Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  So none of that is a concern. What is a concern is that…I haven’t met Sasha’s friends, and there has to be some reason, even if it’s a lot less dramatic than what my friends came up with. And even if there isn’t really a reason, the effect’s still going to be the same: his friends probably now think I’m the girl who took their friend away and who doesn’t have any interest in meeting them, and maybe Sasha thinks he’s not allowed to have his own friends or something, so…it needs to be addressed, just without my friends’ paranoia.

  We meet for some kind of lunch/dinner hybrid—breakfast for lunch has me very meal-confused—at a diner near his apartment and then walk back to his place to catch up on TV. It might be March, but it’s still freezing. He’s in the overcoat that I never successfully managed to steal long-term, and I have the hat he made me pulled down over my ears.

  “Are we still doing Coney Island this weekend?” I say.

  “Yeah! If you want to. I want to.”

  “I do.” I pause. “I was thinking maybe we’d invite some of your friends to come with us.”

  “The girls don’t want to?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “We could go just the two of us,” he says. “Some sort of romantic midday Saturday date. With cotton candy.”

  I kind of want to drop all pretenses and just do that, but I’m on a mission here. “I just want to meet your friends,” I say. “Like that one you told me about from school, your best friend.”

  “Jackson,” he says.

  “See, I didn’t even know his name.”

  “So?” he says. He’s not looking at me.

  “So don’t you think that’s kind of weird?” I say. “You know my friends really well and I don’t even know your best friend’s name.”

  “It’s just different,” he says.

  “Why is it different?” We stop the block before his apartment and wait for the walk signal.

  “I don’t think he’d really be into Coney Island,” Sasha says. “He has CP, so he can’t do a lot of the roller coasters and shit.”

  “Which is why we can do it without my friends. The three of us could do, like, a low-key trip.”

  “You can’t even do three-person trips to amusement parks,” he says. “Someone always ends up sitting alone. It has to be an even number.”

  “Sitting alone on what? You just said—”

  “I know, but…”

  “And there would be six of us,” I say. “With the girls.”

  “I thought you were gonna see if Ashley could bring that guy she’s seeing. Lucas.” The walk signal lights up.

  “They’re not seeing each other anymore,” I say as we cross.

  “Really? What happened?”

  “Stop trying to change the subject!” I say. “See? This is weird. You know the name of the guy Ashley barely dated for two weeks and I didn’t even know the name of your—”

  We’re half a block away from his apartment, and my hip all of a sudden just snaps, like a rubber band, and I completely cave in on that side. Sasha catches me, or I would have just fallen over in the middle of the sidewalk. A couple who was walking behind us brushes past me with this noise in their throats like this is the biggest inconvenience imaginable.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sasha says.

  My whole leg is shaking. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, it just feels like it’s no longer interested in being a leg. I try to put weight on it, then the pain hits, shooting all the way down to my foot and up my waist.

  “Stop,” Sasha says.

  “Fuck.”

  He says, “I’m gonna pick you up, okay?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.” He reaches one arm under my knees and sweeps me up, and I put my arms around his neck. In a different scenario, I’m sure this would be very romantic instead of embarrassing and painful, but it’s still touch, and it’s still comfort, and I still want to bury myself inside of his coat forever.

  He kisses the top of my head. “Can you get the keys out of my pocket?”

  “Um…” I grope around. “Yeah.”

  “Good. Let’s get inside. Don’t rupture my spleen.”

  “Okay.”

  …

  “What about this one?” he says.

  “Sasha, I’m trying to watch TV.” We’re lying next to each other on his bed, me with an ice pack on my hip, him with his laptop balanced on his legs. I can’t concentrate.

  “Just look, okay?” he says. He turns those big green eyes on me, and I don’t stand a chance. I rest my cheek on his shoulder while he turns the laptop toward me. I feel safe here with him and just about nowhere else right at this moment.

  He shows me the screen. “See? This one comes with lots of designs.”

  “It’s still a cane,” I say.

  “So?”

  “So I’m seventeen. I can’t use a cane.”

  “Does that argument work when people say you can’t have arthritis because you’re seventeen?”

  I groan and hide in his shoulder. I know he’s right, but I still just…can’t picture myself with a cane. Going down the hallways at school. Walking to the subway. Everybody annoyed with me that I’m walking so slowly, then seeing the cane and getting filled with that sympathy they feel like they have to have, and then getting mad at me for making them have it. I know the game well enough already, walking around on two feet. “No canes,” I say.

  He drums on my back while he scrolls down the page. “All right, what about, like… Here, these look, like, sportier or something.” He shows me a page of forearm crutches. “And they’re more stable than a cane, anyway. And look, this one comes in pink.”

  “Why, because I’m a girl?”

  He gives me a look. “Because you love pink.”

  Can’t really argue with that one.

  “So what am I supposed to do, just buy one of these?” I say. “And then I walk out of the house with it in front of my dad? I can’t even imagine how that would go.”

