stuff,
and how she still had a few things left, because, ‘who packs their shampoo the
day before?’ all the while listening to a torrent of her favorite band,
Pandora’s
Bachs
(some weird mash-up of EDM and classical music mixed by a couple of
DJ’s wearing cat masks) – that this could possibly be the last day I was able
to see her on my own.

Something had felt off since I’d woken up, but I
pushed it aside, wanting to enjoy the last day I’d have with my friends.
Looking forward to having everyone over for dinner because my parents knew I
was bitter about having to extend my admission date until ‘we had a clearer
view of things health-wise.’ I chalked up the off-feeling to the anxiety and
nervousness of watching people leave. Excitement for one last night. Perhaps
the plethora of drugs I was on was finally making their voices heard in my
system.

“You feeling okay?” Hannah’s facial expressions can
vary from amused to cynical in two seconds flat, but she doesn’t usually let
concern show on her face like this.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Fine. There’s that word again. For the record, you
don’t look
fine
. You’re so white you’re almost invisible. Or green. Are
you . . . yellow? I don’t know; you don’t look so good.”

By the time she brings my mom upstairs, I’m vomiting
uncontrollably.

I’m gifted a ride in an ambulance, with my mom by my
side and Hannah following in her environmentally-sound blue Nissan Leaf. Even
hooked up to monitors and with an oxygen mask on my face, I can’t help but
worry about her speeding behind us. I wonder if she’s terrified or if she’ll
pretend things are okay, like she usually does.

After tests, and multiple visits from nurses and the
on-call doctor, my parents and Hannah are allowed to enter the room. My mom’s
wringing her hands again and my dad’s palm rests on his hip where his gun would
usually reside. And Hannah, well, Hannah is holding what appear to be half a
dozen Mylar balloons.

The doctor speaks and I avert my attention to Hannah
as she climbs into the bed with me. She’s careful to avoid the port attached
below my right collarbone as it pumps in much needed fluids. One of her hands
is pressed to my heart and the other slips a knitted cap into my open palm as
she whispers, “I didn’t knit it.”

My mom repeats the diagnosis, between nodding her
head at the doctor. “Jaundice.” Nod. “Obstruction of the bile duct.” Double,
definitive nod.

I know what jaundice means in this case. It means I
will get a beautiful catheter tube and begin peeing into bags.

Terrence and Kayleigh arrive, along with Terrence’s
dad. Bishop Short gives each of my parents a hug before approaching my hospital
bed, his face an emotionless mask. He has this look in his eyes like he can see
the future or something, and mine is very, very bleak. When he asks to pray over
me, I allow him to. I crack an eye open to look for Terrence because I’m sure
he’s rolling his eyes or something. But he’s not. His eyes are closed.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my friend pray
for something and mean it.

***

            “I don’t want to leave you,” Hannah says
quietly, her face turned towards mine as I stare at the ceiling above the
hospital bed.

            I give a halfhearted grin. “Then don’t.”

            My mom looks up from her phone for a
second and then away. The sound of the air conditioner and the incessant
beeping of machinery all around me are drowning out our words, but I suspect my
mom is growing antsy about the time. She’ll be able to stay with me but Hannah
will have to go. And my dad, well, my dad already had to go back to work.

            “Don’t tempt me.” Hannah chuckles and
leans forward to press her nose to my cheek. “I’ll write you every day. You
call me when you feel up to it. We’ll Skype or Facetime or whatever you want.
Whenever you want.”

            She’s handed me a loaded grenade and
pulled the pin. I’m a teenage boy, after all. “Whatever I want? Do I finally
get to see your boobs?”

            If she could punch me in the arm, she
would. Or she would throw something at my head and call me a pig. She’d do
something other than laugh and cover her mouth . . . if I wasn’t
in a hospital bed. But I am.

            “Oliver Bishop?”

            “Yeah?” I’m staring into her eyes as she
inches closer, her lips just out of reach of mine.

            “I’ll make you a deal.” Her eyelids
flutter and her gaze drops to my mouth and then back up to my eyes. “You get
better, and the first weekend you can drive up to see me, I’ll show you my
boobs. Rock your entire world. I will
wreck
you.”

            “Deal.” I close my eyes and give her one
final kiss before my mother clears her throat and arranges her features into
something that resembles ‘apologetic.’

            “Visiting hours . . . I’m
sorry, Hannah.”

