We Were Never Here (10 page)

“I understand.”

“So, not sure if I actually said this, but she died,” he says. “The girl.”

“You did,” I say. “You said.”

“She was wearing a green dress,” he says. “I never talk about this. I swear. It must seem like it's so normal for me, but it's not.”

“It doesn't seem normal. I mean, it doesn't seem like you tell everyone. It seems totally normal, though. In the regular outside world, I mean. To tell people what happened. I'm sorry.”

“This sounds so cheesy to say, but I feel like you're sick on the outside and I'm sick on the inside. No one can see mine. But it's really there,” he says.

“Sick?” I say. “You don't seem sick.”

“But I feel it,” he says. “I don't know why or how I'm even having this conversation with you. But I guess for me the sick part and the conversation part is why, umm, I like hanging out there so much with you, I mean.”

I cannot make my breath start again. He is telling me something important.

“You have this hard shell. Like what you were saying that first time we really talked. The angry part of you. But there's also this sort of soft inside part of you. It makes a person want to get to that inside part.”

“What, like I'm an Oreo?” I say. I can't stop myself.

Connor is silent for a moment. “No,” he says. “I didn't say that. But that is what I'm talking about.”

For some reason I felt that until this moment that I could say and do anything. That everyone but me was unharmable. Like, how could I ever hurt this perfect boy? Before it felt like I was the only one who could get damaged here. Who could be wounded. But I can see now that maybe Connor could be hurt too. Maybe I'm not just his job, or some sick person he has to save, a dead girl he has to bring back to life. Because I'm here. I'm alive.

I don't need to be saved.

“Sorry,” I say. I pick at an invisible stray thread on my gown. “I'm actually kind of sick inside too. I want to hide that.”

“Me too,” he says. “Blue inside. Guilty.”

Blue inside. “Guilty?” I ask.

“Oh, I don't know. Also? You have fantastic eyebrows.”

I laugh and run my finger along them, imagine it's Connor touching my face. I wonder what is really wrong with Connor, if what he's saying is true. If he's that sad.

“I think you're beautiful,” Connor says. He sort of whispers it. He sort of coughs it. I think of his chewed-up fingers moving toward his mouth to cover it.

I want to believe Connor with every cell of me. That he could want me, now, later. But buried deep is also this: why is it always
the girl waiting for the boy to tell her she's beautiful? Connor is lovely everywhere. I imagine even his blood is sun-kissed and windblown. And it seems like he might need to know that too.

But I don't say it. Because that's how it is: the girl waiting for the boy to tell her.

Connor says, “I do, Lizzie. I really, really do.”

When my parents come back in, my mother says, “Well, don't you look like the cat who ate the canary.”

We all laugh.

For some reason we are all sort of tinkling and popping and giddy and strange. We don't know anything bad for sure yet, and we are all exhausted, and I guess because I am light and smiling my parents feel it and they are happy too. They are smiling and holding hands. I'm propped up on my pillows, kind of rubbing my feet together like I used to do at night, right before falling asleep. That's when they all come in. The team. My team, which of course has nothing to do with hockey sticks and dribbling and making sure you're not offsides, but I guess there is still a goal.

Save the colon.

Dr. Malik and Dr. Orlitz and some others I don't know and some students I recognize and some I don't all stand at the foot of my bed in their lab coats, their arms clasped before them. They look like a string of paper dolls.

My father clears his throat.

Here we go.

The colon could not be saved. That's what the surgeon told us. Looking back, I see that moment as a frozen image. The paper dolls. My mother with her hands over her face. My father turning away from us both. I can't see myself. I can't remember what I thought or what I knew or who I was about to become. It was just the happiness of Connor's call and then the horror of this scene. Best and worst. Always, at the exact same time.

I'm not sure if the hospital gave us a private room, like some kind of frequent-flier or reward-club points for being there for so long and still having to get operated on, or if my parents ponied up the extra money, but finally I had both the window and the aisle. We moved to this room, and Zoe came in after school with a Lite-Brite and a deck of cards and some crappy magazines and she climbed into bed with me and we read about the worst thing that was happening to people, which was cheesy shoes or being photographed in see-through dresses. Zoe held my hand under the covers. I rested my head on her shoulder and slept a little bit, but at the end of that day, like at the end of all twelve of the days
before it, everyone went home.

I watched them all leave. I looked at the Lite-Brite.
Sleep well
, Zoe had punched in the board before she left. It shone now—in all the colors—through the dark.

