Styx & Stones

by Carmen Jenner

  “Yeah, I just ... I don’t know. I get this pain sometimes.”

  “Have you told the surgeon?”

  “Yeah. He said it’s normal after this kind of procedure.” I roll my eyes, but even that hurts. “Is it wrong to miss chemo? I’d take puking over brain surgery any day.”

  “Tell me about it. They cut me open my chest and neck, and all I can think is, this is going to hurt like a bitch when I’m puking my guts up after chemo next week.”

  I frown. “Why did they operate? No one would tell me anything.”

  “Infected port.”

  “Oh my god, Styx.” I press my hand to my lips in shock. “Was it ... was it from the shower, from getting our lines wet?”

  “You mean when I ate you out in the bathroom?”

  “Shh! My mom is just outside my room.”

  He chuckles. “Probably. It was worth it though.”

  “You realize my pussy nearly killed you, right?”

  This time he doesn’t hold back. He laughs so loud I hear him not just through the speaker on my phone, but also down the hall. I cover my mouth to hide my own laughter.

  “Goddamn it, Stones, I miss the shit outta you.”

  “Right back at you, loner boy.”

  He shakes his head. “Soon. As soon as they let me out of here and I can walk again, I’m coming to see you.”

  “Then hurry up, because I’m lonely as shit in here.”

  ***

  I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing I could call Styx but I don’t want to wake him. It’s well after midnight, and the ICU is quiet, save for the heinous beeping of the machines in my room and in the other patients’ rooms. It’s like a chorus of computers, all singing at once, and it’s annoying as fuck. I don’t know how anyone is supposed to sleep through this.

  Down the hall, the night nurse says, “Mr. Hendricks. Where are you going?”

  “I’m just stretching my legs. My ass is killing me.”

  “You can’t walk around the ICU; it’s after two a.m. The other patients are sleeping, and you can barely stand as it is.”

  “I won’t disturb anyone, I promise. Doc said I need to get up and get moving.”

  Typical argumentative Styx. He always has an answer to everything. I guess he’s had a lot of practice convincing adults to do exactly what he wants.

  I shake my head, but I’m smiling from ear to ear. I’d get up too, if I thought I wasn’t going to land flat on my face. When the nurses came by earlier to help me walk to the bathroom, I almost passed out. There’s this air bubble in my head, and I can feel it moving when I move. It’s so disconcerting, that at one point, I was screaming for them to take me back to surgery.

  “He didn’t mean in the middle of the night,” the nurse says.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “That doesn’t mean no one else can. Go back to your room, Mr. Hendricks.”

  “This is madness!” Styx shouts. “It’s a deprivation of my basic rights as Miss. Stone’s boyfriend.”

  “Mmhmm, if you don’t go back to bed, I’m afraid I’m going to have to transfer you to another hospital. One where you’re less likely to cause a commotion and keep all the other patients awake.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going,” he says. “Don’t transfer me. I’ll die without her.”

  I scoff and pull my phone from the tray beside my bed.

  Me: Nice try, bonehead.

  Several seconds later, my phone buzzes with a text.

  Styx: Don’t say I never do anything for our love.

  Me: What, like wake up all of the ICU? I wouldn’t dream of it.

  Styx: Every cell in my body misses you.

  My heart trips all over itself, and tears well in my eyes because I know exactly how he feels.

  Me: You’re such a dork.

  I grimace at my text. I’m out of my mind with longing. I just lack the ability to say it as casually as he does.

  Me: I miss you too. I wish we could go back to LA, back to Disneyland.

  Styx: Me too, but without the sepsis and seizures.

  Me: Yeah, definitely without those things. Get some sleep, Styx. Hopefully they’ll let us see each other in the morning.

  Styx: I’ll threaten to sue if they don’t.

  Me: Sue?

  Styx: For depriving me of you.

  A dreamy sigh leaves my lips. Who even am I now?

  Me: I love you, loner boy.

