Falling for Hadie (36 page)

Her words were comforting and I absorbed them, wanting to believe that everything was going to be fine. I had to keep on believing. I had to have hope.

“Come on, you need to get your mind off this. Let’s talk about something else,” Mariah said, plopping down on the bed beside me. “Oh! Lana asked Estella about you today.”

I raised a brow but didn’t say anything.

“Well, she asked both of us, but Ray kind of shoved past her,” Estella said.

“She deserves it!” Ray said in indignation, rocking the bed as she slapped her palms down onto it. “She’s obviously asking around because she wants all the gossip on what’s going on with Lincoln.”

Estella bit her bottom lip, looking uncertain. “I don’t know…she genuinely seemed to be worried about Hadie.”

“Oh, Estee,” Ray said, lying back on the bed, “your goodness will be the death of you one day.”

There was an awkward silence.

Mariah gasped and then bolted upright, clamping her hands over her mouth. “Hadie, I’m so sorry! That was too soon! I didn’t mean to say the ‘d’ word! I honestly didn’t even think!”

“It’s fine.” I shrugged, brushing off the comment.

I knew she hadn’t said it with any malicious intent. That was just the way Mariah was, babbling on without really knowing where her mouth was going to take her. I couldn’t be mad at her for being herself.

“I’m not sure how I feel about Lana,” I admitted, rolling a strand of my hair between my fingers. “I don’t think I have any room left inside of me to feel anything for her. She couldn’t be further from my thoughts.”

And that was the truth. My lying, back-stabbing, cheating ex-best friend wasn’t a concern of mine anymore. Only Lincoln was.

“Oh, and Eddie asked about you too,” Estella added, when she was sure that I really hadn’t been upset by Ray’s “death” comment. “He wanted to know how you were doing. I told him you were dealing with everything as best as you could, and he said he’d check in on you to see if you needed anything.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the mention of Eddie. He was someone I could talk to without worrying about being judged. He was someone I could trust.

“I really like him. He’s a great guy,” I said absently.

Mariah and Estella looked over me and gave each other a quick look. Then Mariah cleared her throat rather obviously.

“What?” I asked, wondering what my friends were communicating to each other in the aftermath of Mariah’s weird throat clearing thing.

“Nothing,” they both said in unison.

I was definitely more than a little curious about what my friends were keeping from me, but I let it go. It didn’t seem important right now. Not when there was Lincoln to think about.

I had to see him. I had to see him before it was too late.

And then I was crying again, and my best friends wrapped their arms around me and tried to calm me down with words of comfort. It was nice to have them here to support me. It was nice to be able to tell them how I was feeling.

“The last thing I said to him was that he was an ass,” I sobbed. “What if that’s the last thing I ever say to him?”

Estella stroked my hair in a motherly way. “Hadie, it’s going to be fine. You will get your chance to see him. Everything will work out.”

As I snuggled into her, I hoped that Estella was right. I hoped I would get my chance to see Lincoln.

Lincoln

My lids felt heavy when I tried to open my eyes. It felt like something solid had been placed on them and was weighing them down.

All around me were voices and sounds that were indistinguishable. A strange, sterile smell invaded my nostrils as I took a deep breath. I had no idea where I was.

There was a steady beeping that sounded eerily familiar. I’d heard that sound before many times. It was a sound that belonged to a place that I hated going to. My insides turned to ice when my brain finally put the pieces together.

I was in the goddamn hospital.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Everything was blurry at first, but eventually I could make out the shapes of some objects in the room. There was a chair at the foot of the bed that was occupied by someone I couldn’t distinguish just yet.

Trying to sit up was difficult, so I grudgingly continued to lie there. My movement must’ve roused the person in the chair, because they stood up and came over to me.

“Lincoln, you’re awake,” my dad said, sounding relieved.

I tried to speak but my throat was dry, so I just nodded my head once to acknowledge that I’d heard him.

“How are you feeling?”

“F-fine…” That was a complete lie. I felt like absolute shit.

My stomach was aching in places I’d never known existed and my movements were slow and delayed. It took me a few seconds to follow through with a single action. I was useless.

“…Water…” I croaked.

My own voice sounded strange and foreign to me. I didn’t sound like myself. My tone was weak, soft, and raspy.

“Yes, hold on. I’ll get you a glass. Let me just help you sit up first.”

Pain shot through my body as Dad placed his hands beneath me and shifted me up a little. Despite the pain that was terrorizing me, my body felt limp and lifeless. He propped some pillows behind me and then walked away to get the water.

“Here,” he said, holding out the glass for me.

Leaning forward, I took a good long drink from the glass as my dad held onto it until my throat wasn’t so dry anymore. I reclined against the pillows, taking in my surroundings for a second time. I was hooked onto the beeping machine which was monitoring my heart rate. There were tubes and IVs running from a bag of fluids and into me. I felt like I was half man, half machine. Finally, I looked over at my dad again.

“It’s good to see you alert, son.”

Alert? I sure as hell didn’t feel alert. Barely alive was more like it.

“How long have I…been here?” I still didn’t sound like myself. I sounded like an echo—faint, distant, and weak.

“Two days,” Dad said.

Shit! I didn’t even know how I’d gotten here. The last thing I remembered was being in Mr. Swinton’s office and feeling dizzy and nauseous. I’d gone to give him the letter for Hadie, because he was the only one I trusted to give it to her when the time was right.

