Chapter Five
I woke up to loud knocks on the door and the overhead lights blaring cruelly bright. Disoriented, my eyes squinted open, blinking to adjust. This is real. I’m really in the hospital. Sheets twisted, skin clammy, head throbbing, I gasped for air and scrambled to sit up.
My phone slipped down the blanket. I’d fallen asleep with it clutched to my chest. When we’d settled into the new room the night before, I got a text from Jason.
Quinn told me no more visitors. :( I promise I didn’t mean to scare you down the stairs. Can I see you tomorrow?
I read it over and over before falling asleep with it in my hand. Can I see you tomorrow? It’d been the one glimmer of hope in my surreal night. I should be paralyzed with embarrassment from my tumble and tragic party departure, but here I was in a hospital bed, in ugly pink pajamas Mom had found at the gift shop, so my emotional capacity for embarrassment was lower than usual. Hey, thanks, possible tumor, for giving me that. Was he about to kiss me last night? He wouldn’t have texted if he didn’t care.
Mom stirred in the cot next to me as a doctor strode into the room and stood impatiently by my bedside. I glanced at the clock: 5:04 a.m. So not nice. Had this doctor missed the section in med school about the healing power of sleep? The poster on the wall behind the clock was of snow-capped mountains with the words Indomitable Spirit written on the bottom, like a threat.
“Good morning. I’m Dr. Nichols, your oncologist.” She wore a white doctor’s coat and her black hair pulled back into a bun. With a quick glance at her clipboard she said, “Nice to meet you, Ellie,” and then shook my hand so firmly I wondered if I’d have to stay in this room another night for crushed finger bones. A plump older nurse trailed in behind her and introduced herself as Darlene.
“Mrs. Hartwood?” Dr. Nichols said.
“Please, call me Sonia.” Mom rose awkwardly from her cot, still dressed in her clothes from the night before, and came to stand next to me at the head of my bed, rubbing her eyes.
“I examined the X-rays, and we definitely need to get a better look. Ellie, today you will get blood work done and a series of scans,” Dr. Nichols said as the grandma nurse tapped away on her tablet. “MRI, bone scan, and CT scan with and without contrast. We’ll also want to schedule a biopsy as soon as I have an opening.”
“A biopsy? What do you think it is? Dr. Springfield told us it’s probably benign, that it could just be a bone spur,” Mom said.
Dr. Nichols shook her head. “It’s not a bone spur. There is a chance the tumor is benign. The scans and biopsy will give us a more precise picture of its depth and location. Until we know more, Ellie, I don’t want you running, jumping, or doing anything that could put too much force on your leg.”
“What? I—I don’t understand.” Mom shook her head, eventually finding more words. “What do you think it is? Does it look malignant? What happens if she does accidentally put too much pressure on it?”
A hundred mini boa constrictors flooded my throat, tightening and squeezing, suffocating my voice and breath.
“I’m sorry. We can’t answer most of those questions until we get a better look. The physical limitation is just a precaution. If the tumor is malignant and Ellie were to fracture or break the bone, it would make our treatment options more complicated. Don’t think too much about it. It’s a precaution.” And with that, Dr. Nichols left.
That was it. No more reassuring words, just “don’t think about it.”
That seemed impossible. But she’d said there was a chance it was benign. I have to hold on to that, to think only of that.
The gripping coils in my nerves just rooted deeper. Relief would only come with an answer.
At least, I prayed it would be relief.
“We’ll be doing the MRI after the blood work,” said Nurse Darlene. She handed me a mint-green gown. “Please put this on with the opening in the back, dear, and make sure to take off your bra and any jewelry. We don’t want any metal in the machine. I’ll wait for you in the hall.”
Mom’s face matched the fear that was coursing through me. This was all happening too fast. No discussion, no satisfying explanations.
She gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I’m going to go talk to the nurse for a minute.” She smoothed her bedhead down then held my chin and kissed my forehead again before leaving.
