Damage (17 page)

“Yeah.” I stop at the end of the hall and peer out into a larger hall with dimmed fluorescent lights humming overhead. The smell of medicine and sour sheets makes it hard to swallow. We’re down one of the wings where the sickest kids are, the ones who sleep all day and moan all night. I used to be one of them. I wonder if Dani was in one of these rooms too? I wonder if our younger selves ever passed each other in the hall and had thoughts about each other. I can’t remember a little girl with eyes like hers, but I’ve never been good at placing people on looks. I need to talk to them, touch them, form impressions that make them three-dimensional enough to remember.

“So what are you thinking?” I whisper.

“I don’t know yet.”

We start down the hall, footsteps nearly silent on the slick floor. The floors are nicer up here, polished and shiny, and the walls are covered with murals the kids work on every spring.

“An act of hope and renewal.” That’s what they called it when Dani and I were here. As if we didn’t all know there wasn’t hope for a lot of us.

Dani pauses by a painting of a field of flowers with a big, smiley sun rising over the mountains in the background. Her fingers float out to hover over a brown flower with a bright red center. “This was mine. I was so weak by then. I remember the brush felt like it weighed a ton.”

I stare at the field, recognition slowly dawning. “This was the one I worked on too.” I step back, scanning the blues and yellows and greens, finding an orange-and-purple-striped tiger lily with fat petals. “That’s mine.”

Dani smiles. “That’s pretty good. Are you an artist?”

I snort. “That was the first and last time I ever painted anything. I only did it because we were getting ice cream after, and they said I couldn’t have any unless I tried hard on the mural.”

“That’s a shame. Looks like you have potential,” she says, her words making something inside me puff up the same way it does when I score a goal from halfway down the field. It’s stupid, but I like the thought that I might be good at something other than sports, that Dani sees things in me no one else has bothered to look for.

She wanders down a little farther, to a framed picture on the wall by the mural. She leans in and sucks in a breath. “Is that you? It is, isn’t it?”

I come to stand behind her, following her finger to the last row where a thin boy with improbably wide shoulders stands a head above the rest of the kids, even the ones who are obviously older. “Yeah. I was always really tall. It’s weird because my sister was super short. But I’m not sure we have the same dad, so I guess … ” I fall silent, searching the rows of pale, drawn faces and haunted eyes. Even the kids who are smiling look sad beneath the skin. They make me feel sad too, and when I finally find Dani I get even sadder.

“You.” I point to the emaciated girl in the front, the one sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her bulging elbows are propped carefully on her knees, as if it hurts to touch the parts of herself together. The Tinker Bell on her T-shirt is smiling, but she isn’t. She’s biting at her lips, holding in a scream. Her face is skeletal, her cheeks hollow, and her bright brown eyes glitter with sickness.

Something catches in her throat when she sighs. “Yeah. I was really sick. Way before I came into the hospital. That’s why they gave me the experimental treatment. They thought it was my only chance,” she says. “But for a long time I just got sicker. It took months for me to get stronger.” Her hand drifts up, lingering near the image of her old self. “When I was weak, Rachel was my friend. She would come play with me at night when I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t until the medicine started to work that she tried to kill me.”

My arm finds its way around her narrow waist. I wish there was more of her to hold. Seeing how close she’d been to death makes me want to take her home and feed her some spicy sausage pasta, the stuff with the extra mozzarella and green onions that Traci and I go in on together if they have a deal on meat down at Bedford’s. I buy the veggies, she buys the sausage, and I cook the hell out of some Italian food. I bet Dani would like it. I bet she’d like Traci, too. My foster mom can be cool when she wants to be. I wonder if life will ever be normal enough for me to invite Dani home, to make her the first girl I’ve ever introduced to my foster parents.

“But you don’t look that sick here,” Dani says, drawing my attention back to the picture. “Do you remember feeling sick?”

I shake my head, letting my lips brush against the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. “No. Like I said, I only did the painting because they said we’d get ice cream and I think I ate a gallon of the chocolate. I almost never felt bad during the day. It was only in the afternoon after the treatment that I’d start to get sick to my stomach, and … ”

“And what?”

“My muscles hurt a lot, and my joints. But I never … ” I think back, a nagging feeling tugging at the back of my brain. “I was never weak or sick like most of the kids. I never lost my hair or anything. And I grew a lot while I was here. Almost five inches in a year and a half.”

Dani turns in my arms, her hands pressing against my chest. She lifts her face and I read a new fear in her eyes. “You’re probably going to think I’m crazy. But the more I think about this … and after everything you just said … what if you weren’t sick?”

The idea startles me for a second. But only a second. That’s all the time it takes for my brain to start sprinting down the path Dani has cleared. “If I wasn’t sick.”

“If you were just a kid with no parents and no family.”

“And no one who was going to care if … ”

If they used me, if they made me part of some kind of science experiment.

I think it, but Dani is the one who actually has the guts to say it out loud.

“If they used you to test a new diabetes treatment.” Her hands fist my shirt. I can tell this conversation is making her sick. But then I guess for a girl like Dani, someone sheltered from the ugliest parts of the world, it must be pretty sickening to imagine a kid having his life stolen like that.

But if it turns out to be true, I won’t be surprised. I’m way past being horrified by people. People are people, and a lot of the time they suck ass. This would just be another example in a long list of personal experience with the ass sucking. The only thing that shocks me is that I didn’t think of the possibility sooner. Years sooner.

