I duck back inside my room, closing the door behind me and tugging at the neck of my T-shirt. I pace over to the window, and then back over to sit down on my bed, and then back over to the window, pushing back the blinds as the walls start to close in on me.
I need to get outside. I need air that’s not filled with antiseptic.
I throw open my closet door to grab a hoodie, pulling it on and peering out at the nurses’ station to see if the coast is clear.
No sign of Barb or my mom anymore, but Julie’s on the phone behind the desk, in between me and the exit door that will take me straight to the only stairwell in this building that leads to the roof.
I close my door quietly, creeping down the hall. I try to duck down lower than the nurses’ station, but a six-foot dude attempting to stay low and sneak around is about as subtle as a blindfolded elephant. Julie looks up at me and I press my back up against the wall, pretending to camouflage myself. Her eyes narrow at me as she moves the phone away from her mouth. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I mime walking with my fingers.
She shakes her head at me, knowing I’ve been confined to the third floor since I fell asleep by the vending machines over in Building 2 last week and caused a hospital-wide manhunt. I put my hands together, making a pleading motion and hoping the desperation pouring out of my soul will convince her otherwise.
At first, nothing. Her face remains firm, her gaze unchanging. Then she rolls her eyes, throwing me a face mask before waving me along to freedom.
Thank god. I need to get out of this whitewashed hell more than I need anything.
I give her a wink. At least she’s actually human.
I leave the CF wing, pushing open the heavy door to the stairwell and taking the concrete steps by twos even though my lungs are burning after just one floor. Coughing, I pull at the metal railing, past the fourth floor, and the fifth, and then sixth, finally coming to a big red door with a huge notice stamped onto it: EMERGENCY EXIT. ALARM WILL SOUND WHEN DOOR IS OPENED.
I grab my wallet from my back pocket, taking out a tightly folded dollar that I keep in there for moments like these. I reach up and wedge the bill into the frame’s alarm switch so the alarm doesn’t go off, then I open the door just a crack and slide through onto the rooftop.
Then I bend down to put my wallet in between the door and the jamb so it doesn’t slam shut behind me. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way before.
My mom would have a heart attack if she saw I was using the Louis Vuitton wallet she got me a few months ago as a doorstop, but it was a stupid gift to give someone who never goes anywhere but hospital cafeterias.
At least as a doorstop it gets used.
I stand up, taking a deep breath and automatically coughing as the cold, harsh winter air shocks my lungs. It feels good, though, to be outside. To not be trapped inside monochrome walls.
I stretch, looking up at the pale-gray sky, the predicted snowflakes finally drifting slowly through the air and landing on my cheeks and hair. I walk slowly to the roof’s edge and take a seat on the icy stone, dangling my legs off the side. I exhale a breath I feel like I’ve been holding since I got here two weeks ago.
Everything’s beautiful from up here.
No matter what hospital I go to, I always make it a point to find a way to get to the roof.
I’ve seen parades from the one in Brazil, the people looking like brightly colored ants as they danced through the streets, wild and free. I’ve seen France sleep, the Eiffel Tower shining brightly in the distance, lights quietly shutting off in third-floor apartments, the moon drifting lazily into view. I’ve seen the beaches in California, water that goes on for miles and miles, people basking in the perfect waves first thing in the morning.
Every place is different. Every place is unique. It’s the hospitals I’m seeing them from that are the same.
This town isn’t the life of the party, but it feels sort of back-roads homey. Maybe that should make me feel more comfortable, but it’s only making me more restless. Probably because for the first time in eight months, I’m a car ride away from home. Home. Where Hope and Jason are. Where my old classmates are slowly chugging their way to finals, shooting for whatever Ivy League school their parents selected for them. Where my bedroom, my freaking life, really, sits empty and unlived in.
I watch the headlights of the cars driving past on the road next to the hospital, the twinkling holiday lights in the distance, the laughing kids sliding around on the icy pond next to a small park.
There’s something simple in that. A freedom that makes my fingertips itch.
I remember when that used to be me and Jason, sliding around on the icy pond down the street from his house, the cold sinking deep into our bones as we played. We’d be out there for hours, having contests to see who could slide farther without falling, chucking snowballs at each other, making snow angels.
We made the most of every minute until my mom inevitably showed up and dragged me back inside.
The lights flick on in the hospital courtyard, and I glance down to see a girl sitting inside her room on the third floor, typing away on a laptop, a pair of headphones sitting overtop her ears as she concentrates on her screen.
Wait a second.
I squint. Stella.
The cold wind tugs at my hair, and I put my hood up, watching her face as she types.
What could she possibly be working on? It’s a Saturday night.
She was so different in the videos I watched. I wonder what changed. Is it all of this? All of the hospital stuff? The pills and the treatments and those whitewashed walls that push in on you and suffocate you slowly, day by day.
I stand up, balancing on the edge of the roof, and peer at the courtyard seven stories down, just for a moment imagining the weightlessness, the absolute abandon of the fall. I see Stella look up through the glass and we make eye contact just as a strong gust of wind knocks the air right out of me. I try to take a breath to get it back, but my shitty lungs barely take in any oxygen.
