21
Shelly woke me up at five the next morning. We held each other for a few minutes, or rather I held her while she cried, and I couldn’t deny that I felt a little guilty for abandoning her this summer. But I had made my choices, and I was mostly happy with where I had placed my time. I just wished I had more to give.
Soon we started shaving my stomach and bagging up my toiletries and doing all the other last minute things that constituted getting ready for a major surgery. I wheeled myself out onto the porch at six forty and smiled as the sun started peeking over the sea down the street, illuminating my perfect little corner of the planet. The first winds of what felt like an early cold front had filtered in overnight, the coolness alien on my summer skin. Esophageal Intresia and not being able to eat fucking sucked, but still, this had been a good life. I was pretty sure of that.
I took out my phone and called Cooper. As I put my hand to my ear I noticed how different it looked compared to when I’d met him. My wrist had shrunken considerably, and my arm was now covered with the fuzzy baby hair associated with malnutrition. I was so different from the stronger, braver, tanner girl I’d been at the beginning of the summer. But I was still strong in some ways. After all, I still braved the paralyzing case of butterflies Cooper still gave me every time I talked to him. I couldn’t believe I’d done it – fallen in love this summer. What had seemed like such a pipe dream had fleshed itself out into something that was so real I felt it all around me, heard it humming in the silence, saw it sparkling in the dark. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected Cooper. Never.
I thought about where I was before him, and the problems that faced me, just like anyone else my age. Was I any more mature now? Had I gotten any more of my proverbial shit together? I guess I was happier, which was some small success, but did that really change anything? And I decided I didn’t know. I didn’t know if love could save me any more than my doctors could. But wouldn’t it be nice to think so? Wasn’t it pretty to believe in the rescue?
“Hi,” Cooper answered after four rings, his voice sleepy and comforting.
“Hi. I love you.”
“And I love you.”
“God,” I breathed as I looked at the sunrays falling on the palms and tried to forget about this weird, non-goodbye goodbye period of the last few days. “This place is so beautiful.”
“What is?”
“This life,” I said. “This world.”
A semi-awkward silence followed. “Oh. Yeah.”
“I am so glad I downloaded Spark,” I said for probably the tenth time.
“And I am so glad I didn’t creep you out too much and make you ignore my messages.”
“Ha. See you at the hospital?”
I could hear my mom, who had demanded to drive me there, tearfully preparing a Coffee Pot of Doom in the kitchen. I noted how similar this scene was to the day I’d first downloaded Spark and met Cooper: a porch, a phone, a girl, a wish.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” I said. And then we prayed.
Shelly drove me to the hospital with the windows rolled down. As we hit the highway, Saviour’s biggest hit, Hellraisers, came on, and I hummed along as the day was born:
Palms by the water, lights up in the sky
Wading in pools with you while my youth flies by
Pressing pause on our dreams, drinking in dusty basements
Sticky July days with no pressing engagements
You got one hand on the wheel, the other on my dead heart
And that’s when all the bad thoughts start
I thought I was destined for something greater than this
But turns out fate, it had you in mind, kiss kiss
Fucking around out here on these streets
Ruining ourselves with Fast Car on repeat
My mom calls us hellraisers for the trouble we cause
Lighting up at the park, scoffing at stupid laws
But here with you, boy, I know why they call it ‘raising hell’
Your love made the flames rise up and make me unwell
(Unwell, raising hell)
Don’t know what happens next in this life, this game
All I know now, my friend, is that I’ll never be the same
These feelings, they’re sinking right down to my DNA
(Gotta run from what you love before it burns you at the stake)
So if history repeats itself, God knows I’ll run from this love
(Unwell)
Run, run, run away
(You raised hell)
I shivered and changed the channel.
Checking into the hospital was beyond surreal, filled with wardrobe changes and mile-long instruction lists inspected with a counselor lady and stacks of paperwork that required me to literally sign my life away to Dr. Dill. Soon I found myself lying alone on a hospital bed in a light blue gown in a small room on the second floor. This was where I was supposed to meet whoever wanted to talk to me before the surgery, which was scheduled for ten AM. They were only letting people come in one at a time, something about occupancy rules, I don’t know. First was my precious little brown-haired brother. It pained me to see him so scared and nervous as he shuffled in, his dark eyes darting from side to side.
