Dr. Lowell didn’t usually make house calls, but he must have made an exception for his son. I heard his familiar voice speaking quietly. His assertiveness had Damian replying with, “Yes, sir,” a few times. Somehow I knew Damian’s hand was clenched around mine.
My mother’s hushed voice sounded urgent. For a short time, the room stood still, and I wondered whether everyone had left or if I had died. Then the frenzy began. Drawers opened and slammed closed. Footsteps beat against the hardwood floor. A chair tipped over. Voices rose.
I tried to open my eyes, but they refused.
In the chaos around me, Damian’s hands moved softly over my scalp. His voice whispered close to my ear. “We’re taking you the hospital, Katie. You’re gonna be okay.”
Everything happened so quickly. I slipped in and out of consciousness, never alert enough to catch the details. The scent of my mother’s perfume stayed with me during the ambulance ride. She held my hand and spoke to me. I wanted to ask her if I was dying, but the words wouldn’t pass through my thoughts.
Needles poked into my skin, and the blood pressure cuff gripped my arm. Usually, I tensed when it squeezed and cut off my circulation. This time I barely felt it.
A horde of voices encircled me, barking out orders. Feet shuffled against the floor. The heart monitor beeped somewhere beside me, slower than it should have been. That familiar hospital smell wafted through my nostrils. I got my eyelids to rise for a split second, and I was rewarded with a blast of bright light stinging my pupils. I closed them immediately. Fear rushed through me. Where did my mother go? Where is Damian? I couldn’t hear him or feel his presence.
I started to panic as air filled my lungs and pushed against them, making them burn. If I was going to die, I wanted to say good-bye.
The voices around me began to fade. Feeling in my limbs dimmed until there was nothing left.
I tried to speak. I wanted to tell my family that I loved them. That I was sorry I couldn’t fight hard enough and that I’d miss them. I wanted thank Damian for the time he’d spent with me. That…
How much did I care about him?
Then, blackness engulfed me.
~*~
When I opened my eyes, I squinted at the clock—4 AM. Damian was asleep in the chair next to me. He was slumped over the side of my bed, his head resting on his arms. It took me a few minutes to realize that this room wasn’t my bedroom. I reached over and ran my fingers through Damian’s disheveled hair. For some reason, the first thing I noticed was the lack of gel. His head perked up almost immediately. He smiled, and even in the dark, I could see the relief in his eyes.
“Hey, there,” he whispered, his smile growing as he spoke. He stood up to move his chair closer and peered at me. For a second, I thought a saw a tear in the corner of his eye, but mine didn’t stay open long enough to confirm it.
Damian bent over to kiss me softly. He pulled back and kissed me again, a little harder. I had to push him away to catch my breath.
“Sorry,” he said, smirking.
“Uh, um.” I swallowed and looked around the room. “I’m…in the hospital.”
Damian nodded. His hand glided over the top of my head as he spoke. “The virus took over your system, and, because of the chemo, your body couldn’t fight it.” He kissed me again. “You’ve been out for eight days.”
My eyes widened. “Eight days?”
I remember watching an alien movie once. The characters noted a space-time continuum where eight minutes of their lives just disappeared. I wish I could say the same. Lucky them.
Damian nodded. “Your mother has been sleeping in the empty bed over there.” He nodded toward her.
“And you?”
He cupped my face in his warm hands. “There’s no way I’d leave you.”
It’s weird knowing I was knocked out while people walked in and out, talked, and even touched me. What’s weirder, was that it seemed like my mother’s life, as well as Damian’s, had been put on hold for those eight days as well. They just waited around for me to wake up.
I peered over at my mother sleeping peacefully. Her hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail, fanned out over the pillow. During what I could only assume was a restless night, the sheets were bunched at her ankles. She wore a t-shirt and yoga pants. No make-up graced her face, and dark shadows hung under her eyes.
“Would you like me to wake her up?” Damian asked.
I shook my head. “No, let her sleep.”
“I think she’d want to see that you’re awake.”
“I know. But I don’t have the heart to wake her; she looks so peaceful.”
Damian nodded. “You should probably go back to sleep, too.”
My eyebrows rose. “Apparently, I’ve been asleep for eight days.”
He chuckled. “Okay, but it’s still four in the morning.”
I patted the space next to me on the bed. “If it’s not too much to ask, can you just hold me?”
