Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “I know,” I say.

  Sasha reaches up and tries to rip the oxygen cannula out of his nose, but his hand is slow and clumsy and he can’t make it do what he wants, and that just makes him even more pissed off. He tries to sit up again, and Dmitri takes both his shoulders and holds him down.

  “Get off of me!” Sasha yells.

  Dmitri looks at the nurse. “I really think we need those restraints.”

  “All right,” she says, and she leaves.

  “He’s gonna hate that,” I say.

  Dmitri sighs. “Last time he went under general, he was…smaller.”

  “Stop talking about me like I can’t hear you!” Sasha says. “I’m not supposed to be here. This isn’t right. Something’s wrong.”

  “Sasha,” I say, and he looks at me, and God, he doesn’t look confused. His eyes are so clear and sure.

  “Please,” he says, and it’s the exact same voice he uses when he’s asking me for something real. When he knows what’s going on.

  It’s hard.

  I tuck his hair behind his ear. “I know this doesn’t feel right. You just gotta trust us and get through this part, okay?”

  “Fuck you,” he says. “I don’t want you here.”

  Dmitri says, “He doesn’t mean—”

  I feel like I’m about to scream at him, and it’s not his fault, but dude, come on. “You really can stop saying that,” I say. “I understand.”

  “He’s gonna tire himself out soon, anyway,” Dmitri says.

  “I have to go,” Sasha says, and then he gags, and Dmitri quickly turns him onto his side and grabs the basin on the counter next to the sink and gets it under his mouth right before he throws up.

  “He’s been doing a lot of this, too,” Dmitri says, rubbing his back.

  Sasha’s shaking so hard. I put my hand on his hip and whisper “Shh shh shh” as his body jerks.

  “I hate this,” he whimpers once he’s done, and after that he just sobs until he falls asleep.

  …

  The rest of the day is just that, basically, fits of confusion broken up by bouts of sleeping. But the sleeping stretches get longer and longer, and he seems a little less angry every time he wakes up. His oxygen levels won’t stay steady, so they switch the cannula out for a mask, and he seems a lot less upset after that, and I’m really pissed it took them that long to do it. Not as pissed as Dmitri, who, it turns out, had been fighting for that since the second Sasha was out of surgery. I sit in Sasha’s room while he barks orders at his doctor in the hallway.

  He was only six years older than me when Sasha was born.

  “Your dad loves you so much,” I whisper to Sasha. He’s asleep, breathing hard through his nose and fussing with the bandage over his IV, no matter how many times I stop him. I run my hand down his arm and feel him stretched skinny and tight like a tree branch.

  “You’re doing great,” I tell him.

  …

  I should probably eat something. Sasha’s been asleep for over an hour, and I’ve just been playing on my phone while Dmitri’s passed out in the armchair. It’s almost three in the afternoon, and I haven’t eaten anything besides a packet of pretzels from the vending machine. Nadia will be here soon to visit, and I’m just going to be taking up space. I kiss Sasha’s scratchy cheek and go down to the cafeteria, but once I’m on the floor, I end up ducking into the bathroom and sitting in the stall just to be alone for a minute.

  I take some deep breaths and fan my face. Keep it together. Keep it together.

  I don’t know how I’m supposed to balance the contrasting truths that today is probably the worst day and he’ll be back to normal tomorrow, and that if I’m really in this for the long haul, then a minorly bad reaction after a routine surgery is nothing compared to what we’re going to have to face down the road. That first thought is enough to keep me going, but it feels irresponsible to cling to that. It makes me feel like someone who needs something to cling to, and I don’t want to be that person. That’s not what he deserves.

  He’s just so upset, and he doesn’t even know why.

  And I am so tired. I am tired all the way through my bones. I don’t know how I’m even supposed to eat, let alone do anything else, when I’m this tired.

  I shouldn’t have come in here and sat down. I have to keep moving.

  I wash my hands and go out into the cafeteria and start filling a tray with food, and right before I check out, I go back and add another serving of everything. Maurice, the checkout guy, asks me how Sasha’s doing while I figure out how to balance two plates of pizza on my arms and stuff the sodas into my purse.

  “He’s doing great,” I say.

  He says, “You know you two are our little resident couple. We better all be invited to the wedding.”

  “We’ll try to make you proud,” I say.

  I walk slowly toward the atrium so the plates don’t fall and take the elevator up to five. I probably should have texted first to see if my dad was in his office, but there he is, sitting at his desk. I wonder if he misses when he got to actually get up and do things. He probably does. He used to be happier.

  I wonder if he really believed he was going to get to spend more time with us.

  I think he did.

  He looks up and smiles when I come through his door. “Hey, munchkin,” he says.

  “I brought lunch.”

  “I can see that.” He pushes the paperwork he’s filling out aside. “Pull up a chair.”

  I do. “I hope grape soda’s okay.”

  “It’s perfect.” He takes the plates away from me and sets them out in front of us. “How’s Sasha doing?”

  “The surgery went well,” I say. “But you probably know that already.”

  He smiles a little. “I asked around.”