  Styx: Love you too, Stones. More than life itself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  STYX

  By lunch, I’m given the all clear to see Alaska. This fucking sepsis is a pain in my ass. My organs feel like they’re being squeezed in my dad’s wheatgrass juicer, but I lie when the doctor asks me how bad my pain is because I’m afraid they’ll keep us apart. My mom and the nurses give me shit about not resting, but I can’t. Every waking second, all I can think about is Stones, and when I’m asleep, I dream we’re back at Disney, and we’re healthy, watching the fireworks, and she’s wrapped tightly in my arms.

  I walk down the hall, my ass sticking out of my hospital gown, my IV pole clutched in my hand like a life support. She lies in bed, staring at the ceiling as her mom’s mouth opens and closes rapidly. From behind this glass door, Mrs. Stone sounds like the parents in The Peanuts movie.

  Wah, wah, wah.

  Alaska turns her attention to me and smiles. I stare at my girl and press my hand against the glass separating us, but I don’t hit the button to open the door.

  It’s a blood infection, you pussy. She can’t catch it by being in the same room.

  I know this. I’ve spent the last two days reading up on sepsis and all the ways I could put her at risk. The truth is, I can’t. Not unless I plug a needle in my arm and give her a blood transfusion, but I still feel like a ticking timebomb. I’m still afraid I’ll detonate, and she’ll be caught in the blast.

  I stand outside her room, and watch her smile disappear completely. All the color drains from my face. I feel it. Just like I feel the weightlessness of my body as I stumble back from Alaska’s door.

  “Styx? What are you doing out of bed?”

  I turn toward Maggie, who’s watching me as if I’m the Unabomber, about to press the trigger. My heart rate soars, my head feels woozy, and I pitch forward, stumbling into her.

  “I need a wheelchair here,” Maggie shouts to her colleague—the ball-busting nurse from last night.

  I’m vaguely aware of them putting me into a chair and the breeze on my face as they rush me toward my room. They don’t even call for another nurse to come lift me onto my bed. I guess because I weigh next to nothing nowadays.

  Alaska pounds on the window to my room as she screams my name. I lift my head to see her through the commotion. Her mom is trying to pull her away but our eyes lock. She presses her hand against the glass wall, the way I did just a few moments ago. Her face is twisted, tormented, and tortured with pain as tears stream down her cheeks.

  Don’t let this be the last time we see each other. Please? Don’t let this be the end.

  I pray to whatever god or entity who will listen. The truth is, I don’t believe in any of it anymore. Life is cruel. Alaska just had her skull cut open, my blood is trying to poison me, and I’m likely going to die without ever getting to kiss the girl I love goodbye.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ALASKA

  For an excruciating three hours, they wouldn’t let me near him. They wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with him or if he was even okay. The Hendricks rushed into his room about thirty minutes after Styx’s fall, and ten minutes after that, they wheeled him downstairs to run more tests.

  It’s close to four p.m. when Styx’s mom comes to tell me that he collapsed from exhaustion. He’s still so weak from the sepsis, and he hasn’t been resting—which is likely my fault. She doesn’t say that, of course, but she doesn’t have to. I know it just as well as she does.

  The doctors come to visit me again. They’re moving me from th
e ICU to the children’s hospital just as soon as they can free up a room for me. I don’t want to leave, but I have no choice. I’m well enough to leave the ICU, but not well enough to go home, it seems. Our next chemo session is in four days, and they’re still not sure how to handle it, given puking up my guts will likely cause extra pain in my head and increase my risk of an aneurysm. So, for now, all I can do is wait. Wait to live, wait to die, and wait to find out whether Styx will ever make it out of this hospital.

  It’s funny how the terminally ill spend so much time waiting, while death creeps closer every second.

  Waiting fucking sucks.

  ***

  By dinnertime, they still don’t have a room for me, so it’s another night in the ICU. I’m not complaining though. Styx is sleeping soundly, but I’ve been in his room, holding his hand for the last two hours as I doze in the lounger by his bed.