Did I think I was going to die? Or that my life as I knew it was ending? My life,
whole
. It makes me sad how scared I was and how hard I tried to pretend that I wasn't. I didn't know who I was about to be. I didn't know any of it, but I thought about it a lot that day, moments when my parents were downstairs in the cafeteria getting coffee, and the nurses were on break or busy or maybe they were just giving me a moment free of their pinpricks and blood pressure cuffs and checking line connections, and techs had just done everything there was to do. Being alone then just felt like everyone had given up on me. Just me and Zoe's magazines and that novel and crappy TV and the Lite-Brite, whose lights had all gone out.

Now, though, I know. How great would it be if we just knew the endings? Well, most of the endings. Even if they were awful. I suppose that's why people go to psychics. There weren't any setting up shop in the hospital, though you'd think they'd make a decent living visiting the sick and the dying.

But you can't know a thing about the future really, and I didn't know anything at all about mine, not even what would happen that afternoon.

That afternoon, Connor came. It was the first time I had seen him on his own. It was like the Lone Ranger without Tonto, though yes, I do realize that movie is totally racist.

“Hi, Connor,” my mother said as he came in. “How are you, honey?” She seemed so tired and, well, resigned.

“I'm good, Mrs. Stoller, thank you!”

“Call me Daphne,” she said.

I mean really? In all this, with all this?

“I was just going!” my mother said, and because they were in fact just going home for a few hours, it wasn't terribly mortifying. “We'll be back in later this afternoon, Liz,” my mother said, turning to me.

It's funny how she called me Liz when she was being lighthearted and Lizzie when she was serious. It seemed like it should be the other way around.

“Okay,” I said. “See you later.” But I wasn't entirely happy to see them go.

I was, on the other hand, entirely happy-thrilled-amazed-delighted to see Connor.

He hovered by my bed and we both watched them leave. When they were gone, their voices fading in the hallway, he gingerly sat down. He set his backpack down carefully on the floor by my bed. He leaned in to me. His body was touching my body. It felt like I was being shocked in all the places our bodies met.

“So,” I said. And then I told him about the surgery. That the colon could not be saved. The saving was finished. There would be no saving. What is the opposite of saving? This.

“Lizzie!” Connor said. He clutched my hand.

“It's okay,” I told him. But it wasn't. It was, though, nice to offer comfort to someone else, even if it was comforting him about me.

I could see him swallowing back tears. I wondered if he was getting ready to book. I mean, who wouldn't want to run after hearing such a thing?

But instead of getting up to go, he leaned in closer. “Okay,” he said, like he was now resigned, like he'd decided something. And then he came even closer. “I have an idea.”

I estimated that we had about two hours before my antinausea medicine was finished. And the pain medicine too. Before the insane pain, as I called it then, would return.

The others packets were less important, and so I disconnected them. I had seen it done enough times. It was just a little plastic tubing coming out, and with a twist I was severed.

I was not thinking that I could barely stand on my own and that I was only good for about twenty minutes before something disgusting happened to me. I was only thinking about getting out of there with Connor.

I took the pouch of antinausea medicine and the pouch of pain med and placed them next to me on the bed. They were like water balloons. They didn't seem serious. And yet without them I basically turned into a pumpkin.

Considering these logistics made me not think of things like: Would I throw up? Would I need to go to the bathroom? Would I
make
it to the bathroom? All this fodder for potential humiliation got pushed way down as Connor waited in the hallway. I slipped on my jeans—enormous on me now—and a light sweater because I was always cold by then and I also wanted to
hide the IV lines, which sprouted and bloomed out from my chest, evil stems. I carefully pulled the pouch through the arm of my sweater, cautious not to tug too much. My hospital bracelet got caught in the sleeve, but still I brought my hand and arm through it. I can do this, I thought, as I went to the closet and sort of toed my Converses. I kicked them over to the side of the bed near Connor's backpack, but I couldn't lean down to get them on, and then I got scared for the IVs and for a moment, I seriously doubted our plan. Connor's plan.

I don't know why I did it. I sat back down on the bed, out of breath. I was so . . . sick. That is just the word for it. And I don't know why when Connor looked in and asked if I needed anything, I told him yes. But I did tell him this and so he came in and he got down on his knee and put on my sneakers as if he were placing my feet into glass slippers. He held my heel and glided each foot in (which makes it seem as if it were easy, but those damn hospital socks, those plastic grips, they made the whole thing a lot less than graceful). He tied my shoes slowly, his head dipped in concentration as he ever so gently turned my laces into perfect bows.

Okay, I know
why
I did it, but I don't know how I did. I think it was like I became superhero strong, or for this single moment my sickness—my evil kryptonite—disappeared. My pain faded like invisible ink, like magic, and with it my fear. At my instruction, Connor took my L.L.Bean backpack from the closet, the one I'd taken to camp almost an entire lifetime ago, and I placed the balloons of medicine carefully inside. You could barely see the line connecting me to them; just two teeny plastic tubes.

