I sit on the couch in the front room of the Home, waiting for my parents to settle the bill. Technically, there is no bill. Or at least there doesn’t have to be. Families here pay what they can, and if that’s nothing, then that’s nothing.
Sinking farther down into my hoodie, I try to block out the world. Still caught in a Benadryl fog from last night, plus the fights of the last week, I shove in my headphones and take in the world through sight alone.
This is a place threaded through my childhood. Friends were made and lost; it’s a place where I knew time stopped. I could walk away from here unscathed, back into the real world where life-life waited for me with open arms.
“Ready, kiddo,” Dad says. He’s taken over the talking to me since Mom and I had our big fight. Every now and then I’ll catch her, mouth open, as if she’s willing the right words to come out. All I want to tell her is there are no right words, except I’ve deleted my blog and started new social media accounts that are all private. Also your father and I are getting remarried.
I don’t expect her to tell me that. Those things are her way to connect. I’m asking her to cut off her life support. I wait for the guilt to settle in, but it doesn’t come, burned away by the constant anger.
The car is packed and the room cleaned. It feels like we’ve never even been here, despite everything that’s changed.
Mom’s going through the trunk. “Rick, have you seen Ellie’s BSG DVDs?”
I’m right here, I want to shout.
Dad turns to me, knowing that I heard her question. His look says this has to stop, but our family is good at digging in our heels, refusing to give up. After all, that’s how we ended up here. Mom was so stubborn at getting me the best care, the thing that would keep me alive.
“I gave them to Caitlin,” I say. A lie.
Ryan still has them. And no way am I going to retrieve them. Perhaps he’ll burn them in effigy. I smile at the thought. It would be nice to destroy something. Anything.
Be the destroyer and not the destroyed.
Except maybe I am both.
Soon enough Ryan will understand what I told him. He’ll feel the sharp sting of the hospital, and then … I’m sure someone else will pick up the pieces. Or maybe he’ll text me. I hate my heart for jumping at that thought, hanging it among the stars with my other wishes.
I crawl into the back seat and lie down, struggling to adjust my seat belt so it falls just right. My lungs still burn with coughs and I can feel the large bruise from the arterial line that takes up most of my lower arm, stretching out yellowing tendrils into my elbow.
My phone is strangely silent. The hundreds of messages a day, just gone. I achieved everything I wanted.
Go me.
Mom climbs in the front seat and Dad slides behind the wheel.
“Don’t you want to say goodbye to your friends, Ellie?” She strains for neutrality, but I can still feel everything she’s holding back. Tension clings to each word as she tries to make them sound like she cares and is not still furious with me.
I stare at her. Did she just say something, to me? Like, directly? The roof of the car isn’t as interesting as hospital ceilings, so I close my eyes, not replying. I haven’t checked to see if she took the blog down, mostly because I don’t want to be disappointed when I see that it’s still up, cataloging my life like I don’t exist apart from her words.
Dad turns around. “I heard you had quite the friend group—certainly some of them are still here. Your mom and I would happily wait for you to—”
“No.” I open my eyes and look at him. “They have their own appointments.” All of the pain I feel pours into my words, and I hope that they extract it from my body. Take the pain away and leave me in peace. But they don’t.
With a sigh, Dad turns back to the wheel and my parents exchange a look. The car starts and I don’t watch the Family Care Home fade. I don’t count down the number of blue-and-green signs denoting Coffman’s reach.
I pull out my phone and delete every conversation.
Our group chat. Gone.
Ryan. Goodbye.
Caitlin. Done.
I delete so many that I end up back at my friends from home. Jack. Brooke. A few others from the speech team. I swipe into Brooke’s chat, and start the message, my fingers flying over the keyboard. It’s not a full rundown of events, but enough that I hope she’ll say something. Anything.
Unwilling to stare at my phone, waiting for Brooke to forgive me, I stuff it back into my hoodie pocket and lean back.
The drive to Coffman is quick. There’s just one last appointment before we head back home. I sit silent, letting Darlington talk to my parents. I don’t care anymore. Shock and anger insulate me from whatever follow-up he prescribes.
We stop at the coffee shop in the subway before we head out. Dad sets my cup in front of me and Mom pulls him away.
“Ellie?”
I look up and see my internist and possibly all-around favorite doc—Dr. Carlyle. There’s a strange moment where I see so many images of him superimposed one on top of the other. I’ve known him my entire life—he’s still mostly the same. Sandy-brown hair, but it’s starting to thin. His face is mostly unlined, but the wear of a surgeon’s life seems to have polished his face to an even shine.
“H-hi,” I stammer.
He motions to the seat across from me. “May I?”
Relief crowds my chest—and for once I welcome the burn. How long has it been since a doctor asked for permission to do something for me? I guess that’s what comes from being there at the beginning, and Dr. Carlyle has seen it all.
Several patients give us side-eyes. Normally you don’t see doctors and patients interact outside of Coffman’s floors. We all inhabit areas of the subway, but we really don’t speak, both living in our personal worlds.
