Love in the Time of Cynicism (34 page)

I nod slowly. The numbness is ebbing away at her words, replaced with an empty sadness mingling with impossible hope. “There’s no point in giving up until it’s over.”

“I wish everyone who came in here thought like that,” she says. “So many parents and siblings and friends arrive and they’re deader than the person they came with. They forget there’s always hope.” I fold my head into my hands and she smiles once more. “You’re not like that, though. I can tell.

“I’m scared,” I admit faintly.

“Of what?” The nurse puts a comforting arm around my shoulder.

“I don’t know,” I go on, unsure of why I’d tell her this other than pure tiredness and the need for connection. “I guess I’m scared of not being with him anymore. That everything is going to be too different for us to get back what we had. That we’ll fall apart. I love him too much to let that happen.”

“Things fall apart,” she says, “but I’ve got a good feeling you two won’t.”

I’m not quite crying because there aren’t any tears left as I ask, “How do you know?”

“Because you saved him.” She squeezes me and then lets go. “And that’s not something either of you is going to forget any time soon.” My phone rings in my hand and the nurse stands up. “You eat. It’s good for you, I promise.”

I smile tightly and answer the phone as she walks away.

“Del?”

“Sky.”

My best friend sighs on the other line. “What happened? Where are you?”

In answer, I say, “I’m at the hospital.”

Her swallow is audible. “Is he…?”

“He’s in the ICU. Doctor said he’d be out soon. Once I see him, I’ll go.”

“You want me to come over there?” She’s at school, faraway shouts echoing from her and Brian’s quiet, unintelligible voice next to her. “Because I can be there in a few minutes.”

“I’m fine, Sky,” I lie quickly.

She sighs again since, as my best friend, she knows when I’m bullshitting her. “Your mom has tried to call me, like, four times.”

“Tell her I’m okay and I’ll be home tonight. Probably.”

“I told her you’d stay at my house, actually,” she replies and I breathe out in relief. I had no intention of going home until I have to. Nice to know she’s still covering my ass. “Good luck, kid.”

“Thanks.”

She pauses, for once not sure how to go on. “I’ll try to control the rumors at school, for your sake.”

“It’s bad?”

“The worst. Teenagers are brutal.” She clicks her tongue as a bell rings. “I’ll bring you some clothes and stuff after school. Hang in there; got to go.”

She hangs up.

I eat the slightly overripe banana from the nurse, drink whole milk, which I have hated since early childhood, and wait.

At three fifteen, Sky brings me a change of clothes and thirty dollars. She hugs me tightly and joins me for late lunch in the hospital’s aggressively clean cafeteria. We eat surprisingly good fried rice and drink unsurprisingly flat soda while sitting in silence. She doesn’t know what to say and I don’t know how to respond.

She leaves and I people-watch for another few hours. Old people with routine exams and surgeries smile at me when they walk past. Doctors rush past, not caring about my omnipresence with their lifesaving to do. Under the glaring fluorescents, I see a few kids from pediatrics and the upstairs psych ward.

While I’m in the main waiting room, I can’t help but ruminate on how people are. Very early on, I realize the most common expression worn at the hospital is a smile, contrary to my original belief that everyone here would be glaring and crying and sighing heavily. Sure, there’s a fair share of those, too, but mostly the patients are smiling or at the very least pleasant. I become the recipient of a few hello-how-are-you interactions from well-meaning nurses and elderly individuals.

At some point, a girl with bright blue hair and more tattoos than I can count nods her head at me like we’ve known one another for years. I reciprocate because she’s probably noting our shared interest in hair dye and piercings. She walks off grinning when I complement her choice of ripped fishnet leggings under what I’ve decided is standard issue psychiatric ward garb.

Around six, a little boy plops himself right next to me and begins to ask me questions.

“You’ve been here, like forever; is something wrong with you?”

He’s got wide, inquisitive eyes as I answer, “I’m here for my boyfriend, actually. He was in an, um, accident and he almost died.”

The boy nods seriously. “I was in an accident a few weeks ago. My mom was really upset; I hope you’re okay.”

“I am,” I lie softly.

“Of course you’re not,” he argues. Then, unexpectedly, the boy hugs me tightly, the rough material of his hospital clothes scratching my arms. I’ve never felt anything like the arms of a child who almost definitely has it worse than me wishing me well. “But you will be.”

Turns out his name is Nick and he’s been in and out of the hospital since he was born. Some heart condition he can’t pronounce combined with epilepsy. The accident he had was a severe, long-lasting seizure where he fell down hard at school. He was alone because his aid had gone to the bathroom and nobody found him until he’d passed out from a head wound (Nick proudly shows off the shaved patch on the back of his head like a trophy). The doctors have him staying at the hospital now because they’re worried about possible heart and brain complications.

Despite all of this, Nick’s the happiest kid I’ve ever seen and by far the most compassionate. He acts like my having to stay here until I can see Rhett is the worst injustice in the world and decides it’s in my best interest to hear his favorite collection of jokes.

“Knock-knock.” Nick’s already grinning at this point.

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow.”

I smile a bit. “Interrupting cow wh-?”

“MOO!” He cracks up, bright eyes shining, and I can’t help but laugh at his exuberance. He goes on with a brilliant smile, “Man, the guy who invented knock-knock jokes should get a
no bell
prize!”

It occurs to me, then, that maybe the people with the most to cry over smile the brightest.

Chapter Twenty Three – Love of my Life

It’s nine o’clock the next morning when a doctor taps me out of a heavy sleep induced by nearly thirty six hours without shut-eye.

The doctor’s got thick brown stubble and sleep eyes, the look of a man who’s been here overtime too many nights in a row. “Are you Cordelia?”

