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CHAPTER 18
WILL
I can’t take my eyes
off her.
The red ribbon in her hair. The rose tucked behind her ear. The way she
keeps looking at me.
I don’t feel like any of this is real. I’ve never felt this way about anyone
before, mostly because all my relationships before were centered on living fast
and dying young and always leaving for a new hospital. I didn’t stay anywhere or
with anyone long enough to really fall for anyone.
Not that I even would have, given the chance. None of them was Stella.
We stop in front of a big tropical fish tank, and it takes everything in me to
look away from her at the brightly colored fish behind the glass. My eyes follow
an orange-and-white fish swimming around and around the coral at the bottom
of the tank.
“When I was really little, I used to just stare at these fish, wondering what it
would feel like to be able to hold my breath long enough to swim like they do,”
she says, following my gaze.
That surprises me. I knew she had been coming to Saint Grace’s for a while,
but I didn’t know she’d been here when she was a little kid.
“How young?”
She watches as the fish swims upward before diving back down to the
bottom. “Dr. Hamid, Barb, and Julie have taken care of me since I was six.”
Six.
Wow. I can’t even imagine being in one place that long.
We walk through the doors into the main lobby, the large staircase looming
in front of us. She looks back at me, tugging on the pool cue and nodding to
them. “Let’s take the stairs.”
The stairs? I look at her like she’s actually insane. My lungs burn from just the
thought of it as I remember my exhaustion from my trips up to the roof. Not
exactly sexy. If she wants this date to last longer than an hour, there is no way
we’re about to walk up those stairs.
Her face breaks into a smile. “I’m kidding.”
We roam the almost empty hospital, the hours blurring together as we walk,
talking about our family and our friends and everything in between, the pool
cue swinging back and forth between us. We head up to the open bridge
between Buildings 1 and 2 and walk slowly across, craning our necks to look
through the glass ceiling at the stormy gray night sky, the snow falling steadily
onto the roof of the bridge and all around us.
“What about your dad?” she finally asks, and I shrug.
“He cut and ran when I was little. Having a sick kid wasn’t in his plan.”
She watches my face, trying to see my reaction to those words. “It happened
so long ago, sometimes it feels like I’m just telling someone else’s story. Another
person’s life that I’ve memorized.”
You don’t have time for me, I don’t have time for you. Simple as that.
She moves on when she sees I mean what I’m saying. “And your mom?”
I attempt to hold the door open for her, which is apparently
very
tricky to do
when you’re holding a pool cue and need to be five feet apart at all times, but
I’m a gentleman, dammit.
I sigh, giving her the brief, generic response. “Beautiful. Smart. Driven. And
focused on me and me alone.”
She gives me a look that says this isn’t going to cut it. “After he left, it’s like
she decided to care enough for two people. Sometimes I feel like she doesn’t see
me. Doesn’t know me. She just sees the CF. Or now the B. cepacia.”
“Have you talked to her about it?” she asks.
I shake my head, shrugging the topic away. “She’s not there enough to listen.
She’s always dictating, then out the door. But starting in two days, when I’m
eighteen, I make the decisions.”
She stops short and I’m yanked back as my end of the pool cue is jerked in
her direction.
“Hold up. Your birthday is in two days?”
I smile at her, but she doesn’t smile back. “Yep! Lucky number eighteen.”
“Will!” she says, stomping her foot, upset. “I don’t have a present for you!”
Can she get any cuter?
I tap her leg with the pool cue, but for once I’m not kidding. There’s
something I actually want. “How ’bout a promise, then? To stick around for the
next one?”
She looks surprised, and then nods. “I promise.”
She takes me to the gym, and the motion-activated lights flicker on as she
pulls the other end of the pool cue past the exercise gear and to a door in the far
corner that I never bothered to explore before.
Looking both ways, she flicks open the lid to a keypad and punches in a code.
“So you pretty much have the run of the place, huh?” I ask as the door unlocks
with a click, a green light shining through the keypad.
She smirks, giving me a look as she closes the lid. “One of the perks of being
the teacher’s pet.”
I laugh. Well played.
The warmth of the pool deck hits me as we open the door, my laugh echoing
around the open space. The room is dim, except for the lights in the pool,
shining bright as the water ripples around them. We take off our shoes and sit
on the edge. The water is cool at first despite the heat of the room, but slowly
warms up as we move our feet back and forth.
A comfortable silence settles over us, and I look over at her, a pool cue’s
length away.
“So, what do you think happens when we die?”
She shakes her head, smirking. “That’s not very sexy first-date talk.”
I laugh, shrugging. “Come on, Stella. We’re terminal. You have to have
thought about it.”
“Well, it is on my to-do list.”
Of course it is.
She looks down at the water, moving her feet in circles. “There’s one theory I
like that says in order to understand death, we have to look at birth.”
She fidgets with the ribbon in her hair as she talks.
“So, while we’re in the womb, we’re living
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