Invincible (5 page)

“I am so lucky,” I say, holding on to him as tight as I can. “I love you so much.”

“I'm the lucky one,” he says.

We stay like that for a while, me lying in bed with Will leaning over me, trapped in my arms. I wish he could climb into bed with me; I wish he could hold me with his whole body; I wish we could fall asleep together. But there's not enough room in my tiny hospital bed, and even if we tried to squish, there's the question of my leg and my catheter and my IV, all the things he could get tangled in.

He kisses me on the cheek. “Now how about this movie?”

“Okay,” I say. It might be good to get a break from this intensity, let some fictional people take over the drama.

He sets his laptop on my bedside table and presses play. As he pulls the adjustable tray out across my lap, his elbow knocks over the pole that holds my IV bags. He reaches out to grab it but knocks the table instead, tipping the computer onto my broken leg.

They can hear my scream all the way in San Francisco.

I am on fire. I am blind with pain. Will is crying. His voice, distorted:
Help. Oh God. Evie.

Nurse Suzanne to the rescue. Her hand on my shoulder. Walkie-talkie crackles.

Rubber shoes scuffle, so many pairs. The heavy silence of emergency. The whisper of nurses turning into angels.

I am falling, falling. Into the black hole with no ladder. Into the darkness with no way out. Into the pain that leads to more pain that leads to numbness that leads to—

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“I'M ON THE GOOD STUFF NOW,” I ANNOUNCE WHEN WILL arrives with yet another bouquet of flowers. “Also, I think I hate flowers.”

“Who hates flowers?” he says, kissing me on the forehead before setting his signature dozen red roses next to the million other wilting arrangements that have collected during the going-on three weeks I've been here.

“Cancer patients, that's who,” I say. “Did you hear me? They have me on morphine now. They inject it right into my port, then
whoosh
!” He does not seem impressed.

“Are you okay?” he says as he caresses my face. His fingers feel like pillows.

“I wish people would stop asking me that.” I try swatting his hand away but I miss. Nothing is where it's supposed to be.

“You scared me last night, honey.” His eyes are wet. What is wrong with these people? I already had to endure my family's waterworks earlier today, but luckily I was nodding out through most of their visit. “You were in so much pain,” he whimpers.

“But now I'm not,” I say. I can't even remember what pain feels like. “So turn that frown upside down.” I try to smile my biggest smile, but I'm not quite sure I get it right. I don't have the most precise control of my muscles right now. “My face feels like lasagna noodles.” I open and close my mouth a few times to demonstrate.

“Be careful with that stuff, Evie.”

“Or what?”

“You can get addicted.”

Does he have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? “I'll go to rehab as soon as I get out of the hospital,” I say. I think that's pretty hilarious, but Will looks like I just punched him in the nose. He doesn't know how funny I am. Stella thinks I'm funny. Outside, in his world, I am not funny. In here, I am a comedian. There is so much he doesn't know about me.

“This stuff is magic, Will. It's like I know there's pain, but I just don't care. It's so nice to not care for a change. I've wasted so much time caring.”

Will ignores me and starts setting up a backgammon set.

“There is no way I'm going to be able to play that,” I say.

What were we talking about? Lasagna? Why were we talking about lasagna?

He looks at me with his puppy-dog eyes and the room stops its throbbing for a second. “Evie,” he says. “Do you remember what happened last night?”

“Of course I remember. You dropped a computer on my leg.”

He flinches when I say that, and for a split second, I think I hear a distant echo of something that might sound like regret, but it passes and the room starts swirling its comforting swirl. I don't know why I never noticed how the lights pulse, how they flicker so minutely. I can see so many things now that I'm so slowed down. Like slow-motion photography. Like extreme close-ups on a nature show. Hummingbird wings. Snake tongues.

“Evie,” someone says. Is it the narrator of the show? Or is it the snake? “Evie,” he says again. “Where'd you go?”

Will. “In case you forgot, I can't exactly go anywhere right now.”

“You can't even focus your eyes on me.”

