Five Feet Apart

by Rachael Lippincott

  There’s a knock on my door, and it flies open not even a second later as Barb busts in holding an armful of pudding cups for me to take my medication with. “I’m back! Delivery!”

  When it comes to Barb, not much has changed in the past six months, or the past ten years for that matter; she’s still the best. The same short, curly hair. The same colorful scrubs. The same smile that lights up the entire room.

  But then an extremely pregnant Julie trails behind her, carrying an IV drip.

  Now that’s a big change from six months ago.

  I swallow my surprise and grin at Barb as she places the pudding at the edge of my bed for me to sort onto my medicine cart, then pulls out a list to double-check that the cart has everything I need on it.

  “What would I do without you?” I ask.

  She winks. “You’d die.”

  Julie hangs the IV bag of antibiotics next to me, her belly brushing up against my arm. Why didn’t she tell me she’s pregnant? I go rigid, smiling thinly, as I eye her baby bump and try to subtly move away from it. “A lot’s changed in the past six months!”

  She rubs her belly, blue eyes shining brightly as she gives me a big smile. “You want to feel her kick?”

  “No,” I say, a little too quickly. I feel bad when she looks slightly taken aback at my bluntness, her blond eyebrows arching up in surprise. But I don’t want any of my bad juju near that perfect, healthy baby.

  Luckily, her eyes travel to my desktop background. “Are those your winter formal pics? I saw a bunch on Insta!” she says, excited. “How was it?”

  “Super fun!” I say with a ton of enthusiasm as the awkwardness melts away. I open a folder on my desktop filled with pictures. “Crushed it on the dance floor for a solid three songs. Got to ride in a limo. The food didn’t suck. Plus, I made it to ten thirty before I got tired, which was way better than expected! Who needs a curfew when your body does it for you, right?”

  I show her and Barb some pictures we all took at Mya’s house before the dance while she hooks me up to the IV drip and tests my blood pressure and O2 reading. I remember I used to be afraid of needles, but with every blood draw and IV drip, that fear slowly drifted away. Now I don’t even flinch. It makes me feel strong every time I get poked or prodded. Like I can overcome anything.

  “All righty,” Barb says when they get all my vitals and finish oohing and aahing over my sparkly, silver A-line gown and my white rose corsage. Camila, Mya, and I decided to swap corsages when we went stag to the formal. I didn’t want to take a date, not that anybody asked me anyway. It was super possible that I would need to bail the day of, or wouldn’t feel well halfway through the dance, which wouldn’t have been fair to whomever I could’ve gone with. The two of them didn’t want me to feel left out, so instead of getting dates of their own, they decided we’d all go together. Because of the Mason developments, though, that doesn’t seem super likely for prom.

  Barb nods to the filled medicine cart, resting a hand on her hip. “I’ll still monitor you, but you’re pretty much good to go.” She holds up a pill bottle. “Remember, you have to take this one with food,” she says, putting it carefully back and holding up another one. “And make sure you don’t—”

  “I got it, Barb,” I say. She’s just being her usual motherly self, but she holds up her hands in surrender. Deep down she knows that I’ll be absolutely fine.

  I wave good-bye as they both head toward the door, using the remote next to my bed to sit it up a little more.

  “By the way,” Barb says slowly as Julie ducks out of the room. Her eyes narrow at me and she gives me a gentle warning look. “I want you to finish your IV drip first, but Poe’s just checked in to room 310.”

  “What? Really?” I say, my eyes widening as I move to launch myself out of bed to find him. I can’t believe he didn’t tell me he’d be here!

  Barb steps forward, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me gently back down onto the bed before I can fully stand. “What part of ‘I want you to finish your IV drip first’ did you not get?”

  I smile sheepishly at her, but how could she blame me? Poe was the first friend I made when I came to the hospital. He’s the only one who really gets it. We’ve fought CF together for a freaking decade. Well, together from a safe distance, anyway.