Dr. Carlyle takes a seat across from me and smiles his warm, quiet smile. “I talked with Dr. Darlington,” he starts.
I curl farther into my hoodie. What good ever came from talking with Darlington?
“And I know his theory that this might be psychosomatic.”
I sit up. Darlington can think I’m an idiot for all I care, but I need Dr. Carlyle to like me, be on #TeamEllie. He can’t believe I would fake something like this.… “I swear—”
Dr. Carlyle holds up a hand and I fall silent, gulping down the words wanting to escape.
“He’s new, and while that shouldn’t be a factor, sometimes even doctors forget there are other possibilities.”
“I don’t follow.”
Dr. Carlyle rests his elbows on the table and leans forward. “Your mom called me. And we had a very long conversation. We talked about what’s going on in your life. Where you go, the different places you go every day. She thought Dr. Darlington may have missed something.”
“My mom talked to you?” I pick at the edge of the cardboard sleeve of my coffee cup. What he’s saying doesn’t filter through the correct neurons in my brain. He has to be mistaken. Mom thinking anything other than Darlington is a gift from God? No.
“Your mother was quite specific that she doesn’t think this is all in your head. Up until you got sick, your life seemed pretty great. So either something happened and you’re not telling anyone, or Dr. Darlington is wrong.”
My mouth falls open. Someone finally said it. “My life was pretty great.…” The words sneak out and Dr. Carlyle raises an eyebrow, asking a silent question. There are lines that you can cross as a doctor and then there are lines. We’re more like distant family, close but not that close.
Brooke and Jack—my whole crowd of speech friends. I haven’t been happier than when I was at school and hanging out with them. Going to speech tournaments, even homework felt like something I was normally good at. My life was on track, and then … it wasn’t. “Is it really in my head?” I ask, and fear gums up every word.
“Dr. Darlington, for all his awards and expertise—sometimes overlooks things. I wanted to know more about the places you went, and your mother mentioned your school building is older, doesn’t have a lot of windows. And I looked through some other files—you’ve had quite a few illnesses since you started high school.”
“I guess.” No one has ever quizzed me on my cold and flu history. Surgery, sure. Common colds—not worth noting.
“Can I share what I think might be going on?”
I nod, too afraid to speak. He has a theory. One that doesn’t include me being wrong?
“I think—and there really is no way to prove this—but I think it’s the school building. Perhaps poor ventilation. It probably wouldn’t affect the students with a normal lung capacity, but for someone—”
“With shitty lungs?” I fill in for him.
“With compromised lung function,” he amends with a stern look at me. I hold in my eye roll. “It can be. I think when you get an average cold, like anyone else, your lungs flare up. You’re well enough to go back to school, but the building with so many kids packed inside, unable to go out, few windows—virus gets in the air and aggravates your lungs.”
“But it doesn’t happen in the summer.”
“Because you’re outside, the doors are open, there’s airflow. Flu season is over.”
“Oh … kay.”
“She shared with me that while you did have a few ‘down days’ after going to Morelands, you bounced back faster than before and didn’t have nearly as many attacks as you did when coming back from school. To me, this suggests environmental factors. It’s not you, it’s where you are.”
“So I just have to live with this?” I want to believe him, in his theories, but I’ve been let down by so many doctors over this. Believing what he’s saying is like stepping on ice—you have to trust that it will hold. The lake is beautiful when frozen over and you can stand in a place where normally you’d sink, but it won’t last, it’s not permanent. This is an answer, and in the moment it’s everything.
“We’ll do some monitoring, but I think next year—if this happens again—what is important is calming your lungs down. We know there’s nothing in your lungs and the cough is not productive. We know it’s not the cyst on your bronchial tubes. I would have to talk with Dr. Darlington about this, but we could try nebulized lidocaine.”
“You want to numb my throat.”
“And your lungs.”
“And that will help?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
He stands up and offers his hand to me. “Take care, Ellie.”
“Do you really think it’s my school?” I ask, taking his hand.
“It feels like the best hypothesis. Your mom was adamant it wasn’t in your head.”
I snort. Sure, it’s Mom.…
Dr. Carlyle levels another stern look at me, as if he knows what’s gone down between me and Mom and he doesn’t approve.
Too bad his opinion doesn’t count in this. He can counsel me on surgery, not me being the cause of my parents’ divorce.
“Take care of yourself,” he says. “The golden doctor is not always the answer to everything—that’s what your mother told me.” He nods at me again and heads off back to Coffman.
Mom hovers at the edge of my vision with Dad. Sometimes I want to believe the worst about Mom. I hate her blog so much, but it started as a way for her to find out how to help me. Mom’s eyes are full of love and care, and I look away, still not quite able to reconcile our fight with what Dr. Carlyle just told me.
She was so adamant that surgery was the only way, that Darlington would fix me—I never thought she would look elsewhere. But she did for me, because she knew I wasn’t lying that something was wrong with me. In that moment, all I want to do is hug my mom.