by James, Ella
I reach the river as the sun sets, pinkening the sky over the pine trees. The black cat joins me. When I start to feel ill and I know I need to move, she follows me back to my car and twines her sleek body around my legs.
“And if we catch her and we have to put her down instead?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“It makes you sad to think about putting down a feral cat you’ve never even met?”
“I think pain should be reserved for something painful…”
I scoop Helen up and take her with me. I don’t know where I’m going until I realize I’m in Lora’s parking lot.
‘I’m here. Coming up,’ I text her as I look up at the third story.
I carry Helen up the stairs and knock and ring the bell. Lora’s not home, but there’s a spare key underneath the frog statue sitting by her mat. I take Helen straight to the kitchen, where I serve her water and a bowl of ham.
Then I pull a wicker chair out from the breakfast table and sit down.
Tired. I feel so—
Don’t.
I pull my phone out of the pocket of the jeans I got from the overnight bag in my car, and turn the screen face down so I can’t see the texts or missed calls.
Denial burns inside me, prickly, unsettling. I stand up and start to organize the counter. Toothpicks, Lora? Three boxes of toothpicks? I move two dirty plates, a vase of crumpled roses, and a sheer pink blouse, then spray the grimy counter down with a bleach-based cleaner.
The air in Lora’s house is cinnamon-vanilla. It feels heavy, like the pressure of the water on a scuba dive, which I did once and hated.
I’m wiping the counter slowly, letting the bleach fill up my head, when my hand bumps into a stack of mail partially obscured by the toaster oven. The thing on top is from the power company. It’s marked urgent.
“Lora, Lora…” I tear the bill open and mount it on the refrigerator with a magnet. I wipe the counter two more times and then thumb through the rest of Lora’s mail. This girl makes me look organized. Probably because she has so much money. What’s a late fee? I thumb through her other bills but don’t see any that look urgent enough to justify my opening them. I’m setting the envelopes in a seashell-shaped pewter bowl beside her paper towel holder when a small, white square slips from the bottom of the stack. It flutters to my feet. I bend to scoop it up and...it’s addressed to me?
I blink down at my dorm room address, and something starts to buzz inside my head.
I set the post card down. The post card with the campus scene. I turn around to face the throughway between living room and kitchen, leaning my back against the countertop. I touch my throat, which stings, as if I swallowed a chicken bone.
I turn back around, compelled, and as my hands grab for the post card—
Thwack!
I whirl toward the breakfast table. My phone has fallen to the floor. Vibrating. I step over to it. Face-down, so I can’t see who’s calling…
Dr. Marlowe’s voice echoes. “A relapse after three years… hasn’t sought treatment… team waiting for him in New York…”
I scoop the phone up, see the number, answer. “It’s Cleo.”
Desperate. Desperate. Desperately, I clutch the phone. I sink into a wicker chair. My mind cranks like an airplane: spinning slowly, faster faster…
Cindy. Be The Match. The international bone marrow registry.
My fingers tremble on my iPhone as she lets me know my blood arrived and has been tested. I am a match. She starts to tell me things I know from last time. I stand up. Circle the kitchen. I step over to the counter, frame the post card with my fingers.
I blink and stroke the glossy cover of my post card as she talks.
My brain…I must be tired. I feel wound up. Like things are connected when they aren’t connected. Like I’m about to cry, or barf. I look over my shoulder. Where is Lora? Is it chapter night? What day is it?
I’m going to pass out.
Just turn the fucking post card over.
I feel strong resistance to the idea. Cindy’s voice is driving me insane. She prattles on. My heart swells like a balloon behind my ribs. It takes up all the space. With a flick of my wrist, I turn the post card over. Read the time stamp: September 19, 2014. So…today.
I blink several times, and scan the text. It blurs as pressure builds behind my eyes.
“Cindy?”
She takes my interruption as a sign that she should wind things down. “So to proceed, we’ll need a commitment. Verbal and—”
“Cindy?” A tear falls onto the card.