“I love you so much, stinky,” I said after he came to my bed. “You’re so smart and funny. I’m really lucky to have you as a brother. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah. Love you too,” he said quietly. I squeezed his arm.
“Hey, do you remember when I used to take you to Sierra Grille, when you were really little?”
“Yeah,” he smiled, warming up. “We’d get Southwest Burritos and sit on the benches by the window, and you’d let me get a raisin cookie even though mommy never let me have them, and then we’d lie to her when we got home and say we went to Subway.”
I smiled and bit my lip. “Yeah. Never forget those days, okay?”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “And, uh, I wanted to tell you something, too, just in case.”
“Yeah?”
He took a deep breath and fiddled with his fingernail. “Thanks for being my mommy when mommy wasn’t being my mommy.”
“Oh, Chase…”
I couldn’t say anything, so I hugged him instead. Just like with Kim, some things didn’t need to be put out there. They just were.
Next was my dad and Nancy, his wife. She was crying. He wasn’t. She just sort of awkwardly stood back while he knelt beside me, and I gave her a polite smile and then faced him.
This was it. No Chase around to distract us from the awkwardness; no conversations about the weather to avoid the fact that we didn’t know each other. The time for the truth had come.
My father was a failure as a parent, something I had accepted with sadness long ago and quietly forgiven him for. Still, at the time I’d gleefully told myself that I’d filled in the Dad-shaped hole in my heart with dirt forever, and that whenever he’d surely come back to my porch begging for his little girl back one day, I’d sneer at him and slam the door in his face. But the saddest thing was that he never came back. He’d never even cared about my preemptive rejection, and he’d probably preferred having me out of his hair so he could press restart on his life with his new wife, anyway. It felt like seeing a creepy guy approach you in a bar and getting yourself all ready to turn him down and revel in the hot satisfaction of rejecting him, only to have him breeze by without even noticing you. Sometimes a kid just wanted their dad to sit by their bed and put a hand on their knee and tell them everything was gonna be alright, and my father’s steadily increasing remoteness had taken any of this behavior out of the equation. But I was okay. I’d found my heroes in books. And a dating app.
He cleared his throat. He’d never really known the right thing to say, which was fine, because that was sort of His Thing. He was awkward, and it was kinda cute. But something told me it wouldn’t be so cute today.
“Summer, you’re going to be fine and everything,” he began, his greying blonde hair shining in the light from the window. “And I know that, but still, I, uh, wanted to say some things to you…just in case.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. Lots of people said things like “just in case” in hospitals.
My dad smiled wistfully at something I couldn’t see, his brown eyes creasing in the corners. “You know, Sum, one time when you were four, you were in the hospital for a while, and I had to stay with you and miss a work party I’d been looking forward to. I’ll never forget this next thing: after you overheard me talking to the nurses about missing it, you sat up in your bed and said, ‘I don’t want to be Summer anymore.’ I asked you why, and you crossed your arms and said, ‘Because I’m a boo boo.’”
He looked down at me. “You are not a boo boo, Summer. You never were. You’re a blessing. Some people spend so much time loving the ones around them that they forget that they are loved, too. I am grateful for every second I get to love you, Summer. Do you understand that?”
I nodded and glanced away.
“You know, you are the most selfless person I have ever met,” he continued, his voice cracking. “And I mean it. You never ever feel sorry for yourself about your scar and everything-” which was highly inaccurate, I noted to myself, I just didn’t complain about it out loud- “and you’re better than me. You’re the strongest person I have ever known, but more than that, you’re quietly strong, which speaks so much more of you. The world doesn’t deserve you, and neither do I, and I’m so sorry I stepped away, and if I could replay every single second of your childhood after that day and put myself back in your life, I would, and…and…”
He trailed off. It was killing me to see him like this because of me. (Pardon my choice of words.) Finally he made an awkward, throat-clearing sound. “And also, um, you’re not, you’re not to blame…it’s not your fault about the divorce,” he spat out as Nancy fidgeted in the corner. “It…it was never going to work out between Shelly and me anyway. Do you get that? I know how you must feel, and you need to understand that none of it was your fault, and, yeah...”
I nodded again, and he rested his hand on my arm as I guiltily watched Nancy start to weep in the corner. “I am so grateful for you, Summer,” he repeated. “You were such a blessing.”