            My girl smiles at me and kisses my cheek
one last time. “I’m not.” She scoots delicately off the bed and crosses the
room to give my mom a hug. There’s determination in her steps as she moves to
the visitor’s chair where her purse has sat for the past few hours. She lifts a
hand to her head and smoothes out her hair a couple of times before she turns
to look at me one last time. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t pick up if you’re
tired or sleeping or whatever.” Placing her fingers to her lips, she blows me a
small kiss and then disappears beyond the curtain.

            It feels as if my heart has walked
itself out of the room in a pair of bright blue flip flops.

10.

            THEY SAY LYMPHOMA IS the cancer to have
if you’re going to have it. And they say that once you start treatments, you’re
a warrior. ‘They’ say a lot of things . . . but honestly? I’d
rather have not been diagnosed with any kind of cancer, period. I’d rather it
had been Non-Hodgkin’s. I’d rather not be considered a fighter because I don’t
really feel like I’m battling anything other than myself.

            And maybe therein remains the struggle.
Maybe your mind is one thing you have control over when your body is working so
very hard to kill you off. When your body goes to war against itself, what is
there left to fight for?

            I choose to believe that, if I keep my
focus on the future, I could very well be fighting for a chance at something
great. A second go at life. There could be the smallest possibility of going to
college and starting something with Hannah. Of letting my parents see me grow
into an adult. These are the things I focus on as the hours become days. As the
days become weeks. During my treatments and in between the little bits of
exercise my doctor has allowed.

            She keeps her promise and writes me
emails every day. Sometimes they’re long. Sometimes they’re short. But just
getting them makes me feel better. They instill strength in me that I wasn’t
entirely sure I had.

            Then there are the Skype
conversations . . .

            She lives with a roommate named Coco who
is, for all intents and purposes, completely batshit crazy. It makes Hannah
laugh, but sometimes I can see that she’s legitimately worried that her
roommate could go off the deep end.

            “I could possibly get straight A’s this
semester. If she ends up drunkenly falling down a ravine.”

            She looks amazing, even pixilated and
distracted by other things on her screen, while we talk ‘face–to–face’ over our
laptops. Her hair has grown out even more, and I can see where her blonde roots
are creating a colorless line down her part when she looks down at her lap or
dips her head to scratch her neck every once in a while. I haven’t admitted it,
but I think I like her better with dark hair. Maybe because that’s how she
looked when I began to fall for her.

            I’d gone and retrieved my old yearbook
out of the back of my closet for the sole purpose of looking at her senior
picture. Her hair was parted directly down the middle, corn silk blonde, and
curled down to her waist. It was such an odd thing to see her like that. When
I’d visited her house, most of the pictures of her there were from when she was
very little. No large prints of her in later years. Looking at this blonde girl
with wide hazel eyes made me feel like I didn’t know her at all.

            Still, I keep the page earmarked so her
image is readily available.

            “I should dye it again,” Hannah says one
night as we’re talking about absolutely nothing at all.

            “I like it dark.”

            “Hmm. Maybe.”

            Coco is knocking around in the living
room and it makes Hannah roll her eyes in frustration. She looks back to me
through the screen with a glint in her eye. “Tell me something.”

            “Tell you what?”

            “Anything.”

            I consider telling her that my doctors
have a very good feeling about my next appointment. I think about letting her
know that the last time I had an appointment, they said my tumors had gotten
smaller. That they’re incredibly optimistic that the word ‘remission’ is in my
future and that they said I could start preparing to run again, as much as I
could handle. Which I have by slowly jogging for the past week or so. But I
don’t want to get her hopes up. Or mine. Yet, if they
do
give me the
news that I’m in remission, I’ve planned to drive to see her that very day to
tell her myself.

She’ll also be excited to know that I’ve given up
bacon.

But only because my doctor kinda suggested a more
vegetarian diet for my recovery.

I don’t want her getting a big head
about it.

            “Huh. Let’s see.” I wrack my brain for
something to talk about that we haven’t said before. Being apart from her and
relying solely on technology to bridge the gap between us has been harder than
I thought it would be.

I want to
touch
her.

A laugh escapes my mouth before I can stop myself,
and immediately I have her unwavering attention.

            “What?”

            “It’s nothing.” My room suddenly feels
small. And warm. The blue t-shirt I have on is clinging to my chest in a
suffocating manner.

