“Who is that?” Ann is tiny in her hospital bed.
“It’s me, Sam.”
“Just Sam?”
“Just Sam.”
“Sit down.” It’s a double room with a curtain down the middle. Sam can hear voices on the other side, but at the moment Ann has no other visitors. Sam pulls up a pale blue chair.
“Where have you been?”
Sam is startled by the question. “In school, taking classes.”
“Is that all?”
“And working. Helping my mom.”
Ann gazes at her. “You’ve been in quite a rush.”
“It’s true.” Sam looks down but she cannot hide. “Thank you for sending Justin with the books and mineral collection.”
“Are you using them?”
“Not yet. I have to keep up with accounting.”
“And what have you learned now?”
“Well—notes payable, notes receivable.”
“What else?”
“Wait, tell me how you are.”
Ann frowns. “Oh, I’m expecting to hear my fate.”
“Your fate?”
“Where they send me. Whether I will walk again.”
“If anyone can do it, you can.”
Ann says, “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“I wasn’t—”
Ann smiles. “I was pulling your leg.”
“I can’t always tell.”
“I like that about you.” Ann’s tone is light; her eyes are fierce.
“I’m sorry,” Sam murmurs.
“For rushing out?”
“Yeah.”
“A little gun-shy, are you?”
The nurse comes in to take Ann’s vitals. She says the doctor will be rounding too, and Ann should eat, so Sam gets up to go.
“Come again,” Ann says.
“Okay.”
“Come back and talk to me.”
“I will.”
She walks out to the slushy parking lot and starts looking for her car, up and down the rows.
“Sam.” It’s Justin in his station wagon pulling up beside her. When he rolls down the window, he looks good, as though he’s over her. “Hey, Sam. Thanks for coming.”
“Of course!” This is how she talks to people ordering their coffee. “She’s amazing.”
He nods but he says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“She’s sharp.”
“Was she scolding you?”
“Not really. A little bit.” Sam is shivering, standing there.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I said I would come back.”
“Great!” He is cheerful too.
The next time she visits, Sam brings Ann rum raisin ice cream, and right before she leaves, Justin appears. They sit for a few minutes with Ann and don’t say anything.
Finally, Ann says, “I hope we’re all still friends.”
Sam nods, embarrassed.
Justin says, “Sure.”
But Ann looks at Sam and says, “I hear that you’re not climbing anymore.”
“I’m doing other things,” says Sam.
“Do you want some more?” Justin holds up the ice cream for Ann.
“No, you can put it in the freezer,” she tells him. “There’s a kitchen down the hall.”
“I’ll go,” Sam volunteers. “I have to go anyway. I have a midterm.”
Ann asks, “For which class?”
“Geology.”
Sam finds the top for the ice cream carton and starts heading out.
“Good luck, dear,” says Ann.
Sam doesn’t have a chance to visit the next week. It’s work and school and Noah and other things preventing her, like staying up late with practice tests. Trying to memorize vocabulary. She has no time for anything, but when Justin texts her ann wants to know where youwere, she apologizes. Sorry I had tests. I can come Th.
He answers, They might transfer her.
Then Sam rushes to the hospital on Thursday, as early as she can.
The room is full of people. Beth, and Justin, and nurses coming in and out. Ann tells Sam, “They’re moving me to Pilgrim.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” says Sam.
Beth is packing up Ann’s clothes. “Grandma, do you want these books?”
Ann looks bothered. “Justin, will you take away this…”
“Lunch?”
“You can call it that.”
“Grandma, I’m going downstairs,” Beth says. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” Ann says. The nurses are stepping out to grab some paperwork. Beth is gone. The only one left is Justin as Ann turns to Sam. “Tell me about your midterm.”
“It was fine.”
“Show it to me.”
Sam opens her backpack and Ann says, “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” Sam says.
But Ann is too quick for her. She sees a big yellow SAT prep book and she says, “Why are you studying for SATs now? Didn’t you already take them?”