I yanked my head over at him.
“Are,” he said quickly. “I meant to say are.”
Shelly was next. Her dark hair was a mess and she’d probably been crying all morning, and she looked scared shitless. She just sort of stopped beside my bed and pawed at my arm, unsure of what she could and couldn’t touch. By now she knew that any overt show of emotion or fear stressed me out in hospitals, and I could tell she was holding stuff in. A lot of stuff.
“I can’t believe it’s finally here,” she finally said. “You can talk about something, you can prepare yourself for something, but when that ‘something’ finally arrives…”
She shook her head and looked down at me. “Are you scared?”
“Yeah. But I can deal with it.”
Her lip quivered, and then she completely broke down. She bent over and sobbed against my arm.
“That’s just it,” she cried. “I am so sorry for all the things you’ve had to ‘deal’ with in your life, Sum. You deserved so much better than this. If I could take it all, all the pain and suffering, and feel it as my own, I would in an instant, you have no idea. I want to so badly. I am so sorry. It should’ve been me,” she sobbed, again and again. “It should’ve been me.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just let her cry on me. Because all at once it occurred to me that my mother was strong. I had mistaken her exuberance for weakness, when all along she had been the one propping up my family when we needed her the most. She’d literally given up her adult life to care for me, stepping into the role of mother and father after my dad’s exit, and suddenly I found myself filled with gratitude. Empathy was worth its weight in gold, and here she was, spilling her empathy all over me in the form of her tears. And right then and there, I stopped expecting her to be the person I wanted her to be, and accepted her for the one she was.
Which all just fed into my guilt even more, actually. Guilt that I was lying here on this gurney putting everything through all this misery because, AHHHH, my stupid fucking body didn’t work correctly.
She wrapped both hands around my cold face. “Whatever happens, I will always be your mommy, and you will always be my little girl. Not your friend, not someone called Shelly, but your mom. Do you understand that? I will always be your mommy.”
“Yes, Mom,” I said, and her eyes filled up with tears again – I’d never called her that before, not that I could remember, at least. “Okay. And thanks for everything you’ve done for me, too, Mom. God, why can’t I stop saying Mom, Mom?”
“Don’t ever stop, baby. And, oh, quit with the gratitude,” she said as she dabbed a tissue at her eyes, waving me off. “I was happy to care for you.”
I took a breath. “Okay. And there’s something else, too.”
“Yes?”
“If anything happens to me,” I said slowly, “I want you to take care of Chase.”
“Okay,” she frowned.
“Wait. More specifically, I want you to back away from him. Let him breathe. Let him have a childhood. No more phantom colds or nonexistent fevers. He’s not me and he never will be, God willing, so let the kid be a kid. God knows he won’t have the chance when he’s grown.”
“Okay,” she nodded again, giving a smile that did not show in her eyes. “Okay. I know what you mean. I’ll cool it. I swear.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Say it again,” she said with her eyes closed, smiling with everything in her, and I took her hand in mine and kissed it.
“Okay, Mom. No more Shelly. You’re Mom forever. I promise.”
The last visitor was Cooper. My sad, beautiful Cooper. The hospital nametag on his shirt had his name on it, and I smiled at his horrid handwriting. He appeared in the doorway and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. But even after all this time, he still made me dizzy. He was so beautiful it made my insides hurt.
He stopped beside me. A tanned god of a boy, careful not to slip into anyone and get hurt; a pale phantom of a girl, desperately lashing out to leave love behind before she left too early. He got pulled down deep. I reached out and left a mark. How in God’s name would we ever make that mark last?
“Hey, kid,” he finally said.
“Hi.”
He put his hand on my arm, and I flinched involuntarily.
“Oh, shit,” he said, pulling away, “did I hurt you?”
“Noooo, no no no. Here, put it back, I was just cold.”
He returned his arm and smiled at me. “Good. I wanna be your cure, not your pain,” he said, quoting Saviour again.
“Oh, gosh, Cooper. You were. Trust me.”
He turned, showing me his beautiful profile: his strong chin, his soft, full lips, his stately nose like a Roman general heading into battle. He stared out of the window and inhaled through his nostrils, chewing on his lips.
“So life is not a cheesy romantic comedy after all,” he finally said. “I don’t remember the part in that Kate Hudson movie where she was strapped to a gurney.”