  “You tell him it’s helpful,” Sasha says.

  “He’d think I was ridiculous. He sees me walk around all the time. He knows I can do it.”

  “Well, maybe he should see your hip freak out and stop working. I should have taken some video for him.”

  “It’s better now,” I say. “It hardly ever happens.”

  He strokes my hair.

  “This is all so you don’t have to talk about your friends,” I say.

  He snorts. “Yeah, I threw out your hip to change the subject.”

  “You would. You’re very sneaky.” I press my nose into his shirt and just…smell him. “I don’t think I could use one of those anyway. It’d hurt my wrist.”

  “You could get a wheelchair,” he says.

  “I don’t need a wheelchair. This is ridiculous. I can walk.”

  “Lots of people who use wheelchairs can walk,” he says. “I’ve used one a couple times when I was really sick. I didn’t lose the ability to walk. I was just tired.”

  “And who gave you the idea to use a wheelchair, Sasha? Was it your boyfriend?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I give up and pause the show. “It was your doctor, right?” I say. “You had a medical professional telling you that you needed it. He probably wrote you a prescription for it.”

  “Is it always going to come down to this?” Sasha says. “We’re always going to come back to this fight that doctors think I’m sicker than you are?”

  “You say that like they’re wrong,” I say.

  “No, I say it like it’s irrelevant. It’s not a competition.”

  “I’m not saying it’s… I’m just saying there are things about each other’s experience that we’re not going to get. We can talk about how we’re both sick like it’s some magical thread tying us together, a
nd I’m not saying it’s not huge and big and important, I’m just saying…we’re not the same. We’re not.”

  He pulls his sleeve down over his hand, slowly, precisely. “Well. I want to be the same.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “And anyway, that’s not even what this is about.”

  “Yeah it is,” I say. “Because I can’t get some mobility aid and then be afraid to use it at a doctor’s appointment because they’re gonna scoff at me and tell me I don’t need it. Because that’s what they’ll do. If you look this shit up, if you google do I need a cane, because yeah, I’ve looked into this, all you find is people desperately trying to avoid it. People who can barely keep their balance without it who are still doing everything they can to not get one. They’re not… They’re worse off than me. They don’t want to use one. You’re not supposed to want to use one.”

  “So you do want one,” he says. “You think it would make things easier.” He doesn’t say it like he’s trying to trap me. Just like he’s trying to understand.

  “I mean, it would be easier in terms of the physical act of walking,” I say. “But when you used a wheelchair, wasn’t it weird? Everyone could just…see that something was wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I kind of felt too shitty to care.”

  “Yeah.” I wouldn’t, but that seems insensitive to point out. Plus, he knows. He knows me. “I feel like once you start using something, then you’re disabled, not sick. And it’s not that I have a problem with being disabled, it’s that… I don’t know. I’m Sick Girl. I’m used to it. To all those, you know, the pluses and minuses of people looking at you and not being able to tell.”

  He sits up some. “Honestly, I’ve been thinking about that lately. And I’m not sure there actually are advantages to people not being able to tell? I think that’s just something that people tell themselves, like when they say it’s fine not to peak in high school. I think it’s categorically better if people can look at you and know that you’re sick.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say.

  “No no, hear me out. Okay, maybe not if you’re, like, interviewing for a job or trying to get a girlfriend or boyfriend or nonbinary friend or whatever. But we’re not in those situations, so I don’t care about them. What do we, like you and I, get out of people looking at us and thinking we’re fine? I mean, I know I get threatening letters on our dashboard when we’re upstate and we park in a handicapped space. You get teachers who don’t believe you when you need a break, and people not giving up seats on the subway, and your dad thinking you’re fine. How would your life actually be harder if you looked sick?”

  “Life is harder for people who aren’t conventionally attractive,” I say. “Even if they’re not looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a nonbinary friend.”

  “Sure, if you’re trying to be a model.”

  “No,” I say. “For everyone. Just for…being treated nicely at stores. And who knows if you would have even looked at me that day in the drip room if I hadn’t been pretty, or I would have looked at you. We’re not saints.”

  “But,” he says. “Having a cane wouldn’t make you less pretty.”

  “It would to a lot of people,” I say.

  He shrugs. “I still think it’s just easier if people know.”

  “But they wouldn’t really know, would they? That’s the thing. I already have a hard time getting people to understand. I mean, remember what you knew about RA before you looked it up?”

  He says, “Honestly, not really. Feels like forever ago.”

  “People think it’s just pain, and if I have a cane, that’s gonna reinforce that, when really what I have the biggest problem with is how goddamn tired I am. So it’s just going to be another reason people don’t get it.” I flop back on the bed. “I tried to talk to my friends about it today, and they just changed the subject. If I showed up next week with a cane, they’d think I was method acting or something.”

  “So what are you gonna do?” he says. “Just hope you don’t fall down when no one’s there to catch you?”