“Has Hadie…come by?” I had to pause between words because each time I tried to speak there was a stab of pain in my chest. My chest hurt with each breath, too. I was losing and the cancer was winning.

“No, she hasn’t.”

I focused on Dad’s face and gave him a ‘what the fuck?’ look. That wasn’t possible. I knew Hadie, and I knew she’d never desert me when I needed her the most, so what the hell was going on?

“Why?’

Dad let out a long breath. “Your mother didn’t want her to see you.”

“What?” I choked out.

“She didn’t think it was a good idea, so she told Hadie that she couldn’t see you.”

I was angry. I wanted to yell and vent my rage, but obviously the medication was suppressing that part of my emotions. I addressed Dad in a perfectly calm voice.

“And what did…you say?”

“Nothing.”

“When are you…going to stand up to her? When are you…going to think for…yourself?”

Dad was silent. I felt bad for saying these things to him, but someone had to tell him. Even if that someone was his seventeen-year-old son.

“Where’s Mom? I want to…talk to her.”

“She went home to get some rest, but I’ll call her back. Let me get a nurse first though. They told me to tell them if you woke up.”

If
I woke up? So they hadn’t expected me to recover full consciousness?

When I didn’t say anything, mostly because I was trying to conserve my energy for my showdown with my mother, Dad sighed and left the room.

I took that chance to look around the room again. I was in a ward with three other beds. The one beside me and the one directly opposite me were empty, but the bed in the corner had curtains drawn around it for privacy.

The walls were a pasty white color and the floors such a bright white that it hurt to look at them for too long. The darkness was solid beyond the window, so I knew it was quite late at night.

I heard shoes click-clacking on the tiled floor and a nurse walked into the room dressed in scrubs and carrying a clipboard. She gave me a bright smile as she approached my bed.

“Hi, Lincoln, I’m Jean. I just wanted to see how you were feeling.”

I shrugged. “I’m okay.”

She nodded, a sad smile on her face. “That’s good to hear. Now, I’m just here to adjust your pain medication. The doctor already made his rounds when you were asleep, so he’ll check in on you in the morning. So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being highest, could you please tell me your level of pain?”

“Nine-and-a-half.” I would’ve said ten, but I didn’t want to sound like a complete wuss.

Jean made a note on her clipboard. “And are you feeling slight discomfort or is the pain excruciating?”

“It’s like…a hundred hot needles are stabbing me in the chest but…from the inside.”

She frowned and also noted this on her clipboard. “You seem short of breath. Are you having difficulty breathing?”

“It hurts…to breathe.”

“Okay, Lincoln, what I’m going to do is get you some morphine to numb some of the pain. You’ll have to let me know how you’re feeling afterwards. I’ll be right back.”

Jean walked out of the room again and I settled back into the pillows and shut my eyes. I needed to see Hadie. I had to see her now.

What I hadn’t told the nurse was how hard it had been to focus on her when she’d been speaking. I hadn’t told her that it’d felt like my consciousness was slipping away. I kept all that to myself because I could tell that I didn’t have much time left.

I was trying so hard to hold on until Hadie got here, but what if she took too long? What if my mom didn’t grant my final wish? What if I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye to Hadie?

The click-clacking sound of heels on the floor came closer and I opened my eyes as Jean walked back into the room carrying a syringe and the clipboard.

“Now, just relax,” she said with that same easy smile which suddenly looked familiar. I had seen that same smile somewhere else.

Jean placed the clipboard down on the bedside table before turning to the IV with the syringe in her hand. Nothing happened for a while, but then I felt a familiar burning sensation as the morphine entered my vein. The sensation only lasted for a moment before a calmness
descended upon me. My muscles relaxed and the pain in my stomach was more subdued than it had been before.

Jean picked up her clipboard and noted something down on it. When she was done she stood there, hesitating like she wanted to say something.

“My son goes to school with you,” she finally said. “You might know him. His name is Eddison.”

Wracking my brain, I began to shake my head when I couldn’t put a face to the name. I was new after all and I didn’t know many of the students on a first name basis.

“Oh, his friends call him Eddie. You might know him by that name,” she said. “I only mentioned it because he was asking me about you.”

Eddie who worked with Hadie. Eddie who had a crush on Hadie. The same Eddie who Hadie had found a friend and confidante in.

“Yeah,” I said, “I do know him. Nice guy.”

Her eyes lit up and she looked like any proud mother would. “That’s what he said about you.”

A thought struck me and I glanced down at Jean’s clipboard. “Do you have…spare paper?”

She regarded me curiously. “Did you want to write someone a note?”

“Yeah.”

Jean flipped through the papers on her clipboard, chewing on her bottom lip. She finally stopped, pulled out a piece of paper and attached it to the clipboard before handing the entire thing to me along with a pen.

I knew what I wanted to say, but it was just a matter of whether I could write it down or not. They were five simple words, but they were difficult to write. It wasn’t just because my hand was unsteady; it was also because writing those five words down made everything real.

It was admitting to myself that my time was up—I could feel it in my bones. My body was giving me all the signs. It was telling me that it was weary of this life and that it was time for me to let go.

Writing that note was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but I had to do it. I had to let go. I had to write this note so that they knew that it was okay to move on and live their lives.

When I was done, I pulled the page free from the clipboard and folded it in half before handing everything back to Jean. Then I handed her the note.

“Did you want me to give this to someone?” she enquired.

“Eddie.”

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she didn’t question my motives. “Okay, I’ll give it to him when I get home.”

I shook my head. “No…give it to him…after I…die…”