Sloth

by James, Ella

  “Fuck...” I give his back a shove, but I can’t move him. He’s too fucking heavy.

  Fuck... That slimy—duh, the ground! That’s the ground under my feet! “Kellan...”

  I just barely get my arm around his neck before his eyes roll back into his head. My feet are mired in mud. I try to swim, to kick against the slimy ground. I cry as I struggle... then it’s shallow. I can stand completely but I can’t lift his limp body. I struggle to the shore with him, pulling his torso out onto the mud. He’s bleeding... from his nose? His mouth?

  I look around for help, but I don’t have my phone. I start to cry. I touch his head, his bloody face.

  “Oh God! What do I do?” I wrap my hand around his mouth, feeling for breath. There it is, a little bit...

  I’m running toward my car when I hear sirens.

  SIX

  Cleo

  “Yes, I realize no visitors right now, but I just want an update.” I smack my fist against the front of the looming counter in the Emory University Hospital ER and bite my tongue so I don’t cuss this fucking woman out.

  My hair is damp from sticking my head in the bathroom sink, the crevices of my fingernails are stained with Kellan’s blood, I’m wearing scrubs and paper shoes and my head aches—and no one will tell me shit.

  “I’ve called a doctor, and we’re waiting on her, ma’am,” bitchy receptionist explains. Bitchily.

  I glare at the yellow smiley faces on her hot pink scrubs and whirl around to sit back down.

  The ambulance ride was awful. I mean... I’m glad one came, of course. Apparently a fisherman heard the wreck and called 9-1-1, which is a good thing, but the ride itself? Traumatic.

  The EMTs pulled two Fentanyl patches off Kellan’s bare shoulder, which explained his blue lips, but after they got an oxygen mask on his busted face, they couldn’t figure out why he was bleeding so much from his nose and mouth. They wrapped his left arm against his bruised chest and I held his right hand until someone stole it from me to stick an IV into him.

  They kept talking about overdoses and something called “narcan,” which I’ve since learned can help people who overdose on opiates. I said I was his girlfriend and they started asking me the basic questions like his age. I got his hand again, the fingers curled and cold, the wide, cool palm swathed in tape, an IV line curling around our joined hands, and as I stroked his fingers, I realized I know almost nothing about Kellan. I don’t even know his real, true, legal last name.

  I explained what I do know to the EMTs and told them that I thought he might use a doctor at Emory, and someone, somehow, sometime confirmed that we were headed here.

  The ride was long. My eyes swept up and down him as I folded his big hand between my warmer palms. I could see the awful, awful bruising on the left side of his ribcage as they tucked his arm against it... strapped it down and then they covered up his pretty abs, his perfect arms and shoulders.

  The blanket was gray, and underneath the plastic mask his face was gray. The female ENT kept pulling the mask off and wiping blood off his face with a white cloth. His nose and mouth just kept bleeding. The few times his eyes open, he looked hurt and scared. His eyes darted around until his gaze found me, and I would touch his hair and rub his shoulder as his body shook.

  There was a neck brace on him, I noticed. When did that happen? His body was hidden under blankets but I watched his feet, stripped of their Keen sandals. His toes would curl as the EMTs shown light into his eyes and pulled the blanket back to stick a needle in... his thigh? He jerked. Their voices moved too loud and fast. The crackle of the radio... my mouth kissing his fingertips.

  The male EMT prodded the inside of his left elbow and nodded at the female. “Lots of marks,” he murmured, covering the arm again.

  “Track marks?” I wailed.

  The female EMT screwed up her face. The dude gave me a no shit look, and I started to cry. I never really stopped, just tried to keep it quiet as they labored over him, and Kellan’s eyes opened and shut and I said sweet things to him.

  By the time we reached the ER drop off, Kellan’s face was snow white. The female EMTs told me to “stay put,” he was in shock and needed blood. I had to let go of his poor, cold hand and stop myself from running with them as they spirited his cot into the ER.

  Someone brought me dry pants and these weird, papery shoes, and I cried some more, and talked to a cop who was nice and handed me a towel from his trunk.

  Someone from the hospital—some sort of advocate woman—popped up and took her own notes as I answered questions for the accident report. And then the advocate told me she’d find out about Kellan, and she led me to a plastic chair.

  That was coming up on three hours ago now. Physically, I might be the healthiest person in this room, but I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m being psychologically tortured.

