Who Do You Love

by Jennifer Weiner

  Sandra turned her head from side to side, like she was shaking water out of her ears. “We aren’t supposed to talk about other patients.” Then she smiled, to show that she hadn’t meant to hurt my feelings. She had a pretty accent—her parents had come from Cuba, so she’d learned to speak Spanish before English. Her hair was dark and shiny, her eyes were merry and brown, and she wore a sweet, flowery perfume. I’d take deep breaths whenever she was close, and try to hold the scent in my nose to overpower the smell of the hospital, floor cleaners and chicken soup and pee.

  “I hope she’ll get better. She’s my friend.” Sandra didn’t answer, but I saw her lips tighten and heard her ponytail whisk against her back as she turned her head away. That, I was learning, was how grown-ups told the truth, not with words, but with what they did. The next night after dinner, I was walking up and down the hall, the only exercise that I could do, and I saw a woman in a skirt and high heels, not scrubs and clogs, talking quietly to Alice’s parents outside of her room. I didn’t see the name on her tag, but I saw the words HOSPICE CARE. They spelled hospital wrong, I thought. Alice’s mom was pale and silent, but her father was crying, big, heaving sobs that made his shoulders shake while he covered his face with his hands. I walked away fast, pulling my IV pole behind me. I was used to mothers crying—at least, I was used to my mom doing it—but it was unsettling to see a father like that. My father was big, broad-chested, and strong. I couldn’t imagine him crying, and I didn’t know what I’d do if he ever did.

  By the fourth week, I was feeling almost completely better, but Alice was sleeping almost all of the time, and the novelty of hospital life was beginning to wear off. My mom would come every morning, bustling around, rearranging my blankets and books and stuffed animals and the get-well cards that she’d taped to the wall. She’d sit on my bed with me and watch The Price Is Right. We’d call out our bets for the Showcase Showdown, keeping track of who won. When dinner arrived at five-thirty, she’d watch me, monitoring every spoonful of soup and cracker that I ate, and if the food wasn’t something I liked, she was ready with a tote bag full of jam-and-butter sandwiches, out-of-season cherries, and Fritos (“Don’t tell Dad,” she’d whisper, passing me the bag). On Friday nights she’d make my brother, Jonah, come with her, and when they left they’d go to Shabbat services, this time to pray for me to get well. In khakis and a button-down, with a yarmulke in his pocket and clean fingernails that I knew my mom had inspected, Jonah would stand in the doorway, mouthing the words spoiled brat when my mom wasn’t looking. I didn’t mind. At least he still treated me like a normal little sister.

  After dinner was more TV, and then story time. I had a big book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales—not the Disney versions but the original stories, where Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters cut off their heels and toes to cram their feet into the glass slipper and the illustrations showed the blood. “Are you sure this won’t give you bad dreams?” my mother would ask. I shook my head, not mentioning the dream I’d had about Alice, not asking her any of the questions I had. It would upset her to have to think about a kid dying, even if it was someone else’s kid.

  Finally, the echoing loudspeakers would deliver the news that visiting hours were over. My mother would stand up and stretch, throwing her arms over her head, twisting from side to side so that her back made popping noises. She’d retuck her shirt, pull out a mirrored compact to put on more lipstick, then bare her teeth in the mirror to make sure they were clean. “Be a good girl,” she would say before she’d leave, her heels clicking briskly, the scent of Giorgio trailing behind her.

  I’d start out in Alice’s room. After dinner was a good time for her. “Sarah baked cookies,” she’d say, pointing at the tin her mom had left, or “Mike brought library books.” She called her parents by their first names, which I thought was daring and very adult. She would teach me cat’s cradles or we’d play with the Ouija board that Alice had somehow convinced Sarah and Mike to bring her. “Will I ever get married?” she’d asked it, and I’d pushed the planchette, practically shoving it into the YES corner, while Alice shook her head and said, “You’re not supposed to do that!”