And then he just walked me out the door. He managed to be casual, waving to the nurses, saying stuff like “That's great, Lizzie, you can do it,” as he looked at the floor just ahead of his feet, indicating that was about as far as we intended to go. I saw Collette look up and turn her head for a moment, thinking, and then I saw her shake away her thoughts and turn back to her papers. Had she thought someone else had disconnected my lines? Was she just letting me go? Either way, Connor guided me, silently, his hand gentle but also sure at the small of my back, radiating heat, as we moved toward the elevator. It lingered there as we went
down down down
to the first floor. I was just so caught up in the moment I felt the opposite of pain and fear and sadness. Joy and happiness. Bigger than ever before. Big, big joy and no fear.

I was all adrenaline then. Or maybe it was just running on fumes. Whatever the case, for the first time ever I was outside in the real world with Connor.

It was a perfect day, weather-wise I mean,
great walking-around weather
, as my father would say. Sunny and not too warm, not too cold, not a cloud.

When we emerged from the lobby, the sun was blinding. Connor still had his hand on my back, still! I got the chills. Like in a shivery good way, not like all the shivering I'd been doing in the hospital. It was like that game Zoe and I once played where she would pretend to crack an egg on my head and make the pretend yolk drip down my neck.
Let the yolk drip down,
she'd say, her fingers along my scalp and neck, and I felt that same shivery weirdness now.

“Wait here one sec.” Connor let go of me, and I watched him disappear around the corner.

I waited and started to feel myself begin to turn back into myself again. Cinderella at the ball, time ticking. A werewolf sprouting hair. I could feel the pouches swishing at the bottom of my pack now. I had like an hour and forty-five minutes left until they were done. I could manage without them—I wouldn't die or anything—but things would turn seriously . . . negative without them.

And then there he was, in a blue BMW as shiny as a bowling ball, pulling into the hospital drive.

He shot out of the driver's seat. “If I'd known this was happening when I'd parked, I would have paid for the garage.” Connor laughed. He opened the passenger-side door for me, and then he bent down and brought my legs in as if I was suffering from polio or he was tucking me into a pre-pumpkin stagecoach, about to place a blanket over my lap to keep me warm for the cold journey ahead to the next kingdom.

Then he went back around and got in. He put one hand on the wheel, the other on the gearshift.

Of
course
Connor could drive stick.

Then he winked at me.

I cannot wink without looking like I'm having a stroke, so I just smiled instead.

And then we were off.

“So,” I said. “Where are we going?” I tried to sound, I don't know,
game
, up for any adventure, but it came out too soft for that to be
believed. I breathed heavily. I was losing my superhero strength, and my fear was swiftly returning, a train pulling into the station. Where
were
we going? And so where would we be when I went down, when I bent over in pain? Because, I suddenly knew, this would happen for sure.

Connor put a finger to the side of his mouth to illustrate that he was thinking. “Nothing too special.” He smiled.

I saw his freckled fingers on the gearshift and I wanted to touch his hand. As if Connor had read my mind, he removed it for a moment and grabbed my pinkie. It felt like he
needed
my pinkie. His grip was urgent, and he braided his fingers with mine.

He extricated his fingers from mine to switch gears and then tied himself to me again.

I brought my free hand to my chest and felt the tubing of the central line. It was still connected, but I could feel the entry point getting irritated from all the jostling and from the weight of my cotton sweater. Connor kept driving, and I don't remember what we passed or any of it because what was happening for me was our hands.

That love I had for Michael Lerner? That was not love. That was intense like. That was crushing. But it was not this. It was nothing remotely like this.

Because Connor was coming to the other side. The side of loving me back. I could feel this
then
. And I couldn't say how or why then, but by the time we'd sped beneath a canopy of trees and slid into a dirt parking lot, he was mine. Of course that had been my wish. Always.

“Here's good!” Connor stopped the car and cranked the parking brake and got me out of the car—again with the legs as if he were transferring me to a wheelchair—and then he took my hand as if instead of putting me in a wheelchair, he was asking me to dance. Two pouches of medicines in my backpack, two IV lines coming out of my chest, a ticking clock, and I was a girl at the ball. I didn't need a gown. I thought I did once, but now I know you just need someone you love to take you by the hand.

Gently, he guided me over to the boathouse. Fletcher's Cove. It's part of the C & O Canal, built many, many years ago (how many? I have no idea), with two paths alongside the canal for donkeys to pull boats carrying cargo. This we learned on a school field trip.

“I sometimes come here on my own with Verlaine.” Connor had his hand at my back as we walked ever so slowly down to the dock. “It's peaceful.”

I couldn't even nod.

Boats rocked against the old wood, and I could see the trees and also us mirrored in the water. He went in and out of the boathouse briefly, and then we were headed to one of those bobbing rowboats.