  “Have you been in to see him?”

  “Uh-huh, I checked on him when he was in recovery right after he woke up. I’m sure he doesn’t remember.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to remember anything for a while,” I say. “He’s still really out of it.”

  “That’s not uncommon,” he says.

  “Yeah, his dad says it happens every time he gets put under. Because of his anemia, I guess. It’s, like, extra strong on him or something.” I wave my hand at him. “I don’t need the medical explanation.”

  Dad laughs a little. “All right.” He starts to take a bite of his pizza, then cocks his head and looks at me. “How are you doing?” he says.

  I shrug. “I’m fine.”

  “You look tired.”

  “You’re not supposed to tell a woman she looks tired,” I say.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Mmhmm.” I take a bite of my pizza and chew it slowly. “It’s just hard. Every time he wakes up I try to calm him down and it doesn’t work. And it’s not like… He’s not normally the kind of person who needs to be calmed down. So I don’t have a lot of practice at it. And I know this isn’t him, that it’s just the drugs or whatever, but at the same time, like, yeah, it is him. He’s feeling all this stuff. You know?” I shrug. “It just feels like there’s nothing I can do that’s right. I feel bad right now that I’m not with him, but I also feel stupid that I’ve been sitting there mostly just watching him sleep all day. I don’t know what I’m doing. And you’d think since I volunteer here I would have some idea, but…”

  “It’s different,” my dad says. “When it’s someone you care about, it’s different.”

  “I know that. I just feel like I should still be better at it than, like…someone who’s just walked off the street with no experience at this kind of thing, and I don’t think I am.”

  Dad wipes his mouth. “Y’know, one thing I’ve noticed is when people get some kind of crisis like this, they tend to think they need to turn into a special crisis version of th
emselves. Someone who’s more capable, more logical, more serious.”

  “And then they wear themselves out,” I say. I’ve heard this lesson before.

  “Well, that,” he says. “And also, it’s not who the people in the crisis want.”

  “Hmm.”

  He says, “When something bad happens, you want the people who love you to be around you, and you want them to be acting like themselves, to be familiar, to be all the beautiful and strange things that are the reason that they’re in your life. It doesn’t really make sense to not act like yourself when something’s wrong with someone who loves you, because probably the only thing they really want is the people who make them happy every day. You have to be the same person to remind them that they’re still the same person.”

  I think about this. “Okay…but sometimes you have to be more logical and businesslike or whatever. Sasha’s dad is like the nicest guy ever, but he still had to yell at a doctor today because they were too busy to give Sasha the oxygen mask he needed. I get that we’re just supposed to be the loved ones and they’re supposed to be the doctors, but it’s really frustrating when doctors won’t do their jobs.”

  “They’re very busy,” Dad says.

  “I am so tired of that excuse. Were they very busy when they told me for a year that nothing was wrong with me? No, they were lazy, and they were writing me off because of assumptions they made about me based on my age and my gender and probably my religion. And a lot of those things apply to Sasha, too, and they apply to every single person here, and I’m not saying all doctors are bad; I’m just saying…why do you guys keep acting so fucking bad? We’re really frustrated, and we get to be, because you treat us like we’re lying, all the time, like I’m trying to get high off you running another blood test or some shit. It’s ridiculous. They can’t stand being wrong, because it threatens their egos, so they just keep insisting they’re right even when they know they screwed up, because they know that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Well, hang on—”

  “No,” I say. “You guys are messing up a lot of people, and that’s just what it comes down to, and I am sick of having to worship doctors when all they do is tell me I’m okay when I tell them I feel terrible and tell me to lose weight and sign a prescription pad, and they won’t give my boyfriend a fucking oxygen mask. You want us to do our jobs as loved ones, or as patients? You have to do your jobs so we don’t fucking have to do them for you.”

  “Everyone’s trying,” he says.

  I slump back in my chair. “I know, I know. Everyone’s always trying.” I take a deep breath. “And it’s good advice. What you said.” I push my pizza around my plate. “You’re a good doctor.”

  “I didn’t learn that from being a doctor,” he says. “I learned that from being your father.” He looks down at his plate. “She left, and you were you. And that was everything.”

  I look at him.

  “You know I…” He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

  That’s as much as I’m going to get from him, I think.

  And it’s kind of everything.

  …

  I kill time browsing the gift shop to give Sasha’s family some more time alone with him and go back to his room at around five. I literally run into Nadia in the waiting room, who tells me her dad’s in the bathroom and she’s going to make him go home for a few hours to get some sleep.

  “That’s a good idea,” I say. “How’s Sasha?”

  “Still pretty out of it,” Nadia says. “But he knew who I was and everything. Last time he had surgery he didn’t recognize me for, like, two days.”

  God. “That’s good,” I say.

  “You should get some rest, too,” Nadia says.

  “Yeah, I’m just gonna go in and sleep in his chair, probably. I’ll go home after your dad comes back to take over.”

  “Okay.” She looks up. “I like the balloon.”

  “Seemed better than flowers, lungs considering.”

  She nods. “Definitely better than flowers.”

