“She’s sedated,” he says. “But you can go in and see her.”
It’s a different world behind the doors. People walk around in scrubs with charts. Nurses laugh as they chat over coffee. So many doors open to rooms with so many people lying in beds hooked to machines. I stare down the giggling nurses. Nothing feels funny back here.
“It doesn’t feel real, does it?” he asks.
I shake my head and look at Kerry. He sounds like he’s talking from experience. His eyes search mine and, for a moment, I see what I can’t believe I’ve never seen before—first Madison and now Kerry. He is broken, too.
When we both seem to acknowledge the moment, he says, “My brother, Charlie, was a total attention hog. He would do anything to make you notice him. I think that’s why he loved being on stage. He was the best actor in our high school.” Kerry rubs the back of his neck. “Later, I realized what he really loved was escaping reality.”
“Was?” I ask, noting his use of past tense.
“Charlie hung himself my sophomore year of college. He was seventeen.”
“Oh my God.”
Kerry leans back against the white hospital wall and glances down at me. “Charlie was complicated and he drove me crazy sometimes.” Kerry shakes his head. “Everything changed for me when Charlie died, and I knew what I was meant to do. I was already majoring in psychology. It just fit. I needed to save teenagers like him from making the biggest mistake of their lives.”
“So you founded the camp.” I sit back against the wall next to Kerry.
“If I could reverse time, I would tell Charlie that he’s not alone. I would tell him that even though he felt lost, if he just waited and didn’t give up, he would have found himself.” Kerry looks down at his open palms. “But he left me. And I never got the chance to say it.” He shrugs and smiles. “He would have loved Camp Padua.”
Kerry seems to shake off the moment between us. He stands up straight, becoming the leader I’ve seen him as all summer. He points to a room number. “Cassie’s in two seventy-one. You’ve got five minutes.”
I nod. I’d take one second if that was all he offered.
He places a hand on my shoulder before I walk through the door. “You’re a good friend, Zander. You saved her life.”
I choke on the lump in my throat.
“You’re a good brother, too. I guess we all have our crazy.”
Kerry gives me a half-hearted smile. “Thank you.”
I walk into Cassie’s hospital room. The electric machines hum, one counting Cassie’s heartbeat to an even rhythm. Another measures her oxygen intake. Even the computer hums.
I used to love these sounds. It meant life was still in my house. That Molly was still with me. I hate them now as I walk closer to Cassie. Today, they mean death.
I pull one of the doctors’ spinning chairs over to the side of her bed, next to her cuffed-down arms. I touch them. Cuffs won’t prevent her from hurting herself. They only prevent that for now.
I touch Cassie’s warm skin and wrap my entire hand around hers, feeling her pulse. It beats under my thumb.
She’s alive.
I bend my head down to the bed, like I’m bowing my head to pray. Like she’s my own personal saint and I need her for help. Only her.
“Please forgive me,” I say to Cassie. “Because I need you. I thought it was the other way around, but I was wrong. I need you.” I say it over and over again until Kerry knocks on the door and tells me my time is up. “And Grover needs you, too. And Bek. We all need you.”
“Time’s up.” Kerry leads me out of the room. He takes me back to the other side of the hospital. “And now, I think you need to head back to camp.”
I pull back from his grip. “I’m not going. Not without her.” Kerry looks tired, shadows circling under his eyes. “If it was your brother, would you have left him?” I ask. It’s low, I know, but it’s all I’ve got.
“Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up. He walks away and down the hall. I return to the seat that I’ve been parked in for hours. Cassie’s sweatshirt hangs over the back. I swing my legs over the side of the chair and rest. My eyelids start to pull downward, but I force them open. I nuzzle into the chair, covering myself in Cassie’s sweatshirt, and imagine what Kerry looked like as a young person and what Charlie may have looked like. I start to cry for me and for Kerry. And before my cheeks can dry, I’m asleep.
