We go straight to the hospital, where I am still. Now. When my mother and I get here, my father and my older sister, Zoe, are waiting for me. The only one missing here is who I want to see most: our dog, Mabel. My father stands up when I arrive, as if I am someone very important.
“My baby,” he says. He has a stuffed animal with him.
“Lizzie,” Zoe says, breathing.
Seeing Zoe like this—tentative, scared, waiting for me, and also without Tim—again makes me realize something is really wrong. Maybe I am dying. And there is something about seeing my dad there with this big teddy bear that makes me really sad. I’m also sad I might be dying. I mean that truly. I have seen the movies; I have read the books. A teenager dying is a terribly sad thing. It just doesn’t feel like it’s happening to me. How could it be? Hockey tryouts are tomorrow. I’m supposed to be there. David B and I never said good-bye.
I’m not just sad, I’m also terrified about all the things that will never happen to me now, or all the things that I will never make happen, but it’s still in me to be a little annoyed about the teddy bear, so I stick with that. I am not seven, I want to tell him. How will this stuffed animal help me?
But then my father sits the teddy bear down on the bed, and I bring it to my chest. It’s impossibly soft, as soft as his gray cashmere robe that I like to wear when he’s at work. It’s comforting to hold, like it fits me. I think of wearing my father’s wool sweaters. And his overcoat. I used to find all these random things in his pockets: scraps of paper, dried-out pens, old nickels. I look over and see Zoe looking at me, which she never does, and I hold the bear tightly, feel its silky hairs along the tip of my nose. If I were alone, I know I would take this opportunity to out-and-out cry. But with everyone here, my eyes sort of leak, a faucet that you just can’t turn tight enough.
“We’re going to find out what’s going on,” my father says. “Right away.”
“We are,” my mom says. “It’s the colon, we know that. But for now we’re on the cancer ward, Lizzie.”
“Colon,” I say. “Cancer,” I say. My heart does that panic fluttery thing that makes me realize should I make it out of here, ever, a slasher movie will be nothing for me. I will never again be the girl waiting at Glitter or Dippin’ Dots until You’re Next and Evil Dead are over.
My mom nods. “Yeah, not the ideal thing, but the best gastroenterologists around are in this hospital. We want you here, and sadly, this ward is the safest place for you. We’re going to get to the bottom of all this.” She kisses the top of my head. I feel her words on my scalp.
I’m definitely dying, I think. I think, I will never get to Spain, which is surprising because I never knew going to Spain was important to me. Also, the language I take in school is French. I look at my family again. Who are these delightful people I once thought were so boring? I think of them missing me, and I won’t deny that initially I get a pang of pleasure imagining their mourning me. They will leave my room as is, even though I never cleaned it up before camp like I’d promised my mother, and I think of what they’ll find. My notebook filled with Birdy lyrics, an embarrassment to be sure. The Converse shoe box filled with all the random things I’ve saved: an origami bird, a ticket stub to the Glen Echo carousel where I went with my friends Dee-Dee and Lydia, notes from Mark Segura when I sat in front of him in algebra. I can’t believe I saved those. English papers I got A’s on. Feathers. Pom-poms. Gold stars. Little-girl stuff all crammed in; I can barely close it anymore.
Everything is different now, here. Here everything fits into this teeny-tiny, lonely world.
I can’t think of the real things. Like if I go, will I miss my family? Do the people who die, especially the young people, do they go through everything alone now? Are they all alone?
I look at my family again. Differently, just for a moment. I don’t want them to let me go.
But a nurse comes in and says they have to. It’s way past visiting hours, she tells them. My mother clutches me before going, and my father swishes the hair out of my face. And then I am alone.
Here is what it is now: there is a bed and a tray that moves over the bed or swings parallel to it, and an old bulky television, which hangs from an ugly white(ish) wall. I have a roommate; a thick, ugly, blue movable curtain divides our two sides. I’m hooked up to a bunch of IVs. They come right out of me; the plastic tubing is taped down along the inside of my arm. I’m not allowed to eat anymore. One of the IVs is this milky white liquid that feeds me through my veins. A plastic bracelet with my name and birth date scrawled on it scratches at my wrist.
My roommate still hasn’t moved; I half wonder if she’s even alive. No, I full-on wonder this.
“I’m Lizzie,” I say to the curtain, when my family has been forced away. The room is dark now. Dark dark. I’m telling you: it’s way worse than the infirmary in here.
“Mm-hmm,” she says.
“Well, what’s your name?” I ask the curtain.
“Thelma, honey,” she says. “I’m Thelma.”
I wait for her to continue, but that seems to be it.
“Lizzie?” Like it’s a question now. “Nice to meet you,” I say, though I do wonder if those kinds of rules for meeting people actually translate to this type of a setting. I mean, it really wasn’t that nice to meet Thelma.
She turns up the television, and the local weather screams at me. Apparently, outside of here, tomorrow is going to be a nice day. Of course.
Thelma has the window, but when I get up to go to the bathroom (I know that makes it sound so very easy, but it is complicated and hard as I can barely swing my legs over the side of the bed here, let alone push myself off this bed and totter alongside my metal IV tree, and as often as I have to go, it is never without drama), I can look out through the slivers of the open parts of the curtain and see the sun go down against the building across the way.
Why is the sun going down so sad?
After my scintillating conversation with Thelma, I drift off to sleep thinking: this is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me.
I really want to go home.
I wake up when a nurse comes to take my vital signs. She comes at me with needles and thermometers. The machine that takes my blood pressure squeezes my arm so tightly I forget I have fingers. I feel the now-familiar shot of pain in my stomach, and when she leaves I’m all alone. I picture all the campers with their huge bags of laundry boarding the buses for home. I try not to think of hockey tryouts. Mr. Crayton setting up the orange cones, yelling at everyone to run faster, legs higher.
I really, really want to go home.