An Illusion of Control

by Cecelia Earl

"Here, take this." He hands me another prayer card. This one has Jesus on it with red and blue light shooting out of his heart. "This is the image that goes with the prayer. To help think about the words while praying."

  I reach up and touch his cheek, kiss him again, and turn to go. Before disappearing behind the curtain, I take one more look at him over my shoulder. He's studying my origami heart, smiling. Then he opens it and lets out a short, whispered laugh. He tucks it inside his fist and holds it over his heart, leans his head back on the wall, and closes his eyes.

  I press the prayer card over my heart and repeat Jax's prayer over and over, imagining healing of his dad's brain and other injuries, imagining peace in Jax's heart, imagining, too, my dad walking through our house laughing again.

  I pray until I understand Jax's exhaustion, wondering when the prayer begins to work, wondering how prayer ever brought him peace when all I feel is emptiness.

  Sue comes in to give Dad a sponge bath, so Mom and I shuffle downstairs for dinner.

  After dinner she announces she wants to take a walk, so we head outside. After walking a few blocks one way and a few blocks the opposite way, we decide to see what the neighboring Children's Hospital looks like inside. It's quite different. There's a large reception area that looks more like a food court than a hospital. There's an open space with tables and chairs. It's colorful. Once my eyes get past the design, I notice flowers. Lots and lots of flowers, and I realize that Marc stopped here and donated his carload.

  Before thinking twice, I snap a picture and send it to him with a text message: You're thoughtful. Hope you're okay.

  Because not being okay sucks.

  Whenever we can, we should check on each other and try to make the life we have suck a little less.

  I side hug Mom and tell her about the flowers.

  "I always did like him." She looks at me. "Tell me about the new boy, the dark-haired one with bright blue eyes."

  "Mom . . . ."

  "I know you think I'm oblivious, but I am a mom."

  "I love you."

  We head back outside to return to Dad.

  "I thought you preferred blonds?"

  I laugh. "Not anymore, Mom. Believe me. Not anymore."

  31

  at a crossroads

  Hours later, Mom gets to see Dad's eyelids slide up, get a glimpse of the blue of his eyes, a hint of a smile when one corner of his lips creeped up.

  "Rick," she says. "Rick." She drops her head by his on the pillow and slides her hand across his forehead over and over. I'm not sure if she's soothing him or herself. The sedative is dripping heavy again. We've lost him to dreams. I hope. I hope he's not trapped under a faux sleep, trapped in a torture of tubes and catheters and surgeries and biopsies. I hope he can't feel a thing.

  I try talking to Big Paul about it, but he keeps telling me the sedative is like amnesia.

  "What does that mean? That he can feel everything, but that when he wakes up he won't remember?"

  "Yeah, kind of."

  "So that means he can feel all of this as it's happening?"

  He stops what he's doing on the computer next to Dad's bed. "He can't feel anything."

  "Are you sure we're not torturing him?"

  Big Paul looks at the clock on the wall behind us. "I'm sure. You should get some rest. Taking care of yourself is as—"

  "As important as taking care of my dad. Yeah, I know." I don't say good night to Big Paul. Big Paul who looks like he needs to take care of himself. His lips are purple and his eyes have dark circles under them. What condition can turn lips perpetually that color? I run my hand across Dad's forehead, kiss it. "Love you, Dad. See you in the morning."

  "Mom?"

  "Be down in a little."

  "I might walk first. Around the floors. I'm not tired yet."

  "Okay." She's flipping through a magazine. I notice she's using St. Jude for a bookmark.

  I stop in our room to grab my toiletry bag. The bathroom by this little room is usually empty, quiet, cleaner than the other one. Tonight one of the sinks is plugged and filled with gross water, though. I hurry through brushing my teeth in the clear one and try hard not to glance over at the full sink, gagging ever so slightly when I can't help but think about the filthy water.

  I apply some eye makeup and a pale lipstick. I'm wearing a sweatshirt and yoga pants so sprucing up my face and hair is ridiculous, especially if Jax and I are going to hang out on a dark rooftop, but I do it nonetheless. Our finish line always looms on the horizon. I can't help but think how every minute with him counts, needs to last, needs to be stamped perfectly in my memory. I can't help but think that if I look perfect, say the perfect thing, he won't want us to end.