  Dmitri comes back and they both hug me goodbye, and Dmitri thanks me for last night, which I guess he hadn’t really had an opportunity to do until now. He looks about as beat as I feel. After they’re gone I go into Sasha’s room and shut the door. It’s a double room, but there’s no one in the other half right now.

  “Just you and me for a while,” I say.

  He blinks his eyes open.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Hi,” he says softly. His breath fogs up the oxygen mask.

  “Hi. I got you a present.” I hold the balloon between my hands so he can read it. I watch his eyes slowly trace over the words—Congratulations, it’s a boy.

  “It’s true,” he says, a little bit of a smile on his mouth.

  “Yeah, they didn’t have any it’s a spleen, but I figured you’re, you know. Also a boy. So at least it’s still accurate.”

  “How’d it go?” he says. He’s been asking that every time he wakes up.

  “Good,” I say. “Everything went great. Are you feeling better?”

  “Hurts,” he says.

  “Yeah, I bet. Let’s see what we can do… Can you scoot over a little?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll help… Good.” I get him closer to the edge of the bed, then I take off my shoes and climb over the rail on the other side and lie down behind him. I curl my body around the shaky, bony curves of him, and he relaxes back into me with a sigh. “Better now?” I say.

  “Mmmhmm.”

  I kiss the back of his neck. “Y’know, the other day when you took your shirt off, I was thinking, ‘I like his stomach like this, but I would like it more if it had a huge scar running across it.’”

  “Too bad,” he says. His voice is so small and tired. “Laparoscopic. Just a little scar.”

  “I can fix that.”

  He actually laughs a little. “You shouldn’t threaten me right now,” he says. “I’m very frail.”

  “Good. That’s how I like my men.”

  He turns his head enough to nestle into my collarbone. “Lucky me.”

  He’s mostly asleep, and I am, too, when he suddenly starts snickering a little. “It’s a boy,” he mumbles. “You fucking weirdo.” We both laugh for a long time.

  I knew it would work.

  …

  It’s eight thirty, and I’m on the train going home. It’s a Friday night, and we’re headed toward Manhattan, so most of the train is people dressed to go out for the night. Girls in sparkly tops, a few guys in suits. Plenty of people my age or younger, some of them swinging from the poles as I sit and look out the window at the industrial scenery.

  And then all of a sudden everything hits me, like a car hitting a wall, and I start crying. And not, like, pretty, private crying, like everyone does on the train from time to time, but gross, sobbing, body-racking crying, like I’m trying to get every feeling I’ve ever had out of my body, and honestly, maybe I am. I’m just so relieved, and so worried, and I’m so, so, so fucking tired.

  Nobody gives me more than a glance, and God, I am so in love with this city that lets me just be a full person outside of my house, surrounded by strangers, lit up with an outer-borough skyline.

  And I am even more in love with that boy.

  What happens next?

  I mean, you tell me, right? Are you and Ashley just never going to talk to each other again? I mean, what she said was terrible, don’t get me wrong, but, I don’t know, you’re just going to drop someone from your life because they said something terrible? Can you…do that?

  —Luna Williams, 16, actress

  We’re collecting donations for a nuclear medicine department, if that’s what you mean. How’s Sasha doing today?

 
; —John Garfinkel, 49, Physician in Chief at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital

  It’s a series of steps. Like from the bed to the door, and then from the door to the nurses’ station, and then a loop. And then after that, who knows how far I’m going to be able to walk. I’m going to be amazing. I’ll go to the Olympics in walking. You want to go to Canada? Give me four days, I’ll be walking to Canada. Or do you mean what’s next in a global sense? I’m still concerned about that volcano I mentioned.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, spleenless

  I don’t know. And I’m not the type of person who typically copes well with not knowing, but I’m trying. Before we got together but when I could already feel that it was going to happen, I said it was like watching a movie I’d already seen before, but now…actually being in a relationship is like listening to a song you’ve never heard, and you really like it so far, but there’s that anxiety that it’s going to fall apart at the chorus. But when you’re with someone like Sasha, it’s a drumbeat, really, this steady kind of throbbing keeping everything steady. Like a heartbeat. I remember what Siobhan said a long time ago about how a good relationship isn’t something you have to gather up strength to do. It’s where you recharge. And I think when you’re me and Sasha, and you’re so tired all the time…that’s just not always going to be reality. Sometimes even things you love are going to be too draining. But you’ve got to be with someone who understands you. That’s really all it comes down to. All the complicated rules and compatibility tests… Really, it’s so simple it sounds stupid. And the truth is, even when the song is too loud for me, I always love the drumbeat. I don’t think people our age get what we have very often. I guess we’d be those people who peak in high school now, except I’m not planning to grow out of this. I’m already old, and Sasha’s never going to grow up, so I think we’ll be fine. I don’t know what happens next, but I know how I’m going to get through it. Close my eyes and feel it all the way through me. You know what happiness is? It’s a boy in a hospital bed. Who would have guessed.

  —Isabel Garfinkel, 17, columnist

  Chapter Twenty-Five