The Someday Suitcase

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “That’s right,” Dr. Belinda Denn says.

  I think about my notebook. I wrote autoimmune disorder and Danny’s grandfather in it on my hypothesis page after he told me about it before. I scribbled a whole bunch of question marks and looked up what autoimmune meant. I’m a good memorizer—Ms. Mendez says famous scientists often have minds that remember facts well—and I recall it meant that the body was hurting itself.

  I shiver.

  “What Danny has is called common variable immune deficiency. CVID. It’s an immune deficiency that in Danny’s case has left him vulnerable to other problems, like autoimmune manifestations and some complicated infections, lung disease, and anemia.” I write all the words down in a new notebook now that Dr. Denn has mine, but the words are long and unfamiliar and frightening. “We believe your grandfather had something similar. We’ve seen many different kinds of autoimmune diseases here at the clinic.”

  Something in Danny relaxes. I don’t feel any better, but I guess Danny does.

  “It has a name,” he sighs, like that’s the only reason we came here. To name this thing that’s eating him up. I want more than a name. I want to fix it.

  “What about me?” I ask.

  Dr. Belinda Denn smiles.

  “You are perfectly healthy, Clover,” she says.

  “Well, right,” I say, scooting a little closer to Danny. “But how am I fixing him?”

  Dr. Belinda Denn smooths her already smooth hair.

  “I know this is hard to understand,” she says, “but not everything has an easy explanation. I think it has something to do with love and something to do with comfort and something to do with . . . well . . . I don’t know the word for it, but the unexplained. Here at the Somerset Clinic, we try to look at people as whole people, not just little hurting parts of them. And you are two people with something very special and unexplained between you.”

  “The unexplained?” I ask. The Somerset Clinic is supposed to be a place for science and answers. It’s supposed to be the place where they give Danny’s illness a name and find him a cure. A real cure that isn’t me. Danny scoots closer to me, but there’s barely room between us to begin with.

  Dr. Belinda Denn lowers her voice. “You’ve done wonderful, wonderful work in helping us figure out what’s wrong with Danny, Clover. Your notes were instrumental in giving us all this information. But we’re still figuring it out too. And some things can’t be figured out so easily. So yes. What you have for Danny is beautiful and love-filled and special and a little scary. And unexplained.”

  Dr. Belinda Denn moves on to talk about treatments that they will try here at the clinic, like infusing his blood with healthy things and treating his other infections with antibiotics and steroids and some experimental treatments that I write down as best I can.

  “We’re going to do everything we can,” Dr. Belinda Denn says. “But some of Danny’s secondary issues are quite serious. His lungs and some of his organs aren’t—in the place we want them to be.”

  I try to unhear the last thing she said.

  I focus on the unexplained, the special, impossible, powerful thing between us.

  Magic, I think, and I’m positive I can feel it shimmering and glittering and fluttering inside me. Magic. I hold on to it as tightly as I can.

  29

  Danny and I wait for it to snow the next morning.

  We don’t talk about CVID or what it means that they don’t know how to fix it. We don’t talk about how much worse he’s feeling every day. Every hour. We don’t talk about his grandfather or anything in my notebook.

  We wait.

  We are waiting for a lot of things: answers, healing, my dad to come back, another doctor’s appointment for Danny, a time when we won’t have to be within one foot of each other for Danny to be okay.

  But right now, we are mostly waiting for snow.

  We sit on the front porch of the clinic. There’s a swing there, a wooden one that squeaks when it goes back and groans when it goes forward and is just high enough that our legs don’t touch the ground when we’re in it.

  “Do you think it will happen today?” I ask.

  “The weatherman said it would,” Danny says. The weatherman’s name is Dale, and he has become our best friend here in Vermont. He wears plaid ties and has staticky hair. He pronounces the ends of his words very hard, like a door slamming, and I think this makes us trust him more.

  The air is biting, but I have no idea if that’s how it feels before it snows. I watch the mountains and wonder if they have answers. They are so tall and solid and beautiful that they must.