Once I had on the gown, I tried to wrap the flaps to cover my back and tuck them under me as I sat on the edge of the bed.
I should be at Quinn’s—still asleep—making banana pancakes in a few hours. What is going on?
I glared at the mocking mountain picture and imagined my indomitable spirit ripping it off the wall and smashing it to the ground with my indomitable strength.
There was a tap at the door. Craig. He set down the bag of stuff that Mom had asked him to bring from our apartment and sat next to me on the bed. “So, a tumor, huh? That sucks.”
A single “ha” slipped out of me. It wasn’t what I was expecting him to say at all. “Yeah.” I gave a sad smile.
He simply looked back at me. A choky feeling rose up in my throat. He surprised me by wrapping his arms fully around me and hugging me tight. I realized it was the first time we’d really hugged, and it went on and on.
What is he doing? But then, it was the nicest sort of hug. He held me so tight and so close, it was kind of comforting. Brotherly.
Tears streamed down my face, my body shaking against his. He was so big, and I felt so small. I had no idea how I’d get the tears and the shaking to stop now. Craig squeezed me tighter, and finally I put my arms around him and hugged him back.
“It’s okay, little bird, it’s okay,” he whispered.
I was a little broken bird.
When Craig was gone Mom came back into the room shaking her head. “The nurse says your MRI will take an hour or so, and that I can’t go with you.” She scanned my eyes like they’d reveal if I’d be okay, and gave me a long, too-tight hug that told me she might not be.
Darlene pushed me in a wheelchair down the antiseptic-smelling hall. Would this be my future? A wheelchair forever? Don’t be ridiculous.
I willed myself to go through the motions. Needle prick, filling vials—one, two, three—dots of blood, press the gauze. You can do this. Get through today.
The MRI room was cold, with a monolith of a machine in the middle of the room. It stood higher than I was tall and was more than twice as long, with a deep, cylindrical hole at its center. At the entrance, there was a bed-pod of sorts.
The technician, Troy, who seemed like he should be surfing on the California coast instead of working in this high-tech room of bad news, cinched straps around my ankles. Troy explained to me the importance of the straps. “Is this all right? Not pinching?”
“I know I’m in here because of a tumor and everything, but I have to ask, how do you get your curls to stay shiny and curly but not look scrunchy?”
His raised an eyebrow and smiled. “My secret is I don’t wash with shampoo. Ever.”
“For real?”
“For real. Only once in a while with baking soda and apple cider vinegar.”
“Whoa, I love shampoo. I don’t know if I could ever be that strong. Also, fair warning, you better pull those straps tighter or I’m gonna bolt.”
He chuckled and gave a good show of pulling the straps imperceptibly tighter. “I’m going to go ahead and guess you are strong enough.” He grinned, patted me on the shin and handed me some earplugs. “It’s pretty noisy when the machine gets going. These will help. If you need anything over the next hour there’s a microphone here so I’ll be able to hear you. No need to be scared.”
Yeah, right.
The bed-pod slid me into the tunnel. The earplugs barely blocked the loud whirring. I kept hearing “tumor…tumor…tumor” in rhythm to the MRI noises. Here I was, alone, strapped down with no control. No escape.
Think of something nice, something happy. The vision of Jason at the beach came to mind. Now as the machine roared around me, it instead chanted, “torso…torso…torso…” Much better.
“Hey there, you awake?” Troy’s voice pierced through my torso-trance.
My eyes flew open, my skin a bit flushed.
“You’re all set, trooper.” Troy moved me out of the tunnel, undid the straps and helped me off the machine.
I clutched my gown tightly around me as I said, “Thank you,” and climbed back into the wheelchair for my next carnival ride. Whee.
The bone scan and first CAT scan were quieter than the MRI. In preparation for the second CAT scan, another nurse injected me with a contrast solution. I had to wait for a few hours so the “nuclear medicine” (a serious oxymoron) could be fully absorbed into my bones. She explained the solution would create “hot spots” to highlight any diseased area of the bone. I somehow managed not to throw-up from her description.
