What's Left of Me (17 page)

I stirred.

A pause. Then:
<. . . What’s it like?>

At first I thought I’d somehow missed part of her sentence.

It took her another moment to answer.

Being alone?

She sighed softly, our eyes still tracing the bumps in the ceiling.

I said.

She fell quiet, then said

She stopped again.

I said, not quite sure where she was going.

I stopped.

She squeezed our eyes shut. Our fingers clenched the edge of a pillow.

She took a long, deep breath.

When I didn’t immediately answer, she rushed on.

I didn’t say the obvious—that for most of that time I hadn’t been able to string together enough words to make a sentence.

she said.

For one wild, ridiculous moment, I thought she sounded jealous.

Addie. Jealous of me!

Laughter bubbled up and spilled over, too bright and sickly sweet. Silent laughter, because without the medicine, Addie was in firm control of our lips, our tongue, our lungs. But she heard the laughter just as she heard my silent voice.

What’s so funny? Did she really have to ask?

She flinched. Our eyes popped open.

She flipped onto our side.

she said.

I said.

She was quiet.

A storm cloud rolled between us, boiling with thunder, icy with rain.

We stared at the wall. Slowly, Addie turned so our face was flat against the pillow.

she said.

Our breathing grew tight.

I said.

A wall slammed down between us. White. Trembling. A cry pushed through our lips. Addie buried our face into the pillow, muffling the sobs until there was no sound. Just tears.

she said.
normal
for once.>

I shrank into myself, folding up as small as I could. I tucked myself away in the corner of our mind, hiding from Addie’s tears. But I couldn’t hide from what she’d said.

I wanted to disappear, to slip into that nothingness I’d found the winter of our thirteenth year, where there was nothing sharp, nothing that hurt, just a stream of dreams that swirled me around and around until I was a part of them.

But I couldn’t. I had too much, now, to lose.

Nineteen

T
he next morning, they dressed us in blue. Sky-blue button-up blouse. Navy-blue skirt that fell to our knees. They were starched stiffer than Mom had ever managed to do, the collar crisp and snow white. Unlike our school uniform, this one had no emblem or decoration. We were allowed no pockets.

“Come along,” the nurse said once Addie tied our shoes. They’d let us keep those, at the very least, along with our long, black school socks. I wished I knew what would happen to the rest of our clothes.

Addie had snuck Ryan’s chip from our pocket. Now it pressed snugly into the hollow beneath our ankle bone, our sock tucking it against our skin.

“Where are we going?” Addie said, our voice dull.

We’d both woken silently this morning. My name had not formed on her tongue as the last veils of sleep slipped away. Or perhaps it had, but she’d swallowed it bitterly down, as I had hers.

The nurse smiled. “To meet your new roommate. All the other children live in their own special little ward. You’ll be moving in today.”

“Moving in?” Addie said. The nurse didn’t reply, just continued giving us that small, bland smile.

Addie reached for our duffel bag, but the nurse touched our hand. “Someone will bring it to you later.”

It couldn’t have been past eight in the morning. Without a watch, we couldn’t tell exactly, but once we entered the hall, we could see the sun hanging golden in the sky through Nornand’s great windows. We seemed to be the only one looking beyond the glass. The woman leading us through the halls stared only straight ahead of her, and the other nurses or doctors who passed by all seemed to have more important things to do than gaze out past Nornand’s walls.

Finally, the nurse stopped before a plain-looking door. She produced a ring of keys from her pocket, selected one, and stuck it into the lock.

“Welcome to the Ward, Addie,” she said.

Inside, it was still dark. A nightlight cast a fuzzy glow in the far corner of the room, but it wasn’t enough to see by, especially not after the brilliance of Nornand’s halls. Addie blinked, trying to acclimate our eyes.

It was wasted effort, though, since the nurse flicked on the lights a second later. Now we could see everything.

The Ward and the Study room were similar in many ways. The carpet was made of the same tightly woven fiber, the walls painted a pale blue, interrupted only twice—once by a gray door and once by a small alcove that seemed to lead to a pair of bathrooms. A broad-leafed plant stood in one corner, fairly bursting from its tiny pot. There were two round, medium-sized tables, a few chairs, and one small cabinet. But no kids.

“Everyone’s still in their rooms,” the nurse said, as if she’d read my mind. She gestured at the gray door. “Let’s get you to yours, shall we?”

