Chapter 37

The drive to the hospital is the worst in my life. It is quiet and stuffy and Levi-less, Tom keeps fisting his hands around the steering wheel like he’s angry, and Millie is sniffling. Worst of all: Astrid has finally lost it.

“Astrid, please don’t cry,” I say, a little too quietly. “Astrid.”

She cries anyway. And it’s too damn hard to watch.

All the way there, I hold my phone in my hands, Levi’s name pulled up, an empty message waiting for me to fill it with words like I’m sorry and I love you or even just a heart. Anything. All I can finally manage is, Please can we talk again soon?

(He doesn’t reply.)

But the driving isn’t the worst of it. We have to wait in the lobby for forever because there was a mix-up and we don’t know where my dad’s room is. It’s us and a lot of quiet and upset people who go up and down the elevators and disappear into the hallway to our right and through the sliding glass door to our left.

My heart aches. While we stand there, huddled together, my brain whirrs and jumps like a broken clock. I keep returning to Levi and the way I left him, looking ragged on the steps of the house we made together, and the last words I spoke to him.

I’m sorry I haven’t been more, I said. I hear the words on replay, a promise I don’t know if I can keep. How stupid of me to say them only because they were what he wanted to hear.

As I tuck these thoughts away, I replace them with thoughts of Mama, and my sisters, and the way we will cry tonight. I think about the way Tom will try not to cry, but he’ll be shaky. I know there is something more, something Mama hasn’t told us. I do know it’s going to break me.

Mama comes down the elevator after we’ve stood there for nearly twenty minutes. She’s wearing a baggy sweatshirt over her pajamas, a plaid shirt-and-pants set. (Seeing something that has so much home to it in this cold, sad place makes my heart twist.) She starts to cry as soon as she sees us, huddled against the wall, and rushes across the busy foot traffic to get to us. She’s shorter than everyone in our family, even Millie, so she’s instantly lost in our embrace. She kisses Millie and Astrid, wiping away both of their tears, and takes my face in her hands and smiles a perfectly sad smile. “Baby Bee.”

I nod, lip quivering. “Mama.”

“You need to know something right now, okay?” she says, taking a deep breath. It’s shaky and teary and I hug her tighter. “Papa…isn’t getting better. His tumor is about the same size, but there are….others…now. One on his liver, one on his lung. There is a chance we can operate to remove the new tumors, but it won’t change the fact that it’s spread.”

I’m about to let go and cry—it’s been building up—but then I hear Millie’s quiet crying and I stop myself. I have to be brave for her, and for Astrid, who’s got her head buried in my shoulder. (I was right: Tom’s hands are shaking and his breathing is rapid.) I bite my lip and say nothing.

“He’s sleeping right now,” Mom continues. “We wanted you to come when he was awake, but he just couldn’t keep his eyes open. So come see him, give him kisses, and then you have to go back home.”

We nod and follow her into the elevator, where it’s finally quiet except for Millie’s muffled sobs. The floor my Papa is on is even worse; it’s as still as death (no pun intended). The nurses’ footsteps are like silk on marble—quiet nothingness. They float like ghosts or angels of death, and I want to sink into one of the waiting chairs and cry, cry until my tears are fresh out and I can face my Papa without feeling like someone’s just gutted me with a knife.

We enter his room on feet that pitter-patter loudly in the darkness. Papa lies on the bed, hooked up to machinery and an IV, his breathing shallow and broken. He looks skinnier than I remember, just from yesterday. So it can be one of two things: Either I haven’t been noticing his slow decline, or it’s a trick of the light.

I let Millie and Astrid go ahead of me, their blond heads looking pale and dull in the wan hospital light coming from the corner lamp Mama switches on. They sit on either side of him, fingers lightly touching his arm, his hands, his cheek. I stay back, my heart pounding, and lean into Tom as he wraps his arm around my shoulder.

“You okay, Beef?” he whispers.

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

I shudder. “I don’t understand. Look at him—I’ve never seen him look so small.” Now I’m crying good and hard, drawing deep breaths to try to keep myself stable. Tom tucks me into his arms and whispers something to me through my messy hair, and I’m pretty sure he’s telling me it will be okay.

But we both know that’s a lie.

I get home, kiss Millie and Astrid goodnight, and lock my door behind me. I kick off my shoes and slide beneath my covers and close my eyes. But while my body is exhausted, my mind is wide awake. I’m imagining the events of today, again and again and again, Levi and painting and fighting and my Papa hooked up to machines like he’s dying.

He is dying, I remind myself, and the tears come again.

I almost text Levi to beg him to come over or just talk to me on the phone, distract me from my fears. But there are three things that stop me.

First: the memory of his expression, the look of utter disappointment on his face when I wouldn’t tell him my name, when I didn’t have a reason. When I let fear get the best of me.

Second: He still hasn’t replied to my text.

Third: The last time I got news about my papa, I was in Malibu with Levi. I remember the weightless feeling I had that night when I kissed him for the first time—it’s the exact same feeling I had when I kissed him tonight for the hundredth time. I also remember what it felt like, afterward, to be told my father was in the hospital because he’s dying.

Both times, this happened. The guilt is beginning to plague me. Should I have been here, with my family? What am I missing out on by doing everything with Levi? These could be my papa’s last days, and I’m off having a good time with my boyfriend.

I shudder, because I don’t want to think about Levi, because thinking about him means thinking about our fight (oh-God-we-had-our-first-fight-and-it-was-terrible) and my guilt and everything I haven’t done right.

I shudder a second time because I know what I need to do now.

I dig through my purse for my phone, barely finding it in the dark, and wipe my eyes free of tears as I unlock it.

There she is: her number, her name. Her picture. I waste no time in pressing on it, but my heart still skips several beats inside my chest.

“Hello?” she answers, after so many rings I thought she’d never pick up. Of course, I’ve woken her from her sleep—it’s three in the morning there. But she’s answered, and she’s here, and that’s all that matters.

“Gretchen,” I say, barely managing to keep the crying under control. “I have something I need to tell you.”