  I sigh. “I’ll talk to my doctor about it. I’ll try to make him listen. You can…help me make a list of talking points before I go in. But I can’t just take this step without someone I trust telling me it’s the right call.”

  “You trust me, don’t you?” he says.

  I look up at him. “Of course I trust you.”

  He smiles a little.

  “But,” I say. “You can’t pretend like my doctor told me I should try using this doesn’t sound a lot better than my boyfriend told me I should try using this.”

  “Okay, true,” he says, and fuck if I don’t love the way he gives in when he knows he’s wrong. I feel like everyone I’ve ever met just holds onto their points and fights like a dog with a bone. But Sasha…God. He listens to me.

  And it’s not lost to me in all of this that he would be perfectly fine dating a girl using a cane or a crutch or a wheelchair. And I realize that shouldn’t be something noteworthy, that any decent guy should be fine with that, especially one with a chronic illness, but…the world is not exactly teeming with decent guys, and here is one right here who has beautiful eyes and good-smelling clothes and the most precious heart, and he loves me. And if his hip stopped working in the middle of the street, I would carry him, somehow. I’d find a way.

  And then I’d probably get on him to get a mobility aid, because he would deserve one. I trust him.

  “Your wrist,” he says quietly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Hang on.” He gets up and goes to his dresser and starts digging through. “I thought I found one when I was cleaning…aha!” He finds something and holds it up in triumph.

  “What is it?”

  “Wrist brace,” he says. “From when I broke my other arm a few years ago. I found it a couple weeks ago and saved it for you.”

  I make a face.

  “Come on,” he says. “It’s a wrist brace. People wear wrist braces.”

  I sigh and hold out my wrist. He smiles, sits down on the bed next to me, and puts it on me.

  It’s strangely romantic.

  “Jackson graduated last year,” he says while he adjusts the straps.

  “What?”

  “Jackson. He’s gone. He’s in Massachusetts, and we don’t talk anymore. We weren’t that close. I…” He tugs on a strap. “Fudged the truth at the hospital because I didn’t know you yet, and I didn’t want you to know I was the loser with no friends who misses too much school and eats alone in the hallway outside the theater and has to beg someone to be his lab partner.” He lets go of my wrist. “There. How is it?”

  He’s looking at me with those big eyes. He’s nervous.

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “You’re perfect.”

  …

  “What’s that on your wrist?” my dad asks me that evening.

  “Oh, I…”

  He sounds so confused. Like he’s literally never considered that I could possibly, ever, need anything.

  “I hurt my wrist in gym,” I say. “The nurse gave it to me.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  He nods. “Good.”

  How do you figure out your priorities?

  I guess I don’t do things and then see if I miss them or if something bad happens. It’s like ghosting, but with activities instead of people. If I don’t do my chemistry homework, then my chemistry grade gets shitty, so I know I have to do my chemistry homework. Okay, so I don’t actually have to try that to figure out that my chemistry grade will get shitty. But isn’t it worth a try? What if the balance of the universe has changed, and now I don’t have to do my chemistry homework, and no one told me? I think I’ll try it again this week and see. I’ll report back.

  —Luna Wi
lliams, 16, Roxy in “Chicago”

  It’s all about cost-benefit analysis. How much work does something take versus what do you get out of it? You have to do what’s going to benefit you the most.

  —Rick Shelton, 18, Republican

  I’m not sure it’s really something you figure out. I think…you just know. For example, me and my kids. They’re gonna be my first priority. And before they were born, I wasn’t really sure I was the mothering type. I thought maybe I was too selfish! And then they’re born and…you just know, nothing’s gonna be the same anymore. Everything’s different now. So I think you just…you can’t figure that out, y’know? You can’t plan for that. You just have to be ready to adjust.

  —Leighann Thomas, 32, radiology technician at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital

  Finally, an easy one. It’s about promises you’ve made. What you told people you were going to get done. You stick to your word, you show you’re responsible, you take care of your obligations, and you do what you’re supposed to do. If you said you’d do something, you do it. That’s it.

  —Claire Lennon, 17, dead

  Eesh. Didn’t you used to ask, like, fun, sexy questions? Isn’t that why you had to be single? This is…gah. Figuring out priorities? I’m not old enough for this.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, Peter Pan in “life”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Coney Island was fun, Sasha lighting up at every little thing and the girls putting his excitement all over their Snapchat stories and all of us screaming our way through rickety roller coasters, but now I’m having one of those weeks that’s just a slog, and it’s only Wednesday. People have been warning me about second semester of junior year since I was a freshman, and I guess I convinced myself it couldn’t be as bad as they said, because it was the only way I could allow myself to age without existing in a constant state of panic. But…it’s bad. We have representatives from colleges coming to meet with us and requirements for how many per month we have to meet with and teachers who are very salty about us missing class to go to these meetings, so basically every junior at my school is walking around feeling like we’re doing too much and not enough all at the same time.