The door led to another hallway, this one narrower and shorter than any of the others we’d seen. A faint glow lit the far end, but the nurse quickly overwhelmed it by turning on the overhead lights.

I managed to count eight doors before the nurse opened one and hustled us inside.

“Kitty?” she said as she stepped in behind us and flicked on the lights. “Wake up and shine, sweetheart. You’re finally getting a new roommate.”

The girl in bed flew upright so fast she kicked her blankets onto the floor. The fairy girl. Her long dark hair was tangled and frizzy from sleep, making it seem even larger in comparison to the rest of her body. Her eyes were huge, her lips parted.

“This is Addie,” the nurse said. Her voice was relentlessly cheerful, like that of a kindergarten teacher on the first day of class.

Kitty stared at us but said nothing. The long silence hung heavily on our shoulders. Finally, the nurse clapped her hands. “All right, then, girls. I’ll go wake up the other kids. You get dressed, Kitty, and tell Addie about our morning routine.”

Kitty climbed out of bed, stealing a glance at our face as she hurried for her clothes. They were already waiting for her on her nightstand, stacked in a small blue pile. The nurse closed the door on her way out.

Addie stood absolutely still, our hands clasped in front of us.

“Hi,” Kitty said quietly, and didn’t speak again as she dressed.

She’d barely finished when a voice rang out in the corridor: “Everybody into the hallway, please.”

Kitty hurried to the door. Addie took one last look at the room—the white walls, the tiled floor, the metal-framed beds and thin pillows. The solitary window was obviously not meant to be opened, ever. I tried to imagine sleeping here. Waking here. How long would it take to grow accustomed to cool white hospital sheets?

No, the nurse was wrong. We hadn’t spoken with our parents properly yet. Dad had promised to come for us.

This wasn’t our room.

“Aren’t you coming, Addie?” Kitty said, lingering in the doorway.

For a second—just a split second—I felt a crack in the wall between Addie and me. Then it was gone. But brief as the lapse had been, it was enough for me to catch a whisper of Addie’s emotions.

A hint of fear.

“Yeah,” Addie said. “I’m coming.”

The main room was full of quiet chaos. Some of the kids were still half asleep, slumped into the wooden chairs, their heads resting on the tabletops. Eli had curled up in a corner, scrunched down so low his knees practically shielded his face from view. A few of the older kids talked quietly near the far door.

Hally was just coming out of the alcove. She held her glasses in one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other, her mouth open in the wide
O
of a yawn. A second later, Ryan stepped into view. He gave a quick glance about the room, and our eyes met. Addie looked away. But in another moment, he was by our side.

“You all right?” He kept his voice buried under the Ward’s sleepy murmur of noise.

“Fine,” said Addie.

He hesitated.

“She’s fine, too,” Addie said, and pushed away from the wall, moving toward a corner of the room. She’d just passed the nurse when the woman clapped her hands.

“Listen up,” she said. “Eli? Shelly? I’ve got your meds, if you’ll come over, please.”

Addie had stopped moving at the clap. When she started walking again, the movement must have caught the nurse’s eye; she looked down, frowned a moment, and then smiled again. “I almost forgot, Addie. Someone just came to tell me that your parents are on the line.”

Our parents. They’d have told them our results by now. All else flew from my mind. Our parents were on the phone and that was all that mattered in the world.

“Can I talk to them?” Addie said. Our voice came out louder than I’d expected. “Please? I need to—”

“One moment, Addie.” The nurse held up her hand and turned to a little girl who’d just walked up. “Here you go, Shelly—where’s your cup? You need water with this, remember, dear?”

The girl moved off again, and Addie tried to recapture the nurse’s attention. “Please, can’t I talk to them now?”

The woman hesitated. She looked around the room, then at the bottles of pills in her hand. Finally, she sighed. “You can’t wait five minutes?” Addie shook our head, eyes pleading. “Well, all right, then. I’ll find someone to take you to a phone.”

“Thank you,” Addie whispered.

Ryan raised his head as we passed, but said nothing.

It was early, and the hall was relatively empty—just a delivery boy and a pair of doctors bent over a clipboard, talking quietly. But before long, another woman in a gray-and-white nurse’s uniform showed up, and the nurse flagged her down.

“Addie here needs to use a phone,” the first woman said. “I’m bringing the other children to breakfast. Would you take her to an office? It’s line four.”