She wheeled me back to the hospital room where Mom and I ate lunch and played gin with the cards Craig brought us, biding our time, trying not to think about my bones being momentarily nuclear and possibly diseased.
“Gin,” I said as I put my last card down, and Mom groaned—it was my third win in a row. I bet she was purposely letting me win since I was not winning at real life today.
My phone rang. It was Dad.
“Ellie-bee. Are you okay? Your mom said they kept you overnight and you’re getting scans?”
He hadn’t called me Ellie-bee in years. It made me feel like I was ten again. “Hi, Dad. Are you coming to see me?” My voice sounded higher-pitched and needier than I meant, but I needed one of his bear hugs right now.
He coughed into the phone. A tic of his when he was uncomfortable. “Well…” He wasn’t coming. “We just got to the airport. We’re about to catch a flight to Maui for Barb’s work conference and our vacation.”
Oh right, Barb’s “We Can Do It” conference, where she was getting an award for reaching a super special level of sales. Platinum, I think. Some sort of metallic recognition. I said nothing, wishing I hadn’t asked if he was coming to the hospital.
He uncomfortable-coughed again. “Do you want me to cancel my flight?” He whispered the last part, clearly not wanting Barb to hear him say that.
Yes. Except I want you to just do it and not ask me. “No. It’s okay. I have Mom here, and Craig.”
And all my friends who seem to care so much more about me than you do.
Most of me wanted him to have a nice trip to Maui, just not the part that needed him to be here and hold me and call me his Ellie-bee.
We said our good-byes. I put my phone down and reached across the pile of cards and gave Mom a huge hug. She would have canceled her trip the second she knew I was in the hospital, even if it had been for some minor injury.
Breaking from the hug, I gathered up the cards and started shuffling them. Mom stared at me. “What, Mom?”
“Oh, you just have a glow about you.” She laughed.
It took me a second to understand. “Mom, did you just make a joke about the radioactive tracer they put in me?”
She nodded, giggling some more. My mom’s smile was the best.
When my last scan of the day was over, Darlene wheeled me back to the room. “You can change and head home now, dear. It will take a while to get the results from radiology.”
“Thanks for your help today, Darlene.”
“You bet, kiddo.” She smiled and walked out.
As I changed out of the gown I studied my leg. It looked normal. Healthy. They are being overly cautious. It’s nothing.
There was a knock, and Mom checked that I was fully clothed before she opened the door and someone stepped beside her.
“Jason?” I said, stupid with shock. I stuttered then managed to get out, “Mom, this is Jason Cooper. He does improv at Porter Township and had the party last night.”
There was so much weirdness about this moment it was hard to keep it straight. What girl had to introduce her mom to the cute boy she’d just met? At a hospital? After getting scans for a tumor? I probably-not-so-covertly brushed my hand through my limp, greasy hair.
Mom shook his hand. “Hi, Jason. It is so kind of you to check in on Ellie.”
“Hi. It’s nice to meet you. And it’s my policy to check on all house guests who are rushed off to the hospital in ambulances.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave a firm nod.
Mom stared at Jason oddly until the dry humor clicked. “Ah, yes, good policy.” Her eyes flickered between us, and then she gathered up her stuff. “I’ll just go make sure our release papers are in order and be back in a minute.”
Jason thanked my mom and stepped further into the room. “Sorry. Did I get here at a bad time?”
I just stared at him, jaw open, brain overloaded.
“Should I go? I should go, I just…did you get my text? I had to see you.”
Had to. A smile bubbled up. “No, don’t. Stay for a sec…if you can.”
“So, are you okay?” He smiled, little creases forming around one side of his mouth, and I didn’t know what to say or how to explain. I’d been given zero answers.
“Were you going to kiss me on the porch last night?” I blurted at him instead. The radioactive tracer has made me bold.
“I, uh, wasn’t expecting that question.” He stepped closer, a mock-serious look on his face. “The better question is, did you think I was going to kiss you and therefore throw yourself down a flight of stairs?”