  We can’t get too close to each other. For cystic fibrosis patients, cross-infection from certain bacteria strains is a huge risk. One touch between two CFers can literally kill the both of them.

  Her serious frown gives way to a gentle smile. “Settle in. Relax. Take a chill pill.” She eyes the medicine cart, jokingly. “Not literally.”

  I nod, a real laugh spilling out, as a fresh wave of relief fills me at the news of Poe being here too.

  “I’ll stop by later to help you with your AffloVest,” Barb says over her shoulder as she leaves. Grabbing my phone, I settle for a quick text message instead of a mad dash down the hall to room 310.

  You’re here? Me too. Tune-up.

  Not even a second goes by and my screen lights up with his reply: Bronchitis. Just happened. I’ll live. Come by and wave at me later. Gonna crash now.

  I lean back on the bed, exhaling long and slow.

  Truth is, I’m nervous about this visit.

  My lung function fell to 35 percent so quickly. And now, even more than the fever and the sore throat, being here in the hospital for the next month doing treatment after treatment to stem the tide while my friends are far away is freaking me out. A lot. Thirty-five percent is a number that keeps my mom up at night. She doesn’t say it, but her computer does. Search after search about lung transplants and lung-function percentages, new combinations and phrasing but always the same idea. How to get me more time. It makes me more afraid than I’ve ever been before. But not for me. When you have CF, you sort of get used to the idea of dying young. No, I’m terrified for my parents. And what will become of them if the worst does happen, now that they don’t have each other.

  But with Poe here, someone who understands, I can get through it. Once I’m actually allowed to see him.

  * * *

  The rest of the afternoon goes by slowly.

  I work on my app, double-checking that I worked out the programming error that kept coming up when I tried to run it on my phone. I put some Fucidin on the sore skin around my G-tube in an attempt to make it less fire-engine red and more of a summer-sunset pink. I check and double-check my “At Bedtime” pile of bottles and pills. I reply to my parents’ every-hour-on-the-hour texts. I gaze out the window as the afternoon fades and see a couple about my age, laughing and kissing as they walk into the hospital. It’s not every day you see a happy couple coming into a hospital. Watching them holding hands and exchanging longing glances, I wonder what it would be like to have somebody look at me like that. People are always looking at my cannula, my scars, my G-tube, not at me.

  It doesn’t make guys want to line up by my locker.

  I “dated” Tyler Paul my freshman year of high school, but that lasted all of a month, until I came down with an infection and needed to go to the hospital for a few weeks. Even just a few days in, his texts started to get further and further apart, and I decided to break up with him. Besides, it was nothing like that couple out in the courtyard. Tyler’s palms were sweaty when we held hands, and he wore so much Axe body spray, I would go into coughing fits every time we hugged.

  This thought process is not exactly a helpful distraction, so I even give number 22, “Contemplate the afterlife,” on my to-do list a try, and read some of Life, Death, and Immortality: The Journey of the Soul.

  But, pretty soon, I opt to just lie on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the wheezing sound of my breathing. I can hear the air struggling to get past the mucus that takes up space in my lungs. Rolling over, I crack open a vial of Flovent to give my lungs a helping hand. I pour the liquid into a nebulizer by my bed, the small machine humming to life as vapors pour from the mouthpiece.

  I sit, sta
ring at the drawing of the lungs while I breathe in and out.

  And in and out.

  And in and . . . out.

  I hope when my parents come to visit over the next few days, my breathing is a little less labored. I told them both that the other one was taking me to the hospital this morning, but I actually just took an Uber here from the corner a street over from my mom’s new place. I don’t want either of them to have to face seeing me here again, at least until I’m looking better.

  My mom was already giving me troubled looks when I needed to put my portable oxygen on just to pack.

  There’s a knock on my door, and I look over from the wall I’m staring at, hoping it’s Poe stopping by to wave at me. I pull the mouthpiece off as Barb pops her head in. She drops a surgical face mask and latex gloves onto a table next to my door.