  Shift change was at eight o’clock. If Alice was up to it, she and I would sit quietly on the couch by the intake desk, watching as the nurses hurried to finish their paperwork before they’d pick up their lunch bags and purses and, sometimes, use the staff bathroom to change out of their scrubs, shedding their nurse-skins, turning back into regular ladies. Once, we saw Sandra emerge in a tight black dress and high heels. She’d put on red lipstick and makeup that made her dark eyes look like deep pools. “Hot date tonight?” another nurse had said, and Sandra gave a small, pleased smile as she tucked a flat gold purse under her arm and walked toward the elevator.

  With all of the confusion—day nurses leaving, night nurses starting their shifts, different doctors arriving to visit their patients—it was the easiest thing to slip into the elevator and stand close enough to one of the nurses that people would assume she was taking me to another floor, but also near another adult so that the nurses would think I was with a parent. Alice couldn’t go, so I was her emissary, the spy she sent out into the world. “Come back and tell me a story,” Alice would say, and most nights, that’s what I would do. I’d go down to the first floor, find a child-sized wheelchair, clip my IV pole to the hook in back, and wheel myself up and down the halls, slow and steady, like the doctors told me, sometimes peeking into open doors to get a look at the scenes they revealed—an old man sleeping, the wires and IV lines attached to his body making it look like he was being attacked by an octopus; two women whispering at the foot of a bed; two interns taking advantage of an unoccupied room to kiss.

  One Wednesday night I stopped by Alice’s room, but the door was shut. I heard voices and wondered if her parents were still in there, even though visiting hours were over. A new sign was taped where the one about hand-washing and mask-­wearing had been: DNR, said the letters; DO NOT . . . and then there was a long word I couldn’t figure out, with a lot of smaller print beneath it. I didn’t see Sandra, so I stopped the first nurse who came down the hall, a skinny woman with short gray hair and a wrinkly face.

  “Excuse me, what’s that say?” I asked, tapping the big word. Her wrinkles got deeper.

  “Why are you out here wandering around? It’s bedtime.” In the harsh overhead light, I could see three silvery hairs glinting from her chin. That was a detail Alice would have loved.

  The nurse pointed down the hall. “Bedtime. You don’t want to make things harder for the doctors, do you?”

  “No, but I just want to know . . .”

  She bent down. I spotted another hair, right in the middle of her cheek. I wondered if she didn’t have mirrors in her house, or anyone to tell her that she needed some tweezers. “Sweetie, there are very sick kids here, and if the doctors or nurses need to get to their room in a hurry, you don’t want to be in their way.”

  By then I had been in hospitals long enough to know when you could get what you wanted and when it was hopeless. “Good night,” I said, smiling sweetly. Back in my room, I decided to go downstairs and see if I could find something interesting to tell Alice about once her parents were gone. I selected a package of chocolate-covered Hostess Donettes from the latest gift basket my mom had sent for the nurses. I wrapped my treats in napkins and bundled up the pink-and-purple afghan my nana had made me. Armed with provisions, the blanket, and my newest stuffed animal, a little teddy bear, I stuck my head out of my door, looked up and down the hallway to make sure that it was empty, then took the elevator down to the emergency room.

  I found a wheelchair by the entrance and waited until the receptionist was busy on the phone before wheeling myself into a corner of the waiting room. A TV was playing Dallas, and it looked like a slow night. A teenage boy was staring down at his right hand, which was wrapped in gauze, and a lady who looked like his mom sat next to him, reading Good Housekee
ping. In the next row of chairs, an old man in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and a battered brown hat was breathing heavily. Occasionally he’d suck in his breath and clutch his belly, gasping, “God-DAMN, don’t that hurt!” His wife, bundled up in a cardigan and shivering in the air-conditioning, kept repeating, “Monty, I’m sure it’s just heartburn.” On the other side of the room, a young mother and father sat with a little girl. “Why did you think putting Barbie’s shoe in your nose was a good idea?” I heard the father ask.