  Just when I think I’m going to end up wringing smiley-face receptionist’s neck, a short-haired brunette in a white coat comes through the double doors. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “Cleo Whatley?”

  I rise and she blinks at me. She seems distracted, almost skittish. She tries to smile, stops half-way, and pushes a strand of short hair out of her brown eyes.

  “Cleo.” She waves me toward the mouth of the ER hallway. “Has anybody spoken with you yet?”

  I shake my head. She ushers me down a short, white hall, into a small, white room with a brown table and three chairs. She sits on the side with only one chair and nods at the two in front of her, which makes me cry because if Kellan was with me there would be a chair for each of us…

  The doctor plunks a tablet on the table and glances down into her lap, then up into my face.

  “Hi there.” Her face is stuck somewhere between kind and gravely serious. Which makes my stomach flip.

  “Can you tell me how my boyfriend is?” I manage hoarsely.

  My voice breaks on the word “boyfriend,” as I remember that he’s not. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. How fucked up is it that I still want him?

  A box of Kleenex slides across the table toward me and I realize I’m crying again. I take two tissues and dab my cheeks.

  “Is he okay?”

  Her mouth flattens. Her face looks like no. “What do you know about Kellan’s health, Cleo?”

  I look worriedly into her wide brown eyes. To see where she is leading me, so I can shelter myself. But I can’t tell. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I... Does… He has a drug problem?”

  She blinks, completely poker-faced. I watch her chest rise on an inhalation. “What makes you think that?”

  My throat tightens—and I can tell I’m right. He does have a drug problem.

  “I found a bunch of pills at his house... recently.” I rub my finger over a ragged cuticle. “Also, in the ambulance. They said... I saw pain patches. On his back.” My stomach twists so hard I have to swallow to be sure I don’t throw up on the table. I look at her. “Is he okay? You’re scaring me.”

  “Cleo...” The doctor leans toward me. Her eyes widen. “What do you know about Kellan’s mental health?”

  My throat tightens as if she’s slung a noose around it. “Nothing.” I bring a hand up to my chest. “Is there something I should know?” My voice wavers.

  The doctor sits back in her chair. She looks almost relieved. “In June, he was admitted for an overdose attempt,” she says, stroking her hair out of her eyes.

  I gape. “He was?”

  She nods. “He spent two nights in the psychiatric unit here, but he was discharged. I’m going to tell you about that,” she says slowly, “but first you need to know he’s being transferred to another hospital.”

  “He is? Why?”

  “We’re moving him to New York. It will be a plane transfer, and it will happen soon. There is an option for you to go along, if you want that.”

  I swallow. I blink, and tears fall down my cheeks again. “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he stay here?”


  She leans toward me, reaching across the table. Time slows as I watch her red lips move.

  “Cleo—I’m sorry to have to share this news with you, but... Kellan is in the most advanced stage of leukemia.”

  SEVEN

  Cleo

  Have you ever had your whole life rearranged by something someone told you? It feels like surgery in a second. Like someone reaching in and moving things around so fast you’re different before you even realize what they’ve done. Maybe they’ve removed a part, or maybe something’s added. Maybe everything’s the same, but shifted slightly leftward.

  Surgery on the heart changes the way the blood is pumped to every other part.

  It makes sense. I can’t deny that much. It makes so much sense now that I know the truth.

  Why he would pay me so much money to stay at his house—and for just three weeks. He mentioned teaching me more of his business, so I could maybe have a larger role, because he was “leaving.”

  From the second we first met, he was always holding my hand. Between the dirty talk and his pretty, perfect cock, he was always reaching for me. Needing to be near me, in me. Wrapping himself around me while he thought I was asleep.

  How many sick people are getting marijuana at no cost because a bunch of college students pay for it?

  Robin Hood.

  I’m not even surprised he set up something like that.

  And yet, I’m so surprised. I don’t believe it—any of it. I can’t fly to New York with him. When the doctor tells me what she tells me, I take a taxi back to Chattahoochee, to my car. I see the swamp, the puncture in the rail, the road muddied from where they hauled his car out, and it’s meaningless to me. Like a scene from a film I watched while half asleep.

  I drive straight to Kellan’s house and find it unlocked. I go to the windowed room and go to sleep, and wake up in a ray of thick gold sunlight. Afternoon, it seems.

  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 clea
r 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.

  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 for a trustee meeting. I remember his wide shoulders, his muscular thighs…