I reposition my headband in the mirror, trying to tame my brown hair into looking as normal as possible for Brooke’s party. I’ve been out of school for so long, it feels like I’m stepping into a new world. Like I went on summer vacation and they were still stuck in classes. They’ve been doing something that brings them closer together while I’ve been drifting further away.
That Mom is letting me go is a minor miracle, especially when I haven’t even been back to school, but I am not questioning her. I snap a selfie of me and a cup of tea and I send it to Ryan.
Ellie
Rule #2.
I stare at my phone, willing him to pick up. The irony isn’t lost on me. This was a Jack tactic. Photos of my life, texts checking in. That done, I start a new thread—and type in three names, leaving Ryan out because, well, I’m not sure I can handle that rejection.
Part of working my way up to seeing Brooke is to start with smaller apologies. Or rather, apologies I’m pretty sure are going to go the way I want.
I hope.
Please. Please let them go over well.
TUMOR SQUAD—TAKE 2?
Ellie
Hey—I hope everything is going okay.
I know I fucked up.
I’m sorry.
I stare at the messages, hoping for something, anything. Caitlin’s separate message pops up almost instantly.
Caitlin
Well done.
Ellie
Think it’ll work?
Caitlin
They’re in post-radiation food comas.
Give it time.
Time. I had plenty of it, but that didn’t make enduring it any easier. Maybe because luck is finally working on my side, the texts start coming in.
TUMOR SQUAD—TAKE 2?
Veronica
I’m clueless about this—so no apology necessary.
Also Luis says all good but wants to know if you’re letting people in?
I demand someone bring me up to speed.
Luis is taking too long.
Caitlin
Ellie yelled at us all when we tried to be there for her.
Ellie
Just rip the Band-Aid off.
Caitlin
You’re welcome.
Veronica
Luis is also asking about Ryan?
Should I add him in this chat?
Caitlin
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
A separate message pops up almost immediately.
Veronica
I knew it!
YOU ARE DATING.
Ellie
We aren’t.
Veronica
Ahhh
So that’s why he’s not in the Tumor Squad.…
Because I don’t know how to talk to him? Because while I was angry with Luis, he seemed to expect it. With Ryan I had been so … it had been a bad time. I was angry and hurt and everything just felt like it was falling down around me. The thing that no one thinks about when you blow up is that you’re bound to get caught in the rubble. I was just now trying to climb out. I wasn’t sure Ryan would be there when I finally did.
I grab my keys and head for the door. Mom stops me and gives me a hug and a kiss on my head and I am forced to remind her that I am a teenager.
“You are great,” she reminds me, and there’s a pang in my chest because it sounds like something out of a book of quotes for coaches. Like something Ryan would say. He still hasn’t responded. Not even when I reminded him of Rule #4.
Nothing.
I park outside Brooke’s house and walk to the door, unsure if my friend will actually let me in.
I ring the doorbell and wait, bouncing on the balls of my feet until the door opens and we stand there face-to-face. Brooke just hangs there in the doorway, her chestnut-brown hair hanging in loose curls. Shock and surprise color her features, but she quickly puts on her debate badass face, her blue eyes going hard, shutting me out.
Say something! I scream inwardly. I was jealous of Ryan and his friends—how easily their lives flowed together even as they now had vastly different experiences. Say anything.
“I had surgery.”
“I heard.” She crosses her arms as if to punctuate the fact that she heard and not from me.
Let.
People.
In.
“It didn’t work.” Her arms drop and her mouth opens, my words knocking the anger right out of her. No one in life-life is used to medicine not having the answers, not working. “They don’t know what’s wrong and…” And it all starts to come out. The last weeks of my life. The story that friends like her, my best friend, don’t even know. I pull out everything that I’ve ever kept from her. The surgeries, the doctors’ visits, the pain and fear I didn’t think she could handle; it all comes out in one continuous wave.
Brooke holds up her hands and I keep going, because she wanted this. And I’m not sure I can keep it all in my head anymore. Then she starts waving them. “Why are you telling me this now?”
I look around at the snow-impacted yards.
“Because I didn’t know how to explain to anyone what my life was like there.”
“And now you just want to get rid of it in one go?”