“I know, Cooper. I know.” Damaged people get no stories, I thought to myself. Nobody posted gushy love posts about them or exalted them from the heavens. They just broke and suffered in the dark. Until Cooper came along, at least.
“Are you afraid?” he asked. I looked away, towards the medical equipment across the room. This was getting so real now. Things were welling up within me, anger included, threatening to spill out.
“I wanted a forever,” is what I said next. “Not this. God, I hate this world sometimes.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Stop, Summer. Please. Every second I spent with you was a gift. I beat the odds by finding you. I-”
I reached up and grabbed him, unable to control it anymore. “Stop it, Cooper. Stop! This isn’t some Hallmark Channel movie. This is real. I’m skeletal and I have a scar on my face and I might fucking die, and oh God, I wanted so much more from this life, and-”
He bent down low, took my free hand, and rested it on his chest. Two humans, tangled up in each other, for now at least. “Feel this, Summer. Do you feel it?”
His heart was thundering.
“Yes.”
“I feel that every second I am around you. I love you, Summer, and you are feeling that love right now. You found a dead boy and made his heart beat again. You are the only thing in the world that makes me feel this alive. You squeeze so much life into every second I have with you, and I don’t care how fucking cheesy or stupid or Hallmark that sounds – I’m thankful. A little angry at the situation, yes, but thankful underneath that. So thankful. Thank God for you, Summer.”
“Look at you,” I smiled after a minute. “Mr. Agnostic, thanking God in front of me. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Remember when I told you I needed something to believe in? I found it. I believe in God now.”
“Wait, you did? You do?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “You’re God.”
“Ummm…?”
He laughed in this weird, rough, breathy way. “Wait, let me rephrase that. I do worship you, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about here.”
“What, then?”
He studied me, looking at me from under his eyelashes, which was my favorite Cooper Thing that he did. “Well, to me, the question of God comes back to the existence of a soul – do humans have souls? And will those souls go anywhere after this, or will we just die and cease to exist, like road kill on the side of this relentless march of time and tragedy that we call life? But there is one thing humans do that no other being on Earth is capable of: we love.” He motioned down at our tangled hands. “Humans love deeply, unconditionally. Sure, squirrels boink each other and have babies for the sake of the continuation of their species, but they do hold their partner’s hand while they flicker and fade from the world, like my grandpa did for my grandma in her final hours? Do they nurse and comfort their friends through sickness and injury? Do they find twin souls and grow old and silver-haired together? No. Every time I’ve seen you reach out and love someone, take your hand and put it on a broken person’s arm and encourage them with your words, kiss me on the cheek and make me feel like the most important person in the universe, play a game with your little brother while you could be doing something else – that’s holy. Those moments when we’re together and we sink into that weird little world where it’s just the two of us and we almost feel like we’re glowing with love and then some vibrating entity that feels older than the sea filters in and hums between us – that’s religion. That’s us rising above our humanity – transcending the genre – and reaching a higher level, a galactic level. That’s love. That’s God. That’s grace. That’s majesty. And you love, Summer, so you’re God.” He laughed again, quieter this time. “To me, at least.”
A wretched sob escaped from my chest. I stretched out and smiled up at the ceiling.
“God, we need to stop talking like this!” I said as I wiped my nose and tried to pull myself together. “It’s just a surgery, not a firing squad. Maybe I’m gonna be fine. Maybe I’m gonna go to sleep for ten hours and wake up and everything will be back to normal, and I am not saying goodbye to you in this hospital bed right now.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking around. “I guess we could’ve found a more romantic setting than a dead-end room with industrial blinds and the faint smell of that damned disinfectant spray.”
“Not exactly a girl’s childhood dream, no.”
A flurry of activity outside told us they were waiting for me. Nurses were good at that; passive-aggressively ruffling some blinds or slamming a book closed to tell you that although they respected your time, scalpels were waiting to be stained with your blood and humanity.
“Hey. You’re gonna do it all, you know,” Cooper said, leaning closer, but fear was blooming in his eyes, and it terrified me. “You’re finally gonna be healthy and strong, and you’re gonna eat all the food in the world and then adopt a kid, a whole orphanage full of ‘em, and you’re gonna get the most obnoxious Facebook wedding in the world, and then we’re gonna go to that pier again and sit under the sky, for as long as you want, and glow again.”