Damian’s dimples deepened. He climbed up on the bed and pulled me against him kissing my temple. “It’s never too much to ask.”
~*~
I didn’t think I’d fall asleep, but when I awoke, my mother beamed at me. Tears streamed down her face as she squeezed me.
In the daylight, lines I’d never seen before filled the space between her eyebrows and hair line.
As she clung to me, I noticed Damian’s empty chair. My shoulders fell, disappointed he’d left without saying good-bye.
“Where’s Damian?”
Missing him already, I thought about how it felt to fall asleep in his arms last night.
Why does he seem to like me so much?
Mom pulled back, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Oh, he went home to shower. I guarantee he’ll be back soon.” She winked at me. “He seems to be on very good terms with the hospital staff. Leslie’s quite impressed with him.”
“Really?”
“He’s a good kid. Your father likes him, though he wishes he’d sleep on the chair by the window instead of next to your bed.” She laughed and shook her head.
“How are you feeling?” Tammy asked, walking up to my bedside.
“Uh…” Confused?
Tammy smiled. “That’s okay.” She put the blood pressure cuff over my arm. I grimaced when it met its maximum Python squeeze. “120 over 70. Very good.” She waved a wand over my forehead. “100.2. You did well, Kate.”
“Thanks.” They knocked me out, so technically, had I done anything?
“Dr. Lowell will be in soon to check on you,” Tammy said before she left.
An hour later when Damian returned, my mother ran home to freshen up.
My heart almost stopped when he breezed into my room, wearing loose-fitting jeans and a blue and white American Eagle polo. It brought out the color of his eyes.
Damian’s face lit up when he saw me sitting up in bed, sipping on some cafeteria soup. He walked over and pulled out eight red roses from behind his back.
“One for each day you missed.” He set them on the table next to my bed, then sat down next to me, taking my hand and kissing it.
“Thank you,” I said, lifting his hand to my heart and pressing it against me. His smile widened.
“Maybe next time I should bring you some chicken broth made from chicken instead of whatever they pass that off as.”
I shrugged and slurped at the spoon. “I think it came from a can.”
Damian made a face. “Canned chicken? That might be worse. I’ll bring us dinner tonight.”
A knock interrupted us, and Dr. Lowell poked his head in. “How are you feeling, Kate?”
Damian shifted his eyes to the floor. Dr. Lowell never looked at his son, keeping his focus on me. Tension filled the small room, and Dr. Lowell forced a smile at me.
They must have been at it again.
“Um…better, I guess.”
“Your blood work came back, and it looks like the virus has run its course. I’m still going to suggest you not return to school until January. Your immune system won’t be able to take another infection.”
I nodded. At this rate, I’d be in tenth grade until I died.
“I’m keeping you on an antibiotic for another week, just as a precaution. All things considered, you pulled through this with flying colors.”
“Bullshit,” Damian muttered under his breath.
Dr. Lowell shot him a quick glare. “I want to keep you for another couple of days for observation, Kate.”
I nodded again, wanting to melt into the bed. “Thank you.”
As Dr. Lowell left, Damian rose to his feet, his brows pinched at the closed door. I reached for his arm and tugged. Damian looked down at me, softening a little.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
His eyes flashed back up to the door, then back at me. He sighed, bit his lip, and sat down on the bed.
“He just pisses me off.”
“Why this time?”
“He’s fucking delusional. You almost died!”
I reached out and slid the back of my hand over the faint indentation the dimple formed in his cheek. “What would you do, then?”
“Not give a false sense of security.”
I wished Damian could understand.
Dr. Lowell didn’t have to say it; I knew I’d barely survived. Technically, cancer wouldn’t be the disease that killed me. More than likely, it would be a simple bout of the flu, or an infection from a cut—something a healthy immune system could easily fight off. What Dr. Lowell meant was, “I’m glad you’re still with us.”
“It wasn’t false,” I said. “It was hopeful. It’s a good quality in a doctor.”
“Lying is a good quality in a doctor?”
I looked down at my sheets and the standard hospital-grade blue blanket.
Damian moved closer to me, his eyebrows furrowed. He reached out and lifted my chin so that my gaze met his. His eyes searched mine.
“It’s not like I don’t know. I do. What I don’t always get, is that I can pull through.”
“You’re going to beat this, Katie,” he whispered. “I know you will.”
He leaned in, kissing me tenderly.