  I nibbled a Donette, hoping for some excitement. The night before, there’d been a car crash, and I’d seen gurneys speeding through the room, ambulance technicians running alongside them, shouting codes, calling for units of blood, just like I’d seen on TV, except one of the ambulance guys was old and fat and everything was over in ten seconds.

  Finally, the doors hissed open, and a boy about my age came in, with a woman in a skirt and a blue blazer trailing behind him. The boy was tall, with skin a few shades darker than mine and thick, curly hair that hung down almost to his collar and looked like it needed a trim. His face was pinched with pain, and he had his right arm folded against his chest, with his left arm holding it there. He and the woman went to the desk, and I overheard her say “Eight years old” to the receptionist before she said “Good luck” to the boy and then walked out the door. The receptionist pointed to an empty row of chairs and said, “Take a seat.”

  I looked at the boy. He had skinny legs and a dimple in his chin, full lips, and eyes that tilted up at the corners.

  I wheeled my chair up beside him. “Hey,” I said.

  For a minute, he didn’t answer. His eyes were wide and shocked, and he had bitten his lower lip so hard that I could see dots of blood. One of his legs was bouncing up and down, like he was nervous or he had to pee. Finally, he looked at me from the corner of his eyes.

  “What?”

  “What happened?”

  “Hurt my arm,” he muttered, and glanced down like he was checking to make sure the arm was still there. He had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a boy, thick and curled up at the tips.

  “How?”

  He paused, staring unhappily into his lap.

  “I fell,” he finally said.

  “Fell where?”

  “Off a balcony.”

  “You fell off a balcony?” I winced, imagining it. “How many floors?”

  “Just one,” he said. He was talking so quietly that it was hard to hear him. “I was balancing on the railing.”

  “Why?”

  “Circus tricks.” He got to his feet, sucking in his breath as his arm jiggled, and crossed the room to talk to the receptionist. He asked her something. She shook her head. He backed away from the desk, looking around the room before choosing the seat farthest away from me and sitting there, slumped, with his head drooping down and his foot bouncing.

  I gave a mental shrug and returned my attention to the Ewing family, hoping for something that would make a better story than a kid with a broken arm who didn’t even want to talk to me. A minute later, the receptionist called across the room. “Andrew?”

  The boy raised his head.

  “Can you think of any other place your mom might be? We haven’t been able to reach her at the hotel.”

  Andrew shook his head, and went back to staring at the floor while I stared at him. It was hard for me to believe that a kid my age could be in a hospital all alone.

  I wheeled across the room to where he was sitting. Andrew eyed me tiredly, but he didn’t tell me to leave. Instead, he said, “How come you’re here?”

  “I have a congenital heart deformity, and I had a special tube put in so the blood goes where it’s supposed to.”

  “Why are you in a wheelchair? Can’t you walk?” he asked.

  “Well, I can,” I admitted, lowering my voice. “But I get bored, and if I use a wheelchair people just think I’m supposed to be here. Did you come here in an ambulance?” I hoped he had, and that he’d tell me about it. The only time I’d ridden in one I’d been six, and I couldn’t really remember my trip. But Andrew shook his head and didn’t say anything else. I tried to figure out what else to ask him, some question he wouldn’t be able to answer with a nod or a “no.”

  “Where are your parents?” I asked.

  “It’s only my mom and I don’t know where she is.” His voice cracked on the last word, and then he started talking fast, the words tumbling out of his mouth like a spill of stones. “She was the lucky caller on Q102, and we got to come here, and go to a movie premiere and meet the stars. She said she was going down to a party by the pool for just one drink, and that I should stay in my bed and she’d be back by nine, and then it was nine and she wasn’t back and I climbed up to see if I could see her and I slipped . . .” His voice broke again, and he turned his face away, looking furious, scrubbing at his eyes with his good hand, first one and then the other, so hard that it had to sting. “Go away,” he said, and it sounded like he was still crying. “Just leave me alone.”

