What We Leave Behind (5 page)

School was out, and by then I had cajoled my mother into getting me a job as one of those cheery candy stripers. I would have much preferred a job at the local music store or even the video store so I could get discounts on my favorite items (not the five-fingered kind), but I astounded myself with my enthusiasm toward my new line of work.

I was pretty much there every day, all day, from the time I finished my shifts, up until dinner. He was there too, and on the days he wasn’t, I felt incomplete. I’d watch for his white Jeep Cherokee every afternoon and hide my disappointment if he didn’t show up.

Jonas was unlike any other boy I’d ever met, and I probably shouldn’t be calling him a
boy
when he was clearly seven ever-present years older than I. Over the course of our meetings, I summarized the few things I had learned about him: His family lived in Malibu in what was presumably a large house. It had a name, so I couldn’t be wrong. His little sister, Amy, was the light in his life. He and his dad played a fierce game of tennis back in the day, although he hadn’t picked up a racquet since the diagnosis. His mother, Rachel, was a bright, strong woman, and when he spoke of her, there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. Like most boys his age, Jonas was self-assured and charming. Unlike most boys his age, he possessed a depth about himself that made him appear older than his years.

I was convinced early on that I had something to do with the latter side of his personality.

Jonas’s life outside the hospital was foreign to me. There were limits to him, boundaries I constantly tried to push through. I couldn’t tell you his favorite anything, not movie, not book, or song on the radio, so I took pride in the things I did know, the other, more important things. Like, I knew when he was happy to see me. I knew the way he’d try not to smile when he saw me open the door to his father’s room. And I knew when he was amazed at something I’d say or do, which was quite often. I also knew how scared he was to lose his father, how he’d go off into one of the waiting areas, closing the door behind him so that he could think and sulk in private. When he was really angry or upset, I’d catch him smoking a cigarette outside, even when we both knew how oddly ironic it was for him to choose something that might destroy his own lungs.

“You’re joking me,” I’d said the first time I caught him with one dangling out of his mouth. “The wise doctor-to-be smokes? Don’t you know it’s slow-motion suicide?”

He puffed away, as though if he puffed hard enough, I’d go away.

I continued. “It’s disgusting. It fills your lungs with tar and gives you stinky breath.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not kissing me,” he answered, throwing the butt into the waiting basket and positioning himself before me.

Whenever he looked at me with those eyes, I could feel the air catch in my throat. I almost forgot what I was about to say.

“My friend Beth went to London last summer…”

“Is there going to be a point to this story?” he interrupted.

“And she saw this advertisement on the telly—you know that’s what they call television over there, right?” Again, he rolled his eyes at me. “Well, it showed a picture of this woman’s face, and all of a sudden her lips and eyes and nose turned into hot molten lava, and her skin was curdling from the heat, and she turned into this black smoldering creature, features dripping off her face like a volcano. Then the announcer came on and said, ‘Imagine if what happened on the inside, happened on the outside.’ Totally freaked Beth out. She swears she’ll never even look at a cigarette again.”

“That’s a great story, Jessie.”

I also knew when Jonas wanted silence and when I should back off.

One afternoon, Jonas motioned for me outside his father’s room. I was pushing a cart back to the nurse’s station, having finished my shift.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No.”

“I’m going to the cafeteria. Want to sit with me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” turning his back to me and walking toward the elevator. Then he called out, “Hey, Parker, don’t go bugging my dad anymore today.”

I took offense, leaving the cart behind and catching the elevator door just as it was about to close. “What do you mean, ‘bugging him?’”

“Exactly what I said, now let go of the door.”

“I’m not bugging him. He loves my company.”

“Okay, that’s great, but let go of the door.”

“No,” I said. “Not until you explain yourself.”

“There’s nothing to explain, alright. Forget about it, just move out of the way, okay?”

It dawned on me that there were three sets of eyes waiting for me to let go of the door. Their impatient stares were almost as bad as Jonas’s vain attempts to get under my skin. My hands dropped, and I stepped into the unwelcome space. Nobody said a word. When the doors opened on the first floor, there was no question I’d follow Jonas into the crowded cafeteria.