  But these moments, this stay at the hospital, can't last forever.

  What then?

  We're at a crossroads in our lives, even aside from this situation at the hospital. Summer, distance, college, the future.

  And this, this hospital situation is like a seesaw with one end hanging off a cliff, teetering every second toward the edge and dropping forever into a chasm, an abyss of nothingness.

  Our dads could fall forever any time now, and there'll be nothing we can do about it but peer over the edge, still on the brink of life ourselves, but so, so close to death ourselves there won't be much we can do but inch away and start to live again.

  Before dropping my bag off in our room, I drink from the water fountain, cooling down the rot of despair that has filled my brain. I have to stop thinking negative thoughts. I have to keep going, keep hoping for the best, see a happy future.

  I can't let fear get the best of me.

  By the time I'm taking the stairs up to the rooftop, the top layer of the parking garage, I'm feeling relief. The stairs buy me time to think and clear my head the elevator would not. Step. Step. Step. Clear. Brighter. Run, don't walk, away from the cliff. Climb a mountain. High enough to see the stars up close.

  Jax is smiling and reaches a hand out to me when I reach him. He's found a corner devoid of cars and has laid out a couple of hospital blankets on the ground.

  "I figure the blacktop ground might gross you out, so I've created a barrier."

  "Yeah, disgusting parking garages rank right up there with worst germ nightmare."

  "But you can be here with the barrier, right?"

  "Yup. The blankets were a good idea."

  He pulls out his phone. "And, there's this."

  He plays quiet music: instrumental guitar, piano, violin. The part of me that wasn't soothed from my trek up the stairs calms now. Then he finds some app that mimics candlelight and sets in in the center of the blanket. His hand is warm around mine and we sit, facing each other.

  I lean in for a kiss, and he doesn't hesitate to meet me. Our lips together make the perfect kiss. We share the perfect amount of soft and gentle, heat and passion, slow and needy, fast with an urgency that says we both know we need to take everything, give everything we can while we have these sparse, fleeting, stolen moments.

  I rise to my knees and tug him up with me so I can lean into his strong chest. His arms move around my back, holding me to him. My hands are in his hair, pulling his face into mine. When we reach the point my hands have traced his spine and found the spot his shirt is untucked and his fingertips trace the skin on the small of my back, the heat becomes more than we can handle, exposed in a parking lot, and we pull away to breathe and look into each other’s eyes.

  Chests rising and falling, we laugh, but I’m disappointed. I wanted to lose myself in him for a bit longer.

  "Public space. Probably . . . not a good idea."

  "Probably not," he agrees. "Kind of sucks."

  "Definitely sucks."

  We lie back, staring up into the sky, holding hands.

  "Here."

  He tugs me over, taps his chest, the part his heart lies beneath. "Put your head here."

  Tucked inside his arm, snuggled into his side, we lay in silence except for our slowing breath and racin
g hearts.

  "It's crazy," he whispers.

  "What, me again?"

  "No. Not at all."

  "What, then?"

  "Everything changed. When I first met you. Saw you even."

  "Yeah?" I exhale, hold my breath.

  "Something clicked." He kisses the top of my head. "Into place."

  "And then we spoke, and you learned about my obsession with germs and studying, and you couldn’t resist?"

  "We did. I did. And then, yes, I fell for you even more."

  I kiss his chest, snuggle closer, revel in his warmth.

  "Everything about you made everything about me make sense. For no reason, really, but that's how I felt," he says, his tone serious and pensive.

  "So, together, we made irrational sense."

  "You disagree?" He shifts to look down at me so I tip my chin up. I find his jaw is clenching and unclenching. He’s thinking a lot about this, or he’s nervous to expose his feelings.

  I'm teasing him because I'm so touched. To keep from crying, to keep from announcing my feelings, I'm making light of the words he's saying that are cutting me so deeply, creating a trench I won't be able to fill when he leaves me. When this is over.