I bolt upright and reply, “Yeah, I am. Why?”

“Rhett Tressler’s been asking for you the past four hours, insisted you would be in the hospital and refused to take any medication until I brought you to him. It’s been a long night and even though it’s utterly against the code of conduct, will you
please
come with me?”

I nod breathlessly, excitement rattling in my chest. I’ve been here for longer than I would’ve ever thought possible and the idea of getting to see him is immediately the only thought alive within my tired head.

I gather up the few papers I’ve collected during my time here and Dr. Sleepy-Annoyed-and-Handsome leads me to the elevator I’ve heard dinging for the past thirty six hours. It opens at a swipe of his doctor card and we ride in his mildly irritated silence to the third floor which, unsurprisingly, looks
exactly
like every other floor. Green and white with soothing paintings at regular intervals. The only difference is a bird cage at the end of the hall with manic yellow canaries chirping like life in a hospital cage is the best one ever.

Dr. SAH knocks softly on the last door in the hall before walking in.

“Cordelia Kane,” Rhett beams like nothing is different. He’s pallid and tired-looking, his body reined in by an IV dripping through the back of his hand and a heart monitor attached beeping incessantly to his right. His flawlessly tanned skin is like that of a ghost and his lips are viciously chapped. His left ankle is wrapped in a tight ace bandage. The change is shockingly drastic and my heart falls at the shift.

The doctor makes a swift exit with an awkwardly mumbled goodbye, the door cracked behind him, and I sit on the side of Rhett’s hospital bed. I take his hand in mine and he traces circles on the back of my hand like he would on all the days we spent together. His touch still sends shivers up my spine, but now I can’t stop myself from wondering how many of these touches are left.

I fill the quiet with the first question that comes to mind. “What happened to your ankle?”

He laughs, the sound strained but full. “Some crazy bitch dragged me up the stairs while I was unconscious.”

“That sounds awful.”

“I imagine it was.”

I pause, hesitant to continue this conversation. But I know everything has to be put out there for us to stay together. “Why’d you stop taking your antidepressants?”

He shrugs limply, shoulders sagging back an instant after they lift, and shuts his eyes as if my question has hit with physical force. “Everything was so good with us and I felt so…calm. Like I never have before. And then…I just felt lost inside myself because of everything.” He opens his beautiful eyes again and smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry your absolutely stunning little head, though. The doctors here are A plus and put me on some new, fast-acting pills. All better.”

I nod though of course he’s only trying to make me feel better. We’ll have time to talk later, I promise myself as exhaustion ebbs at my body.

“I hope you don’t really think-” I stop, swallow, and start again, “You’re not going to hold me back, Rhett. Yes, I’m going to New York at the end of the school year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come with me.”

“Except it does,” he argues. “Because my parents aren’t going to let me move away after this, not even eight months from now. I’ll probably be on house arrest for the next few months.”

“Is this why you forced some doctor to bring me up here?” I try to be angry and fail miserably as I stand up. “To tell me we can’t be together? Because that’s not going to work for me.”

The beeping on his heart rate monitor increases and he reaches for me with the hand not trapped by the IV. “Don’t be like that, my love. I want to be with you. More than anything. And I made that doctor get you because I knew you would’ve waited for me and didn’t want you staying here longer than you had to.”

I wait to reply for a moment and shuffle the papers in my left hand. “How about we don’t think about the future until it comes?”

“That sounds perfect,” he agrees. “I assume this would be a bad time to kiss you?”

I shake my head and press my lips briefly to his. “I love you.”

Rhett smiles and runs a few fingers through my fast-fading orange hair before asking, “What did you bring in here with you?”

“Oh, these?” I wave the few sheets of lined paper in front of him and shake my head. “The hospital workers were so freaked out by my constant presence that they sent this power suit-wearing counselor to talk to me about ‘dealing with things.’ She made me write about a future where I was happy with everything, then asked me a load of questions about it. An hour well-spent, in my mind,” I explain sarcastically.

His eyes flit to the papers in my hand, then to my lips and finally my eyes as a small smirk plays over his pale, chapped lips. “Read it to me?”

“Too embarrassing.”

“Please?”

“Fine.”

He smiles broadly like I’ve given him the best gift.

And even as the words I penned shakily a few hours ago trip from my lips, I know they can never be true. Because I’m going to work at my dream job in a few months in a land far enough away that I’ll never have a reason to visit. Because Rhett will be stuck here on suicide-watch through college, probably commuting daily back and forth from UTex or Baylor or any other horrible place he’d never elect to attend of his own free will getting a degree in business or something else he can use to waste his life.

The words are impossible, but I still wish they’ll come true because of the light in Rhett’s eyes, reflected in on my own with love I’ve never felt. This boy who waltzed into my life wearing a leather jacket and reading poetry by a woman he shares more kinship with than I could’ve guessed at first glance and without a care in the world is the reason I want everything on these few papers to be true.

Epilogue – Years Later

There’s a girl in a small, cluttered apartment curled on an old couch and staring out at the blotchy snow that blankets the city around her. She’s still getting used to the look of the fluffy white clinging to everything and the biting cold. Hell, she couldn’t even zip her jacket with one hand (a local skill) until a kind secretary helped her on her first day.

Her hair is cropped short around her chin, the color of red velvet cupcakes fresh from the over. There’s a steaming mug of coffee warming her hands. She’s taken up drinking caffeine during the many light nights at her labor-intensive job. The youngest staff writer in the history of
The New Yorker
. Every day is a dream, spent checking out up-and-coming bands or coffeehouses and immersing herself in the local culture of the most famous city in the world.