“Shh!” The taller one whispered, “It’s hide and seek and Suzie’s it. Don’t give us away!”
Dad smiled indulgently and resumed his puzzle, but Mom opened the door and pointed into the hallway. “Out! This is a hospital, not a playground. Can’t you see she’s resting? Out!”
The girls looked at each other, at me, at Mom, and then left. I was glad the younger one stuck out her tongue and wasn’t surprised when Mom followed up by paging Nurse Snoopy and complaining.
“Children shouldn’t be running wild. It upset Mia—she has little enough privacy as it is. She should be able to nap without yelling and intrusions. That’s unacceptable.”
“Now, dear, to be fair, Mia wasn’t napping,” said Dad.
“Stay out of this! Couldn’t you have told them to leave? You always make me play the bad guy.”
Rather than argue, Dad excused himself to “go pick out something for dinner,” and headed to the nurses’ station to study the binder of take-out menus—though he probably had them memorized by now. I’d heard Mom and Dad’s origin story a million times—how he’d been Mom’s statistics tutor in college. “Forty-nine percent of me adored her, the other fifty-one was terrified of her,” he liked to joke. Twenty years later, it didn’t feel like those stats had changed.
The nurse turned to me. “I’m sorry if they disturbed you.”
“It’s okay. They were fine.”
“No, it’s not okay. We’re paying for a private room for a reason,” said Mom.
Nurse Snoopy nodded sympathetically. “Are you getting out of your room more? Have you met the other patients yet? You’d benefit from making some friends and getting involved.”
“Why?” answered Mom. “Those kids were seven—what could they possibly have in common? Mia’s not here to babysit. She’s here to recover.”
The nurse squeezed my arm. “Just think about it.”
I did. About how Mom acted like the hospital was a spa and my stint here was supposed to be rejuvenating. How she didn’t seem to get the scope of my treatment—this wasn’t one month and done. And most of all, how she missed the big thing those seven-year-olds and I had in common: cancer.
But that didn’t mean I wanted my room to be a stop on their scavenger hunts.
This was temporary. I knew it was more than a blip, but it wasn’t permanent. I’d recover—then reclaim my life. There was no need to put down roots or make connections; these people wouldn’t fit in my postleukemia world.
Hil called on a bad day. If my thoughts had been less muddled, I wouldn’t have answered. Her voice sounded full of points and pinpricks; it hurt my head and distracted me from her words.
“So it happened. But I’m okay. Really. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.”
“What?” I asked, having comprehended nothing after hello.
“I saw Keith. At the grocery store, of all places. At least I wasn’t buying something embarrassing like tampons. He was with his mom and she wanted to chat.”
“Chat?”
“Yeah, like I could stand there and make small talk with the guy who dumped me the night he graduated.”
“Oh.”
“I said I had to go and walked out without the cookie dough I was supposed to bring to Lauren’s. It was so strange to see him, Mia. He looked good, like he was still my Keith. I had to stop myself from hugging him …” Hil hiccuped and took a deep breath that ended in a whimper. “God, that sucked! But I’m okay. Really.”
“Really?” My brain could only hold on to her last word and parrot it while I tried to process the rest of her rapid-fire speech.
“I think so. I will be. Please come home. We miss you. I need you.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Love you, Hil.” As I hung up, I felt vaguely like I’d failed her, but my body insisted sleep was more important than figuring out how.
“Are you excited? Last day of chemo.” Nurse Hollywood smiled encouragement.
“Yeah.” My lips were dry; the word made them split and bleed.
“Then what?” It was Gyver’s voice; I turned and found him sitting in the chair to my left, flipping a pick between his fingers. He looked as exhausted as I felt.
“Then we wait for her white cells to grow back cancer free.”
“And she’ll start feeling better?”
The nurse busied herself checking the cups on my bedside table. She picked up two empties and answered as she exited, “Not right away, but in the long term.”
Gyver looked from the nurse to me. “I made you a new playlist.”
“What’s it called?”
“Notes against Nausea. It’s a good one.”
I fiddled lethargically with my necklace. “I haven’t listened to your last three. I try, but I fall asleep.”
Gyver laughed. “That’s kinda the point. They’re called Sleep Songs. Like all good playlists, they progress toward a focus track. If you weren’t asleep by the end, I failed.”
“So I shouldn’t play them on shuffle?” I teased. “What’s on them? Iron and Wine? Coldplay?”
“Some Iron and Wine, Stars, The National. Not Coldplay.”
“I like Coldplay. Are they not cool anymore?”