  But I don't want him to think I don't feel the same. I don't want to hurt him, so even if it means letting hurt in, I have to speak, to say, "When I met you, saw you, spoke to you, I agree everything changed." I'm nodding, showing how much I agree with him, my cheek rubbing against his cotton shirt. I stare across the darkened lot when I admit, "I see the world a little differently, understand a little more. You made the world make sense. If I didn't believe in love before, I do now."

  He takes a fingertip and tilts my chin up, forcing my wet eyes to look into his.

  "Look at me," he whispers.

  I look. I see a boy on the verge of being a man, with a face of an angel, so sweet, so kind, so vulnerable.

  "What are you saying?” he asks.

  I want to shrug. I want to act like I could go either way, take him or leave him. But the look in his eyes, the warmth in his body . . . . "I’m falling for you." I swallow. "I think I’m in love with you."

  A tear slips out of his eye and falls down his cheek to his ear. I prop myself up on my elbow so I can reach up and slowly trace its path with my fingertip. He takes my hand and kisses each fingertip, savoring each kiss like it'll be his last. When he finishes with all ten, he kisses my palm. "In this hand, you hold my heart. I can tell you don't want to believe it, but I love you, Laine Carroll. Everything changed when I met you."

  "Everything is changed now that I love you."

  He nods, never taking his eyes away from mine. "Everything," he agrees, "has clicked into place."

  32

  shades of blue

  Dreams come fast and hard again that night. There's no transition between them, no logic. Mom's trying to hang stars in a black sky from the top of a mountain cliff. I'm on a playground in broad daylight screaming at her to stop, not to fall, and yet the starlight is so gorgeous, part of me wants her to continue hanging them until the sky is ablaze with their dazzling glow.

  Jax is in a car that's decorated like a parade float, covered in daisies of every color of the rainbow. He's smiling and waving out the window, but there's nobody there to see him. The streets are deserted but for grime and debris that's skipping across the gutters in the wind. Surrounding the park I'm in, there are hundreds of white benches, each one with the name of someone I've known in my lifetime. Not even people I've known well. It's as if my brain has a catalog of names, and it's etched each one into a plaque in this graveyard of benches. I'm racing through, searching for a name, but I don't know whose. All I know is each name I see isn't the one I'm looking for, and with each bench, I grow more and more frantic.

  I wake up in a panic, covered in a sheen of sweat. I take my toiletry bag to the bathroom and wipe myself down with a washcloth, rinse my hair, and brush my teeth.

  It's five thirty in the morning, so I head down to the cafe to get a bagel and a coffee. I sit by the windows and watch the sky that resembles a parfait, dark on top, fading as it nears the horizon, through shades of blue, purple, rose, and peach.

  "Couldn't sleep?" Jax sits down across from me and lays a hand over mine.

  I shake my head. "You?"

  "I'm usually up by now, head over before school to see my dad."

  "You're going to school today?"

  "Probably not today, but some days I have been."

  I nod, so out of it I can't believe how the days are running into each other. When I'm here it's hard to know if it's Monday or Thursday or even Saturday. I'll need to go back too soon, for school, for the mail, for Muffy, for my status with the student body, for work. I missed work Wednesday and now it's Friday. I'll leave tomorrow morning, work the weekend, school Monday . . . .

  He clears his throat and asks, "How are you feeling about last night?"

  "Last night?"

  His cheeks are pink. "Our . . . conversation?"

  I'm not sure how he wants me to answer. How does he feel? Second thoughts? Regret?

  "Why . . . were you under the influence of romantic, phone candlelight? Want to take it all back?"

  He laughs, a nice sound in the wee hours of the morning, before the sun is even fully peering over the edge of the world at us. "No, but I guess that's what I'm wondering about you." His raises my hand to his lips, kisses my palm the way he did last night. "Do you want to run? Do the words we said change your mind about me, about us?"

  "Are you saying this because of Marc? Because you thought I ran from him after he told me he loved me?"

  He shrugs a shoulder. "I guess. Maybe."