“I'm not mad at you,” my mouth says, but I don't know why.

“Oh, Evie.” Will is beside me, his face buried in his hands. I wish he would stop saying my name. Something must have happened. There are so many flowers.

“Well, if it isn't my two favorite Abercrombie models,” says a different voice, and it brings a new soundtrack to this tragic scene. It brings dancing instead of this funeral dirge.

“Stella!” I say. And there she is, materialized out of the fuzz, sauntering into the room in her signature rock-chic ensemble. Her tight tank top shows off her boobs that have somehow remained perfect despite all the rounds of chemo she's gone through.

“Cheerleader,” she says. “Hey, Loverboy.”

“Will, look at her boobs!” I say.

“Evie!” he says with a voice that means I'm in trouble.

“Uh-oh,” Stella says. “Looks like someone's been hitting the sauce.”

Do I catch her and Will sharing a meaningful moment of eye contact?
She's on the IV drugs now, isn't she? Next stop, PCA city. This is the end, isn't it? Only a matter of days now. Hours, even.

Well, whatever. Let them have their moment. Better than the usual of them not knowing what to say to each other, of Stella thinking Will's a boring tool and Will thinking Stella's a bad influence on me.

“They're not letting me out yet,” I say. “They were supposed to let me out.”

“They know what's they're doing, Evie,” Will says. “They have to get your pain under control.” God, why is he always so serious?

“Stella, you just missed a really good joke I said,” I tell her.

“What was it?”

I try to think, but all I find in my head is cotton. “I don't remember.”

“Sounds hilarious, babe.”

Will is determined to set up the backgammon board. There are at least a thousand little black-and-white pieces for him to find the right places for. It's making me dizzy just looking at it. And not the good kind of dizzy. Not the warm whirlpool of forgetting I had before he got here.

“Will, stop it with the backgammon,” I say. “I told you I'm not playing.” I can't put my foot down, so I thump my fist instead. But it's harder than I meant it to be; I'm stronger than I'm supposed to be, and the game and all the million pieces go flying. White and black buttons fall in slow motion to the ground, tinkling dully and rolling away to darkened corners where they will never be found.

“Oops,” I say. I know I should look at Will. I should make this easier for him. I should soften the blow of all these things falling apart. But I cannot take his sad face anymore. I cannot risk his reflecting me in those glassy eyes and showing me a version of myself that is not as indestructible as I want to feel.

So I look at Stella. Strong, wild, beautiful Stella. She could probably be a supermodel if she wasn't such a feminist. “Stella, you're beautiful,” I say.

“Don't tell me you're switching sides, Cheerleader. And with your boyfriend sitting right here. Scandalous!”

“Excuse her,” Will says. Why is he crawling around on the floor? “She isn't herself right now.”

“I'm myself,” I say. “I'm totally myself.”

“Maybe this
is
herself, Loverboy,” Stella says as she picks up the huge photo of my cheer squad out of the jungle of flower arrangements. She looks at the photo and shakes her head, then puts it back down facing the wall. “I can't look at these fembots anymore,” she says. “No offense.”

Will looks up from where he's kneeling on the floor, his hands full of white and black game pieces, as if finding them all will make this day salvageable. He looks so tired. Is this new? Or am I only now noticing? Is it my special slow-motion super-vision? But what if I don't want to see this? Why am I sad? I thought morphine was supposed to make all the pain go away.

“Get up,” I say as kindly as I can. I try to focus on him, try to remember what it feels like to want to make him happy. “Come here.” I reach out my hand for him. I see him take it but I barely feel a thing. I flex my skeleton arm and pull him to me—amazing how much power I have to move
people. I smile, kiss his chin, and just like that, I make everything okay. I will hold his sadness if I have to. It is heavy, but at least I don't have to do it for much longer.

