Invincible (4 page)

But none of this comes close to what will be the most terrible part of all. I don't know how I'm going to tell Will that I'm giving up on the promise we made that we'd get through this together, that I'm leaving him to get through this alone, without me.

“Can you believe this shit?” Stella says, showing me a page featuring a scantily clad teen holding a math textbook with a confused look on her face. She has written in a thought bubble above the model's head:
Keep me stupid so I don't ask questions.
“I can't believe this is legal. It's like child porn.”

“I'm sure she's eighteen,” I say, grateful for the interruption of the depressing mess inside my head. Stella rolls her eyes.

“Hey guys,” Caleb says as he walks through the door with two construction-paper hearts. He hands one to each of us with a big dopey grin on his face.

It's still shocking to see him sometimes, so unlike the rest of us. We are all so obviously sick, but Caleb still seems healthy. He walks around the halls unassisted most of the time. He goes around cheering up little kids. Most of the time, he doesn't seem sick at all, definitely not sick enough to be an inpatient. But then he'll disappear for a day or two with a migraine that makes him unable to move, or he'll get really confused all of a sudden and forget how to talk and we have to get a nurse to take him away. But he always comes back cheerful and full of hope, even with double vision, even with sores in his mouth from the radiation. Brain cancer can be weird like that. One day you're doing your math homework, then all of a sudden you forget your name. Then you have a seizure and end up here, where doctors find a tumor the size of a Ping-Pong ball in your head.

Caleb's brain cancer was “cured” at age six, so he had a whole nine years of believing he was done with it, nine years to forget what being sick felt like, to forget the fear, nine years to create a normal life. He had nine years to feel grateful, to believe every day was a miracle. But at fifteen, just a semester into his first year of high school, just a week after getting cast in the school musical, he found out God made a mistake. He took back the cure. And yet Caleb still believes in Him, now more than ever.

The heart Caleb made me has a white doily stuck to it and several sparkly heart stickers. He appears to have had a little difficulty with a clump of sequins. It says in careful purple cursive:
For Evie. Love, Caleb.

“Glitter,” Stella says gravely. “The herpes of the crafting world.” She leans over and looks at my valentine, then back at hers. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Why does Evie's say ‘Love, Caleb' and mine just says ‘From Caleb?'”

Caleb blushes and looks away. He hurries over to the TV and busies himself with setting up a video game. I expect Stella to keep talking, to embarrass him further. But she just looks at me, smiles sadly, and looks back at her magazine.

“You three too cool to hang out with everyone else?” Dan says as he walks into the room. He has to duck his head slightly as he comes through the doorway, nearly dislodging some hanging pink hearts. He looks like he should be playing basketball for the NBA instead of hanging out in here with us. He won't tell us exactly how tall he is, but I know it's close to seven feet.

“Hi, Danimal,” Stella coos, and gives a silly little wave with her fingers. Dan rolls his eyes.

“Evie, my friend,” he says, sitting in the chair next to me. “How are you?”

“I'm okay.”

“I've been meaning to come by and see you all day, but a couple little kids were getting ready to go into surgery this morning and needed me.”

“It's okay.”

“You know it's okay for things to not be okay, right?” he says softly, as if lowering his voice a little could give us privacy in this tiny room. “You could tell me.”

“I know.” Does he really have to do this in front of Caleb and Stella?

“All right,” he says, but I can tell he doesn't believe me. “I'm about to leave for the day. I'll come by and see you tomorrow, I promise. Is there anything you guys need? Caleb? You okay over there?”

Caleb is staring at the controller in his hand, as if he's wondering how it got there. After a few seconds, he looks up and smiles. “Hi, Dan,” he says, like he just noticed he was here.

“My shoulders are sore, Big Dan,” Stella says. “Can I have a massage?”

“Goodnight, Miss Hsu,” he says. Stella cracks up, and I laugh a little too. The only reason she can get away with this is because she's Stella.

“He is so fun to flirt with,” she says after he's gone.

“You should give my sister some pointers,” I say. “She
loves
him.”

“Your sister,” Stella says, then pauses for dramatic effect, “has a big fat stick up her ass. And not the fun kind.”

I love how raunchy Stella can be, how she'll say anything to get a reaction from people. Being with her and Caleb is the only thing that's making my new death sentence tolerable. They're the only ones who don't need to talk about it.

Caleb gives up on the video game and puts the controller down. “I don't understand,” he says, scratching the flaky skin behind his ear. “Why do you want to flirt with Dan if you're a lesbian?”

“Oh my god!” Stella exclaims in mock horror. “I am so not a lesbian. Lesbians knit and have ten cats and drink herbal tea. Just because I've made out with a few girls doesn't mean we need to label it. And in case you forgot, I have a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but wasn't he—?” Caleb doesn't finish his sentence. Stella shoots him a look that makes it clear she has no interest in hearing the rest of his question.

“So you're bisexual?” I say.

“I'm just Stella.” She grins, tipping her hat to us. And that's the end of that.

Only on pediatric cancer wards do you get friendships like ours. When you're sick like we are, how you present yourself to the world seems to lose its importance. No one cares about your hobbies or how you dress when you're sitting side by side for hours getting blood transfusions. No one cares about being cool when you're rubbing your friend's back while they puke into a bedpan.

It hits me that I'm going to have to say good-bye to them, too. Not just the world of the well. This one. I'm leaving my sick world too.

“I'm tired,” I say. “I'm going to take a nap before my parents and Jenica get here.”

