Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  A lot of splenectomy patients are up and walking around a couple hours after they wake up from surgery. Sasha is not most patients, but we do get him up on his feet when I visit him on Saturday. He makes it from his bed to the armchair, where he promptly falls asleep for three hours, the balloon I got him bopping gently against the ceiling above his head.

  “Was I awful yesterday?” he asks me later. His dad’s downstairs getting us something to eat, and I’m helping Sasha sponge himself off. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “You were fine,” I say.

  “So I was awful, but you’re not mad about it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He sighs happily. “I’ll take it.”

  His brothers come to visit that night. They bring board games and run laps around the bed and gently hug Sasha, who manages to stay awake for a full ten minutes at once. Afterwards, I play Monopoly with them on Sasha’s tray table while Dmitri stands in the hallway and calls their extended family and fills everyone in. Sasha sleeps through the whole thing.

  …

  “You’re supposed to walk to the nurses’ station today,” I say to him on Sunday.

  He has his pillow pulled over his head. “I’ve decided to become a bed person.”

  “I think you already are a bed person,” I say.

  “Good. Then there’s nothing left I have to do today.”

  I sit down in the chair by his bed. “I’m making you get up later.”

  “Well, I like the later part.” He turns his head and looks at me with those sad eyes. “I feel like crap today.”

  “I’m sorry. To be fair, you did just have surgery. I don’t think you’re supposed to be feeling spectacular.”

  “True. Sorry I’m so boring.” He shifts around. “All I do is sleep.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do in the hospital, right? Relax and be taken care of. Plus, that’s why I brought a book.” I kick my shoes up and rest my feet on the bed next to his leg and take out the book I finally thought to bring. He rubs my feet until he falls asleep.

  …

  I get a text in the middle of the night between Sunday and Monday and I freak out and wake up my dad and he comes to the hospital with me.

  Given his lungs they think it’s probably pneumonia. He spiked a fever, and they’re hoping they don’t have to intubate. Nobody can see him except for Dmitri, who doesn’t come back to the waiting room. My dad rushes around, getting all the information, and I sit there next to Nadia, and we squeeze hands.

  This was supposed to be boring and routine and stressful and exhausting.

  This was not supposed to happen.

  This can’t be happening.

  …

  His voice is rough on Tuesday. He blinks his eyes open and gives me a small smile under the oxygen mask.

  “You should probably go back to school at some point,” he tells me.

  “Shut up.”

  …

  I stop by on Wednesday during my volunteer shift. He’s eating green Jell-O, and he has a stack of empty cups already on his tray.

  “You know I can hear you coughing from down the hall,” I say. “You’re disturbing my other patients.”

  “This isn’t even your floor.”

  “You caught me.”

  “You look sexy in your polo.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You look like you’re going to tell me the schedule of events on my senior citizens’ cruise.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You look like you’re about to rattle off a list of what plants were traditionally used as herbal remedies on our nature hike.”

  “Sasha.”

  “You look like you’re about to buzz in at the mathletes finals to tell me the limit does not exist.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “No, I have more! Stop! I’m in love with you!”

  …

  “You feel up for Monopoly yet?” I ask him on Thursday. We’re squished into his bed together, eating popcorn I got from the vending machine.

  He coughs for a while. He’s back to just the cannula now, and he says it’s okay, but he sure has been coughing a lot. “Mm,” he says. “Maybe tomorrow?”

  “We’ve got all the time in the world,” I say.

  “How was school today?”

  “I don’t know.” I throw a piece of popcorn into the air and catch it in my mouth. “Do you think it’s wrong of me just to cut Ashley out completely? I think the girls think it makes me soulless.”

  “Well…do you miss her?”

  “No. But she’s sad.”

  “You don’t have to be friends with someone out of charity,” he says.

  “I know I don’t have to…”

  “Do you want to be friends with Ashley?” he asks me.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes or no.”

  I eat a few pieces of popcorn. “No.”

  “Then there you go. Plus, she’s graduating in two months anyway. You’ll both move on.”

  “You’re right.”

  “How’s stuff going with your dad?”

  “He’s…trying.” I give Sasha a look. “You know doctors. They’re always trying.”

  “Poor doctors,” he says. “We should be more understanding.”

  “It’s very hard for them, having to look at all these sick people.”

  He nuzzles my shoulder. “Do you want to go to Africa this summer? See my moms?”

  I toss a piece of popcorn into his mouth. “Sure.”

  …

  I draw a Community Chest card. “Gimme ten dollars,” I say. “Second prize in a beauty contest.”

  He hands me a ten. “I got first prize.”

  “Yeah, they don’t give you any money for that.”

  It’s Friday, April twelfth. I realized this morning that this past Monday was the day we would have been in the drip room together again, five months after we first met. It would have been the first time we’d seen each other again, if everything had gone as planned. Except we wouldn’t have, because he would have been in the ICU with post-operative pneumonia, and we would have had to have waited another five months.

  None of this was supposed to have happened.

  He lands on Tennessee and my hotel. “Ah, fuck.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yeah, let me mortgage everything I’ve ever owned.”

  I look out the window into the hallway and watch the people while he works. It’s amazing how many stories are going on all at once in this one hospital. How small Sasha and I and our little coincidences really are, even just in this one building.

  What if he hadn’t broken his arm?

  What if I hadn’t been assigned to his floor that day? What if I hadn’t gotten up to deliver water? What if he hadn’t recognized me? What if he’d been too shy?