  "You're not Marc. No matter what he said or did, I didn't have feelings for him anymore."

  "I know."

  "What I feel for you isn't even a fraction of what I felt for him, ever, not even when we first started dating two years ago, not in the beginning, middle, or end of our relationship."

  "What do you feel for me?"

  This whole expression of emotion is exhausting, not easy for me.

  "I meant what I said. You make every day better, when we're together, and when we're not. Just thinking about you makes life better." One of my nonsensical dreams flashes in my mind. "You hang the stars."

  He leans forward, smiling. "I like that."

  I'm sweating. Talking like this, exposing myself is terrifying.

  "You," he says.

  "Me?"

  "Make every day make sense. Make every day worth getting out of bed. You've replaced the sun with something better, something hotter and brighter."

  I look down at the table, then up at him. He's still there, his navy eyes flecked with seawater blue, his smile. His hands are cool when I take them in my own. A million thoughts flash through my mind when I touch him: kissing, wrapping in a warm blanket with him and holding him forever, walking outside along the horizon and this sunrise, sitting in a corner cafe somewhere sipping coffee and talking, working a puzzle—a future. A future flashes through my mind.

  "I'm a promise. A promise of happiness in the future, no matter what." No matter what happens here, with our dads.

  We hold hands and walk to the elevator together, past a group in blue, a mystery I've yet to solve, but don't even care to anymore.

  Some things matter in life, and I'm starting to be able to recognize them, and let the others go.

  He kisses me in the elevator, and it's soft and lingering, but ending. We drop each other’s hands as we enter the ICU doors, and the inches between us grow as we take our steps down the hall. His dad's room arrives first, and so with a last glance over his shoulder, Jax tosses me a smile. I take it and run, ready to bury it in the yard with all the other smiles he's tossed me over the past two weeks.

  Dad's room hasn't changed. Mom's in the same spot. The numbers on the machines are identical to what they were yesterday. While I wait for his sedative to wear off some for the day, I text Brady to organize
the next week's schedule, the who's where with Mom when schedule. I need to work and go to school Monday, return to Mom, be back home by Thursday, maybe even work Wednesday night. He says he'll drive over tomorrow and stay through Monday, come back Wednesday night through Friday morning.

  Deal: I text.

  This is the most he and I have "spoken" in years.

  Then the morning falls into routine: breakfast, transplant team (Dad's all set for a transplant!), magazines, games on my phone, doze, hold Dad's hand, early lunch, take a walk, hold Dad's hand.

  Chase texts that he worked Mocha Monkey for me and reiterates that I rocked serving and the bar last weekend (whatever). May texts that their marketing plan was executed flawlessly and that my pictures outdo the trashy posters 300 percent. They've taken turns making announcements on my behalf, as part of the yearbook committee, and have plugged me each time. Word is the crowds are reacting positively, and I'm a huge favorite. It's hard to tell if she's being honest in a text. Who knows how much tongue clicking is going on behind the letters?

  Sue smiles at us now when she writes the date on the whiteboard each morning. Mom and she were laughing about something when I returned from the bathroom. I guess she's gotten used to us, realizes we're not leaving. Our butts are parked on the green chairs pretty much 24-7.

  An hour or so before the dinner hour, I try to peer in by Jax. I want to go to the Y for a shower, but he and his mom are talking with two doctors in white coats. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is tight, shaking even, with each word. Jax is looking at the floor. His hands are in his pockets, but his left knee is shaking.

  I don't know whether or not to hover.

  I decide to drive to the Y, skip a run, but shower fast. I'm back before forty minutes pass.

  The windows that line the hallway across from the elevators don't cast light into the hallway tonight. Clouds create a ceiling of gray for the world, so though it should still be an hour before sunset, it looks like the middle of the night. The windows are cool to the touch. I lean my forehead on them and close my eyes, feeling trapped, feeling edgy. I should have spent ten minutes running. A mile and a half may have released some of the nervousness in my bones. I may not bounce outwardly like Jax, but I can feel that same jitteriness inside of me. I hold it in, he lets it show. He's probably healthier for it.