“I’m so tired of trying to pretend it’s nothing. I felt so alone.”
Brooke lets out a heavy breath. “I’m glad you’re back.” I tense, waiting for the but I know will come. Maybe I deserve that. “And Jack is here and I did some minor probing…”
I shoot her a look. “Brooke—”
She waves away my words. “I am taking things into my own hands.” She pulls me into the house and waits patiently as I struggle with my coat. Stitches stretch and I wince. I can either continue with the pain or ask for help. Before, I would never have asked anyone for help, didn’t want to call attention to my differences. “Can you—”
The question is not even fully finished before Brooke is there, helping to ease the coat over my shoulders. “Jack is apparently miserable.”
We share a smile, because this is what I’ve waited for, what I’ve worked so hard for. As Brooke takes me to the basement, she gives a rundown of the rest of our friends. My stomach does flip-flops and my chest suddenly doesn’t feel like it can hold my lungs. And it’s not my illness.
Friends mix in Brooke’s basement. They hold cups of soda and examine the different packages they’ve brought. A sharp laugh punctuates the general hum of conversation.
“Hey, everyone,” Brooke says, “look who’s back.”
Color drains from my face and I grab Brooke’s arm in a viselike grip reserved for nurses who need to give me my next dose of morphine. This was not planned.
Eyes focus on me. I am sure that I am going to throw up. The moment hangs heavy in the air, every second dragging out to a year. The shift happens on their side first. Smiles bloom along with small cheers. My friends push closer to the edge of the stairs to welcome me first. Jack hangs back and we lock eyes. A spark crisps my chest and I offer him a smile.
He returns it.
Maybe this will work out. Jack and I will patch up everything and life will go back to how it was. I want for that feeling to sink in, that everything will be okay. But I feel like I’m walking to my execution.
We skirt around each other, finding ourselves in different groups, trying to work up the courage to talk. My friends provide a great distraction. They fold me back into their lives, gently turning over the last several weeks and months, catching me up, waiting for me to reciprocate. I add a few things, testing the waters. It’s hard, not being with my hospital friends. Being here, with Brooke and my friends—this feels normal. But thinking about telling them about Caitlin, Luis—Ryan … My heart tightens and I can’t breathe.
A cough helps me find breath again and my friends look worried.
“So are they going to do another surgery?” Brooke ventures. She’s bringing it up. Not me. She’s never asked me a direct question about the hospital before. I guess it was another unspoken rule, that I just didn’t want to talk about it. But maybe she did and she was just protecting me.
I wrap my hands around the can of Coke and pray this caffeine will help silence the cough in my lungs. My bruises from surgery still linger, the stitches … Maybe the hospital is grafted into me and I will never be free of it. Things still haunt me. The look in Ryan’s eyes, the pain as the nurse pulled out the arterial line, telling my mom to stop owning my life. Things that I want to forget, need to cut out of my life so that I can get back to what and who I really am.
Who I want to be.
“No,” I say quietly. I want to look at my phone, check to see if there’s a message from my medical coach. Even though I know what his advice would be, I still want his message to be there. Talk to them. “They thought it might work, to help me get better.”
Every instinct in me screams to pull back. Stop before they get too freaked out. Before they leave me. But wasn’t this what Luis said—I have to trust people? I can’t grade them on just a few moments. “But it was too complicated.”
I pull my elbows into my sides, wanting to disappear. I’m scared to look up and see pity on their faces, to hear the inevitable I’m sorry, and then watch them move on in the conversation back to happy topics, things in their lives that will go on as normal. Things that aren’t failures. But that’s not what happens.
“So that’s it?” Brooke says. “They just gave up?”
“I mean, there’s nothing more they can do.”
“They just cut you open and now are like Well, sorry, we’re done.”
“Yeah.” This time I do look up, prepared for the pity I didn’t get the first time. For the sad and secret We’re so glad it’s not us looks. But again I’m shocked. Every one of them looks furious.
“Fuck them,” Brooke says. And the others raise their glasses in agreement. I don’t know what to say. Tears hit the backs of my eyes and I want to say more, to say something to mark what just happened. Instead, I take their anger, their comfort, and pull it inside, wrapping it around me like a blanket.