“You could have just said yes instead of pretending you meant no.”

“You can be such a jerk sometimes,” I said.

He ignored me, and when he walked through the lunchtime crowd in the cafeteria, he turned to me and said, “Why don’t you go grab us a table?” And because I did whatever he asked, I started to walk away in search of an open seat when I heard him call out from behind me, “What can I get you?”

Walking the few awkward steps in his direction, I stopped right in front of him, close enough to touch, looked him in the eyes, and deadpanned, “Is this a date?”

When I laughed, and he proceeded to stare at me, it was clear he just wasn’t getting my sense of humor.  I was pretty hungry. I might have allowed myself to eat something, if not for the small fact that my stomach was tied in knots and my throat felt dry and tight, and I wasn’t sure anything would go down because this would be our first meal together.

That’s when “chocolate milk” popped out.

“Chocolate milk?” he asked.

It surprised me too, but it had always been a comfort food.

“Whatever you say,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You do look kind of cute in that outfit.” I looked down at my clothes and was reminded that I was wearing the shapeless candy striper uniform. In one powerful yank, I freed myself from the red and white fabric and crumpled it into a ball. Jonas was watching me, and I wanted to smack the arrogant smirk right off his face. Turning, I stomped off in the other direction to a table in the back, where I threw the apron over the chair, took a seat, and surveyed the room.
This
is where I was at my best, in a crowded room of strangers.

I had oftentimes contemplated a career with the CIA or FBI, in large part due to this game I would play called detective. Beth and I played it all the time, whenever we went to a restaurant with her family. It was easy; you simply had to call a table. Upon entering a dining establishment, search the room, hone in on a specific table, and come up with the most accurate depiction of its inhabitants. That meant, by the end of the night, we would have to know how the people were connected and the various elements of that connection—love, hate, friendship, family, turmoil, or strife. I was not the easiest opponent to play this game with because I never believed I was wrong. Even if Beth was certain, even if she swore she knew the people, after she heard my argument and supporting evidence, she always changed her mind and ended up agreeing with me anyway.

Take the time we watched a couple kissing throughout the entire meal. Beth thought they were a happily married couple. She said, “They’re madly in love after twenty years, three kids, a dog, and a house with a big yard.”

Beth didn’t stand a chance.

“Come on, Jessie, look how happy they are.”

“First of all, married couples usually aren’t that happy. Statistically, the only people that are that happy are the ones that are having affairs, and to prove my point, he’s wearing a wedding band. Take a look, she’s not.”

Beth’s face moved through varying emotions before settling on disbelief. “She’s the girlfriend,” I said. “The wife you’re talking about, well, she’s at home, probably watching those three kids, and walking the dumb dog.”

Beth was dumbstruck. I said, “Didn’t we just watch
Falling in Love
together? DeNiro and Streep had the same look in their eyes and they weren’t married.”

Jonas sat down with a tray of food just as I was about to call the table beside us. There were two of them, a man, probably around forty, a girl maybe Jonas’s age. This one was tricky. She could have been his daughter; she could have been his girlfriend. He was good-looking enough to get away with such a pretty, young girl by his side. I just wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the body language between them. She seemed sad, and he was doing his best to console her. We were in a hospital, though, and there was a lot of that going on.

“What are you doing?” Jonas asked, a puzzled look on his face.

“Shhhh,” I said. Obviously, he didn’t know that the agent could not be interrupted or the
call
might be inaccurate. Thinking these things, I scared myself at times.

“What are you up to?” he asked again, impatiently starting with his hamburger. When I waved him off with the flick of my hand, he turned to his food. I couldn’t believe the crap he put on it, mayonnaise, hot peppers, loads of ketchup, mustard. No wonder he had a queasy stomach.