“You two are so cute,” Stella sighs. “I wish Cole was here. We could, like, double date or something. Do something superexciting like go to the cafeteria and share some fries. Cole's going through this weird phase right now where all he wants to watch is kung-fu movies, but I'm sure he'd join us in the playroom to watch
Toy Story 3
for the fiftieth time. He's a good sport like that. Though if I have to watch that movie one more time, I think I'll tear my eyeballs out.”

“I like
Toy Story 3
,” Will says.

“You haven't watched it forty-nine times.”

“There you are, Stella,” says a dreaded voice from the doorway.

“Crap!” says Stella. “Quick, hide me.”

“Miss Hsu,” Nurse Moskowitz bellows, “go back to your room right now. Doctor's orders are to rest. You know that.”

“I'm not even tired. See, watch.” Stella dances a little tap dance in her big black boots.

“Right now, young lady.”

“But I put my boots on and everything. Do you know how long these things take to lace up?”

“Do you want me to call your parents?”

That makes Stella stop dancing. “Ooh, Nurse Ratched. You are diabolical.” She makes a show of dragging herself out of the room. “Have to go back to my cell now, kiddos. Come over tomorrow, Cheerleader. We can drink Diet Cokes and braid each other's hair and talk about what we're going to wear to homecoming. So long, Loverboy. Stay gold, Pony Boy.”

“Bye, Stella,” I call behind her. The room is smaller and darker as soon as she leaves. The lights start pulsing again, but not in a friendly way.

“She's so weird,” Will says. “I don't get how you two are such good friends.”

I shrug. Something like pain twists in my chest. It has nothing to do with cancer or my broken leg. But one of the charming things about morphine is it comes in waves, so just when sadness comes sneaking around, a warm surge turns my blood cozy again.

A sound like
“Uhhhghhh”
comes out of my mouth. Like something deflating.

Will is a cartoon character, startled, a little furry animal with his eyes bulging out of his head.
Danger! Danger!

“Everything's okay,” I mumble. My eyelids are so heavy.

“What happened?” he says. “Are you okay?”

Will, I don't want to talk to you right now. I don't want to darken this fluffy cloud with your worry.

“Morphine,” I say. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh, Evie,” Will says, barging in on the conversation.

“Stella, get me that flower over there.”

“Stella's gone. This is Will. Are you okay?”

God, that question!

“Are you in pain?”

“The flower, please.”

“Which one? There are a million flowers over there.”

“Bouquet, second from the left. Little yellow flower on the bottom. You can barely see it.” Even with my eyes closed, I know every millimeter of those flowers. I feel like I've been staring at them for years.

“This one?”

My eyes open. The room is just a cave. The machines are just shadows. Will hands me the flower and I hold the tiny, fragile thing pinched between my fingers. Amazing that my fingers know how to stay still while the room wobbles.

“Will, I'm dying.” It comes out like water, liquid and cool.

“You know I hate it when you say that.”

“No, really. I'm stopping treatment. There is zero chance that I'm going to live. Ask my parents.” I am lucky because I don't have to feel his pain. I don't have to go with him inside where his heart is breaking. I can stay right here, floating, a safe distance from it all.

The sound I hear resembles “No,” but it is more like a waterfall—crushing, deafening, love trapped and drowning beneath tons of violent water.

“Look, Will,” I say. “This flower knows things. It's called a buttercup for a reason. Put it under your chin. Just like this.”

I am blind. I see with my fingers. I can feel his afternoon stubble. I remember what it used to feel like on my cheek when we kissed. The best sandpaper.

“It paints you yellow if you like butter. Makes you glow. Right here. Right where I kissed you.”

“Where?” The word sculpted out of tears.

“You can't see but I can. Your desire lit up like the sun.”

“You're talking nonsense.” I know from his voice that he's crying, but I will not look. I know I should feel sad with him, but the flower is the only thing I will let myself see.

“Other flowers tell other things. Do boys do ‘She loves you, she loves you not?' with the petals? Guys play football, girls decapitate flowers. But we don't need to ask, do we? We already know the answer. Right, Will? Right?”

He is kissing my hand. His lips are wet with tears. Trembling. Wordless.