  Instead of leaving I looked out the window, but all I could see was the dark. No ambulances with their lights flashing, no people coming in all bloody, like the man I’d seen two nights ago who had cut his hand when he was slicing a bagel. Alice had giggled a lot when I’d told her that one, probably because, we’d decided, bagel was just a funny-sounding word.

  “I’m Rachel Blum,” I said. “It’s spelled B-L-U-M, but it’s bloom like flowers, not blum like plum.” When he didn’t smile or even look at me, I said, “I’m eight, too.”

  “I’m almost nine. I’ll be nine in two weeks,” he said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Philadelphia,” he said . . . and then, after a minute, “The lady told me I’ll probably need an X-ray.”

  “X-rays don’t hurt,” I said.

  “I know that,” he said, and looked away again. I could see goose bumps on his arms, underneath the short sleeves of his shirt.

  “Do you want to borrow my blanket? My nana made it herself. She knits.” Before he could tell me no, I pulled my blanket off my lap, looked around, then sneaked out of my chair to spread it on his lap.

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you hungry?” I handed him one of the little doughnuts, and he took a bite—just to be polite, I thought. I was running out of things to talk about or ask about, so I picked up

  my bear.

  “Hello, Andrew!” I said, in the silly voice I had used for all my stuffed animals when I was a little kid, five or six, and I liked to pretend that they could talk. Sometimes if there were little kids in the playroom I would do it for them, make the stuffed bears and owls and rabbits pretend to meet each other, or go to the first day of school, or get in fights.

  He didn’t smile, but he did ask, “What’s his name?”

  I had decided that the bear was a girl and named her Penelope, but didn’t want to say so. “He doesn’t have a name yet.”

  Andrew turned the bear over, inspecting its tag. “It says Darwin.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to call him that. You can change it. You can keep him if you want to.”

  “Really?”

  “I have a bazillion stuffed animals. My dad brings one every day. I think they sell them in the gift store. All the dads bring them. My mom says it’s because it’s convenient.”

  Andrew looked at his lap. “My dad is dead.”

  I had no idea what to say to that. We sat together silently for a few minutes as Dallas gave way to the eleven o’clock news and the man in the hat punctuated the report of an unsolved murder in Little Havana with his groans.

  The boy looked at my incision. You could just see the very top of it underneath the collar of my pajama top. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “It did, a lot, at the beginning.” Every time I’d coughed, every time I’d moved, the pa
in had rolled through me, like something big with lots of sharp teeth was trying to bite through my chest. I was trying hard not to think about how bad it had been, and, if I needed another operation, how bad it would be again. “It’s okay now,” I told him. “The worst part is that my parents worry. My mom cries when she thinks I’m sleeping. She thinks I’m going to die. My dad just brings me presents and barely even talks to me at all.” I touched my scar, feeling the edges of the tape with my fingertips, the bumps of the stitches underneath. “Everyone in my school thinks I’m weird. I have to stay home a lot, or else I’m in the hospital, and when I come back the teachers make a big deal, and everyone stares at me like I’m . . .”

  I wasn’t sure the boy was listening, but he said, “Like you’re what?”

  “Like I’m broken. Like I’m a busted toy, or a bike with flat tires. Nobody wants to play with me at recess. At lunch, we eat at our tables, so I don’t sit by myself, but at recess they all play Four Square or Princesses and Ninjas, or Red Rover, and no one ever wants me in their game.” I didn’t tell him the worst part, which was that sometimes I thought that I was broken, too, and that maybe I’d never get better. I’d just keep coming to the hospital and coming to the hospital and finally they wouldn’t be able to fix me anymore and I would die.

  “Reindeer games,” said Andrew. He looked at the bear. “Maybe he should be Rudolph.” Then he looked at me. “I don’t really have friends, either,” he said. He straightened his shoulders, wincing as his arm shifted. “My dad was black and my mom’s white, so the black kids think I’m stuck-up and the white kids only play with other white kids.”