What air I do get catches in my throat and I start to cough. Hard.
My rib cage screams as each cough pulls more and more air from my lungs, my eyes starting to water.
Finally, I start to get control of it, but—
My head swims, the edges of my vision going black.
I stumble, freaked out, whipping my head around and trying to focus on the red exit door or the ground or anything. I stare at my hands, willing the black to clear away, the world to come back into view, knowing the open air over the edge of the roof is still barely an inch away.
CHAPTER 5
STELLA
I slam open the door to the stairwell, buttoning my jacket as I book it up the steps to the roof. My heart is pounding so loud in my ears, I can barely hear my footsteps underneath me as I run up the steps.
He has to be crazy.
I keep picturing him standing there at the edge of the roof, about to plummet seven stories to his death, fear painted onto every feature of his face. Nothing like his previous confident smirk.
Wheezing, I make it past the fifth floor, stopping just a moment to catch my breath, my sweaty palms grabbing at the cool metal railing. I peer up the stairwell to the top floor, my head spinning, my sore throat burning. I didn’t even have time to grab my portable oxygen. Just two more stories. Two more. I force myself to keep climbing, my feet moving on command: right, left, right, left, right, left.
Finally the door to the roof is in sight, cracked open under a bright red alarm just ready to go off.
I hesitate, looking from the alarm to the door and back again. But why didn’t it go off when Will opened it? Is it broken?
Then I see it. A folded dollar bill holding down the switch, stopping the alarm from blaring and letting everyone in the hospital know some crazy guy with cystic fibrosis and self-destructive tendencies is hanging out on the roof.
I shake my head. He might be crazy, but that’s clever.
&
nbsp; The door is propped open with a wallet, and I push through it as quickly as I can, making sure the dollar bill stays securely in place over the switch. I stop dead, catching a real breath for the first time in forty-eight stairs. Looking across the roof, I’m relieved to see he’s moved a safe distance away from the edge and hasn’t fallen to his death. He turns to look at me as I wheeze, a surprised expression on his face. I pull my red scarf closer as the cold air bites at my face and neck, looking down to see if his wallet is still wedged in the doorjamb before storming over to him.
“Do you have a death wish?” I shout, stopping a more-than-safe eight feet away from him. He may have one, but I certainly don’t.
His cheeks and nose are red from the cold, and a thin layer of snow has collected on his wavy brown hair and the hood of his burgundy sweatshirt. When he looks like that, I can almost pretend he’s not such an idiot.
But then he starts talking again.
He shrugs at me, casually, motioning over the edge of the roof to the ground below. “My lungs are toast. So I’m going to enjoy the view while I can.”
How poetic.
Why did I expect anything different?
I peer past him to see the twinkling city skyline far, far in the distance, the holiday lights covering every inch of every tree, brighter now than I’ve ever seen them as they bring the park below back to life. Some are even strung across the trees, creating this magical pathway you could walk under, head back, mouth agape.
In all my years here I’ve never been on the roof. Shivering, I pull my jacket tighter, wrapping my arms around my body as I move my eyes back to him.
“Good view or not, why would anyone want to risk falling seven stories?” I ask him, genuinely wondering what would possess someone with defective lungs to take a trip onto the roof in the dead of winter.
His blue eyes light up in a way that makes my stomach flip-flop. “You ever see Paris from a roof, Stella? Or Rome? Or here, even? It’s the only thing that makes all this treatment crap seem small.”
“ ‘Treatment crap’?” I ask, taking two steps toward him. Six feet apart. The limit. “That treatment crap is what keeps us alive.”
He snorts, rolling his eyes. “That treatment crap is what stops us from being down there and actually living.”
My blood begins to boil. “Do you even know how lucky you are to be in this drug trial? But you just take it for granted. A spoiled, privileged brat.”
“Wait, how do you know about the trial? You been asking about me?”
I ignore his questions, pushing on. “If you don’t care, then leave,” I fire back. “Let someone else take your spot in the trial. Someone who wants to live.”
I look up at him, watching as the snow falls in the space between us, disappearing as it lands in the dusting under our feet. We stare at each other in silence, and then he shrugs, his expression unreadable. He takes a step backward, toward the edge again. “You’re right. I mean, I’m dying anyway.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He wouldn’t. Right?
Another step back. And another, his footsteps crunching in the freshly fallen snow. His eyes are locked on mine, daring me to say something, to stop him. Challenging me to call out to him.
Closer. Almost to the edge.
I inhale sharply, the cold scraping at the inside of my lungs.
He dangles one foot off the end, and the open air makes my throat tighten up. He can’t— “Will! No! Stop!” I shout, taking a step closer to him, my heart pounding in my ears.
He stops, leg floating off the edge. One more step and he would have fallen. One more step and he would have . . .
We stare at each other in silence, his blue eyes curious, interested. And then he starts to laugh, loud and deep and wild, in a way so familiar, it feels like pressing on a bruise.
“Oh my god. The look on your face was priceless.” He mimics my voice, “Will! No! Stop!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Why would you do that? Falling to your death isn’t a joke!” I can feel my whole body shaking. I dig my fingernails into my palm, trying to stop the trembling as I turn away from him.