  “How are you feeling today?” I ask. We have thermoses of hot chocolate and bellies full of pancakes and eggs with Vermont cheddar, so I feel great, but it’s hard to tell with Danny.

  “Okay,” he says. I don’t believe him. I move closer to him. He sighs. “It’s not working as well anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s still better when you’re here. But better isn’t very good anymore.”

  His arms are even skinnier than usual, which is really saying something. Even his chin looks skinny. His throat. His nose. They have been filling us up with delicious food and hot drinks and covering us in the softest blankets. Those things fix me, they make me feel better. But they’re not fixing what’s wrong with Danny.

  “They’re going to figure it out,” I say.

  Danny shrugs.

  “You’re not the cure,” he says at last, looking out at the not-snow.

  “But I am!” I say. “That’s what they said! They said they agree with me!”

  “No,” Danny says. “I’m getting sicker anyway.” He takes this breath, this huge, huge breath, that’s so big it feels like it might not even leave any air for the rest of us. “It’s okay, Clover.”

  “It’s not okay!” I say. “I’m not trying hard enough! I keep getting tired, but if I try harder, the magic will work and you’ll be fine!” I’m crying, and I didn’t even realize it. I don’t know when it started, and I especially don’t know when it will stop.

  “Our friendship is so powerful it helped make me feel better. That’s—I mean, how great is that? We have a magical friendship.” Danny isn’t crying. He actually looks okay, a fact I can’t believe.

  “Love with a twist,” I say like a mantra.

  Danny gives me a Danny smile. “They showed me other cases of people with CVID who got diagnosed here. And none of those people had someone like you. I’m so lucky, Clo. I get this terrible, mysterious, awful illness, but I’m still so lucky.”

  “How is that lucky?” I ask. The tears won’t stop coming.

  “You’re what makes it lucky. I got a magical elixir in the form of my best friend. I got to realize how special you are and how huge our friendship is. I got to come on an adventure with you. I don’t know. Now we’re going to see snow. That’s . . . that’s everything I could want.”

  “But the snow’s not even coming,” I say through sniffs and sobs. “I’m supposed to be fixing you. We’re supposed to have our perfect symbiosis!”

  Danny laughs.

  It is unexpected and true.

  “You can’t fix this, Clover,” he says. “You’re going to make such a good scientist. You really are. But Ms. Mendez says being a good scientist isn’t about trying to change the world, it’s about trying to understand the world.”

  I didn’t know Danny ever listened in science class.

  He rubs my shoulder, comforting me. It’s been a while since it’s been Danny comforting me, not the other way around, and I lean into his hand. I let him comfort me and I hang on to the way it feels.

  “It’ll come,” Danny says, cool as a cucumber, sipping the world’s most perfect hot chocolate on the world’s squeakiest porch swing. “The snow will come.”

  It doesn’t come. We don’t move. I try to let go of all the worry and focus on the cold and the wet air. I imagine my worry as
a heavy rope I’ve been pulling on for months, and my arms are tired and I’m sweating and the force on the other side has gotten stronger and stronger. I imagine letting go. I imagine my arms relaxing and finally being able to rest, no longer pulling so hard on that worry rope day after day after day.

  I do it. Sort of. I let go. As much as I can.

  Eventually Danny says, “Remember that day at the aquarium?”

  I nod. Tears are frozen on my cheeks from earlier. I can feel them stuck there. I should add that day to my list of perfect days too.

  “That was a great day,” Danny says. “I thought you were so lame for liking science. And symbiosis. And then I saw it. We’re like those fish.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “And if something happens to you, I can’t survive. Like the fish.”

  “Even if something happened to me,” Danny says, finally, finally looking right at me and not at the place where snow should be, “the love stays forever. Love is what makes us symbiotic. And that’s never going anywhere. Even if something happens to me. Okay? You hear me?”

  “The love remains,” I say, trying to sound as calm and okay as Danny. Maybe he’s right. Rachel says magic comes and goes, and mine is getting weaker, but love is always there. If magic is love with a twist, and the magic goes . . .

