Demanding Ransom (3 page)

Mikey shrugs. Seeing him sitting here is so ill
fitting. Nothing about him looks remotely sick. He’s a tall, hulking,
eighteen-year-old football player. His cheeks hold a healthy pink flush and a
golden tan glows across his skin. And his near-shoulder length, sandy blond
hair appears freshly washed. He’s the very picture of perfect health. At least
on the outside. But apparently we have machines that can see past that outward
picture—that can view what’s underneath, what’s growing and festering under
the surface without our knowledge of its silent existence.

“Plus,” I continue, “you’ve got girl hair, so
there’s no room to talk.”

“Sadie likes my hair,” Mikey defends, sweeping
several strands from his face. He really could be the envy of every high school
girl with those natural honey highlights and the slight wave that curls through
the length of it. “Actually,
all
the
chicks like my hair.”

“Well, the dudes like my quick wit and ability
to deal with all things gross.”

“Really, Mags. And what dudes would those be?”

I bite back the sarcastic remark that wants to
fly out to verbally slap Mikey in the face. “Brian liked it for three years.
That’s gotta say something.”

“Yeah.” Mikey brings a hand up to his square
jaw and drags his finger across the blond stubble forming there. “But he
dropped you the second he rushed that frat. Your lack of girly-girl sorority
status seemed to hurt you a bit in that department, Sis.”

“Whatever.” I stare into the opening of my soda
can and rotate it side to side, sloshing the contents around just enough so
they creep to the mouth of it, but don’t spill over. “Brian is a tool.”

“A colossal tool.”

A tool that I’d given every single part of
myself to for the past three years. A tool that I’d willingly handed over my
time, my social life, and my body to, over and over again, like some track
stuck on repeat. Yeah, Brian was a tool, but I think I was the one who allowed
myself to be used. Maybe we’re both tools. Whatever. There isn’t any “us”
anymore to worry about, anyway.

“Want anything to eat? I was going to go down
to the cafeteria to grab something.”

“On those wheels?” Mike shifts in the bed and
looks down at my new mode of transportation. “That’s what they have these hot
nurses for—to get you food and junk.”

“Hot nurses? We obviously don’t have the same
ones.”

“All of mine have been hot. Like
Halloween-nurse-costume-fantasy hot.”

I place the Diet Coke back onto the plastic
food tray. “I think that tumor is expanding at an unreasonably fast rate and
your vision is being affected. I have yet to see anyone in this hospital that
is even remotely attractive.”

I take that back. Ran was attractive. Very
attractive. But that was in the ambulance and technically
outside
of the hospital, so I don’t feel the need to retract my
previous statement.

“Knock, knock.” I twist in my chair toward the
door; five teenage guys all about Mikey’s size and age walk through its
opening. “Care for a little company?”

Two girls dressed in cheerleading uniforms
trail behind them, Sadie the last to enter.

“Mikey! Looks like you’ve got some babes taking
care of you up in here! What do I have to do to get a room?” the tallest of
them all, Eric, jokes raucously. He’s wearing a football jersey and blue jeans,
the same attire as the other four boys that followed him in.

Eric and Mikey have been best friends since
they were five. We lived next door to the Tomlinson’s until Dad’s money ran out
and the mortgage became an impossible burden that his airplane mechanic job
couldn’t bear, and we had to transition from expansive country living to
cookie-cutter suburban life. It happened at the same time mom ran off with her
much younger, much wealthier, new husband—the same time she also took her
half of everything in my parents’ estate—everything, that is, except her
children.

“Hey Maggie. How’s your leg?” Eric slides onto
the empty space at the foot of Mike’s bed and gestures toward me. He pulls off
his blue baseball cap and runs a hand through his ebony crew cut. The rest of
the crowd files against the wall opposite us. They’re so still, so steady and
unmoving, that they look like mannequins.