  His warm fingers squeeze mine, and I glance at Styx. There’s a goofy, sleepy grin stretched across his face.

  “Hey,” he murmurs in a husky tone.

  A lump forms in my throat and tears prick my eyes.

  “Hi.” I smile and wipe away the saltwater before it can fall from my lashes. “You scared the shit outta me.”

  “Consider it payback for LA.” He chuckles and shifts on the mattress. “We gotta stop doing that to one another.”

  “Yeah, we really do.”

  “Come here,” Styx says, giving my arm a weak tug.

  “Where?”

  “Come lie with me.”

  I laugh and shake my head. “I can’t. I’ll squash your lines.”

  “They’re plastic; they’ll bounce back.” His face turns serious, and the desperation in his eyes claws at my resolve. “Get your sweet ass up here, Stones. I wanna hold my girl.”

  It takes a little maneuvering with his central line and heart-rate monitor, and my IV, but eventually I settle in against his side and he wraps his good arm around me, holding me as tightly as his weak body will allow.

  I wish we had the power to make time wait for us.

  I’d make it wait forever, right here. I’d use up all of the seconds it’s stolen from me, from us, and the lifetime it’s going to steal from our future. If I had the ability, I’d hit pause right here, and I’d never let him go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  STYX

  Three days later, I walk between my room and Stones’ in the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. It sucks that we’re at different ends of the ward, but it could be worse. At least neither one of us is in the ICU.

  Walking is still difficult for me, but I’m determined to get stronger and get the hell out of this hospital. Not that it hasn’t been nice being this close to my girlfriend without the twenty-four-hour parental supervision. Stones and I have had plenty of opportunities to make out in the teen lounge, which is often occupied by us alone. Our moms have been pretty good about giving us time to ourselves, but they’re never far away, hovering in the designated parent lounges or the corner of the room, and pretending they don’t notice our lovey-dovey shit.

  Today, there will be a serious lack of making out, because I’m taking Stones to the arts studio where she can enjoy the excited shrieks of tiny humans while she paints. It may not be with a spray can, but it beats the coloring books the hospital superhero visitors bring us.

  As I turn the corner and walk toward her room, Mrs. Stone is at the other end of the hallway, likely returning from the lounge with fresh coffee in her reusable cup. She glances up, and her shoulders fall ever so slightly, but she smiles anyway. I give her a lazy wave.

  Yep, coming to steal your daughter away again. Sorry not fucking sorry.

  Someone announces a “code blue” over the loudspeaker. A nurse rushes between us and through Stones’ door, followed by another, and then one more.

  I freeze.

  A heartbeat passes. We stare at one another.

  No!

  The coffee slips from her hand. The china shatters. Tawny liquid spills out over the waxed hospital floors as she runs toward her daughter. I move as quickly as my feeble body will allow, stopping in front of the open door. Joanie is in the way, her hands over her mouth, a strange wailing coming from her throat. I push into the room. Alaska is on the ground. She’s not moving. Another nurse begins compressions on her inert frame. “I need a crash cart in here.”

  “Stones!” I pitch forward, desperate to get to her, as if I could help, as if I might save her.

  “Get them out of here,” the nurse working over my girlfriend says.

  A woman grabs my arm and tries to usher me out. “Come on. You can’t see this.”

  “No! Stones, wake up. Get up, baby.” I shove the woman away, and a male orderly drags me from the doorway. “Get the fuck off me!”

  “Alaska! Honey!” Mrs. Stone whimpers, as a female nurse escorts her from the room. “What’s happening to my daughter?”

  “Someone shut that door,” the nurse yells. She leans over Alaska and throws her weight into her compressions. It’s too much. Too hard. She’ll break her. The door closes before me, shutting us out. No!

  She can’t go like this. She can’t. It’s supposed to be me. I’m supposed to go first.

  I slump to the floor. I can’t breathe. My lungs scream for air and yet I can’t take a breath until I know she is. It’s not supposed to be like this. She isn’t supposed to fucking die. It should be me. I’ve been preparing for this my whole life, and Stones can still get through this. She has to.