I lean into the conversation, suddenly feeling myself slide back into their lives. We are not perfect, but I no longer feel like this is something I have to keep from them. Something that I need to conceal.
Focus, Ellie, I tell myself, this is your life-life. I worked so hard for this. I hang in there. My cough gets a little worse and my side aches, but I forgo medication, willing my body to heal.
Jack comes up to me, as all-American as he ever was, and Brooke checks in via a look with me. I nod and she backs away with a warning glare at Jack. And then it’s just us.
“Hey,” Jack says. He seems surprised that I’m here. I suppose I’m not the girl he saw a few weeks ago.
“Hi,” I say. We both stand there, neither sure what to do next. Some of our friends look like they’re ready to intervene.
“You made it back,” he says. I wait for hurt or anger to slice into me like a surgeon into a patient, clean and precise and knowing exactly how to inflict only intentional damage. But I find it easy to meet his hazel gaze because I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt to be here with him. And I don’t want to lean into him, to kiss him.
“Yeah, it was … umm … The surgery didn’t work out.” I dig my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, refusing to shrink with the admission.
I brace for his reaction. The pity. The sympathy. The confusion on how he should feel about this. Things I’ve feared almost as much as I’ve feared surgery itself.
Jack looks down at his cup again, trying to make sense of everything. “Oh,” he says, and that one words carries with it confusion, fear, and sympathy. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”
That’s when I realize I don’t want anything from him. Not an apology, and certainly not to take me back.
“Yeah,” I say. Maybe it’s the simple expletive from Brooke, but it’s not what I was expecting. There’s no spark here now. Nothing that reminds me of why I did everything to try to get back to him. Instead there’s just a dull glow from the memories that were good. Something to remind myself why I worked so hard to get back here.
“I can’t imagine.” His tone is cool, reserved. If he were Ryan, I would fight that tone, push until I broke through, but now … I don’t want to.
There’s only a scar there, where our relationship used to be. Old wounds healed and newly shiny. I have lots of scars. The thing is, sometimes they make you stronger. That’s when I know I’m ready to let him go. I had surgery because of a boy. But maybe not this boy.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words feel right in my mouth, their shapes filling in the holes I realize I tore in my own heart. I’ve done a lot of apologizing. Maybe it’s like doing surgical prep. All the tests are roughly the same, and they lead to one outcome. The actual surgery—the change—comes later.
Or maybe I’m still the same and just living through all these stupid mistakes, letting them heal. Closing them up to make way for something new. Something better—or at least functional.
“I should have told you about what was going on. It’s never been easy for me to tell people—because it’s too much to explain. Mom was always the writer about my life. People who were there in the hospital, they didn’t need me to explain.”
They usually already have at least a one-way ticket. Passengers have a very hard time on this train. “I clammed up about it because it’s…” My voice trails off because I can’t decide if it’s a curse or a blessing.
Jack nods. “You should tell people more often. Let us be there for you.” There’s no forgiveness in his voice. I duck my head; it was a shitty thing for me to do. Perhaps if I could do it all again, I would do it differently. But there are no redos—we are stuck with the surgeries and lives we have.
Yesterday’s miracles.
Jack falls in with some of his friends from choir. There is no goodbye, no understanding or meeting of the minds. His brush-off stings, but it doesn’t kill me and it definitely doesn’t inspire me to go after him.
“I can’t believe he would do that,” Brooke says, materializing by my side as if by magic.
I worked so hard to get back to Jack, but now I’m surprised to find I want to be at the hospital. I need to be there. I pull out my phone and look at Ryan’s picture.
“Who’s that?” Brooke asks.
“Can you do me a favor?” A weak plan is already forming. A treatment for a broken heart. I’m going to need a convincing lie, and I will probably end up doing one to two months’ incarceration in my room, but what else is there?
“Have you finally found anger? Are we ready to take it out on him? I will throw him out of this party.” Brooke is ready to pounce. Someday I should introduce her to Caitlin; they would be fast friends.
“I’m gonna spend the night at your place tonight.” Brooke looks skeptical. “I’m not really spending the night. I mean, I don’t think I will.”