  Love remains.

  30

  It doesn’t snow, but everyone is bundled up at the clinic and there’s a fire in the fireplace in the lounge and Danny and I play checkers and don’t have to get any blood drawn. We haven’t spent much time in the lounge, but other patients are here all the time, in flannel robes and thick sweaters and handmade scarves. We say hi to a few of them.

  There’s one woman in long pajamas and a woolly striped scarf and super-soft slippers who introduces herself to us. Her name is Isabelle. Isabelle introduces us to Glen, who wears a huge sweatshirt three sizes too big and a smile that’s a few sizes too big for his face, too.

  “Best friends,” Isabelle says. Danny and I are on the cozy gray carpet in front of the fireplace, and Isabelle and Glen flank us on either side in checkered armchairs. I can tell they’ve been at the clinic a long time.

  “Us?” I ask.

  “Of course you!” Glen says. “Look at you! The best of friends. Clearly.”

  “True,” I say.

  “Only when she’s not annoying me,” Danny says, and I love him a little more than the second before, because Danny will tease me anytime, anywhere.

  “He’s the annoying one,” I say.

  “They sounds like us sixty years ago,” Glen says.

  “They sure do,” Isabelle says.

  “You guys are best friends too?” I ask. Checkers is boring and I like the way the fire sounds when it crackles and the warmth on my cheek that is facing it. This is exactly what I thought of when I thought of Vermont, except with snow. If this were a snow globe, we’d be in a tiny cottage lit up from inside with orange light, and with enough shaking we’d be in a glittery snowstorm.

  But it’s not a snow globe, so it’s gray and still outside the huge picture windows.

  “Lifetime best friends,” Glen says, leaning back in his armchair. I can hear his bones crack. “And married.”

  “Ew,” Danny says. “That would never happen with us.”

  “Never,” I say with a grin.

  Glen and Isabelle laugh.

  “What are you two in for?” Isabelle asks.

  “Common variable immune deficiency,” Danny says, but he sounds a little proud. He’s happy it finally has a name, even if the name is a scary one.

  “Impressive,” Isabelle says. “They haven’t quite figured us out yet. Magical place, huh?”

  Danny and I exchange a look and nod.

  Then Danny coughs and his face goes white.

  The cough makes my heart hurt and my eyes water. I touch his knee, and the cough relaxes a little but doesn’t stop. A week ago it would have been all gone. His cheeks get rosy again, right away, like little stoplights lighting up out of nowhere.

  “Well, look at that,” Glen says. “You see that, Isabelle?”

  “I sure did,” Isabelle says. She shakes her head like she can’t believe it. “I’ve never seen something so beautiful in all my years.”

  I guess she’s talking about me and Danny and the magic between us. I didn’t know how visible it had become, how powerful and obvious. I blush. Danny blushes.

  “Never seen anything like it,” Glen says.

  “Guess you’ve never been to the aquarium,” Danny says. I keep my hand on his knee and laugh. He laughs too—a big, boisterous laugh with only a few little coughs in between.

  It feels good.

  I wish his cough would stop.

  I wish it would snow.

  The fire keeps crackling.

  31

  Danny and I go to sleep in our twin beds. Right before I fall asleep, he whispers, “Dale said it’s going to snow late tonight. Let’s stay up.”

  “I’m so tired. And Dale is always wrong about snow,” I say. I waited all day today for snow and nothing happened. Now I’m sleepy from the fire and the cold and the promise of more tests and research and reading tomorrow. They found out that not only did Danny’s grandfather have CVID, but his great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother did too.

  “A fascinating and unusual family disease,” a doctor who was not Dr. Belinda Denn said.

  “I wish your CVID didn’t have so many complications, Danny,” Dr. Belinda Denn said. She looked worried.

  All that talk about Danny’s illness wore me out. I can’t wait for snow that won’t ever come. I’m already half dreaming about Jake and me traveling down a river on an alligator and Elsa singing Christmas carols.