“Fine.” It’s all I have to say, because even
though nothing about it appears fine, the fact that my little brother has a
foreign growth taking up space inside his head pretty much makes anything less
life-altering than that fall into the “fine” category.

“Is that dumbass behind bars?”

My hands feel unnaturally cold, and I twist
them over one another in my lap. I shrug, not wanting to seem like I have no
clue what he’s talking about. Everyone surveys me like the subject matter is
obviously something I should be familiar with.

“Who has a blood alcohol level that high at
5:30 in the evening? Seriously—hope they lock him away for good.”

Is that
what happened?
I think it, but am pretty sure I don’t say it,
because everyone continues their staring, waiting for something to fall from my
lips.

“Yeah, I hope they put him away,” I finally get
out.

Eric nods. “You’re lucky, Maggie. It could have
ended up really bad.” He shifts his gaze to Mikey. “And you’re lucky, too, man.
I heard that the initial sack is what messed with your tumor and made you black
out. Like it aggravated it or something. I think this is one instance where
coach can’t get mad at you for taking the hit.”

I look at Mikey and though he laughs faintly, I
see the fear held in his eyes—that same look he’d get when we were young,
awaiting our punishment for something stupid we’d done. The fear of the
unknown.

“Hey Mikey, I’m gonna head back to my room. You
okay here?”

He smiles warmly. “Yeah Sis.” Mikey reaches
across his bed for something and tosses it my direction. “Take this. You owe me
new wallpaper.”

I scoop up his cell phone and attempt to angle
the wheelchair, pivoting the wheels with my hands, but the extra bodies in the
room occupy the space I need to maneuver it without looking like a total
amateur. With one hand I thrust the right wheel forward, with the other I grab
ahold of my IV pole, and instead of moving the direction of the door, I slam
into the window ledge directly behind me.

 
Eric hops off the bed and wraps his
fingers around the two handles at my back. I want to decline his offer for help
because Mikey is the one who truly needs the support right now, but the truth
is, I know I won’t be able to make it down the hall without some assistance. I
won’t even be able to make it to the doorway. “What room, Mags?”

“319.”

He throws a glance toward Mikey. “Don’t go
anywhere, buddy. I’ll be right back.”

***

“What are these?” I pull myself up from the
chair and collapse onto the bed, grateful for the opportunity to rest, even if
the sheets are impossibly starchy and the pillows feel more plastic than
cotton. A bouquet of five balloons flutters under the ceiling vent: four
colored ones and a single, yellow Mylar balloon with an enormous smiley face
printed across its front.
 

I’ve been in the hospital less than a day, and
though I do have a few friends back at college, I definitely don’t have the
entourage my little brother boasts. I’m not even sure anyone knows I’m here.
And if I did have any visitors, I think I’d probably send them Mikey’s way,
because it feels wrong to have any sort of attention given the circumstances.

The nurse (still not an attractive one) at the
foot of my bed thumbs through my chart. “Not sure. They were left at the front
desk for you.” She paces toward me and lifts a small card from the envelope
that’s taped to a weight at the bottom of the balloon arrangement. “Here.” She
deposits it in my lap. “Need anything else?”

I bite my lip and flip the card over in my hands.
“No, thank you. I’m good for now.”

“Okay.” She leans across my body to point to a
button on the side rail, and I have to hold my breath because she bathed in
perfume this morning instead of water. My eyes burn from the floral stench.
“Just push this if you need something and we’ll send someone in.”

“Thank you.” I say again, more as a “good-bye”
than a real statement of appreciation. I’m ready for some solitude. And some
breathable air.

The nurse slips into the hallway and the door
swings shut behind her.

Lifting the card from the blankets, I rotate it
over in my palm.
Maggie,
it reads on
one side in a handwriting that is unfamiliar to me. I quickly flip it over,
eager to see the rest of the inscription.

You said
you like balloons, and that you like my face.