“Sure.” The other nurse smiled at us. “Right this way.”

We hadn’t walked more than a few minutes before she let us into a small office. A desk, littered with papers and manila folders, took up most of the room. The nurse gestured toward a swivel chair behind the desk. “You can sit there.”

Addie did as she bid, watching as she lifted the phone from its cradle and pushed one of the glowing orange buttons.

“Hello?” she said. A pause. “Your daughter, sir? Her name?” Another pause. “Okay, then. Yes, she’s right here. One second, please.”

She placed the phone in our outstretched hands. Addie smashed it to our ear. “
Hello?
”

“Hey there, Addie,” Dad said. False cheer strained each word. “How’re you doing?”

“Okay,” Addie said. She twisted the telephone cord around our wrist, swallowed, and curled away from the nurse, who hovered near the desk. “I miss you. And Mom. And . . .”

And Lyle, but our voice gave out before we could say it.

There was the tiniest of hesitations. Then Dad spoke again, and the cheer was gone. “We miss you, too, Addie. We love you. You know that, right, sweetheart?”

Addie nodded. Gripped the phone. Whispered, “Yeah. I know.” When Dad didn’t speak, she said, “How’s Lyle?”

What did you tell him?

“Oh, he’s great, Addie,” Dad said. Then, as if realizing how this might come across, he added, “He’s really upset about you being gone.”

Addie said nothing.

“But we . . . got a call last night,” Dad said. “From his doctor.”

Our muscles stiffened.

“Addie, they’re going to move Lyle up the transplant list. They said . . . they said they’d give him top priority. Even if they’ve got to transport it from another area
.
”

At first, nothing. Then coldness. Dizziness. Fire in the backs of our eyes. And finally, a gasp from clenched lungs. We knew what this meant, not only for Lyle but for us.

A transplant meant no more hours of dialysis every week for Lyle, no more meaningless bruising and days when he didn’t want to open his eyes.

A transplant meant our parents’ personal miracle.

A transplant meant a trade.

“You said it would only be two days, Dad. You said . . . you said you’d come get me if . . .” Our throat was closing up. We squeezed the receiver so tightly our fingers cramped. Addie couldn’t finish her sentence.

“I know,” came Dad’s voice. “I know, Addie. I know. But—”

“You said
,
” she cried. A sob punched through our chest. She squeezed our eyes shut, but the tears escaped anyway, hot down our cheeks. “You
promised.”

Our brother. Our wonderful, terrible, annoying little brother, fixed up nearly good as new.

And we would never see him again.

“Addie,” our father said. “Please, Addie—”

The roaring in our ears drowned out his words. What did it matter what he wanted to say? He wasn’t coming.

He wasn’t coming.

He
wasn’t coming
. Not to take us away.

“They say they can make you better, Addie,” he said. “They’re a good hospital—and they’re the only place in this part of the country that specializes in this . . . this sort of thing. We want you to get better.
You
want to get better, Addie, don’t you?”

There was no mention of what Addie “getting better” would mean for me, for his other daughter, who he claimed to love. He’d said he loved me. I’d
heard
him.

Addie didn’t respond. She held the phone to our ear and cried, knowing the nurse was watching us and hating her for seeing.

“Addie?” our father said quietly. “I love you.”

But what about me?

“We—” Addie gasped. “I mean, I—”

It was too late. The silence seeping through the phone said it all.

“I want to go home,” Addie said. “Dad, take me home. Please—”

“You’re sick, Addie,” he said. “And I can’t make you better. But they—they say they’ve got all these ways. They can . . .”

“Dad—”

“I know this is hard, Addie.” His voice was tight. “God help me, I know, but it’s the best thing for you right now, okay? They’re going to help you get well, Addie.”

How much of that did he truly believe, and how much was he just saying it so he could feel better about abandoning us?

“But I’m not sick,” Addie said. “I—”

“You are,” he said. The words were so heavy with defeat they knocked our breath away.

“I’m not,” Addie said, but so softly only I heard.

“We’ll call again tonight, and we’re going to fly up as soon as we possibly can,” Dad said. “Addie, listen to what they tell you, okay? They only want the best for you. Mom and I only want the best for you. Do you understand, Addie?”

For a long moment, she said nothing. He said nothing. The phone line buzzed with silence.

“Addie?” our father said again.

We gave no reply.