We Were Never Here (4 page)

I wake up to Thelma's voice, but all I want is to put my earbuds in and just tune out.

But I don't. Yes, I say, high school. One sister. And a dog. No, I say, I don't go to church. Virginia, I tell her. Suburbs. That's all she asks.

Then it's my turn. I learn this: Thelma's married with a kid, and she's a secretary at some government office. I've seen her husband—or at least the tall man in a navy-blue jacket, gold cuffs, and collar who comes in each night who I
think
is her husband—but I gotta say, there are too many people in and out of here, and I haven't been paying a lot of attention.

When I tell her I'm in high school, she's silent for a moment.

“You'll be out soon,” she says. “This is just some strange hiccup in God's plan.”

“You too,” I say, because what am I supposed to say? All of this is way out of the age-appropriate province.

I crane my neck and look in where the curtain is just slightly parted. I guess that's Thelma. She's smiling. Her hair doesn't smile with her, and she scratches under it.

Thelma has a wig.

“Both of us,” I say, looking away.

“All right!” My mother stomps into the room with her coffee as if she's ready to spearhead some kind of movement. “That's it. You have to get out of that bed. You're going to get bedsores, Lizzie! Your muscles are going to turn to jelly.”

I can tell she has talked to my father about this and that he's said,
You're absolutely right, Daphne, you have to go in there and just make her get up. Be tough!

“I was just sitting,” I say. “That counts.” I roll away from her, onto my side, which causes a lot of pain in my stomach. It also tugs the wires that connect me to the IVs along the metal stand next to my bed, which feels like the lines are pulling at my heart.

Thelma makes a moaning sound from behind the curtain.

“Shall I call a nurse?” my mother calls out, but there's no answer.

Just then I hear the quiet swing of the door opening, the rush of outside activity, like the sound of a seashell to my ear.

The door opens—for a fleeting second I think it could be the boy and his dog, and then the door closes and it goes quiet, as if someone has put the seashell down. It's Thelma's husband who comes in, with a kid I assume is their kid. They have to pass through my space to get to Thelma's side of the room, and we all say hello and I see the little girl, her hair all frizzy with yellow and pink and purple barrettes and little ponytails all over her head. She won't look at me.

“Poor woman,” my mother says, sitting down next to my bed.

“They're right there, Mom,” I scream-whisper. “They can hear you.”

“Well,” my mother says.

The little girl peers around the dividing curtain. My mother doesn't seem to notice, but I wave and try to smile, and she shoots back behind her curtain. Thelma, her husband says. Thelma Thelma Thelma, and I wonder if she has her wig off, and what her daughter thinks to see her mother like that.

“I'm not moving,” I say to my mother. “Really, I'm not.”

I think of a cheesy television movie, the one with the determined patient who gets out of bed and struggles for life, and despite the odds, and due to all that
strength
, he wins. But can I just say something about strength? It's only an expression. You either become healthy again or you don't. Just because a person is sick and isn't dead yet, it doesn't mean she's strong. I don't feel strong. In fact I'd be happy—if that's what you want to call it—to just give up and lie here. I am the opposite of strong.

“Yes, really,” she says. “Darling, there are some very sick people here.” She tips her head toward Thelma's side of the room.

I get it!
I want to scream. But I can't.

My mother looks up at me. She tilts her head, and I can tell she has a decision to make about which way to be: the stern, tough-love kind of mom, like on the Lifetime movies where the mom grips her daughter's face with one hand and says, “Now you listen to me, missy, we're going to kick this thing and we're going to do it
together
,” or the sweet, tender kind of mom who takes her daughter's hand and tells her she's so sorry for what's happening to her, to them, to their
family
, it isn't fair, life just
isn't fair, is it? But how else could she help her?

I won't deny I'm really hoping for the second option, when my mother says, “You are going to get up and walk those hallways and get that system moving, or we're likely to be in here forever.”

I'm outraged.
Hello?
Maybe it's not option two, but I am
suffering
here. I don't know how to say that to my mother, though. How the suffering can take my breath away.

