CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

December 7

I didn’t get to visit Anna over the weekend. Mom said we had to wait until Anna was stronger—that there was always the risk of infection after major surgery, that Anna was in good hands, and that we had to be patient.

Finally, on Wednesday after school, I heard the words I’d been waiting for.

“Mrs. Liddell says Anna’s vital signs have stabilized,” Mom told me when I got home that afternoon. “Would you like to visit her this evening?”

“You bet!” I shouted. “Hooray!”

I got to work right away making a card for Anna. I wrote GET WELL, ANNA! in silver glitter glue on the front. Inside, I pasted pictures of Anna’s favorite things: a swimming pool, a rainbow, tennis shoes, someone pumping her legs on a swing set, a basket full of puppies, a plateful of cookies . . .

Wait a second. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

“I’ve got the perfect present for Anna,” I said to Mom. “Oreos.”

“Hmm.” Mom looked up from her laptop and frowned. “Anna doesn’t have much of an appetite, according to Mrs. Liddell. She still has a feeding tube in to make sure she gets enough nutrients.”

“But she’s eating hospital food, too, right?”

“They’re working very hard to get her to eat three meals a day. Most of what she’s eating is soft, like yogurt and cottage cheese.”

“She’ll eat the cookies,” I said. Anna used to eat them every day after lunch. “Oreos are her favorite cookie.”

“Even so, how about some balloons, instead?”

“We can bring balloons along with the Oreos.”

Mom smiled. “Whatever you want.”

After dinner, we stopped at the store for the cookies and a big pink balloon that read GET WELL SOON! I bubbled over with excitement the whole ride to the hospital.

But when we entered the hospital lobby, the knot in my stomach returned. As we stepped into the elevator, I looked away from the wrinkled woman in a wheelchair, a bag of IV fluids hooked to her arm with needles. I tried to ignore the nurses who rushed past us in the hallway with scary-looking carts, and I plugged my ears to drown out the weeping coming from inside one of the rooms we passed. I breathed through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to take in the horrible smell of chemicals mixed with sickness.

I hobbled past my parents, crutch-free, and knocked on the door to Room 1103—Anna’s room.

Mrs. Liddell opened the door and smiled when she saw me.

“Hi, Pansy!” She poked her head out and waved at my parents. “I was just feeding Anna dinner. Come on in.”

Andy sat in a chair next to the bed. He flicked off the TV with a remote, looked at me, and waved. But he didn’t wave the way you would at a really good friend who you were glad to see. It was more like a greeting for a stranger, someone you barely knew.

I waved back, then turned my attention to Anna, who was lying on the bed.

I knew something was wrong right away. Anna was so still and quiet that I would have thought she was asleep. But she was awake, staring at the TV, which wasn’t even on.

“Hi, Anna.” I tried to make my voice sound cheerful, but it came out forced and strained. Not my voice at all. I tried a smile, but my lips only trembled as I leaned over to give her a hug.

Anna didn’t hug back. She didn’t make a happy sound like she usually did when she saw me. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even look into my eyes.

She just lay there, her head drooping down, her eyes looking lifeless. She didn’t seem to care if I was there or not.

I swallowed. I tried to keep my voice steady as I tied the balloon to the end of the bed. “I brought you a balloon, Anna,” I said. Then I placed the box of Oreos on top of her blanket. “And cookies.” I tore open the wrapper. “Look, Anna. Oreos—they’re your favorite!”

Then Anna turned her head. Her eyes flickered as she stared at the package of cookies. She lifted her hand and dropped it on top of the package. There was silence, except for the sound of crackling plastic as Anna’s hand landed on the package.

The sound filled the room and roared in my ears. I blinked a few times to make sure I was seeing things clearly. Anna was supposed to eat those cookies, not hit them!

“I can’t believe it!” Mrs. Liddell said. “Look, Andy! She’s using her right hand!”

Andy jumped up from his chair. “Do it again, Anna,” he said. “You can do it.”

When Anna hit the package again, Mrs. Liddell clapped and cheered. “We were worried that the surgery had affected the right side of her body,” she explained. “This is the first time she’s moved her right hand since last Friday!”

“It was Pansy’s idea to bring the Oreos,” Dad said. “Seems like it was a good one.”

I heard my name, but I couldn’t speak. The conversation in the background melted into sounds in slow-motion, muffled background noise. People were talking and laughing and smiling, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

All I saw was Anna. Lifting her arm with determination, dropping it back down on the package of cookies. In a flash, I rewound to last April, the first time I’d seen Anna since she left for camp. Mom had warned me that the brain damage had changed her, but I didn’t believe her until I saw her lying in that hospital bed.

“Hi, Anna,” I had said, handing her the stuffed puppy I’d picked out for her. It had light blonde fur and big brown eyes, like her golden retriever who had died a few months before, and it had a blue ribbon around its neck, since blue was her favorite color.

Anna had looked up at me, but her expression didn’t change. Like she had no idea who I was. Her eyes, which used to sparkle with energy, had stared back at me blankly.

“It’s Pansy,” I had said in a voice that shook. “Remember me?”

“Of course she remembers you,” Mrs. Liddell had said softly. “She’ll always remember her best friend.”

The room shifted back into focus.

“This is just wonderful!” Mrs. Liddell said. “If Anna’s moving her hand, then she may move her leg again soon!”

My legs felt like strands of spaghetti. I put my hand on a chair to hold myself steady.

I stared at Anna, who was still concentrating on the Oreos. She was pale—paler than she’d been when I visited her before the surgery. She was hooked up to monitors and IVs, and her shaved head was wrapped in bandages.

I glanced over at Andy. He was staring at Anna, too. For a moment, he looked over at me, and our eyes met before he quickly looked away. But I’d seen it—the emptiness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

It took all of my concentration to stand perfectly still and breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I’d imagined it all—Anna understanding my words when I told her about my goals, Anna looking at my badge and getting that I’d earned it for her. Now I knew that Anna hadn’t understood that I was doing any of those things for her.

All my dreams about Anna’s recovery instantly evaporated into the air. They were just dreams. That’s all they ever were.

The girl lying on the bed next to me was just the outside shell of what she used to be, kind of like those empty shells you find on the beach after the creature on the inside has already moved on.

I wanted to run out of Anna’s room, down the eleven flights of steps, and out the front doors. Just run, run, run, far enough away that I could stop seeing my best friend lying in a hospital bed—my best friend Anna, who could look right at me and not see me at all.