  Joanie shouts at the staff. “I want to see my daughter!”

  “They can save her. They have to save her,” I say to no one at all. “Save her!”

  The orderly grabs my wrist but I pull free from his grasp. “You’ve opened your stitches.” He nods toward my chest, which is soaked with blood. “Come on. Let’s go get that looked at.”

  “Don’t fucking touch me.” I lean against the wall for support and I watch the door as if I could see right through it, see my girlfriend lying on the floor as a team of medical professionals tries to save her life. I stare at that door as if I can see the future, see her regaining consciousness, see her laughing and calling me loner boy.

  “You should see your face,” she’d say, as if this were all some hilarious joke. But it’s not a joke. None of this is a fucking joke.

  The door opens as a doctor rushes in. The nurse is still on her knees, but she’s no longer performing CPR.

  She looks at her watch. “Time of death—nine twenty-three a.m.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  STYX

  I walk the halls of the hospital like a ghost. Maybe she didn’t die after all. Maybe I’m the one who coded on the floor. It sure feels like it.

  I walk until my feet can no longer carry me. My wound aches, but I suspect the pain is dulled by the sheer torment of my heart cracking in two.

  I push out into the garden. The icy air stings my face. It feels like a betrayal. Why should I get to breathe, to see, to feel, when she doesn’t?

  A quiet sob escapes me, and I stare at the railing.

  I could just jump. I could end it all now, climb up and let the wind take me. But the fall to the terrace below is only ten feet, fifteen at the most. Would it kill me, given how fragile my body is right now? Or would it just hurt like fuck and see me staying in this goddamn hospital for even longer?

  I stagger to the railing and lean against it, bowing my head as I calculate the drop and the kind of damage it might do, or not do. And wouldn’t that be just my luck? Stuck here and slowly dying of internal bleeding from a broken heart and failed suicide attempt. Who knows? Maybe it would be worth it.

  “Don’t do it.”

  I straighten and look at the long-haired loser from my chemo sessions. Harley.

  I swipe at my eyes with the heels of my hands. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  He steps closer and studies my bloody T-shirt, then he leans against the railing and looks down at the terrace below. “I buil
t this place.”

  I glare at him. “You built the hospital?”

  “No. I built the gardens,” he says with a wistful smile. “I landscaped them so patients would have a place to come and see something beautiful in a time of such cruel brutality. Never expected I’d be seeking comfort in them less than a year later. Life’s fucked like that.”

  I look at his stoic face, really look at it. He can’t be that much older than me. Twelve years? Maybe fourteen? Will I seem this put-together if I make it past twenty-five?

  I guess we’ll never know. I don’t intend to make it through the fucking day without Stones.

  I sniff as the Bay air assaults my nose and eyes. “Yeah, life is fucked. Cancer is fucked. Then you die, right?”

  “Sometimes.” Harley’s smile is childlike, but there’s a sadness in it too. “And sometimes you live, but if you jump, you’ll never know.”

  “Stones is dead,” I choke out.

  “Ah shit.” Harley shakes his head. Tears prick his eyes, but he doesn’t cover them like I do mine. They fall, thick and fat over his lashes. “When?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty, maybe forty minutes ago.” Another sob breaks free of my body. My stomach is in knots; my chest feels as if it’s completely caved in. Like she reached in and ripped the heart right through my fucking rib cage.

  He pulls me into a hug, and I let him because I’m not sure I can hold myself up any longer.

  “I don’t know how to live without her. I don’t want to live without her.”

  “I know,” he whispers. “Believe me, kid, I know.”

  I clutch this man to me who is all but a stranger, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll jump, and I won’t care if death is brutal and slow. I won’t care if my parents cry over my motionless body as a machine breathes air into my lungs, or if they’re forced to switch off the machines after three weeks when there’s no brain activity. They deserve more than that.

  But I wasn’t prepared for this. I can’t do this. The love of my very short life just died on the floor of her hospital room.