Sam doesn’t want to say she is taking them again, so she pulls out her midterm and shows Ann her score, a 98. “This is the one I got wrong. This question here. Stromatolites.”
“Let me see that.” Ann holds the test up. “Where are my reading glasses?” Justin hands them to her and she says, “Oh yes. Presence of blue-green algae. What was the date that you forgot?”
“Three point five billion years ago.”
Ann says, “What a lot of time has passed.”
“I know,” says Sam.
“Will you take another?”
“Geology course? My professor says I should.”
“And will you?”
Sam hesitates. Then she says, “I would have to transfer.”
“Where would you go?”
“Well, I wouldn’t, because I’m in the middle of accounting.”
“But if you did.”
“U Mass Amherst.”
Ann takes that in, and her eyes are full of light. “Oh, be a scientist.”
“That’s what you tell everyone,” Justin says.
“You mean that’s what I told you!”
Beth is back with blankets and a new nurse with a wheelchair. “We’re going to take you downstairs now,” the nurse says.
Ann says, “Not so fast.”
The nurse looks a little nervous. “We’ve got the ambulance waiting.”
“That won’t be necessary. My granddaughter is driving me.”
The nurse says, “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Because those are the hospital rules. You get transferred in an ambulance.
“But I told the doctor no,” says Ann.
“It’s for liability.”
“It’s ridiculous. This is not an emergency.”
“I realize that, ma’am, but it’s hospital policy.”
“It’s a waste of money.”
Beth is trying to help Ann into the wheelchair, but she shouts, “I don’t want to!” Beth tries to calm her, but Ann swats her away. She wants to stand up. Sam knows Ann wants to run away, but she doesn’t have the strength.
“It’s just a short trip.” The nurse is wheeling Ann down the hall.
Beth leads while Justin and Sam trail after. “Bury me and get it over with,” says Ann.
Outside the hospital, the ambulance is waiting and two guys load Ann in her wheelchair, ramp lifting slowly. Rising up, she is quiet and cold. She looks at Beth like You’ve betrayed me. She glares at Justin. And finally, she looks at Sam.
“You got this.” Sam tries to be encouraging.
“Oh, have I?” Ann shoots back. “I wish we could trade places.”
Beth leaves with Ann. The ambulance pulls away without a siren, and Sam sinks down on a metal bench. She feels cursed, even though she knows Ann was just upset.
“She didn’t mean that.” Justin sits next to her.
“Yes, she did.” Sam stares out in front of her. It’s just that Ann’s moods change so fast. “She’s sweet one minute. Then she’s scary.”
“Scared.”
“I guess.” It’s hard to imagine Ann scared of anything.
Justin says, “It was good of you to come.”
“It wasn’t good.”
“Oh, okay. What was it then?”
“Just what I should have done.”
“You like feeling guilty.”
“No, I don’t.”
He says, “I was just trying to thank you.”
“Oh.”
“And you act like you were making reparations.”
It’s freezing on that bench. Sam’s jacket is thin. Her head is bare. “I didn’t make you very happy.”
He looks down at his salt-stained boots. “Yes, you did.”
“I mean the way I left.”
“That doesn’t matter now.”
“But you were angry.”
He does not deny it. He just says, “You’re cold, and I should go.”
“Yeah.” She thinks he will get up to leave, but he does not. They are sitting there with their legs almost but not quite touching. “You were right. I didn’t say goodbye—or tell you anything, even though I wanted to.”
“You didn’t want to.”
“Yes, I did, but it was hard to say.”
“What was it?” She shakes her head, but he presses. “What did you want to tell me about?”
“My life.”
“Your life.”
She is embarrassed. She can hear her mom. Sam, you’re nineteen, because how much life does she have to talk about? Not much, if you count years. Nothing compared to Ann, or the whole earth.
A bus pulls up wheezing. Doors open, flooding them with light, and they shake their heads and the bus drives off again. She says, “It’s okay, we’ll talk later.”
“No, tell me now.”