“Oh, come on, Stella!” he calls after me. “I was only fooling around.”
I pull open the rooftop door and step over the wallet, wanting to put as much space as possible between us. Why did I even bother? Why did I climb four stories to see if he was okay? I start running down the first few steps, reaching up to realize . . . I forgot to put on my face mask.
I never forget my face mask.
I slow down and then stop completely as an idea pops into my head. Climbing back up to the door, I slowly pull the dollar bill off the alarm switch, pocketing it as I fly back down to the third floor of the hospital.
Leaning against the brick wall, I catch my breath before pulling off my jacket and scarf, opening the door, and strolling to my room, as if I’ve just been off at the NICU. Somewhere in the distance, the roof alarm goes off as Will opens the door to get back inside, distant but blaring as it echoes down the stairwell, reverberating in the hallway.
I can’t help but smile.
Julie tosses a blue patient folder onto the desk behind the nurses’ station, shaking her head and murmuring to herself, “The roof, Will? Really?”
Good to know I’m not the only one he’s driving crazy.
* * *
I gaze out the window, watching the snow fall in the fluorescent glow of the courtyard lights, the hallway finally dead silent after Will’s hour-long reprimanding. Glancing over at the clock, I see it’s only eight p.m., which gives me plenty of time to work on number 14 on my to-do list, “Prepare app for beta testing,” and number 15, “Complete dosage table for diabetes,” before I go to bed tonight.
I check my Facebook quickly before getting started, a red notification for an invite to a Senior Trip Beach Blast this Friday night in Cabo popping up. I click on the page and see that they used the description I’d drafted back when I was still organizing this, and I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. I scroll through the list of people going, seeing Camila’s and Mya’s pictures, and Mason’s (now sans Brooke), followed by pictures of a half dozen other people from my school who have already replied with a yes.
My iPad begins to ring, and I see a FaceTime call coming in from Camila. It’s like they knew I was thinking about them. I smile and swipe right to accept the call, almost getting blinded when the bright sunshine of whatever pristine beach they’re sitting on bursts through the screen of my iPad.
“Okay, I’m officially jealous!” I say as Camila’s sunburnt face comes into view.
Mya lunges to stick her face over Camila’s shoulder, her curly hair bouncing into the frame. She’s wearing the polka-dot one-piece I helped her pick out, but she clearly doesn’t have time for pleasantries. “Are there any cute guys there? And don’t you dare say—”
“Just Poe,” we say at the same time.
Camila shrugs, fixing her glasses. “Poe counts. He is CUTE!”
Mya snorts, nudging Camila. “Poe is a thousand percent not interested in you, Camila.”
Camila punches her playfully in the arm, and then freezes, squinting at me. “Oh my god. Is there? Stella, is there a cute guy there?”
I roll my eyes. “He is not cute.”
“ ‘He’!” The two of them squeal in delight, and I can sense the waterfall of questions that’s about to pour over me.
“I gotta go! Talk to you tomorrow!” I say while they protest, and hang up. The moment on the roof is still a little too fresh and weird to talk about. The page for the Cabo beach party swings back into view. I hover over “Not Going” but I can’t bring myself to click on it just yet, so instead I just close the page and pull up Visual Studio.
I open the project I’ve been working on and begin to sort through the lines and lines of code, already feeling my muscles loosen as I do. I find an error in line 27, where I put a c instead of an x for a variable, and a missing equal sign in line 182, but aside
from that, the app finally looks ready to go for beta. I almost can’t believe it. I’ll celebrate with a pudding cup later.
I try to move on to completing the dosage table for diabetes in my spreadsheet of the most prevalent chronic conditions, sorting through varying ages and weights and medications. But I soon find myself staring at the blank columns, my fingertips tapping away at the edge of my laptop instead, my mind a million miles away.
Focus.
I reach over to grab my pocket notebook, crossing off number 14 and trying to get the feeling of calm that usually comes from finishing to-do list items, but it doesn’t come. I freeze as my pencil hovers over number 15, looking from the blank columns and rows on my spreadsheet back down to “Complete dosage table for diabetes.”
Unfinished. Ugh.
I chuck the notebook onto my bed, restlessness and unease filling my stomach. Standing up, I walk over to the window, my hand pushing back the blinds.
My eyes travel to the roof, to the spot where Will was standing earlier. I know he was his usual self when I got up there, but I didn’t imagine the coughing, and teetering. Or the fear.
Mr. “Death Comes for Us All” didn’t want to die.
Restless, I walk over to my med cart, hoping that moving on to “Before-bed meds” on my to-do list will help calm me down. My fingers tap away on the metal of the cart as I look at the sea of bottles, and then out the window again at the roof, and then back at the bottles.
Is he even doing his treatments?
Barb can probably force him to take most of his meds, but she can’t be there for every single dose. She can strap him into his AffloVest, but she can’t ensure he keeps it on for the full half hour.
He’s probably not doing all his treatments.
I try to go over the meds in order of when I take them, shuffling them around on the cart, the names all blurring together. Instead of feeling calm, I feel more and more frustration, the anger climbing up the sides of my head.
Five Feet Apart Page 5