I scoffed. “I can’t believe it. I’m in the hospital and you’re going to point out my lack of grace?”
He laughed. “For the record, I’m not calling you graceless. I’m asking about your flight response, because I might have gone over it a few times last night…” His voice got so quiet that I could just make out the rest of his sentence under his breath. “When I didn’t sleep at all, thinking of you.”
I internally and silently bounced and squealed. “Thinking about me?”
“Well, first, obviously, I wondered if you were okay, but once Quinn let me know you hadn’t broken anything, I came up with the top five reasons you didn’t want to kiss me.”
I smiled too big, heat filling my face. Trying to act calm, I asked, “So? Reasons?”
He rubbed his forehead. “Well, if you want to go there, um, one: Maybe I had beastly breath and so you threw yourself off the deck to escape me.”
“No. Your breath smelled like sugar and sunshine.”
“Hmm, specific. Okay, two: I opened up about my mother and freaked you out. So, you chose to jump down a flight of stairs to get away before I mentioned cancer.”
My blood cells collided to a stop. “No, that wasn’t—wait, what do you mean cancer?”
“That’s how Mom died. Stage four breast cancer.” He took a deep breath. “This hospital reminds me of her, actually. It’s where she was treated. Sorry. How are you? You never said what you’re still doing here?”
“I…” I couldn’t tell him the details. No way. Not now. Tumor, biopsy, those words would remind him of his mom. My brain scrambled. “I…” I’ll get the results back and find out it’s nothing, and I won’t have to bring any of it up. “Nothing, really. They saw something on my bone in the X-rays that they needed to check out, and…anyway, I can go home now.”
“Sorry, Ellie. If only I hadn’t tried to kiss you, none of this would have happened.”
“No, no, I’m the idiot who stepped away from the cute guy instead of toward him.”
“Cute guy, eh? I’ll take it.” He gave me his irresistible side-smile again and took my hand in his.
“Uh, so what were you saying? Reasons? I believe you were on number three.”
He looked up to the ceiling and then back at me. “My favorite reason: you were pretending to be pulse-stoppingly-pretty and hilarious and talented, with just enough weirdness to keep you interesting—but deep down you’re a heartbreaker who likes to entice boys from other schools and then leap out of reach just when they think they can go in for the kiss.”
“Excuse me? Heartbreaker?” Pulse-stoppingly-pretty? He said pulse-stoppingly-pretty.
“Four: you fell instantly in love with me but lost your courage, so you hurled yourself from great heights to get away.”
“Whoa.” I laughed, my stomach feeling like Harold the goldfish was in there doing his freak-out laps. “So, you really think I’m hilarious?”
“Out of all of that, that’s what you take away?”
I shrug-nodded. Energy thrummed between our hands.
I couldn’t resist asking, “What was the last reason?”
“Number five. The hard facts: you really didn’t want to kiss me. But I can handle—”
“Definitely not it,” I said softly.
“Definitely not?” he asked, looking happy.
“Definitely not.”
“You know, it’s a funny thing about this room we’re in.” He pointed all around me, as if this was crucial info. “There aren’t any patios, stairways, or cliffs from which you could fling yourself right now.”
“Huh.” I examined the room as if this was real news. “Interesting. Should I call you Sherlock?”
“No. You should let me kiss you now.”
He didn’t make a move at first. He held my gaze in a way that made it impossible for me to think of any more words to say. It was just like our moment onstage together, when we could read each other wordlessly. But this time, no audience. I don’t know who moved in closer first, him or me, or when, but there was definitely less space between us. His head leaned toward me, my chin tilted up. His other hand moved to gently touch my cheek as his lips finally, finally met mine. Gurneys and IV stands creaked and wheeled by outside the door. Names were announced over the intercom. Beeps emitted from medical monitors in some other room. It didn’t matter. My whole body was light and bubbly. And his lips felt amazing, more amazing that anything I could have imagined.