I knew this was misguided as we stepped into the boat, just from the wobble of my footing, but I didn't care. I wouldn't have traded it in for
not
going, even though the truth was I couldn't and I shouldn't have and this was about to end and it was about to end badly.

Connor, the mind reader, said, “We're going to hug the shore. Just a little ride for a few minutes. To get the hospital off us.
Being on a boat used to always make me feel so much better.”

This one with the sailing, I thought, as I gingerly sat down. I had become a girl who, skinny as a nail, sat down gingerly. Whodathunkit.

I looked up, trying not to be sick. Why did I look up? I have no idea. I was glad it was happening, that Connor had taken me away and that in that moment of taking me he had started to love me back.

We pushed off. I turned to watch the sun behind me, shining down in golden rays, when I felt the boat teeter a bit. Connor reached for me then. He turned me toward him and knelt down on the wet, leafy boat bottom, and then his hands were cupping my face, and then he was leaning down toward me and he kissed me. It was long and deep. It was like the movies, the two of us in this red rowboat, Connor's lips finally on mine. I could feel myself blushing as his hands brought my face closer, I was so happy inside. There is no other way to say it. And I wished that I would never have any other kind of feeling ever again.

My heart was in my ears. I was in the moment, and I felt all that happiness and newness and there was a terrible ringing in my ears that I refused to answer. It's not like I hadn't been kissed before, or hadn't kissed back, but this was different. I saw stars. It was just us in this small, special world. It was the kiss and it was Connor but it was also sickness and pain. And the world began closing in.

“I have to go.” I pulled away when I realized the stars were not from happiness. They were not sparkly glitter stars. “We have to get back,” I said. The boat was turning around. The leaves were
swaying on either side of the canal and the sky above them was as blue as a robin's egg. The boathouse became a tiny pinprick. And then it all went completely black.

When I came to, Connor was carrying me out of the boat. I remember the boat rental person saying we needed an ambulance. “That girl is very sick,” he said, and then I snapped awake and both Connor and I told him “No!” I was just fine. I remember getting into his car and then waiting and waiting, unable to speak, gripping the leather handle as we sped back to the hospital.

Where did Connor
go
? All I remember was being alone in the room with Collette. She stood over my bed, reconnecting my IV lines.

“I don't think you understand,” she said. “I don't think you understand your situation here.”

I swallowed. It made me feel nauseated again. As punishment for my five minutes in that boat, I was never going to live another moment without feeling as if I would puke.

“This could have been so serious. What on earth were you two thinking?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. Why was I apologizing to Collette? “Where's Connor?”

“I understand,” she said, acknowledging my statement but not my question. “And I won't tell your parents. Someone else might but I won't, which is just crazy, but you do need to know that was really, really stupid.” I was all clicked in, all connected, a plug to a socket. I wanted to use my illness superpower, the power that let me say whatever the hell I wanted without consequence, but she
was also keeping our secret, so . . . “I mean disconnecting your own lines! You could have had an embolism.”

I didn't know what that was, and I didn't ask.

“Which, just so you know, is a blocked blood vessel. Which kills you. Boom,” she said, smacking the curved part of her palms together. She had dark-purple nails with a layer of blue glitter over them. “Killed.”

So now I knew.

That was when I heard the other nurses greeting Connor. Connor, they said with none of their usual enthusiasm. Hello. That's when I realized Connor wasn't going to have a job here anymore. Collette might not tell my parents, but everyone else here knew. There would be no more Verlaine and Connor making this place a better, more livable world.

Soon there was a knock on the door.

“Hello?” Connor peeked his adorable head in. His face. His freckled face. His face with the lips I had just kissed.

“Hello, Connor,” Collette said grimly.

He bowed his head. It was like his whole body was apologizing. When he looked up, he looked at me and his face changed. I couldn't decode what he was telling me or what he was exactly sorry about.

“I left my backpack?” Connor said.

I felt then the familiar fear that getting his backpack was the only reason he'd come to my room, that I'd been wrong and he had not come to the other side at all but had in fact been unmoving on the non-love side of things. Perhaps that kiss had only been a way to tell me good-bye.

But I smiled meekly. And in my smile I was totally, subversively happy about our day. I hoped he saw that.

“By all means.” Collette mock ushered him in. “You do know, though, that this girl has a very difficult day ahead of her tomorrow. I expected more from you, Connor. Really.”

Oh God, the I-expected-more-from-you tack. That was almost as bad as the bad-judgment tack that might have been utilized here were it my mother speaking.

“I know,” he said. “I was just trying to help. Her mood, I mean.” He looked at me, hopefully, and in that moment I realized Connor really had no idea. And yet I would have followed him anywhere.