“Want me to wheel you back to your room?” Caleb says.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I'll come up too,” Stella says. “Maybe my roommate will be asleep and I can have phone sex with Cole.”

“Gross,” Caleb and I say in unison.

I just want to fall asleep before I start crying. If I start, I'm afraid I'll never be able to stop.

The second saddest thing, after Valentine's Day in a children's hospital, is a Valentine's Day present from your parents. The white stuffed dog mine brought me holds a heart in its mouth that says
I Ruv You
. It sits on my bedside table next to the plastic pitcher of water, an evil grin on its little doggy face. Its beady eyes say, “No romance for you, Cancer Girl.”

Does the white dog know it's also my two-year anniversary with Will? Exactly two years ago today, we went on our first date—burgers at Barney's, and
Casablanca
at the art house movie theater on Telegraph. He kissed me for the first time when Ilsa said to Humphrey Bogart, “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.” The theater shows it every Valentine's Day, and we went again last year, just before my first diagnosis. We were going to make it our tradition. We had it all planned out for tonight—the same burgers, the same movie—but that was before my leg fell apart and I ended up back in here. And now visiting hours are over.

I've been lying here since my parents and Jenica left. Kasey even made an appearance, but left quickly for a date with some new boy she just met. I could tell she didn't want to tell me about her plans, didn't want to talk about life going on outside these walls when mine's about to come to a close, but I pulled the information out of her. She couldn't look me in the eye as she told me.

My favorite night nurse, Suzanne, is on duty, and she keeps coming in to see if I need anything, if I want to speak to the counselor on call. Everyone is trying to get me to talk. It must be part of my
care plan now. It must come up in big, blinking red letters whenever someone opens my charts on the computer:
Get her to talk about her feelings!!!
But I don't feel like talking. What's the point of having the same conversation over and over again? What's the point of talking if it doesn't change anything?

But I did tell Suzanne my leg hurts. I can at least talk about the kind of pain that medicine can fix. There's been talk about putting me on a PCA, “Patient-controlled anesthesia,” which would give me control of my pain meds with the push of a button. But no one's willing to make that call just yet. Once that happens, it's over. There's no coming back from that.

I hear a knock on the door. “Dinner,” Suzanne calls from the other side.

“I already ate,” I say.

“It's a special treat,” she says. “Close your eyes.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Are your eyes closed?”

I close my eyes. “Yes.” It'll probably be something heart-shaped. It'll probably be something pink. I wish I were sleeping. I wish I could just get rid of the rest of this sad, pointless day. I wish my leg wasn't throbbing. I wish these pain meds were stronger.

I hear Suzanne's shoes on the floor, the creak of the rolling tray. I swear I can smell the broken promise of my anniversary cheeseburger, and I feel the beginning of tears leaking through my closed eyelids. Crying over the hallucinated scent of a stupid cheeseburger? I must really be losing it.

Suzanne clears her throat. I pretend I'm sleeping. She clears her throat again. Her voice sounds low; I think she's coming down with a cold. “What?” I grumble, and open my eyes.

The lights are dim and in front of my bed is a tray covered with a lace tablecloth, candles, and a dozen red roses. On a real china plate sits a big, beautiful cheeseburger and curly fries.

I look around the room and find Will standing by the door. “Happy Valentine's Day,” he says, and I immediately start crying. The floodgates are finally open. In a blink, he is by my side, his warm hands around mine.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his face squeezed into its too-familiar look of concern.

“Yes,” I say. “Just surprised. Just . . . happy.” I don't tell him that my leg is on fire. I don't tell him I've been trying not to cry for days. None of that matters in this moment. There is just happiness. There is just love. “How did you manage this?”

“I worked it out with Dan and Suzanne. They're awesome, by the way.”

“I know.”

“I brought
Casablanca
,” he says, pulling his laptop out of his backpack. “And theater-sized Junior Mints. But the deal is you have to eat all three and a half servings.”

I lift my skeleton arm and pull him close. He is so sturdy, his back so muscled and solid, he feels like a different species from me. “I love you,” I say with all the strength I have left.

His lips are soft on mine. I can barely remember what it felt like when my whole body would respond to his kiss, when it was strong enough to want something more than this weak grasp on survival.

“I wish I were stronger,” I say, my tears in our mouths. “I wish I could—”

“Shh,” he says. “You're perfect. This is perfect. Just like this.” I nod, wanting so badly to believe him. “Except, the burger might have gotten a little cold in my backpack.” It doesn't matter. We both know there's no way I'll be able to eat more than a couple bites anyway.

I manage a laugh, and for a second, with his face so close to mine that he's all I can see, love breaks through the fog of the pain medication and everything does feel perfect. I can imagine, just for this moment, that things are back the way they used to be. Back before everything was almost over.

“Will,” I say. “Thank you.” I don't want to let go. Maybe if I keep him here, just like this, time can stop. Maybe we can stay here forever, a freeze-frame of perfection.

“No problem,” he says, running his fingers down the back of my neck.

“Not just for this. For everything. For everything you've done for me this past year. For staying with me. You didn't have to. No one else would have.”

He looks at me with his kind, sky-blue eyes. “Evie, I love you. Leaving was never an option.”

“But it's been so hard on you. You shouldn't have had to deal with all this. You should have had a normal life.”

“I wouldn't have it any other way. I've gotten to be with you. That's all that matters.”

I shake my head, but I know there's no use in arguing with Will's loyalty. It is pure and solid and so much better than I deserve.