I wake up to Kerry’s voice. For a moment, I forget where I am, but as my eyes open and the white of the walls and the cups of coffee still sitting on the table come into view, it all comes rushing back.
I sit up quickly, my back sore from pressing into the wooden armrest while I slept. Kerry stands in the corner of the room, talking to a police officer.
“She has no family,” the cop says, pointing down at the folder in his hands.
“Isn’t there another option?” Kerry asks.
The cop shakes his head.
“What about her aunt?” I blurt out. They both look at me.
“Zander . . .” Kerry starts to say, but I cut him off.
“Cassie got a letter from her aunt. I heard her say it.” My face feels tight from all the tears that have dried there, like my skin is dehydrated. I’ve lost all the water in my body.
Kerry dismisses the cop and comes to sit next to me. “Cassie doesn’t have an aunt, Zander.”
“But she said she got a letter from her Aunt Chey.”
“Cassie got a letter from the foster woman she lives with named Cheyenne,” Kerry says. “Her school in Detroit informed me about it just yesterday.”
“Her school in Detroit?”
“Cassie comes to Camp Padua on a scholarship for kids who can’t afford to come to camp but who would benefit from it. Her school contacted me about it a few years back in hopes it might help her.”
“What?”
“Apparently, her foster parent, Cheyenne, can’t handle Cassie anymore and she’s sending her back,” Kerry says.
“Sending her back where?” I ask. My throat feels like it might close. Tears break from my eyes even though I didn’t think there was any water left in me. The world I thought spun in even circles is tilting on me. “Where are they sending her, Kerry?”
“To a group home for girls.”
“No!” I yell, gathering the attention of the police officer. “She’ll die there!”
Kerry looks around the hall and quiets me. “Zander, Cassie’s been in ten different homes over the past ten years. Not one has been able to keep her.”
“So people just give up on her? They just put her back into a broken system for broken people?”
“It’s her best option.”
“That’s not an option.” I point at Kerry. “That will kill her.”
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“But you said we could all be found. You said that.” I wipe tears from my cheeks. “I’ve been praying to Saint Anthony all summer. And now you’re taking it back? That’s what you’re doing to her. Cassie will be lost forever. You said you wanted to save kids like Charlie, but you’re killing her!”
I don’t wait for Kerry to defend himself. I run down the hallway toward the exit sign, unable to be in this hospital a moment longer. I can’t be in these concrete white walls with machines that keep people alive. This isn’t living.
I burst through the hospital doors and into a parking lot. Cars buzz by on the street. Everything around me is concrete. I don’t want concrete. I want camp. I want mosquitoes and trees and the sound of the water lapping on the beach of Lake Kimball. I want to hear Cassie make fun of Hannah. I want Bek to lie to me. I want Grover to kiss me and make this all go away. I want reality to just go the hell away.
I squeeze my arms around my chest as tight as I can. My breath comes in ragged pulls from the top of my lungs. The air is thick with smog and dirt and burned-out everyday life.
I scan the space around the hospital and find a tree. One lone green, leafy, alive tree in a se
a of gray. I run toward it like it’s my only way to survive.
When I’m in its shade, I fall down to my knees. The tree’s full branches block the sun, and I curl up in the dirt. I pick a leaf off the ground and press it to my nose. It doesn’t smell like the leaves do at Camp Padua. I ball it up in my fist and it crunches and breaks too easily.
Nothing that lives stays whole.
Everything eventually breaks.
After a while, I force myself up off the ground. Even in the shade, the sun hurts my eyes. I walk around the block, my feet dragging along the cement. I feel helpless and I hate it.
But when I see a drugstore across the street from the hospital, my spirits pick up. I can’t go back into the hospital, not yet, but I can do something else.
I grab a basket and cruise the aisles of the drug store, quickly filling it with everything I need. When I get up to the clerk, he looks at me,, concerned.
“You okay, miss?”
“No. I’m never okay.”
