Invincible

by Amy Reed

  “Poor girl,” Mom says, shaking her head. I don’t know if she’s referring to the cancer or her parents, but either way, she’s right. “You know I love Stella, but sometimes I’m afraid she just doesn’t think.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say, my voice trembling with an unfamiliar feeling. “It was a gift.” I feel like I’ve been possessed by something foreign, something outside myself. I am shocked to realize it is anger pulsing through my body, sharp and vivid, like a drug. I can see how people could crave it. It’s like what Stella said about the music, about the women singing. My anger makes me strong.

  “What was a gift, honey?”

  “What Stella did. Taking me outside. She thought it through. She did it for me.” My voice shakes with a desperate need to be understood. “You don’t know what it’s like being stuck in here. Trapped, like a prisoner. She wanted me to get off of hospital grounds once before I died, so I could feel freedom again, just for a second.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says. “It was very sweet, in her way. But I wish she would stop to think about how her actions affect others, that’s all. What you two did was kind of selfish, Evie. We were really scared.”

  Again, that taste of anger. Ever since I got sick, all I’ve done is think about how everyone else is feeling. All I’ve done is try to protect them from their fear, protect them from mine.

  But my rage dissipates as quickly as it came, leaving only sadness in its wake. “Are you mad at me?” I say. As intoxicating as it is, I don’t want anger, theirs or mine. All it does is create conflict. All it does is tear people apart.

  “Oh, Evie,” Mom says, grabbing my hand.

  Dad puts his arms around me and squeezes tight. “Sweetheart,” he says. “We could never be mad at you.”

  My parents finally leave and I immediately call Caleb’s room and tell him to come over.

  “Did you bring everything?” I ask when he gets here.

  “Laptop, check,” he says. “Giant piece of red velvet cake from the cafeteria, check.”

  “I made a bouquet out of my best flowers,” I say. “I think that’s everything. Is she awake?”

  “Yeah, I walked by her room and the door’s open and the lights are on.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  My surprise for Stella isn’t nearly as epic as hers was for me, but it’s the best I can do with limited time and resources. Caleb carries the supplies as I wheel myself down the hall. Nurse Suzanne gives us the thumbs-up from where she’s sitting at the nurses’ station. It’s sweet how seriously Caleb is taking this, tiptoeing down the hall in a semi-crouched position. He flattens himself against the wall outside Stella’s door, then looks at me and nods. I nod back in the silent language of covert operations. He reaches his arm in and turns the dimmer down on the lights. I open the laptop and punch some keys to get it ready.

  “Hey!” I hear Stella’s voice from inside. “What’s going on?”

  As we enter the darkened room, I see her writing something on a piece of paper, but she quickly hides whatever it is under her hat on the bedside table.

  “What’re you writing?” Caleb says.

  “None of your beeswax. What’s with the mood lighting? What the hell are you two up to?” But her attempt at feistiness makes her cough so hard it shakes the bed and rattles the table next to it. “I’m okay,” she gasps, waving off Caleb’s doting. “I’m okay.” She takes a deep breath to collect herself.

  Caleb sets the cake and flowers on the table. “For you, madam,” he says.

  “Are you trying to woo me?” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her wrist is so skinny it barely seems strong enough to hold on to her hand.

  Caleb takes the computer from me and sets it in front of her. The screen glows with Cole’s smiling face.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Cole says out of the computer’s tiny speakers.

  “Oh!” Stella gasps, raising her skeletal hands to her mouth. Her eyes well up with tears.

  “We wanted to have candles,” Caleb says. “But Nurse Suzanne said no open flames around oxygen tanks.”

  Tears are streaming down her face and she’s gasping for air.

  “Stella?” Cole says from inside the computer. “Are you okay?”

  “Can you breathe?” I say. “Do you need us to get Suzanne?”

  “I’m not suffocating, I’m crying,” she says. “Jesus, can’t you people tell the difference?”

  Stella is not supposed to cry.

  She wipes her eyes and sits up a little straighter. She looks into the computer screen and her face relaxes into a smile. If it were anyone else, I would say she was almost blushing. But this is Stella, and she doesn’t do things like that. But there is a sudden peace in her eyes that takes her out of this room, takes her away from all these machines and sterile whiteness, takes her out of her weak, emaciated body. For a moment, she is somewhere else, somewhere with Cole, and she is not sick.

  I know what that feels like. Sometimes with Will, even when I’ve been so sick I could barely sit up, I would see him walk through the door and I’d be suddenly be strong and flawless, as if the sight of him healed me. I wish he were here. I wish he would wrap me in his arms and make all of this less scary.

  “Let’s give them some privacy,” I say, wheeling myself backward out the door. Caleb follows and shuts the door behind him.

  He takes a seat in a spare wheelchair and parks it next to mine. We are sitting in the hallway outside of Stella’s room, staring at the white flatness of her closed door.

  “I wonder what they’re talking about,” Caleb says.

  “What would you say to your girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  The brightly lit hall reverberates with the sounds of TVs. The nurses and medical assistants are huddled around the nurses’ station, laughing at something on a computer screen. It might almost seem cheerful to someone who wasn’t stuck here, who didn’t know what kind of suffering is going on behind these walls.