The man at the next table drew a hand out toward the girl. Without hesitation, she took it in her own. I watched as he cupped it in his, feeling the tingly goose bumps travel down my spine. She wiped a tear from her eye, and I began to feel terrible for watching; but like a car wreck, I couldn’t turn away. It was a hospital, I reminded myself, sad stuff was bound to happen.  Still, I always shamed myself a little bit by watching. A very little bit. Maybe her mother was dying, maybe she was dying, or Grandma Bessie from Seattle. This one was hard to pin down so I left it, for the time being.

“Drink your milk. You’re a growing girl,” he said to me, as I focused both my eyes and ears on him.

“Do I look like I need more growing?” I asked.

When I saw his eyes move from my face downward, I decided it was okay that he didn’t answer.

“You’re always trying to act all cool and macho, Jonas, but I know beneath all that med school arrogance, you like having me around.”

“And you, Jessica Parker, you’re always trying to act all cool and macho, but I know beneath all that grade school charm, you wanted to have lunch with me.”

The music of Jefferson Starship was in the backdrop of our play, and I began to hum along to “You Can Count On Me” while Jonas pretended not to hear. Well, he wasn’t wrong. I knew I was fascinated and sort of scared of him at the same time—a lethal combination when it came to matters close to the heart.

“What are you going to do for your dad’s birthday?” I asked, suddenly at a loss for words. He didn’t think to ask me how I managed to obtain knowledge of this kind.

“We’ll probably just try to make it as normal a day for him as possible. Amy will be here. She’s finishing this ballet camp thing in San Francisco. You’ll finally get to meet her. And then some of Dad’s friends from work mentioned visiting. The hospital might give clearance that day for more visitors, though I don’t think he wants any of them to see him like this. I told him I’d sneak him in a bottle of his favorite wine.”

You’ll get to meet her
, was all I heard, as if there was a progression in our friendship, an invitation into his family. The welcoming gesture poured out of him, and if he had wanted to filter it, he did not. To be part of a unit like the Levys was something I had been pining for my whole life.

“I’d like that,” I said.

“I figured you would. You never leave this place. Why aren’t you somewhere with Beth doing something fun?”

I thought about this. I knew what he was asking with those words. It was what lingered beneath them that bothered me. “You don’t think I’m serious about becoming a doctor?”

“I believe you,” he answered, shoveling a handful of greasy fries into his mouth. “You can be anything you want to be, anything you set your mind to. I just think you hang around this place too much. It’s kind of unnatural.”

“Unnatural? It’s my job.”

“You’re a volunteer,” he reminded me. “When your shift is up, you don’t leave. When it’s your day off, you come in. You can’t possibly want to hang around sick people all day and all night?”

“I like it here. I like the way everybody knows each other, like an extended family.”

“That’s just it, they’re not your family, they’re not even your friends. What is it with you?”

I thought I heard Dr. Norton’s voice reverberating in my mind.

“You’re different, Jessie Parker,” he said with a smile. “You’re not like other fifteen-year-olds I’ve met.”

“Do you comb the local high schools for friends?”

“And you’re pretty sharp. That doesn’t come from someone who’s just plain ordinary.”

“I never said I was ordinary, Jonas, you did.”

I fingered the glass of chocolate milk, watching the smooth, clear line I painted across the frosty glass. I wanted to talk to Jonas. I wanted him to hear my voice, the collection of words that would tell my story, but I was frightened of the truth, frightened of what I’d hear, and frightened of what I’d learn about myself.

I turned to the couple beside me and all the while Jonas’s eyes never shifted from my face. I couldn’t look at him. Already I was convinced he could read my overflowing mind, and my vulnerability was a skin I never showed and never shed. That he saw me as nothing short of invincible was essential to our friendship.

“This couple here,” I said, pointing discreetly to my left, “do you think that’s his daughter?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Or do you think they’re married? Or she’s the girlfriend?”

“What’s this about, Jessie?”

“Just answer me. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably his daughter.”

I turned to them again. He was still holding her hand. The girl no longer looked frightened. She looked at ease, safe. An exchange passed between them. There was admiration, possibly love.