HALLWAYS OF Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for hours, blank and brainless, carting all my bags. And I decide he didn’t know. Kellan never sought me out at Chattahoochee College. He didn’t know about our strange connection until I said “sloth” on the balcony that day.
This is the universe’s setup. God’s joke. It’s so insane that as I wash my hands outside his room on the bone marrow transplant floor, I question whether he’ll really be in there. If Jesus can escape tombs…
Kellan’s nurse, a pretty brunette named Arethea, interrupts my magical thinking with a bunch of facts.
I don’t like any of them. Even though I’m here, I can’t seem to believe. Or maybe I believe too much. Blind faith that none of this is real. It’s all a lie.
I would never let Kellan have cancer. I wouldn’t let him die. He’s perfect Kellan. Duh.
You know Manning texted me? That girl is not his fucking girlfriend. She was Lyon’s girlfriend. Now she’s in medical school at Emory, which explains why she popped up in the parking deck
After she and Kellan’s Uncle Pace popped up to beg Kellan to seek treatment, Manning said Kellan was worried I’d find out. He wanted me to go away. He wanted to protect me. So he made it up, the bit about the pregnant girlfriend.
“Your hands seem clean to me,” Arethea says kindly. I look over my shoulder at her.
“You want to go inside? I think he’s sleeping.”
It’s horrible, the stepping through the door. With every cell I have, I protest. My stomach twists into a knot. My forehead sweats. My heart hammers so hard I barely notice my surroundings: teeny tiny hallway, widening into a wider room with pale blue walls.
He’s not in here. He’s not. I would believe that if I could. If I didn’t want to see him so badly. But I do. I want it more intensely than I fear it.
I take soft steps down the tiny hall. I pause at the mouth of the room so I can listen to the beeping, breathe the strange, cool air. It smells like plastic, and some sort of cleaner.
“Why is Daddy in that bed? It has a rail like Olive’s baby bed.”
“He’s sleeping, honey.”
“Will he sleep forever?”
“I don’t know.”
Kellan’s bed is empty, the sheets tucked neatly, as if it’s not been used. It isn’t hard for me to accept. In fact, I’m overtaken by a rush of mindless joy.
He isn’t here? I knew it.
But I see an IV pole. With IV bags. I see a rolling table with a newspaper, a black thermos. Both things are right beside a recliner. The chair is angled toward the room’s far right wall. I can see the foot-rest part is out—and something white on it.
I walk closer. It’s hard to breathe.
I don’t know what I think I’ll find, but as I come to stand in front of the recliner, I’m shocked and not surprised at all to find him lying on his right side, bundled up in sheets. They sag down his left bicep, so I can see how bruised his shoulder is.
I blink a few times. There are pillows propped behind his back and left side, propping him in this position, so all his weight is on the right side of his body. I can’t see under the sheet, but his ribs are hurt just like his shoulder. I remember that.
I rub my palm against my lips and blink, and his swollen, bruised shoulder blurs, as if the bruising is nothing but a watercolor. I could reach my fingers out and smudge it all away…
And still, it’s easier to look there than at his face. His cheekbone and the skin around his eye are bruised deep purple, almost black.
Anger bubbles up in me, even as I sink into a crouch beside the chair’s right arm. My face is level with his now. When he opens his eyes, he’ll see me. Breathe, Cleo. I watch his eyelids…watch his mouth. I can see his pulse throb over his brow.
Wake up, Kellan. Please wake up…
My fingers flex. I want to touch him. Stroke his hair. He hasn’t shaved. Does that mean he’s too hurt to get up? I blink, and a tear drops down my cheek. His mouth tautens, lips pressed together. It’s just a flicker of expression, there then gone, but it’s enough to make my hand grip the chair’s arm.
I lean closer to the chair and say his name…so soft, but loud enough to rouse him