“Okay,” I said, drowning in love and life and fear of the future. “Remember that poem So It Goes by Saviour, about her friend with cancer or whatever?” She certainly wouldn’t have had Esophogeal Intresia, I noted to myself, caustic to the end.
“And so it goes,” he recited, “to be a young soul trapped inside a set of broken bones. What a beautiful curse, to be young and beautiful and doomed.”
“And so it goes,” I continued, “that love will keep a soul alive. A person who was loved and left love behind cannot die so long as they are kept inside the beating heart of a human – or better yet, five.”
He wiped his eye, laughed, and then shook his head. “God. We have got to find some less depressing singers to quote.”
“You’re right,” I said. “From here on out, it’s Katy Perry for me.”
We both grimaced at exactly the same time, proving once and for all that I had found my one twin soul. We were soul mates, this boy on the cusp of forever, this girl on the edge of oblivion.
Finally a nurse entered and started going over charts and messing with stuff in the cabinet, chatting all the while. As I sat there saying my maybe-goodbyes to Cooper, the cheeriness in her voice hurt like hearing a Christmas song in January.
“…The scans are actually looking really good!” she said as she flipped a page in her notebook with her back to us. “There’s less blockage than they thought. This might even go more quickly than we expected! So that’s good! Really good, y’all!”
“Yay!” Cooper said in the same tone as the nurse as he looked down at me and rolled his eyes, making me giggle.
“Oh, and one last thing, Cooper,” I told him quietly, and he leaned closer.
“Yeah?”
“This is gonna sound weird, but promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll write a book. Just promise. I want to know that you’ll fulfill your dream, or whatever. Please write one. You can do it, I swear.”
“Okay,” he said, but something in his eyes was sparkling, and I didn’t understand it at all. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“What’s funny?”
“It’s just that we’re sitting here saying…you know, maybe goodbye, or whatever, and you’re thinking about me. So typical, Summer. So typical. You’ll never change, will you?”
“Whatever. Maybe the nurse is right, anyway,” I said, taking a long, calming breath. “I’m gonna be fine. We’re being dramatic. I’m gonna be fine. I know it!”
“You are, Summer,” he said, tracing circles on the back of my hand. “I love you, and you have all my love. What more could you need?”
The nurse arrived behind my bed and flashed a tight smile at Cooper. It was time for him to go.
“I love you so much,” he said as she started to lead him out. “I love you so much! I’m so glad I met you. I’m gonna see you in no time! Float on, Summer. And never forget that I-”
The stupid nurse closed the door, silencing him.
~
So now I’m in another room waiting for the anesthesiologist. I don’t really know what’s going to happen next. Maybe I’ll be fine. Maybe I won’t. Maybe this will be the last time I ever breathe, ever look around at the room surrounding me, ever live, ever be.
I stretch my arms out again and let out a terrified, heartbroken, exhilarated ahhhHHHHuhhh as I look up at the ceiling and try not to cry. But as much as I want to run away and live out my days under the palms somewhere in secrecy, I know I have to do this. I’d known from the moment Steinberg brought up the surgery, actually. I wasn’t going to be a burden any longer. I wasn’t going to have Shelly fuss over me or have my dad be depressed about my life prospects or have a team of aging doctors sit around once every six months and elegantly debate the prospects of my mortality. I was going to try to normalize myself, and if I undid myself in the process, then so be it. I was going to be Healthy Summer, or I was going to be Dead Summer. Either prospect would be better than the humiliating half-life of my first twenty-four years. Every rude comment from random people on the street, every time I’d been left alone at home during a middle school dance to stare at walls while the pretty girls twirled in their dresses under the lights, every time people had gawked and laughed at me in the lunch room, every time I’d stared at my computer watching those same girls twirling down an aisle, bouquet in hand – I just couldn’t do it anymore. Oh well. You never win a match you don’t sign up for.