“Miss Whatley?”
I swallow, but my voice is still a rasp. “I have a question.”
“Sure,” she says indulgently.
My heart hammers. I swallow, but it doesn’t help me breathe. Again, the chicken bone. “Can you tell me…when did R. die? What day?”
My chest is on fire. My head on fire. I lean against the table as my hand mangles the card.
“If you really want to know, I guess it couldn’t hurt. Just one moment, Autumn, okay?” I can hear her fingers clicking on a keyboard.
“Cleo.”
“Cleo? Okay, Cleo. I’ll be back in just a moment.”
My chest rises… My head spins.
“Sloth,” he says. “Is that a nickname?”
* * *
“Chicken pizza? Are you kidding me?”
“What can I say?” He smiles. “Chicken? Pizza? It works. You agree?”
* * *
“I think we might be soul mates.”
“What makes you think so?”
“You just played a song I really like, one I usually play when I’m coming here. But other things too,” I add.
“What things?”
“Like how … you made me drink the Snow Queen. My friend used to always say to drink before I come here.”
“Anything else?”
“I just…feel weird about you. Good weird. Like I know you, even though I know I really don’t.”
I hear a click. “Okay, Cleo.” Cindy’s voice is clear and crisp.
I close my eyes. I mouth the date. I mouth the words, because I know before she tells me. All this time I didn’t know and I know now. I know.
“It was in September. September 18, 2011. That’s the date, according to the charts.”
I hold my breath as Lora’s kitchen slowly tilts.
“I’m sorry, Cleo.”
I jump up. I’m sorry. So fucking sorry. I look down at the crumpled post-card. Then I dash into the living room, where I hung my purse on the front door knob.
Cindy’s voice pipes up: solemn, concerned. “I hope this doesn’t make you feel…”
Her voice is static. I pull the check out of an inside pocket, fingers shaking.
No surprise. It’s no surprise now. Now I know.
It’s R.’s handwriting. Kellan’s check.
R. and Kellan. Kellan, R.
Lyon. Robert. Robert Lyon?
Lyon is the real R., and Kellan was his stand-in. Writing after his brother was dead to thank me for giving bone marrow to Lyon.
I murmur a goodbye to Cindy. Then I dash to Lora’s sink and vomit.
Chapter Eight
Cleo
September 20, 2014
I walk the hallways of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for hours, blank and brainless, carting all my bags. And I decide he didn’t know. Kellan never sought me out at Chattahoochee College. He didn’t know about our strange connection until I said “sloth” on the balcony that day.
This is the universe’s setup. God’s joke. It’s so insane that, as I wash my hands outside his room on the bone marrow transplant floor, I question whether he’ll really be in there.
This seems like a dream. One big, bad dream.
I keep seeing him on that pebble path behind Taylor Hall, walking with me in between the shrubs. The way his hair glowed in the sun that day. The way he smirked. I remember he was dressed up f
or a trustee meeting. I remember his wide shoulders, his muscular thighs…
“Why would you want to write and sell a book?”
“Maybe I was thinking of writing my memoir.”
Kellan doesn’t need a memoir. Nothing’s wrong with him. I want to believe it so badly, I could almost convince myself. So I resent the nurse beside me, telling me about the unit’s rules. Arethea, her name is, and she’s pretty. She’s got brown hair, brown eyes, and this soft voice, with a lovely accent I can’t place.
So it’s strange that I kind of want to throttle her. Doesn’t she know all this is bullshit? I would never let Kellan have cancer. I wouldn’t let him die. He’s perfect Kellan. He’s mine.
You know Manning texted me? That girl is not his fucking girlfriend. She was Lyon’s girlfriend. Now she’s in medical school at Emory, which explains why she popped up in the parking deck that day.
After she and Kellan’s Uncle Pace showed up at Kellan’s house—an intervention, where they begged him to seek treatment—Manning said Kellan was worried I’d find out. He wanted me to go away. He wanted to protect me. So he made up the bit about the pregnant girlfriend.