“Time to say good-bye,” I hear Thelma's guy say as my mother sighs back into the chair.

“We?” I say.

“I know you're the patient,” my mother says, softening. “But if you think this is fun for me, you've gone crazy.”

At some point it just seems easier to actually walk than to listen to people constantly asking me to walk. Also, I secretly think about the possibility of seeing Connor out there in the hall and that maybe I was rude to him and now he's never coming back to the room. I think about changing out of my disgusting hospital gowns, but you are supposed to wear them in here, and also? It will take so much energy I won't be able to take the walk anyway.

So. I call the nurse to say I'm going to get up. You'd think I'd told her I'd found a suitcase full of her money, because she sprints in, her face filled with gratitude as she unhooks all my wires. When I swing my feet over the bed, my mother gets so excited it's embarrassing. As I try to catch my breath, just from
sitting
, I look at these two skinny white legs coming out of my hospital robe, and they look like they belong to an old person. I have always wanted to be skinny like you just can't be bothered
to eat, like you're not
trying
, but I didn't want it to happen like this. I'm also nauseous. How many ways can I tell you how nauseated and in pain I am? There are no more words. All the words sound the same.

I just want to lie down and cry now. I can't do this. I have never before—not even as I went screaming from the goal line, hockey stick high in the air—wanted to feel strong. I think I actually wanted to be less strong then. Just regular. Smaller, weaker, girl-like, Birdy-like. Birdy. But that's not what I've become either.

I stand and grab the IV stand for balance, and holding on to my mother, I sort of stagger toward the door. I don't even care if my hospital gown is open in back, which I guess it is, because my mother reaches behind me and closes it.

“There you go,” she says. “Look at you!”

I have all this rage. At my mother for making me do this, for talking to me this way; at my father for his stuffed animals; and also at myself, for being someone who might never be normal again, not inside or outside. Why can't they figure out what's wrong with me? Who do I get to freak out on for being sick like this?

I ignore my mother's excitement as she opens the door to the hallway. The nurses are bustling around at their station outside my door. An elderly man glides by, holding his IV stand; an old guy is slumped over in a wheelchair. It's like a television show about a hospital. Or a show about a bus station.

I push through. I'm out! I'm
up
! I stand, breathing in the air as if I've finally reached the tippy top of a mountain. I even smile at the nurse coming out from behind the station. And then I see
Connor and Verlaine turning the corner from the elevator banks, fresh and ready for their daily visit. Maybe they're coming for me! For me.

“She's up!” the nurse says as she walks briskly by.

“She sure is!” my mother says. “Isn't she doing great?”

I roll my eyes, but I don't mean it. Because it is true! I'm up. I can both see and feel my knuckles go white as I lift the other hand to wave to Connor. I instantly regret this—how embarrassing can I be?

Connor and Verlaine are moving toward me, and I can hear my mother smiling—you can do that, by the way, hear my mother smiling—and then, quick as a mugging, I'm down.
Down
down. Like on the floor, pain chomping a chunk from my side. I know it's no good in there. All I can wish for is that I will lose consciousness, but I don't and so I can tell that, as the nurse runs toward me and as Connor lets go of Verlaine's leash and comes flying to help me up, I'm crying. It's like a movie how much I'm crying, and my mom is crouching down on my other side, and she and Connor carefully pick me up. They handle me like I'm glass and bring me back to my bed, where I dry-heave into my little lima-bean, sad-smile metal bowl, only now I turn it around to make it frown.

Connor bows his head like he's the one who is ashamed.

“Thank you, Connor,” my mother says grimly.

He nods. He isn't smiling. I can see the lines of his mouth, turned down.

At first I think, thank God he's leaving, so I can experience the pain and humiliation of this moment alone with a roommate
and her entire immediate family and a mother and a bunch of nurses and techs and students and doctors wandering in and out of here. As in: privately. As private as it gets here.