  “I’m staying up,” Danny whispers. His bed is close to the window, so he doesn’t have to go anywhere. He seems to be feeling okay, with my bed one foot away and both of us breathing the same chilly air.

  “Clover?” Danny says, interrupting my dream beginnings.

  “Mmmm?”

  “Dr. Belinda Denn admitted you’re magical today. I wasn’t going to tell you. I don’t want you getting a big head. But she said she couldn’t think of another explanation. She said it when no one else was around. But she said it. Pretty cool, right?”

  I smile in my sleep.

  A real live doctor said magic is real. My magic is real.

  “Pretty cool, Danny,” I mumble, and my dream shifts into a Sunday cookout with Danny and our families and Jake all dressed up in a tux, tap dancing.

  “Clover?” I shift. I hate waking up. “Clover?” My eyes hurt and I don’t want to open them. My head is fuzzy and heavy. “Clover, you have to get up.”

  My dad’s voice is thick and strange and all wrong because Dad isn’t the one sharing this room with me, Danny is.

  “You’re here?” I ask, trying to understand the awake world while I leave the dream one behind. It’s cold. I pull up my quilt.

  “I’m here,” Dad says. “I got back late. It’s still late.”

  I look around. It’s dark.

  Danny’s not here.

  Danny’s not here, next to me.

  “Where’s Danny???” I say, popping up in bed, fully awake. Dad puts one of his big hands on my shoulder. It’s something I’ve been doing to Danny a lot, something he’s been doing to me, too. We’ve been grabbing each other, trying to suck as much magic as possible out of each moment.

  This is different.

  There’s no magic between Dad and me.

  “Where is he???” I ask again. There’s lightning and thunder in my chest, and I’m so dizzy I don’t think I can stand up.

  “Clover,” Dad says, and I hate the way he says my name. Like he’s sorry.

  “WHERE?”

  “He’s gone, honey.” Dad clears his throat. I don’t understand. I do, but I don’t.

  “Gone where?”

  Dad rubs his own eyes and looks out the window. I wonder if it snowed.

  Then I don’t c
are.

  I grip the edge of my bed, but it doesn’t help anything. Dad takes my other shoulder so he’s holding both sides of me. His face is all wrong.

  “Danny died,” he says.

  It is the most anything has ever hurt. More than a sunburn or stubbed toe or being called ugly by mean neighborhood boys or getting food poisoning from one of my mom’s meals or Jake pinching me or biting me or slapping me across the middle.

  And with the hurt there’s confusion. It doesn’t make sense, like a sentence with a missing noun. The whole world is a sentence with a missing noun.

  But mostly there’s hurt.

  “Noooooo,” someone wails, and I guess that someone is me.

  “I’m so sorry, Clover. I’m so, so sorry,” Dad says, but the words don’t mean anything at all. I look around the room like it’s a joke, like Danny’s here. He isn’t.

  “I was right here! How could he? When I was HERE? I was fixing him! Dad, no. NO.” My hands are shaking and my heart and voice too. All of me.

  “He snuck outside,” Dad says. “It snowed a little and he wanted to see. And he did see. Glen and Isabelle, two of the patients, saw him. They watched the snow fall with him.”

  “Why would he do that? He knew he needed me. I would have gotten up. I would have held his hand and watched the snow with him! I would have done anything!” I’m crying so hard now that I can barely breathe, so Dad rubs my back and doesn’t answer my questions. He says shh, shh, shh like an ocean, and I try to get lost in the sound because everything else is unbearable.

  “He wasn’t getting better, honey,” Dad says. “He knew he wasn’t getting better. That’s what he whispered to me. He told me he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He knew he was too sick. But he wanted to have a last adventure with you. He knew, Clover. He knew it was time to let go.”

  He told me to let go too, and I did. He told me to let go of that rope of worry and I tried to do just that, but I didn’t know what he meant.

  Or I did know, but I couldn’t hear it quite right. I pretended not to know.

  I shake my head and bury it under the blankets and try to find a world under there where Danny’s fine and it’s six months ago and none of this has happened and everything’s okay.