Early treatment is absolutely critical. It’s why you’re still here.
I dial his number before I can think too much about it. A woman picks up almost instantly. “Ramon Gutierrez’s office.”
“Hi. I have a question about, um, diagnostics.”
“Are you a patient of Dr. Gutierrez?”
“Yes. I was wondering if…” I scrunch down in my seat and lower my voice. “Theoretically, if I wanted to get some tests run to…sort of check my remission status, is that the kind of thing that I could do without my parents being involved? If I’m not eighteen.”
There’s a moment of silence on the other end. “Could you tell me your name and your date of birth, please?”
I grip the phone more tightly in my suddenly sweaty palm. “Can you answer my question first?”
“Parental consent is required for treatment of minors, but if you could—”
I hang up. That’s what I figured. I turn my arm so I can’t see the bruise anymore. Last night I found one on my upper thigh, too. Just looking at them fills me with dread.
A shadow falls across my table, and I look up to see Luis standing there. “I’m staging an intervention,” he says.
I blink, confused. Luis is entirely out of context in my mental space right now, and I have to forcibly shove away thoughts of cancer wards and anonymous texting before I can focus on him. Even then, I’m not sure I heard right. “What?”
“Remember that outdoors you don’t believe in? I’m going to prove you wrong. Let’s go.” He gestures toward the door, then folds his arms. After the scene with Mr. Santos and the rude kid yesterday, I kind of can’t stop looking at them. Maybe Luis could do that towel snap another two or three or twenty times.
He waits for a response, then sighs. “Conversations usually involve more than one person, Maeve.”
I manage to unfreeze my tongue. “Go where?”
“Outside,” Luis says patiently. As though he’s speaking to a small and not particularly smart child.
“Don’t you have to work?”
“Not till five.”
My phone sits on the table in front of me, mocking me with its silence. Maybe if I call again, I’ll get a different person and a different answer. “I don’t know…”
“Come on. What do you have to lose?”
Luis gives one of his megawatt smiles, and what do you know, I’m on my feet. Like I said: I have no defense against his particular demographic. “What did you have in mind, in this alleged outdoors?”
“I’ll show you,” Luis says, holding open the door. I look left and right when we hit the sidewalk, wondering which way we’re going to walk, but Luis pauses at a parking meter and starts unchaining a bicycle leaning against it.
“Um. Is that yours?” I ask.
“No. I pick locks on random bikes for fun,” Luis says, detaching the chain and looping it beneath the bike’s seat. He flashes me a grin when he’s finished. “Of course it’s mine. We’re about a mile from where I want to take you.”
“Okay, but—” I gesture at the empty space around us. “I don’t have a bike. I drove here.”
“You can ride with me.” He straddles the bike so he’s standing in front of the seat, hands on the outer edge of the bars to hold the frame steady. “Hop on.”
“Hop—where?” He just looks at me, expectant. “You mean the handlebars?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you do that when you were a kid?” Luis asks. Like he’s not talking to somebody who spent most of their childhood in and out of hospitals. It’s sort of refreshing, especially now, but the fact remains that I don’t even know how to ride a bike the normal way.
“We’re not kids,” I hedge. “I won’t fit.”
“Sure you will. I do this all the time with my brothers, and they’re bigger than you are.”
“With Manny?” I ask, unable to keep a straight face at the mental image.
Luis laughs, too. “I meant the younger ones, but sure. I could haul Manny’s ass if I had to.” I keep hesitating, unable to picture how any of this is supposed to work, and his confident smile fades a little. “Or we could just walk somewhere.”
“No, this is great,” I say, because Luis with a disappointed face is just too weird. People who never get told no are so bad at hearing it. Anyway, how hard can it be, right? The saying It’s as easy as riding a bike must exist for a reason. “I’ll just…hop on.” I gaze uneasily at the handlebars, which don’t strike me