  “Evie?” Caleb says after a couple of minutes.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m scared.”

  I look over at him and his baseball hat is on his lap, the scars and bumps and discolorations of his scalp exposed, vulnerable.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Can I hold your hand?” Caleb says.

  “Okay.”

  He reaches over and threads his warm, thick fingers through mine.

  Given the circumstances, I don’t think Will would mind.

  NOW.

  if.

  Dear Stella,

  I know you’re putting your makeup on, getting ready to visit me. Soon, I will hear your big boots clomping down the hall. I will hear you whistling at Dan and it will make me smile even before you can see me.

  The good news is I think we’re off the hook for our escape the other night.

  If I write you this letter, it means you can’t be gone. A letter has a destination. It makes you exist. You will read it and laugh, and then I will watch your beautiful hands fold it into a heart.

  In the world of this letter, there is no such thing as a coma. Your voice has not been reduced to the sucking of the CPAP echoing in your empty room. Your eyes are not closed, your eyeliner and mascara not smeared away. There is not your limp hand resting on the blanket over your stomach, the tubes connected to the port in your chest, your fingers naked, all your rings removed.

  But in the other world, the world outside of us, it is another story. A sad story. In this world, Dan wheels me over to the window, as though a change in scenery could somehow make you less gone. He tries to get me to talk, but I am somewhere far away, somewhere I do not have a voice. Here, the world looks different, wrong. It is dirty and hostile and falling apart, not beautiful like the view from the hill. It is not beautiful like when you are in it.

  In this world, your parents walk stiffly to the front door
of the hospital. Their faces are stone, showing nothing of what’s inside, showing nothing of what it feels like to have a vegetable for a daughter. But then a flash of light—Cole rushing behind them, your knight in shining armor. And then a standoff, three figures at the sliding doors, fighting over who’s allowed to love you. Your parents block the way. Cole is the hero, trying to save you. You are his Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss that will bring you back to life. I call to him, but I, too, am a princess. I am Rapunzel locked in a tower. No one can hear me this far up, behind these thick windows that cannot open. We are beyond saving.

  He was gallant, Stella. You need to know that. He tried to get around them. He did everything he could. But your father is bigger than Cole. And when the father of the girl you love shoves you to the ground, it is impossible to get back up. When security guards automatically side with the grown-ups, you are already defeated.

  But don’t worry. That is somewhere else. That is the world we don’t belong in. In this world, our world, Cole is with you right now, and you are playing guitar softly while he runs his fingers through your long hair that has never fallen out. It is summer and you are singing. We are at the top of the hill looking at the world in all its glowing perfection, and your voice is making me brave.

  Stella, it is so hard to stay with you. I keep shuttling back to the place where you are not. I am sick here so close to the ground. I am nauseous and trembling. But this sick is not from the cancer, not from chemo or dehydration or various medications. This is a new kind of sick, something sweet and feverish, something that comes with a sudden urge to tear this cast off, run down the hall, and jump out the window. Something in my bones, my muscles. I’d give anything to move. I know what wild animals must feel when they are caged. This room—this life—it is so small, so safe, so sterile. I want to scratch the paint off the walls. I want to run. This is something primal.

  Stella, we are deer running through someplace wild. No. We are wolves.

  I look at the framed picture of the cheer squad you turned backward. All those girls with their faces to the wall, surrounded by wilting flowers. All those girls who have never known real pain. All those empty smiles. All those perfect lives. Their flawless world is miles away now, across vast deserts, mountains, oceans—unreachable. I will never find my way there again. That is not my world. Not that little universe captured so cleanly in that cheap frame. There’s no way in, no portal between this world and theirs.

  I bend and twist and stretch my body until my reaching fingers touch the frame. Muscles throughout my body, weak from disuse, strain back to life. I grab the picture, hold the hard, flat thing in my hand, then throw it across the room. Satisfaction pours through me as the glass shatters against the wall. My blood cools. The room expands just a little. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to stay alive.

  I don’t know which world is broken. Which world is yours? Which world is ours? Which world is the one I’m in right now?

  Glass is on the floor. If I could walk, it would cut my feet.

  Stella, which world is the one where you’re not dead?

  Love always,

  Evie

  eleven.

  “COME ON, EVIE. JUST TRY IT,” CALEB SAYS. WE ARE IN HIS room because there are too many kids in the teen lounge, but even in here with the door and curtains wide open, I feel claustrophobic.

  “No, Caleb. I am not going to pray with you.”

  “But it works, it really does,” Caleb says. “There are studies.”

  “It works doing what? Does it bring people back from the dead?”

  He flinches.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I am. Why am I being mean to the one person left in the world who can come close to understanding what I’m going through? “I just don’t understand what I’m even supposed to pray for.”

  “You can pray for comfort,” he says. “You can pray for peace in your heart.”

  A surge of anger burns through me. “Really?” I can’t help the acid in my voice. “What about cancer? Can it make cancer go away?”

  He lowers his eyes. I’ve hurt him, but he’s still trying. “Actually,” he says softly, “there have been cases of people being cured of all kinds of things, including cancer.”