            Hannah, in pajama pants and a tank top,
with her hair piled up high on her head, glares at me through the screen. “It’s
not ‘nothing’ if you’re turning the color of my least favorite pepper. What?”

            Reaching around to the back of my neck,
I feel my skin flush hot and I laugh again. “Did I ever tell you that, before
my first chemo, they suggested that I . . .
Uh . . .”

            She quirks a brow and leans in closer.
“They suggested you, what?”

            “Umm. They made me give a sample at the
hospital. For safekeeping. Like. For the future.” I can’t meet her eyes, so I
look away at my bedroom door, hoping to God that this isn’t the moment my mom
decides she wants to bring in my laundry or something.

            “A sample.” Hannah’s voice is controlled
and tight. I know she’s going to burst out laughing at any second.

            “Yeah.”

            “You have frozen baby batter somewhere?
For future use?”

            I finally face her again and can’t help
but smile because she is, too. “Maybe. I guess they want to make sure I can
have kids in the future if something happens because of all of the chemicals.”

            “Did you watch porn?”

            “No! No, they
didn’t . . . It’s a hospital. They just, ya know, gave me a cup
and said, ‘
There’s the bathroom’
and I was expected to just hand it over
in a few minutes.”

            “Oh my god. Was your mom there?”

            “Not IN the bathroom. No. Jesus.”

            She’s in full laughter mode now, hand to
her face, and cackling. “Oh. Oliver. That’s awesome.”

            “Shut up. It wasn’t the best experience.
But at least I have a back-up plan.”

            That’s when she catches her breath and
leans forward until I have a pretty good view of the valley between her
breasts. She licks her lower lip and tilts her head to the side. “Well, if you
couldn’t watch porn, what did you think about?’

            I don’t answer because I know that she
knows.

            “Better question:
Who
did you
think about?”

            Swallowing thickly, I shrug my left
shoulder and avoid eye contact with her until she taps her monitor to get my
attention. When I finally look at her, she’s practically glowing.

            “It was me?”

             My chest starts to feel tight and I
know my face is bright red.

            “Seriously. Blink once if it was me.”

            I do. And she jumps up from her desk
chair, throwing her fists in the air.

            “Oh. My. God. Holy shit, Oliver Bishop.
You just made my entire life at this very moment. It’s kinda gross, but it’s so
damn flattering. Like, I can’t . . .” She’s smiling bigger and
brighter than I’ve ever seen her.

Which is exactly why I close my laptop and
disconnect from her.

***

            “I saw Ryan getting coffee this
morning.” Hannah is eating some baby carrots and tapping her toes against the
top of her desk. They’re painted electric blue today.

            The view from my end isn’t so bad.

            “Did you talk to him?” It’s hard to say
that I’m jealous of someone I’ve never met before, but Ryan seems to be that
one person who can pull that reaction out of me.

            She sighs and nibbles on the carrot. Her
hair is down and it looks soft and shiny from recently being dyed. “Nah. I
think Tricia broke up with his stupid ass. No need to rub salt into the wound.”

            These are our conversations as she goes
to school and I debate whether or not to sign up for online classes since I’ve
missed fall enrollment.

            And then, one day, something spectacular
happens.

            Hannah’s face is hardly an inch away
from the screen as I stand before the camera, elated and shocked at the same
time.

            “You look like an extra from the
Teen
Wolf
set.”

            “It literally happened in my sleep. I
swear. You saw me last night. I was, you know . . .” My mouth
can’t form the word ‘hairless’ as I pass my right palm over my left arm.

            “Is it going to stop growing? I’m
concerned your mom might not be able to open your bedroom door due to your
follicles exploding like that.”

            “Hannah.”

            “What?”

“My hair is growing back. Shut up for a second.”

She has this look on her face and it almost brings
me to my knees. She’s so incredibly happy. “I almost forgot what you looked
like with hair.” Her eyes are wide and searching, filling with happy tears.
“This is good, right? Like, this means that everything is working and—”

I hold up my hand and cut her off. “It means
something. I have another appointment at the end of the week.”

Her voice cracks a little as she sits back. Her
hands are shaking as she adjusts her monitor and gets her face back into frame.
“Amazing.”

“I know.”

We smile at each other for what must be a full hour
before I find my voice again. “I can’t wait to let you touch it in person.”