“Cleo? Your hands seem clean to me,” Arethea says kindly. I look over my shoulder at her and find her face is tranquil. Kind and patient. Maybe even sympathetic. Something in me recoils.
“You want to go inside?” she asks, passing a paper towel. “I think he’s sleeping.”
It’s horrible, the stepping through the door. With every cell I have, I protest. My stomach twists into a knot. My forehead sweats. My heart hammers so hard I barely notice my surroundings: teeny tiny hallway, widening into a larger room with blue walls.
He’s not in here. He’s not! I would believe that if I could. If I didn’t want to see him so badly. But I do. I want it more intensely than I fear it.
I take soft steps down the tiny hall. I pause at the mouth of the room so I can listen to the beeping, breathe the strange, cool air. It smells like plastic, and some sort of cleaner.
“Why is Daddy in that bed? It has a rail like Olive’s baby bed.”
“He’s sleeping, honey.”
“Will he sleep forever?”
“I don’t know.”
Another long, slow step, and here I am. I blink at the wall of windows in front of me, then look left, at the TV mounted on the wall, beside an ocean print. Under the TV, there is a door. Maybe the bathroom. I suck a desperate breath back. I can feel gravity pulling harder on my body as I swing my gaze to the right.
Kellan’s bed is empty. My throat tightens as I see the sheets tucked neatly, as if it’s not been used.
He isn’t here? I knew it! That’s what my heart screams.
But I see an IV pole. With IV bags hanging from the top. I see a rolling table with a newspaper, a black thermos. Both things are right beside a recliner. The plastic-textured chair is angled toward the room’s right wall. I can see the foot-rest part is out—and something wrapped in white on it.
I walk closer. Hard to breathe.
I don’t know what I think I’ll find, but as I come to stand in front of the recliner, I’m shocked and not surprised at all to find that the white bundle is Kellan’s legs… My eyes race over him, and down and up again, taking it in. Kellan lying on his right side, bundled up in sheets. They sag down his left bicep, so I can see how bruised his shoulder is.
I blink a few times. Blurry. There are pillows propped behind his back and left side, cushioning him in this position, so all his weight is on the right side of his body. I can’t see under the sheet, but his ribs are hurt just like his shoulder. I remember from the ambulance.
I rub my palm against my lips and blink, and his swollen shoulder blurs, as if the bruising is nothing but a watercolor. I could reach my fingers out and smudge it all away…
And still, it’s easier to look there than at his face. Solemn face, closed eyes… His cheekbone and the skin around his left eye are bruised deep purple, almost black.
Anger bubbles up in me, even as I step around the chair and sink into a crouch beside the right arm. My face is level with his now. When he opens his eyes, he’ll see me.
Breathe, Cleo.
The IV lines droop from the pole and trail beside me, disappearing into the sheets pulled up to Kellan’s throat. I check him over from this angle. He’s so still… His face so pale. Why is there a patch of gauze tapped at the base of his throat.
Fuck. I suck another breath in.
I watch his eyelids, watch his mouth. I can see his pulse throb over his brow.
Wake up, baby. Look at me…
My fingers flex. I need to touch him. Stroke his messy hair. He hasn’t shaved. He looks swarthy, like a wounded pirate. Does that mean he’s too hurt to get up? I blink quickly, and a tear drops down my cheek.
His mouth tautens. It’s just a flicker of expression, there then gone, but it’s enough to make my hand reach out and grip the chair’s arm.
I lean closer to the chair and mouth his name. I don’t mean to speak, but my throat is so tight, the sound comes out.
His eyes stay closed, but he shifts his shoulders, the tiny movement just enough to make the white sheet droop. I can see his chest now. Pretty throat, his collarbone, and…shit. The sheet falls lower still, and I can see his chest. The IV lines join up at a small, white tube that’s punched into his chest, over his pec.