A thought struck me, and do you know what I did next? I took out my phone to clear my head, which I was still allowed to have until the last possible moment. (Okay, maybe I’d snuck it in. Whatever.) I opened up my Facebook and scrolled through the goings-on of all the people I’d met in my life, all with dreams and goals and problems so different from mine, and I tried to be angry, but mostly I just felt sad. I remembered something and kept scrolling, and sure enough, soon I saw her: Misty the Pen Thief, that human manifestation of a Bud Light burp, that girl who’d inspired me to download Spark all those weeks ago, who lived to brag about her fiancé and how he cherished the ground she walked on. And ultimate plot twist: she’d just been dumped.
I couldn’t believe it. There she was, posting some furious status about how she’d already sent out the invitations to her bridesmaids’ luncheon when the fiancé had decided he “needed time to think.” I guess the pretty lies had fallen away, and Misty and her man had been left with a truth neither of them could deal with: they were not a match. And I couldn’t help it: I laughed, fully and completely, with everything in my broken body.
And then I thought about where I’d be right now, what I’d be doing, what my summer would’ve been like, had I not seen Misty’s Oak Tree of Love photo and been spurred to download Spark and swipe “yes” on Cooper and lead him down this path of lies and love and death and Funfetti cake. Would my health have nosedived as quickly? Would the surgery still be months away? Had I been hurtling towards disaster ever since that first day at Joe’s Crab Shack?
And what did Cooper think about all this, really, and his role in it? As I lay there I tried to dig inside his mind, to see whatever waiting room he was seeing, but since I did not have some Patented Mind Reading Machine, this was impossible. I guess I’d never know for sure. But if something did happen, I hoped he’d get over his anger one day. More than anything, actually. He deserved it.
As I waited, I wondered if I would ever again get to smell the marshes of Jax Beach and see the canoes paddle by in the coffee-colored water while the crickets sang; watch the leaves on the oaks in my yard ripple in the Atlantic breeze as the clouds gathered; wake up at ten on a Sunday and walk to the beach access at Fourteenth Avenue, my toes burning on the hot pavement under the dazzling sun, to sit on the sand next to Cooper until the storms filled the sky. Maybe this was all I’d ever get with him, this summer of beautiful risk, these last three months when he had loved me so perfectly by the sea. Or maybe we’d get forty or fifty or sixty more years. Or maybe I’d survive and he’d come to his senses and dump me in a week. But whatever happened, I knew I’d always have this summer, and that first night on the pier under the stars, with the waves surging around us, when we both glowed. And armed with that, I was not afraid. This summer, and this life, had been a privilege. I was sure of that.
For a moment I got giddy with excitement imagining what would happen if the surgery worked, and I woke up with a fixed stomach and a throat that functioned, a normal girl for the first time ever. Oh, God, I’d be so thankful. I’d do everything I never could before – I’d run marathons and eat seafood feasts and wear bikinis and live spectacularly for all the support group kids I grew up with who had either died or hadn’t been fixed and would never get the chance. I would live and eat and run for them and I would love every minute of it; I would savor every activity that healthy people wasted away and squandered. I’d play softball for Hank and go to Key West for Autumn and drink all the beer in the world for poor Ethan, bless his heart. Then I’d swallow a Funfetti cake a day until I got big and fat and happy, I promise. Nobody would have ever been happier to get fat, I can tell you that much.
I shivered and told myself to relax. All that would have to wait. First I had a surgery to get through, and the ultimate enemy to face: time. Nobody could ever escape time. Just ask Cooper Nichols.
Finally, as I waited for the doctors and nurses and specialists who would spend the morning deciding my fate, I zoomed out and imagined looking into the room from a stranger’s perspective, seeing what they would see. A blonde girl in a filmy papery gown, free at last but broken and trying to be fixed, who’d somehow gotten over herself for the first time in her life and reached out into the madness and opened herself to love, whatever it was, in all its bruising glory and otherworldly horror. Would these strangers take my example and do the same in their own lives? Would they get over the fear that kept them alone and told them they were inferior; would they step outside the borders of their own bodies and take another human’s hand? Would they shatter their own barriers and choose the scary thing, the hard thing, the worthwhile thing, the burning thing?
I crossed my legs on that cold bed in that cold room in this very wide and varied world and hoped that they would, whoever they were. I hoped they would choose love. They owed it to themselves – that much I knew.
Okay, the anesthesiologist just came into the room. I don’t know what else to say now, other than that I am so grateful for you, Cooper. I am so grateful. I am so grateful. Wish me luck, if it exists at all. God and fate and numbers know I need it.