He shrugs, rings up my stuff, and asks for $15.74. I forgot things cost money out here, so I do the only thing I can think of. I tell him what happened. Every gory detail. My and Cassie’s mistakes. I tell him and the line of customers behind me. They all listen intently. When I get to the end, the clerk looks at me, shocked.
“I’m glad your friend is okay,” he says.
“Oh. She’ll never be okay. Her heart is broken now.” I shrug. “But she wasn’t okay to begin with so . . .”
The woman behind me in line hands the clerk a twenty-dollar bill and says, “Broken hearts can heal. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen it.”
“Thank you.” I smile at her and look at all the people forming a line behind me. “You know what? This has been the best group share-apy session I’ve ever had.”
CHAPTER 31
Dear Gerber Memorial Hospital,
Your beds are hard. Your sheets are starchy. And if one more person asks me to eat Jell-O, I’m going to file a lawsuit.
Kisses,
Cassie
When I round the corner on the hospital floor, Kerry lets out an exasperated sigh. “Where the hell were you?”
“I had to run an errand.” I hold up my goods.
“Jesus, Zander.”
“It’s just Zander, but thank you for the compliment. You know, you really shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
He cocks his head, seemingly not amused, and picks up the sweatshirt lying on my chair. “You left this.”
I take it from him. “I need to see her again.”
“You have to do something for me first.”
“Fine.”
“Set everything down.”
I follow his orders and place the bag and sweatshirt on a chair.
“Stand on one foot,” Kerry says. “Put your arms out at your side for balance.”
I look at him like he’s losing it, but at this point we all are a little crazy, so I follow his instructions, wobbling a little bit at first, but then I settle into a steady place.
“Whatever you do, do not put your foot down until I tell you to. If you do, you can’t see Cassie. If your foot touches the ground, you go back to camp.”
I must look like a flamingo hovering on one leg in the middle of a hospital waiting room, but I keep my back straight and breathe.
Kerry smiles at me. “I’ll be back.” He starts to walk away.
“When?” I holler at him.
“Don’t put your foot down.” He leaves me and disappears down the hall.
I take a breath and stare at the wall. After a while my lifted leg starts to ache. Then my standing leg. Then my arms. Then I start to sweat. I make my breathing even and stare harder, but eventually my whole body hurts. Gravity pushes on me like a torture device, and I shake under the pressure. But I remind myself of Cassie in her hospital bed and how I need to see her. I need to.
It feels like forever until Kerry gets back. I’ve gone numb and I’m on the brink of tears. His face curls up into a broad smile as he sips a fresh coffee. I grit my teeth and look back at the wall.
“You can put your foot down.”
The second my toes touch the ground, I collapse.
Kerry sits down in a chair and pats the seat next to him. I crawl over to him on my hands and knees.
“Perseverance is one of the final things we talk about at camp. It’s an important life skill.”
“Okay.” I shake out my legs.
He squares his shoulders to me. “Charlie didn’t think he had it in him. And he cut his life short before he could find out that he did.” Kerry points to my legs. “Even when it hurts. Even when it feels like we can’t go on. You need to make sure Cassie knows that. It might hurt like hell for her, but she can do it. And she’ll listen to you.”
Kerry goes back to the nurses’ station then, and a few minutes later I get led back to Cassie’s room. Finally.
I settle into the doctor’s chair once again, setting the bag and sweatshirt on her bed. The nurse closes the door so that only a crack is left open. I sigh, relieved to be alone with my friend.
Her eyes are still closed and the machines are beeping, but I block it out. I take out the bottle of nail polish remover from the drugstore bag and a few cotton balls. I pick up Cassie’s hand and inspect it. Just as I suspected, little bits of cracked, broken polish speckle her nails.
I take each finger and gently rub it down with a soaked cotton ball until all of the polish is gone. The slate is wiped clean.
