said. He might as well have said it to me in Uzbek. I wasn’t familiar with the condition, whatever it was. While my mind tried to piece it together from the Latin terminology, he shifted in his chair and extended his impossibly long legs in front of him, still looking slightly away from me. “It’s a disease,” he said. “It means my chest was permanently caved in. My sternum and my ribs.” He shook his head and shifted again. “I couldn’t breathe normally or exercise because it was messing with my lungs and my heart. And I . . .” He trailed off.
“What, Seth?”
“I looked deformed. You know. When I took my shirt off.”
“Seth . . .” His vulnerability awakened my own. “Is it treatable?”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “I had surgery a year ago.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction.” I wanted to be encouraging.
“But then I got injured.” He took a deep breath and scooted down a little in his chair, aiming his eyes at the ceiling as he relived his pain. “Seven ribs got disconnected from the sternum. And it killed. I mean, the pain . . .” He blinked a few times to dispel the tears in his eyes. “But the doctors couldn’t see it. They didn’t do an MRI or anything and just kept telling me it was normal to feel bad after surgery, but . . . I knew it was worse than that. Anytime I moved . . . or breathed too deeply . . . or someone bumped into me . . . And the pain pills they gave me to try to deal with it made me moody . . . you know, mad and tired all the time, and . . .” He paused and bit the inside of his cheek to quell his emotions.
“Oh, Seth . . .”
“It lasted four months before anyone figured out that my bones were detached—and that whole time I just felt like someone was constantly sawing at my chest. Then a doctor in Munich did an MRI and they had to go back in and operate again.”
“After four months?”
He shook his head to dispel the memories, and his mouth pinched into a line. “It was . . . It was bleak,” he said. “Wanting-to-be-dead bleak.”
“Seth, I’m so sorry.”
“So when I get up and give that monologue about pain and death and stuff . . .”
“It hits close to home.”
“Yeah. Every time.”
“And is that okay? I mean—will it hurt you too much to relive it over and over?”
He shook his head again. “It’ll help me, I think. I’m still dealing with the whole God thing, and saying Lewis’s thoughts . . . it screws my head on straighter.”
“Well, I’m sure you know it’s a powerful scene from the audience’s perspective too.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “It is?”
“It’s . . .” I looked for the right word. “Redemptive.” Seth was one of the few students I knew who would understand the significance of the word. “You mentioned the ‘God thing.’ I think it’s a God thing that you’re part of this cast, Seth. That you’re C. S. Lewis.”
His hands were rolling and unrolling the script they held. He nodded.
“Please let me know if there’s anything—anything at all—you need help with.” I remembered some of the tough rehearsals we’d had recently. “How are you doing with Kate?”
He shrugged.
“Listen, I know it’s not always easy dealing with her. But I think she really respects your acting, and she clearly wants to get this right. So if you can just let Kate be Kate for a little while longer and not let her Joy-ness fluster you . . . She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“I know,” he said as a blush crept up his neck.
“All right.” I stood. “Time for me to get Shayla home.”
Seth rose too and pulled on his trademark trench coat before shouldering his backpack.
“I’m proud of you, Seth.”
He just ducked his head and exited the room.
Minutes later, Shayla and I were walking up three flights of stairs to the front of the school and Shayla was whining about being hungry. I wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t know what hungry was until she went on a no-carbs diet, but I informed her instead that we’d be home soon and could eat then.
“But I’m hungwy now, Shelby!”
It was the I’m-about-to-lose-it variety of Shayla’s whining. And it usually came right before the much less socially acceptable I’m-going-to-scream-until-I-get-what-I-want variety.
As always, knowing this left me with a dilemma. Should