  I roll my eyes. They are so swollen from crying, they are just slits. Stella died yesterday, and Caleb has made it his mission to comfort me. But all I seem able to do is treat him like crap.

  “No offense, Caleb, but that’s bullshit.”

  He takes a deep breath and looks at me with more kindness than I deserve. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Me too.” I wish I believed as he did. I wish I had faith that God was taking care of me, that God gave a shit about any of us. I wish I believed there was a good reason for His taking Stella.

  Caleb takes my hand in his. “I pray for you, Evie,” he says. “I pray for you every day.”

  “Well, stop,” I say. I pull my hand away. “I don’t want your fucking prayers.”

  He looks like I slapped him. I hate myself.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s okay,” he says with a timid smile. “We’re all grieving. We just do it in different ways, I guess.”

  “Hey, kiddos!” Dan says too cheerfully from the doorway. He’s been popping in on us practically every half hour, along with the chaplain (aka the Grim Reaper), a social worker, a therapist, and all sorts of people who want to know if we want to talk about our loss. I assume this is just one of these visits until I notice a new glimmer in his eye. He’s staring right at me with a maniacal look on his face.

  “Evie, my dear, I’m going to steal you from Caleb,” he says, and practically sprints over to grab the wheelchair. He wheels me out of the room before I even have a chance to say good-bye.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  “Your folks are here.”

  “That’s what you’re excited about? They come here every day.”

  “Dr. Jacobs is here,” he says.

  “Ugh.”

  He just laughs as he delivers me to my room, where Mom, Dad, and Dr. Jacobs are waiting for me.

  “Oh, Evie,” Mom says, hugging me. “Dr. Jacobs told us about Stella. I am so, so sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I should send Mrs. Hsu some flowers.” Even after all this time, they never got to be on a first-name basis.

  “Sure. That’d be nice.” As if flowers could change something. As if anything Mom does could really help. Mrs. Hsu’s daughter is gone forever, and I’m next.

  Dad takes his turn hugging me. “How are you holding up, honey?”

  “Okay, I guess.” How do I even start to answer that question?

  “That’s actually not why I asked you to come this morning,” Dr. Jacobs interrupts. Could he be any more of a dick?

  “Oh,” Mom says, startled. She narrows her eyes in suspicion. “What is it?” It’s never good news when Dr. Jacobs calls them to the hospital.

  My stomach drops. I can’t handle any more bad news. Not now. Not yet. I am too raw.

  We all look at Dr. Jacobs. We are all holding our breath, waiting to hear what new trick the cancer has played on me.

  There is a crack in the usual stone of his face, a fissure in the professional emotionless doctor demeanor. Is that his lips turning up? Is that a smile?

  “The test results came back,” he says.

  “And?” Dad says.

  “I can’t quite get my head around it yet, but Evie’s blood counts and proteins look normal. And the bone scan didn’t show anything except healthy bone and the implants exactly where they’re supposed to be. I think she’ll be ready to get her cast off any day now.”

  Mom and Dad look at each other. Their faces are blank, shocked. They are trying to process this impossible news.

  “Her blood counts, Doctor,” Mom says. “What does that mean?”

  “Well,” says Dr. Jacobs, looking at me sympathetically. “It me
ans I want to do a bone-marrow aspiration.”

  “No!” I say.

  Imagine the most painful thing in the world. Then multiply it by a thousand. That’s what a bone marrow aspiration feels like.

  “Evie,” Dad scolds.

  “Wait,” Mom says, her lips finally breaking into the smile she’s been fighting. “You want to check her bone marrow? You think something may have changed?”

  “The cancer in her bone marrow should have affected her blood work. But as I said, her results matched those of a perfectly healthy kid.”

  “Oh my god,” Mom gasps, and starts blubbering. Dad blinks back tears and squeezes my good knee a little too hard.

  I feel nothing. I feel numb. Stella is dead and they’re talking about me being a “perfectly healthy kid.”

  “Now, I don’t want everyone getting too excited just yet. We won’t know anything for sure until after we get the results. But there’s a chance Evie has more time than we originally thought. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it’s possible the chemo finally kicked in, to use precise medical terminology.”

  Did Dr. Jacobs just make a joke?

  “Oh, thank you, Dr. Jacobs!” Mom cries. I know she wants to hug him, but luckily she’s controlling herself.

  I zone out as they talk about the test. I try not to imagine the big fat needle slicing through my skin and fat and muscle and bone. I stare at the wilting flowers I spend so much time staring at. Why hasn’t anyone removed them? Can’t they see that they’re dying?

  “We need to throw away those flowers,” I blurt out.

  “Oh, okay, honey,” Mom says, confused. “We’ll deal with that in a minute.”

  When Dr. Jacobs finally leaves us, Mom and Dad hover around me, beaming at each other like they just accomplished a great feat as a team—an Olympic relay race, the Super Bowl. And I’m the baton or the football, an inanimate object that gets passed back and forth, a prop without which the game wouldn’t exist.

  In a few minutes I will become a pincushion for their needles yet again. I will be strapped down and drilled into and sampled so they can look for good news.