I move to the other side of the bed and do her other hand. The nail polish remover smell covers up the death smell that seeps in through the crack in the door. I take the purple polish that I’ve chosen for Cassie out of the bag and, slowly, I paint her nails. I make sure to stay inside the lines. When I slip, I wipe it clean and start again.
I blow on them when I’m done, pulling in my breath and giving it back to her. Then I drape my sweatshirt over Cassie’s small body and sit back in the seat next to her.
No one comes to get me, so I just sit. I rest my head down on the bed and just breathe with the ticking machines in the room.
At one point, I fall asleep. It’s brief, and I wake up startled when Cassie’s bed moves.
“Why does it smell like an Asian beauty salon in here?” she says, her voice raspy.
I stand up and move closer to make sure I’m not imagining her talking.
“Say something else,” I say.
“Bek said I was going to hell, but this looks like a hospital.” I laugh and launch myself on top of her. Cassie winces from pain.
“Sorry.” I pull back. Reality seems to hit Cassie slowly. She pulls up on the restraints holding down her hands.
“What happened?” Cassie’s face has turned sullen.
“I’ll let the doctors tell you.” I touch her arm.
“You brought my sweatshirt,” she says. I smile when she takes back ownership of it and nod. “And you painted my nails?”
“You needed a fresh coat.”
Cassie looks down at her hands. “I already messed one up.”
I shrug as the doctors come into the room. “It was bound to happen. Nothing stays perfect forever. And I like it better that way.”
“You’re not going to leave me, Z, are you?”
I shake my head. “No, Cassie. I won’t leave you. But you have to promise you won’t leave me either.”
Cassie looks up at the popcorn ceiling and nods slowly.
I pull a box of Lemonheads out of the bag and place it in her hand. “Take one in case of emergency.”
Cassie looks back at me. A tear rolls down her cheek. “Thanks, Z.”
CHAPTER 32
Dear Budget Airline,
I am writing this letter to inform you of my disappointment. I have not flown in many years and I must say, I was appalled at my experience with your airline. The lack of respect and basic humanity exhibited by your staff was atrocious. When I say I need to be somewhere, I need to be somewhere. You may be willing t
o delay a plane, but life cannot be delayed. It cannot.
Please excuse my tone. If you have children, you will understand.
Sincerely,
Nina Osborne
That night, I sleep in the chair and then move to the floor. A TV plays CNN news coverage over my head all night. Kerry stops trying to insist I go back to camp. Instead, he brings me a blanket from one of the nurses. He stays, too, sleeping in a chair with his arms folded over his chest and legs extended out.
In the morning, it takes a minute for me to remember where I am. Then I think I’m seeing a mirage—a long, beautiful, gangly mirage with a fat, squat, round one standing next to him.
I sit up straight as Grover walks over and kneels down next to me.
“I love watching you wake up.”
I throw my arms around him and knock him over. Grover doesn’t pull back because we’re in public; he holds me tighter. He holds me the tightest he ever has.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers in my ear. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t watching her.”
I ignore his words and press myself to him. I put my nose into his chest and breathe in. Grover smells like camp.
“I knew it,” Kerry groans as he wakes up in his chair. When Grover puts up his finger to say something, Kerry stops him. “Save it. It’s early and you’re off camp property.”
“Well, in that case . . .” Grover leans in and kisses me. The kiss is quick and light, but enough to wake me up more than the three cups of coffee I had yesterday.
Bek plops down in one of the waiting room seats. “Mon amour. Comment va-t-elle?”
“She’s okay,” I tell him. “Well, not okay, but okay for now.”
“Bek got Madison to bring us here,” Grover whispers to me. “He went on a hunger strike.”
“Bek refused food?”
Grover nods. “He said he was lovesick, which according to Bek causes pain, nausea, occasional vomiting, and a lawsuit brought on by his dad, who’s the mayor of Toronto. And then he demanded we get taken to the hospital to find a cure. Madison conceded and said it must have taken a lot of perseverance for a kid like Bek to refuse food.”
The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland Page 20