Fuck!
The IV tubes are threaded through his fingers, and his palm is pressed above his pec, as if he’s holding himself together.
I tip my forehead toward the chair and sit there with my head bowed, hot tears dripping out my eyes.
I’m in a knot. I want to scream.
My palm trembles over his arm. I lean a little closer, till our faces are so close I feel his breath on my cheek.
* * *
Kellan
Cleo is here. I might be dreaming, but... I think I’m not.
I smell her tea perfume. I hear her voice. I try to.
I have a fever. I can’t think because...the IV. If she’s here, then she can see me. I float up from where I’ve been and I can hear the beeps of the pulse ox machine.
Pain flashes all through me. My face, my shoulder, ribs... My hips and back.
I feel Cleo’s hand. I twitch, and I can feel the IV tubing tug. My chest is sore from where they put it in...
Regret and shame.
She knows.
I can feel her fingers in my hair. Her fingers... being nice. Making me tired. But if I fall asleep, I’ll miss her. I peek and— fuck. Cleo—right here.
I can see her see me, see her face go soft and sad. She murmurs, “Sweetheart.” Gentle fingers dance across my brow. “You’re sleepy, huh? You’ve got the good drugs going. That’s good.” She strokes my temple. My chest goes heavy with pleasure.
“I wanted to tell you, Kell...I figured out about the letters. And R. I wanted to say...I understand. It’s crazy...like, a big surprise. But I’m not upset with you or anything.” Her cool fingers, sifting through my hair. “I talked to Manning just a little. It’s amazing, what you guys are doing. You’re amazing. I came to visit, but—” Her fingers dance like fog over my skin. I feel her face come up against mine, feel the warm rub of her cheek, and I’m surprised that she would…get so close. “I’m really here because...I think I’d like to stay with you. Umm...for a while.”
I must be dreaming.
I think Cleo’s crying, even as her soft hands stroke my hair. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t know. About all this, and R. I’m sorry I’m crying. I’ll be fine. I’m just...”
I shut my eyes. I try not to feel her hands, so I won’t feel them when she goes.
I float a little. All the Dilaudid. I try to stay, though. To stay near her.
But I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see...her look at me.
“Can you look at me, baby? I just want to see your eyes.” Her voice cracks. “If I can help you over to the bed... I want to lie down with you. You seem sort o
f uncomfortable in the chair.”
My eyes drift open—I see her, close but blurry—then they sink back shut...because Dilaudid. I want her. I want to lie with her. To have her touch me, but...I’m sweaty. So messed up. The last few days...have gotten bad…with pain.
She strokes my cheek, and my throat aches with want.
“I can help you get to the bed, or even call a nurse if you want. If you don’t want to snuggle, I’ll just leave you alone. Your shoulder, the left one, is it hurting? You keep moving it.”
I do?
She kisses my hair. I feel a sob build in my throat. She’s going to go soon. Godddamn.
I sit up, gritting my teeth against the pain of my cracked ribs. I forget to hold the IV lines. They pull from where they’re threaded into my chest.
I curl over my lap, holding my throbbing head. My heart pounds hard.
“You...need to go.” My eyes roll toward her, the words slurring.
I reach back for the IV pole, and miss it.
“Hey…hang on.” She touches me. I shrink away. “Just let me put the leg-rest down, okay?”
I grit my teeth as she does, and my legs lower. My hips… I brace against the chair’s arms, grunting as I stand. I shuffle as quickly as I can to the bed, but the rail is up. I have to move a lot to lay down. Ahh. It hurts…
I feel the cold linen under my fever-warm body and curl up, shivering. I put my hand up to my face. I tell myself that anyone would go. She came, at least…
And then I feel the mattress indent. My eyes lift slowly open. Cleo’s right in front of me. She melds herself around me, so my face is near her neck.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, one arm wrapping lightly around my back. Her hand curves around the back of my head. “Just go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Chapter Nine
Cleo