  “New one upstairs. Meet me in fifteen?”

  My heart leaps.

  I nod, and she gives me a big smile before ducking out of the room. I grab the mouthpiece and take one more quick hit of the Flovent, letting the vapor fill my lungs the best I can before I’m up and moving. Shutting the nebulizer off, I pick up my portable oxygen concentrator from where it’s been charging next to my bed, press the circular button in the center to turn it on, and pull the strap over my shoulder. After I put the cannula in, I head over to the door, pulling on the blue latex gloves and wrapping the strings of the face mask around my ears.

  Sliding into my white Converse, I push my door open then squeeze out into the whitewashed corridor, deciding to go the long way so I can walk past Poe’s room.

  I pass the nurses’ station in the center of the floor, waving hello to a young nurse’s assistant named Sarah, who is smiling over the top of the new, sleek metal cubicle.

  They replaced that before my last visit six months ago. It’s the same height, but it used to be made of this worn wood that had probably been around since the hospital was founded sixty-some years ago. I remember when I was small enough to sneak past to whatever room Poe was in, my head still a good few inches from clearing the desk.

  Now it comes up to my elbow.

  Heading down the hallway, I grin as I see a small Colombian flag taped on the outside of a half-open door, an overturned skateboard keeping it propped slightly open.

  I peer inside to see Poe fast asleep on his bed, curled into a surprisingly tiny ball underneath his plaid comforter, a suave Gordon Ramsay poster, positioned directly over his bed, keeping watch over him.

  I draw a heart on the dry-erase board he’s stuck to the outside of his door to let him know I’ve been there, before moving off down the hallway toward the wooden double doors that will take me to the main part of the hospital, up an elevator, down C Wing, across the bridge into Building 2, and straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

  One of the perks of coming here for more than a decade is that I know the hospital just as well as I knew the house I grew up in. Every winding corridor, or hidden staircase, or secret shortcut, explored over and over again.

  But before I can open the double doors, a room door swings open next to me, and I turn my head in surprise to see the profile of a tall, thin boy I’ve never seen before. He’s standing in the doorway of room 315, holding a sketchbook in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other, a white hospital bracelet like mine wrapped around his wrist.

  I stop dead.

  His tousled, dark-chocolate-brown hair is perfectly unruly, like he just popped out of a Teen Vogue and landed smack in the middle of Saint Grace’s Hospital. His eyes are a deep blue, the corners crinkling as he talks.

  But it’s his smile that catches my eye more than anything else. It’s lopsided, and charming, and it has a magnetic warmth to it.

  He’s so cute, my lung function feels like it dropped another 10 percent.

  It’s a good thing this mask is covering half my face, because I did not plan for cute guys on my floor this hospital stay.

  “I’ve clocked their schedules,” he says as he puts the pencil casually behind his ear. I shift slightly to the left and see that he’s grinning at the couple I saw coming into the hospital earlier. “So, unless you plant your ass on the call button, no one’s going to bother you for at least an hour. And don’t forget. I gotta sleep in that bed, dude.”

  “Way ahead of you.” I watch as the girl unzips the duffel bag she’s holding to show him blankets.

  Wait. What?

  Cute guy whistles. “Look at that. A regular Girl Scout.”

  “We’re not animals, man,” her boyfriend says to him, giving him a big, dude-to-dude smile.

  Oh my god. Gross. He’s letting his friends do it in his room, like it’s a motel.

  I grimace and resume walking down the hallway to the exit doors, putting as much space as possible between me and whatever scheme is going on in there.

  So much for cute.

  CHAPTER 2

  WILL

  “All right, I’ll see you guys later,” I say, winking at Jason and closing the door to my room to give them some privacy. I come face-to-face with the empty sockets of the skull drawing on my door, an O2 mask slung over its mouth, with the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” written under it.

  That should be the slogan for this hospital. Or any of the other fifty I’ve been in for the past eight months of my life.