A nurse hooks me back up to my tubes that lead into my heart, and she clicks open her pen and says, “It's okay, honey, we'll try again tomorrow!”

“I'll be here,” Connor says, turning to go. He raises his free hand in a way that seems to shield his face.

I look at my mother when he goes, but she won't catch my eye.

Then she turns toward me. “I'll give you a minute, honey,” she says, and I watch her follow Connor out the door.

I lie back. It's not relaxing in any way, but it's the most relaxed I've been. And for just this one moment, everyone leaves me alone.

But the moment of being left alone ends pretty quickly. I'm not sure about it, but I think I hear just the faintest knock. I don't say anything.

Then there is that sliver of light. The sound of outside. And Connor's sweet face.

“Hey,” he says.

I clear my throat.

“Hi. Can I come in? Just for a second?”

I'm silent, which I suppose in this place means yes.

“I wanted to check and make sure you're okay,” Connor says.

I look down at Verlaine, and his head is cocked to the side and he seems to be asking the same question.

I just cross my arms. I can't look either of them in the eye.

“Well, I'm glad you're all right. But I also just wanted you to know it's okay.”

“What's okay? This?” I hold out my hand to the wide expanse of my luxurious room. I shake my head. “It's just not.”

“No, I get that. I do. But please don't feel strange about it. About the fall.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, even though I feel 100 percent the
opposite of okay about keeling over in front of Connor.

“You comfortable with dogs?” He comes to the side of my bed. Briefly I forget how ashamed I am and I feel this: crazy lucky. How lucky am I, I think, that this guy works here, now? The crazy unlucky part comes back quickly, though, because here he is standing up and I am lying here, a mess, a mess who fell on her face in front of him.

Who is Connor? He is incredibly cute, but I can see he also bites his nails really, really short. Like he hardly has any nails. That is never a good quality in a boy, I think, as if a girl who just fell on her face is in any place to judge. A girl with a rat's nest for hair and a gray face that, due to the steroids, is as round as a moon. Make the actual moon full and I might just turn into a werewolf.

I nod. “I have a dog,” I say, managing to do so without crying. “Mabel. A springer.”

I love animals. I love all animals so much, even birds, even fish. That's why I want to be a vet, though I gather there is a good deal of math involved in becoming one. I have no idea why this could be, but it could be problematic for me.

“Can Verlaine hop on your bed? He's super careful.”

I close my eyes for a second. I am not the kind of person who closes her eyes while she's talking. I can't stand that. In fact, it repulses me, but again, it's not like I'm exactly in a position to be repelled. This time it's more like a way to keep everything down. So I do it; I close my eyes and nod.

And then Verlaine is sitting next to me, so careful not to hit my body, his paw up as if in greeting. How on earth did Connor
train this dog to be so perfect? I imagine Verlaine at the circus, walking the tightrope with Connor. I picture Mabel, who just jumps up on everyone and tries to steal food and licks faces without asking. It makes me smile. And Verlaine's smiling too. That dog is a serious smiler. I take his paw. The soft scratchy bottom, I feel it. Feel his
nestells
.
When we were little, that's what Zoe and I started calling those pads on the bottom of dog paws, cat paws too, for that matter, but we are dog people. I feel the smooth nails.

“Hi, Verlaine,” I say. I want to hug him and hug him and never let him go.

I look over at Connor. “I love him,” I say.

Connor crosses his arms. He cocks his head. He smiles.

He's so perfect I almost forget how embarrassed I am. His perfectness takes over. But I feel absolutely terrible.

Both Connor and Verlaine seem to know this at the exact same time.

“I just wanted to come back in and make sure you were okay,” Connor says as Verlaine hops down from my bed. “And to say I'll see you again soon. We will.”

I nod.

“So see you soon!” he says brightly.

“See you,” I say. “Bye, Verlaine!” I say with much more enthusiasm, because it is so easy to love on an animal. There is no shame in it.

Bye, you two, I think, as I watch them move out of my room and into the busy hallway.