Minutes tick by, and I retreat to my room, working on a longer message. Different apologies. Several life updates. Even a simple Hi. But all of those seem foolish. Getting nowhere, I make a big move and start a video call.
Time doesn’t mean a lot to Caitlin—she’s up at all hours, sleep being an option for her most of the time. Holding my breath, I wait either for it to ring into eternity or for her to answer.
“Do not think…,” Caitlin says as her picture forms from a pixelated mess. She stabs her crochet hook through the hat she’s currently working on, and I can imagine that she’s picturing it as my face. “That I answered because I forgive you.”
“You answered because you want to see me grovel.”
“Get to it,” she says. Her words remain stern, but her eyes flash off her work to the camera, and for a second, I see hope.
I take a big breath. Only I can fix this. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bad friend. I just … I don’t know how to mix everything. I thought keeping it separate would be better for us—for me.”
Caitlin holds up her hook.
“You cut me out,” she says. “Chose a boy over me. Me. Who understands better than I do? And then on top of that, you think you need to fix me. We’re broken together,” she says. A kernel of hope grows in my chest. Broken together. That’s our phrase—and no one, especially those who count themselves as “normal,” are allowed to use it. Reclaiming words and all that.
“I didn’t—”
“I’m not done yet,” Caitlin says, and her hook goes back to whipping through the project, going round and round. “Do you know how many hats I’ve made? My mother has practically cut me off. If you hadn’t called … I would have … started to crochet the carpet.”
I laugh.
“You are never allowed to do that again.”
I nod. And then I work up the courage to ask, “What did you decide to do about the morning show?”
Caitlin blows an errant curl out of her face. “Nothing. I just … I don’t like it. I know—I know. But I just don’t want it comma however…,” Caitlin says, making me die from anticipation. “I offered to do a six-month Instagram takeover with them on the lives of disabled teens by and for disabled teens.”
“And?”
“And they agreed!” Her smile is infectious even across the airwaves. And even as I’m so happy for Caitlin, I can’t help but feel the fear and pain Mom’s blogging has caused. I pick at the ties of my hospital quilt, trying to put together the shame and fear inside me. Shame of wanting to be seen and fear of what that will bring.
“What about you—what’s next for Ellie Haycock?”
“Speech, friends…”
“Acting…”
I look down, ready to be told it’s foolish. Wanting to be an actress.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just … I can’t do it. I’m not brave enough and it doesn’t matter how much I want it in my bones, I can’t … I’m too scared. It’s too much of a fight.” Bravery has been my default setting since I was a child, but I’m worn thin and all I want is for something to be easy. But this dream, it’s like wanting to go to the moon. It’s possible, but it’s a really, really, really hard possible.
“People are terrible, we know that. But you are allowed to want those things, just like anyone else. Don’t let assholes on the internet stop you. There will be enough assholes in the audition rooms. Save your ire for them. And their names, because I will put them all on blast.” There’s metal in her voice that would build the world’s tallest building. She’s a rock, much more into the whole “community” thing than I am. Still, no matter what, she’s there for me.
“I’m sorry.” The words sink into my bones, and I feel certain in our friendship. We are not sand on a beach to be thrown about by the tide; we are trees firmly planted and growing together.
Caitlin sighs and blows a stray curl out of her face. “Good.”
We chat for a while, catching up on things. Caitlin’s various channels have grown, especially since her last surgery. There’s maybe someone new in her life, and I smile at the normality of our conversation.
“Oh, tell me everything!”
“I just…” Her hook stops dodging in and out of her project. “This is going to sound stupid, but I go in and out of the hospital so many times and I just want something more permanent. Like what I thought you and Ryan were working on.”
My eyes snap open.
Caitlin chews on her lip and slowly pulls stitches through her project. This is the divide for us. Either I can step back and remain how we were friends only in the hospital or I can be true to my apology.
“Have you talked to anyone?” I ask. I’m desperate for news. I don’t want her to mention Ryan, but I also don’t know if I can handle her talking about everyone else but Ryan.
Caitlin’s stitches grow progressively faster. As if she’s pulling petals from a daisy trying to find an answer. Tell her, don’t tell her, tell her … Finally she reaches the end of the row and a decision has been made. “Yeah.” Caitlin focuses on her project. Her hook retreats to a steady, precise rhythm. “Luis started radiation. As he predicted, the doctors are saying full recovery. His classmates sent him a whole series of get-well junk. He’s really insufferable about all of this.”
“Hopefully the docs have it right.”
She raises her hook and points it at me through the phone, as if to say Correct. “Eh, I think he’s gonna make it.” In, out, in, out. “Veronica and Luis are official.…”
“Finally,” I say, and flip over onto my back.
“This makes the group chat awkward sometimes. When they really get going, Ryan just ducks out altogether.…” Her last word slowly grounds to a stop and her fingers still, the crochet hook halfway through another stitch.
That’s a gut punch I wasn’t ready for. Yes, I had deleted the chat, but it never popped back up on my notifications, which meant they had started it over without me.
“So that’s enough about our love lives.”
I laugh to close the topic and so I can ask her to weigh in on my level of bitchiness.
“Oh, on a scale of one to ten, you were a flaming twenty.”
As expected. What I hoped not to be but actually was.
Caitlin looks up from her crocheting without raising her head and gives me the death glare. “Didn’t we cover this? Not everything that starts in the hospital goes up in flames.”
I bite my lip. Logically, I believe her. I can just look at our friendship for proof. We’re still here. The hospital failed to destroy us and that might take some getting used to.
“So Veronica’s his radiation buddy?”
Caitlin shrugs. “Did I not say this topic is closed? She’s still in town, so the group chat goes off the hinges when they’re planning to get together.”
I look away from my phone. I wanted so bad to be free of the hospital, and now I’m craving the very conversations I once thought split me from the world.
“If you want back in, you need to apologize to them,” Caitlin says. I’m pretty sure she can read my mind. It’s one of the advantages she has from having VACTERLs, just a direct line into where my brain likes to wander.
The weight of what I said to everyone, from Luis to Veronica and even Ryan, sits beside me in bed, suffocating me.
“I’m not doing it for you,” Caitlin says.
“I’ll handle it.”
“You don’t have to.”
She’s offering me an out, if I want it. I could let them go like any number of friendships I’ve formed over the years; let their memories fade to ghosts and then vanish in time. The sharp stab in my heart seems determined to anchor the shades of their friendships to me.
“Yeah.”
Happy that she’s delivered her message and that it’s been heard, Caitlin lets the conversation drift to other topics. School, friends at home, world politics.
“So when is Brooke’s party?” she finally asks.
“Tomorrow.”
“And Jack is gonna be there?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Jack is gonna be there.” I wait for the light to fill me, the hope that I once had at the very mention of his name, but there’s nothing. I force myself to smile, to act happy as Caitlin offers advice.
“I think you should just be direct, and you can blame me if you need to—be like ‘I had to take care of my friend.’ Chicks before dicks and all that.”
I laugh.
“Just practice what you’re going to say. You got this,” Caitlin says as a sign-off.
Hanging up, I lie back in bed and close my eyes. I try to think about what I’ll say to Jack, but every time I start all I see is Ryan’s angry face yelling at me.