Though
this obviously isn’t a picture of my face,

it’s
pretty much how it looked when you said that you

also
like my lips (right before you blacked out.)

Hope
your leg heals quickly.

-Ran

My head goes dizzy and I have to re-read the
note to make sure I got it right the first time. With tingling fingers, I trace
each word with my nail, stopping at the end where he penned his name,
Ran.
The yellow smiley face above me
sways side to side under the gusts of air from the vent, like it’s dancing with
the other balloons.

I told him I liked his lips? Seriously, what
did they give me in that ambulance? Truth serum?

“Found out it’s from one of the paramedics our
hospital contracts with,” my nurse says as she bounds back into my room without
any knock. It’s strange because she never looks at me when she speaks, like
she’s too busy to be bothered with actually nursing me to health. But the fact
that she came back to deliver this information makes me think she must be
invested somehow. Maybe it’s just the paycheck that motivates her. “From one of
the guys that delivered you to us last night.”

I nod my head, thumbing the paper card. I know
who they’re from, I just don’t get why he would send them to me.

“Have you had anything to eat today?”

“Diet Coke.”

“Diet Coke is not a food. And it’s not
something you should be consuming right now. I’ll send in a tray of liquids for
you.”

She sashays out the room and the smiley balloon
bobs against the wall from the added rush of air.

Ran.

I keep the notecard in my grip and slide
further down under the covers. My head feels foggy with sleep and the deadened
sensation in my leg slowly wanes, hints of pain rising just under the surface
of my bandages. I clench my fist to endure it, but only my right one, careful
not to crumple what’s wrapped in the opposite hand. As I slip into oblivion and
try to situate myself comfortably on the hospital bed, I inadvertently drape my
hand across my body, pressing the card to my chest, not entirely surprised when
the accelerated cadence of my heart pulses through the paper.

When I wake up three hours later, the card is
right where I left it, hovering just over my heart.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

I push the bristles across the tile floor, but
the strands of hair catch in the grooves and make them impossible to sweep up.
There’s a loud echo of deep voices and overly high-pitched giggles that
swallows up the music blasting through Dad’s surround sound system. It adds to
the headache already vibrating through my head.

“Don’t worry about that, Maggie,” Eric nearly
yells, motioning his free hand over the ground between us. His other hand
steadily clutches the electric razor as it glides across his scalp, and his
eyes follow its movement in the mirror Sadie has situated in front of him.
“I’ll take care of that.”

“No, it’s fine. I got it.”

Pushing the broom around the room is about all
I can do, and using the wooden pole to steady myself actually works quite well for
balance. It’s better than the crutches that have become a permanent fashion
accessory these past three weeks. Collin, my physical therapist, told me that I
need to start stretching myself again in order to rebuild the strength in my
quad, so little by little, I’m heeding his advice. Sweeping is
doable—painful, but doable.

“How do I look?” Eric swivels on his barstool
to face the audience of his fellow football teammates at my back.

“Awesome. Me next.” One of the guys drops down
into the open chair and tosses his baseball cap onto the kitchen counter. Sadie
hands him the mirror and scrapes the razor across his blond sideburns, which
I’m sure he worked very hard to even grow. Mikey tried to grow his for months
when he was fifteen, then decided the peach-fuzz made him look like he was
trying too hard, which was true. By the time he turned eighteen, he had finally
matured into the man he’d pretended to be as an adolescent, thick sideburns and
all.

“I’m after Tony.”

Eight of Mikey’s friends are already donning
hairless scalps, all in tribute to my little brother’s newly shaved
head—a necessary result from his tumor removal sixteen days ago. Things
went well. After twelve hours of surgery, the doctor announced that it was a
“success”—that they were able to extract the majority of it. So I was
surprised when he held firmly to that original statement, even after the
results came back indicating the tumor was malignant. That my little brother
has brain cancer. It’s odd to put the words “success” and “cancer” in the same
sentence. They just don’t fit together.