We’re trapped in the Home—Mom, Dad, and I are stuck here. That’s the whole philosophy of this place. Put all the families with sick kids together in the hope we can get through by supporting one another, but when we are ready to break there is no place to go and lick our wounds.
Mom and Dad are going to come flying out the door any moment now. I run, even as my body screams that this is a bad idea. I just keep going, letting my feet carry me to Caitlin’s door for the second time. She pulls it open as if expecting me.
I push through her, pacing the room like a caged animal.
“Well, this is a surprise—I like it,” Caitlin says, trying to lighten the mood. But then she sees me, like really sees me, and her mood shifts. Even her curls seem to deflate. She drops out of her annoyance, drops any petty fight we may have had, and instantly switches to friend mode. I’m numb inside and out.
Everything that happened comes out in fits and bursts, but finally, I’ve relayed the whole story and stand there waiting for Caitlin to say something.
Her mom comes out of the bathroom, cleaning rag in hand. I look around, realizing that their suitcases are out. The room is being prepped for them to leave.
“Ellie—” her mom starts.
“I got this, Mom,” Caitlin says, and inclines her head toward the door. Her mom doesn’t look convinced, but she ducks out. “Pretty sure she just bought us some time,” Caitlin says.
I don’t say anything until the door closes and Caitlin locks it.
“I told you this doesn’t work,” I say, new tears already coming. “The hospital destroys all relationships.” Just when I was ready to believe otherwise. When I thought that maybe, just maybe, there was hope. But no.
With a sigh and an eye roll Caitlin pulls me back to earth. “Oh please.” She puts her hands on her hips and tosses her curls back, ready for this fight. This was not exactly what I was expecting from my friend. I thought she’d be a comfort to me, put on a Marvel film—help put me back together. Just like last time.
“What?”
“Ellie, I love you, I do, but this … this is unhealthy. ‘The hospital destroys everything’—what exactly are we?” She motions between us.
“That’s different.”
“How? Because you definitely cut me out once you found Ryan.” Caitlin squares her shoulders, ready for a fight. She never has been one for bedside manner. “Your parents still live together, right? It was probably a divorce in name only.” I stare at her. What would she know? Her breakups happen so often that she must be used to reining in her emotions. “Perhaps the hospital is not the cause.”
“But she blames me,” I say, ignoring whatever she said about Ryan.
She sinks to the edge of the bed, as shocked by the news as I am. That gets Caitlin’s attention. “What she just said … She told me how much she’s given up for me. That this was all that she had done for me.” My worst fears about the blog, about why I let her do it, are real.
“Well, that was a bitch move,” Caitlin says. She sighs and picks up a pile of laundry next to her suitcase. “Here’s the thing: you think that because all this happens at the hospital, then the hospital is to blame. But a place cannot make things happen.” She pauses and drops down next to me, her face softening. “You have to stop pushing people away. Stop replacing your hospital friends. You have room enough for all of us.”
Her kind tone punches through my walls, her words slam into me and steal my breath. “Did you just hear what I said? I know I’m a problem—or rather my body is, hence the hospital.”
“Yes, and your mom has issues. There is no denying that. But that statement—the hospital ruins everything—is not something you pulled out of thin air in response to her terrible move.” Caitlin looks like she’s pulling out her own teeth to say this. “If I didn’t fight tooth and nail to hold on to you … you would have lost my number years ago. And even now you tried to replace me.”
“You think you have everyone figured out.” I lash out because it feels good, and because how dare she suggest I would lose her number? I have made it through this with her. She’s always been here when I am here. “But you’d rather insert yourself into my problems than deal with your own.”
“I am fine,” Caitlin says, her tone bordering for the first time on real anger. Before she was annoyed, maybe even hurt, but now this—she’s ready for a fight. “You think a breakup is gonna end me? Someone breaks up with me, I cry. I curse the universe. I shake my hands at the sky and then I move on. But with you, someone breaks up with you and no one would know it. At least not here. You keep everything and everyone in a neat box. If they escape that box and try to fit in with another, then you cut them off. You bottle up not only your emotions, but also your friends. No one can know you because everything you are, you keep under lock and key.”
“I do not.” I grit my teeth. What good would telling people about certain things do anyway? Then I’d have to explain my whole life to people like Brooke and Jack, which would only serve to remind them that I’m different. And maybe they’d start to think I was a freak too.
“Oh yeah? And so that’s why you don’t tell your friends at home about your surgery? Or why you and Jack were having problems? Instead of telling anyone, you just sewed your lips shut. Or you and Ryan—how long until he figures out you two aren’t built to last?”
“So it’s always about me, but why don’t we talk about you—about your TV appearance? I offered to help you—to do something for you for a change—but all you want is to fix me and how I deal with my life.”
“Friends are there for each other.”
“All you know how to do is push. Push me to be on A Patient Life, push me to talk to my mom, you pushed me and now I know that I broke up my parents’ marriage.”
Caitlin takes the news like a slap, and every word I said sinks into her. Concern is written into every line of her face. This isn’t meant to be harsh, but I’m crumbling under the weight of it all.
Tears slip down my cheeks because of course now I’m crying.
“Ellie—say something—what are you feeling?”
I fish for words. Here, Caitlin is a lifeline, an essential person I refuse to live without. And yet I cannot find the words.
“I know it’s hard, but I get it—probably better than anyone.” She reaches out for me, but I pull back.
“No,” I say when she tries it again. Can she not see how wrong she is—Caitlin’s made it very clear whose side she’s on. I back up out of the room. This was supposed to be something different. I came here for help, for a place to hide and lick my wounds, but instead I got this.
None of this can be my fault.
This was not what I was looking for when I came to see Caitlin. Unable to go anywhere else, I head back to my room. I hold my breath, hoping for the best but prepared for a “family talk.”
To my surprise, no one says anything. I slip back in, refusing to look either of my parents in the face. Mom seems like she wants to say something, but Dad holds out a hand to stop her. Silence is our agreed-upon reaction. We tiptoe around one another as if one false move will plunge us all to our deaths. And so we ignore it.
Their eyes scrape over me and several times I catch Mom looking like she might say something, only to have Dad silence her with a look. Small blessings.
There’s still surgery in the morning. Too bad shattered friendships don’t count as a get-out-of-surgery-free card.
Ryan texts me. Again and again my phone pings. I curl up in the twin bed, unable to sleep and refusing to leave this room. I can’t take meds to knock me out and my lungs are having a field day. But I know Ryan is just outside, waiting for me. But what’s just happened isn’t something he’s prepared to handle—even with all his medical coach knowledge. What could he say about my parents’ divorce? It’s not like they did it because they hate each other, they did it because of me.
I’m the problem. And I should just be left alone.
Mom too seems to be restless, her nervous energy crowding the room. Mom the worrier. This time there is no place for her to put her fears. No place for people to tell her things will be okay in the end, that they are rooting for us, or praying for us, or any manner of things. Here we are finally alone. Three people, one family against an unknown force, but our cracks show, and we are not built to last. Love was never meant to survive the hospital.
I turn on my side and flip my phone to night mode. I don’t want to see any more messages. I don’t want to hear the vibrations. This—whatever I was building with Ryan—stops now. How foolish I was to think that it could be more.
I’m a case in point for that.
And isn’t Caitlin? Who runs through relationships like she’s an Olympic athlete?
Eventually they all reveal what I’ve known for years—that this place will tear them apart. My parents are just another strike in the hospital’s favor.
Curled up in blankets, I let tears stain my cheeks. I didn’t think there were any left. I thought I had gotten rid of them all, and yet my body continues to surprise me and push for more.