There’s only one flaw in her logic.

“But how would that work?” I drop my voice as a nurse hustles down the hall behind us, rolling a machine with tubes spilling down from the top. She doesn’t pay us much attention, either. Morning visiting hours just ended. Maybe she thinks we’re relatives who haven’t made it off the floor yet. “I know I didn’t have diabetes.”

She runs tight fingers through her hair. “I don’t know, but when the scientists at my dad’s lab are testing new drugs they like to give them to people who aren’t sick, too. Just to see what kind of side effects they give normal people. North Corp is always advertising for healthy volunteers. They get a lot of college people and single moms … ” She sighs. “But not many little kids. Not any, I don’t think. That’s why what my dad did was so controversial. Some people thought he was using me as a test subject. He had a lot riding on getting that diabetes drug onto the market. It could have made his career, maybe even won him a Nobel prize or something. Instead, it nearly killed me. And maybe … not just me.”

“You mean your—”

“My dad is the one who developed the treatment. It was his drug,” she says. “The first one he worked on for North Corp.”

Dani

I search his face, waiting for understanding to dawn, waiting for him to decide to hate me.

Even though we don’t know anything for sure, a part of me is certain. I just
know
Dad did this. He was so determined to cure me. That’s the whole reason he went to work for North Corp. They already had a medicine to treat juvenile diabetes in the works and promised that Dad could take over as head of the project. He would have done anything to help me get well.

Even put innocent kids through unnecessary pain and misery. He really doesn’t care about other people. Penny says Dad’s like a pack animal, willing to do whatever it takes to preserve his pack but missing a certain amount of “empathy for his fellow man.”

Which is just another way of saying he doesn’t give a crap about anyone who doesn’t share his house or his genes. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Why didn’t this jump into my mind the second Jesse and I started talking about drugs we might have been given?

Because you don’t want to believe Dad’s really that bad. Because you’re a dumb, trusting kid.

I wince. Harsh. But true.

“But if that’s what happened, then … ” I hesitate, not wanting to say another word, but knowing I have to. My father isn’t picking up his phone, he isn’t calling me back, and a horrible thought has already started to bleed into my mind. “What if my dad has something to do with what’s happening to us now? What if he—”

“Hold on. You’re letting yourself get way too far ahead,” Jesse says. “We should look at our records first. We might not even have gotten the same treatment. I might really have had some kind of cancer. And even if your dad was part of something sketchy in the past, he isn’t part of what’s happening now. He would never hurt you. He wouldn’t let people run our bus off the road, or pay Vince to steal his own hard drive.”

I nod. He’s right. I can’t believe my dad would do any of those things. But still, if he’s to blame for hurting Jesse, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him. Or myself. I fight to take a deep breath, but the weight of my suspicions makes my shoulders heavy. “But what if … what if what happened to you is my fault?”

Instead of pulling away, Jesse leans closer. “It’s not. Even if you’re right. You’re not your dad.”

And then he kisses me. Soft and slow, his lips warm against mine. I shock myself by giving in to the kiss, letting Jesse banish all the worry for a few heady seconds. His tongue slips between my lips, tasting vaguely of the almonds we stole from Mina’s house and something else I can’t quite place. Something salty and sweet and just … Jesse. Something that reaches past the shock of feeling another person’s tongue against mine and makes the new intimacy seem natural. Perfect. So good I don’t notice that we aren’t alone until someone clears their throat.

Loudly.

I jump back so fast my head hits the mural. Jesse handles the interruption better. But then, he’s probably had a lot more practice kissing—and getting caught kissing—than I have. He pulls his hands from my waist and crosses his arms over his chest, nodding a slightly cocky “what’s up” as he turns to face the soft, bread-loafish-looking nurse standing a few feet away.

“Sorry,” she says, a smile tugging at the wrinkled skin of her cheeks. “But visiting hours ended twenty minutes ago.”

“Yeah, we know,” Jesse says. “We’re here to talk to somebody about volunteering with the kids.”

Volunteering. It’s a great excuse to roam around the floor every Thursday afternoon, but I don’t know how it will help us today. We need to get to a computer
now
.

“Wonderful! The hospital can always use more volunteers. But we don’t handle that here.” She points toward the front desk. “You’ll want to take the elevator to the second floor administration offices. Take a right when you—”

“We would have gone there,” I say, trying to think as fast on my feet as Jesse. “But we wanted to make sure we’d get to work with the kids on this floor. We were both here when we were little. We’re Danielle and Jesse?”

“Oh my. Danielle and Jesse.” Her pale blue eyes move back and forth between us, not seeming to remember who we are.

But I remember her, even before she puts her arms around us both and hauls us in for a hug. Her coffee scent stabs at my nose, bringing memories of cold alcohol swabs and sticks in the arm. It’s Coffee Nurse, the one who always took my last blood draw of the day. She’s older and quite a bit wider, but her smile and smell are still the same.

She releases us after a moment, looking up at Jesse with a shine in her eyes. “And look how big and strong and healthy you both are.” She sniffles. “This is why I stay here. Moments like this, when you know there’s hope.” She smiles again, this time a full-blown baring of her yellowed teeth. “Come on down to the break room. Let me get you two something to drink and we can talk about what you’d like to do with the kids. They’re going to be so excited! It will be great for them to see that our kids can grow up so well.”