  What if I’d dated some nice boy at school instead? It’s a Friday night. I’d probably be out somewhere, wearing something cute instead of these ratty sweatpants, with my hair in something other than the sloppy bun I slept in last night. Doing something sexier than playing Monopoly.

  “All right,” he says. He hands me a pile of unorganized money. “Nine-fifty.”

  “You know what?” I say.

  “What?”

  I sort the money and slip it underneath the board. “I still haven’t made that mistake I was supposed to make.”

  “Dating me was supposed to be the mistake,” he says.

  I shrug a little. “Yeah, well.”

  “Oh, that one ended up working out okay?” He nods at the board. “All right, come land on my hotel instead. That’ll be a good mistake.” He looks up at me, green eyes, pale lips, dimpled smile.

  I hold my breath and roll the dice.

 
; Acknowledgments

  The amount of support I’ve received since the second I first mentioned this book is truly like nothing I’ve ever experienced. So many people encouraged me to write this book as happy and as true as I could make it, and I so hope I’ve made you proud.

  There’s no way to name everyone who supported me, but there are a few who need special recognition. Jen and Kate fell in love with this book before I even knew it was ready to be seen, and we wouldn’t be here without them. John and Rebecca put their all into my career time and time again while still going along with the incredibly strange decisions I tell them I already enacted at three a.m. Lydia and the whole team at Entangled adopted this book and gave it a beautiful cover, a dedicated marketing plan, and a lovely home.

  My incredible family, from my parents who never stopped seeing me as myself and my sister who always promised me that no, not everyone feels this way, on whose futon I came up with the idea for this book two years ago, remain so patient with my pathological secrecy about my books and give me plenty of space and even more food. The burden of emotionally supporting me is, thank God, staffed by a large team, and I’m eternally grateful to, just to name a handful, Seth, Emma, Kat, Jessi, Parker, and Amanda.

  Thank you to Roz and Jed, who I hadn’t even realized I needed to know until, thankfully, I already did.

  And thank you, always, forever thank you, to anyone who has ever had to ask how to spell their disease, who has ever smiled and nodded when they were asked if they’d tried yoga, or who has cried on the phone with their insurance company, who has sat in a doctor’s office and wondered if they were losing themselves, who has lost themselves, who has found a community. We are here, we are here, we are here.

  Readers’ Group Guide

  Sick Kids in Love, by Hannah Moskowitz

  Prepared by Nancy Cantor, media specialist,

  NSU University School

  The author wants us to understand how people live with what she calls “invisible” illnesses. Readers learn about Gaucher disease and rheumatoid arthritis. What others can you identify? Do you know anyone with a chronic illness? If so, how do they handle their issues?

  On page 40, Isabel and Sasha discuss that they define themselves as sick, and that society does not want them to. Sasha says, “You either have to be overcoming it or you have to be completely disconnected from it. God forbid it be an important part of your identity that you’re just living with. Why is that?” After reading this book, do you agree with society or with Isabel and Sasha? Why or why not?

  Isabel is glad that her father doesn’t think of her as sick, and yet she can’t discuss being sick with him, even though he is a doctor. Is her father being overprotective? Unrealistic? A good dad?

  Isabel is surprised when Sasha and his father speak candidly about Sasha’s illness. What are your experiences with an ill person? Would it be different for a young person than say, a senior citizen who is closer to death?

  On page 21, Isabel describes her first crush, a boy she and Maura fought over in seventh grade, until they decided they hated him more than each other. What was your first romance like?

  Isabel’s friends make plans to go skiing and don’t include her. Isabel doesn’t feel bad about it, however. Should the girls have made plans that would have been difficult for her to enjoy? Is this typical of friend dynamics in your circle?

  On page 74, the girls discuss their experiences with breaking up. What are your experiences with ending a romance?

  Isabel and her dad do not “do” holidays. Why do you think this is? Do mothers have a greater capacity for creating memories and traditions? What traditions from your childhood will you carry on into adulthood?

  Do you think people from the same religious or cultural background have better relationships? What are the advantages or disadvantages of dating someone much like yourself?

  Isabel thinks her illness has made her “a mean, angry, worse person.” Do you agree? Why or why not?

  Isabel is worried that she is faking her illness because she was always fascinated with illness as a child. Sasha says she must have always felt it deep inside, like one feels their religion deep inside. Whom do you agree with? Why?

  At the beginning of their romance, Isabel is worried that dating Sasha could mess up their friendship. What are your experiences with dating a friend?

  The New Year’s Eve party at Sasha’s is a sleepover. Does your crowd do coed sleepovers? Is everyone appropriate? How would your parents react?

  When Sasha and Isabel have an argument and Sasha says he will change for her, Isabel is frightened because she senses she has too much power in their relationship. Has that happened to you? Is equality in a relationship possible?

  Isabel fears that she can’t be happy without a tragedy happening. Is this because of her illness or is it just her personality? Do you know people who are afraid to be happy?

  The girls discuss being gay and whether it is nature vs. nurture. What are your thoughts?

  Were you satisfied with the way Isabel left things with her mother? Did you think she should have called her mom? How could the author have changed this part?

  Each of Isabel’s questions for her column would be interesting to go through with your group. Here’s one that seems especially relevant: Why are you the way you are?

  About the Author

  Hannah Moskowitz is the author of more than a dozen works for children and young adults, including Break, A History of Glitter and Blood, and the 2013 Stonewall Honor Book Gone, Gone, Gone. After a stint in New York, she’s happily back in Maryland. She has ankylosing spondylitis, and she’s doing fine.

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