  I squint down the hallway to see the door swinging shut behind the girl I saw moving into a room down the hall earlier today, her scuffed white Converse disappearing onto the other side. She’d been by herself, lugging a duffel bag big enough for about three fully grown adults, but she actually looked kind of hot.

  And, let’s be honest here. It’s not every day you see a remotely attractive girl hanging around a hospital, no more than five doors down from yours.

  Looking down at my sketchbook, I shrug, rolling it up and stuffing it into my back pocket before heading down the hallway after her. It’s not like I have anything better to do, and I’m certainly not trying to stick around here for the next hour.

  Pushing through the doors, I see her making her way across the gray tile floor, waving and chatting to just about everyone as she goes, like she’s putting on her own personal Thanksgiving Day Parade. She steps onto the large glass elevator, overlooking the east lobby, just past a large, decked-out Christmas tree they must’ve put up early this morning, long before the Thanksgiving leftovers were even eaten.

  Heaven forbid they leave up the giant turkey display for even a minute longer.

  I watch as her hands reach up to fix her face mask while she leans over to press a button, the doors slowly closing.

  I start climbing the open stairs by the elevator, trying not to run into anyone as I watch it chug steadily to the fifth floor. Of course. I run up the stairs as fast as my lungs will carry me, managing to get to the fifth floor with enough time to go into a serious coughing fit and recover before she exits the elevator and disappears around a corner. I rub my chest, clearing my throat and following her down a couple of hallways and onto the wide, glass-encased bridge leading to the next building.

  Even though she just got here this morning, she clearly knows where she’s going. Judging from her pace and the fact she apparently knows every single person in the building, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were actually the mayor of this place. I’ve been here two weeks, and it took me until yesterday to figure out how to sneak safely from my room to the cafeteria over in Building 2, and I am by no means directionally challenged. I’ve been in so many hospitals over the years, figuring out how to get around them is what counts as a hobby to me now.

  She stops short under a set of double doors reading EAST ENTRANCE: NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT and peeks inside before she pushes them open.

  The NICU.

  Odd.

  Having kids when you have CF falls into the super difficult category. I’ve heard of girls with CF bumming hard over it, but going to stare at the babies she might never have is a whole other level.

&nb
sp; That’s just fucking depressing.

  There are a lot of things that piss me off about CF, but that’s not one of them. Pretty much all guys with CF are infertile, which at least means I don’t have to worry about getting anyone pregnant and starting my own shit show of a family.

  Bet Jason wishes he had that going for him right now.

  Looking both ways, I close the gap between me and the doors, peering inside the narrow window to see her standing in front of the viewing pane, her eyes focused on a small baby inside an incubator on the other side. Its fragile arms and legs are hooked up to machines ten times its size.

  Pushing open the door and sliding inside the dimly lit hallway, I smile as I watch Converse girl for a second. I can’t help but stare at her reflection, everything beyond the glass blurring as I look at her. She’s prettier close up, with her long eyelashes and her full eyebrows. She even makes a face mask look good. I watch as she brushes her wavy, sandy-brown hair out of her eyes, staring at the baby through the glass with a determined focus.

  I clear my throat, getting her attention. “And here I thought this was gonna be another lame hospital filled with lame sickies. But then you show up. Lucky me.”

  Her eyes meet mine in the reflection of the glass, surprise filling them at first, and then almost immediately changing to something resembling disgust. She looks away, back at the baby, staying silent.

  Well, that’s always a promising sign. Nothing like actual repulsion to start off on the right foot.

  “I saw you moving into your room. Gonna be here awhile?”

  She doesn’t say anything. If it wasn’t for the grimace, I’d think she didn’t even hear me.

  “Oh, I get it. I’m so good looking you can’t even string a sentence together.”

  That annoys her enough to get a response.

  “Shouldn’t you be procuring rooms for your ‘guests’?” she snaps, turning to face me as she angrily pulls her face mask off.