We Were Never Here (2 page)

I'm in a haze, but I know my mother comes for me. I feel her before she walks through the door, and I'm thinking how I've never been so happy to see my mother. She's in jeans and one of the long linen shirts that she refers to as a tunic, not the suits she usually wears to work, downtown on Capitol Hill. She works for a nonprofit. My mother does all this good for the environment. Also, she doesn't have any lipstick on.

From there we take a plane back to Washington, DC, where I'm from. Well, I'm from Virginia, but it's close enough. In any case, we have to take an ambulance to the airport. I think of all those hospital shows, and I know that the sixteen-year-old girl who gets flown in a special plane to a hospital in another state has something terribly wrong with her. Someone hovers over me and asks me if I'm comfortable and then it's nighttime on the plane, and I look out the dollhouse windows and there's the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial. They are all so close it's like the plane is flying in between the monuments, and then up into the sky, and then back in again.

“Mom!” I say. “Look how close we are to the buildings!”

“That,” my mother says, smiling at me, “is the pain medicine talking. I'm glad it's working.” She brushes my hair behind my ears with her fingers in a way that says,
I'm so glad you are letting me do this
. Her fingers make my neck tingle.

Outside it looks indigo blue, deep, and there are stars, and the lights from the city are everywhere. I can see a dangling crescent moon.

I am in a whole other world. Camp is as far away as a circling planet. I'm in all this pain and then there's what's happening outside the window: Everything is horrible and beautiful, both at the exact same time.

We go straight to the hospital, where I am still. Now. When my mother and I get here, my father and my older sister, Zoe, are waiting for me. The only one missing here is who I want to see most: our dog, Mabel. My father stands up when I arrive, as if I am someone very important.

“My baby,” he says. He has a stuffed animal with him.

“Lizzie,” Zoe says, breathing.

Seeing Zoe like this—tentative, scared, waiting for me, and also without Tim—again makes me realize something is really wrong. Maybe I am dying. And there is something about seeing my dad there with this big teddy bear that makes me really sad. I'm also sad I might be dying. I mean that truly. I have seen the movies; I have read the books. A teenager dying is a terribly sad thing. It just doesn't feel like it's happening to me. How could it be? Hockey tryouts are tomorrow. I'm supposed to be there. David B and I never said good-bye.

I'm not just sad, I'm also terrified about all the things that will never happen to me now, or all the things that I will never make happen, but it's still in me to be a little annoyed about the teddy bear, so I stick with that. I am not seven, I want to tell him. How
will this stuffed animal help me?

But then my father sits the teddy bear down on the bed, and I bring it to my chest. It's impossibly soft, as soft as his gray cashmere robe that I like to wear when he's at work. It's comforting to hold, like it
fits
me. I think of wearing my father's wool sweaters. And his overcoat. I used to find all these random things in his pockets: scraps of paper, dried-out pens, old nickels. I look over and see Zoe looking at me, which she never does, and I hold the bear tightly, feel its silky hairs along the tip of my nose. If I were alone, I know I would take this opportunity to out-and-out cry. But with everyone here, my eyes sort of leak, a faucet that you just can't turn tight enough.

“We're going to find out what's going on,” my father says. “Right away.”

“We are,” my mom says. “It's the colon, we know that. But for now we're on the cancer ward, Lizzie.”

“Colon,” I say. “Cancer,” I say. My heart does that panic fluttery thing that makes me realize should I make it out of here, ever, a slasher movie will be nothing for me. I will never again be the girl waiting at Glitter or Dippin' Dots until
You're Next
and
Evil Dead
are over.

My mom nods. “Yeah, not the ideal thing, but the best gastroenterologists around are in this hospital. We want you here, and sadly, this ward is the safest place for you. We're going to get to the bottom of all this.” She kisses the top of my head. I feel her words on my scalp.

I'm definitely dying, I think. I think, I will never get to Spain, which is surprising because I never knew going to Spain was
important to me. Also, the language I take in school is French. I look at my family again. Who are these delightful people I once thought were so boring? I think of them missing me, and I won't deny that initially I get a pang of pleasure imagining their mourning me. They will leave my room as is, even though I never cleaned it up before camp like I'd promised my mother, and I think of what they'll find. My notebook filled with Birdy lyrics, an embarrassment to be sure. The Converse shoe box filled with all the random things I've saved: an origami bird, a ticket stub to the Glen Echo carousel where I went with my friends Dee-Dee and Lydia, notes from Mark Segura when I sat in front of him in algebra. I can't believe I saved those. English papers I got A's on. Feathers. Pom-poms. Gold stars. Little-girl stuff all crammed in; I can barely close it anymore.

Everything is different now, here. Here everything fits into this teeny-tiny, lonely world.

I can't think of the real things. Like if I go, will I miss my family? Do the people who die, especially the young people, do they go through everything alone now? Are they all alone?

I look at my family again. Differently, just for a moment. I don't want them to let me go.

But a nurse comes in and says they have to. It's way past visiting hours, she tells them. My mother clutches me before going, and my father swishes the hair out of my face. And then I am alone.

Here is what it is now: there is a bed and a tray that moves over the bed or swings parallel to it, and an old bulky television, which hangs from an ugly white(ish) wall. I have a roommate;
a thick, ugly, blue movable curtain divides our two sides. I'm hooked up to a bunch of IVs. They come right out of me; the plastic tubing is taped down along the inside of my arm. I'm not allowed to eat anymore. One of the IVs is this milky white liquid that feeds me through my veins. A plastic bracelet with my name and birth date scrawled on it scratches at my wrist.

My roommate still hasn't moved; I half wonder if she's even alive. No, I full-on wonder this.

“I'm Lizzie,” I say to the curtain, when my family has been forced away. The room is dark now.
Dark
dark. I'm telling you: it's way worse than the infirmary in here.

“Mm-hmm,” she says.

“Well, what's your name?” I ask the curtain.

“Thelma, honey,” she says. “I'm Thelma.”

I wait for her to continue, but that seems to be it.

“Lizzie?” Like it's a question now. “Nice to meet you,” I say, though I do wonder if those kinds of rules for meeting people actually translate to this type of a setting. I mean, it really wasn't that nice to meet Thelma.

She turns up the television, and the local weather screams at me. Apparently, outside of here, tomorrow is going to be a nice day. Of course.

Thelma has the window, but when I get up to go to the bathroom (I know that makes it sound so very easy, but it is complicated and hard as I can barely swing my legs over the side of the bed here, let alone push myself off this bed and totter alongside my metal IV tree, and as often as I have to go, it is never without drama), I can look out through the slivers of the
open parts of the curtain and see the sun go down against the building across the way.

Why is the sun going down so sad?

After my scintillating conversation with Thelma, I drift off to sleep thinking: this is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me.

I really want to go home.

I wake up when a nurse comes to take my vital signs. She comes at me with needles and thermometers. The machine that takes my blood pressure squeezes my arm so tightly I forget I have fingers. I feel the now-familiar shot of pain in my stomach, and when she leaves I'm all alone. I picture all the campers with their huge bags of laundry boarding the buses for home. I try not to think of hockey tryouts. Mr. Crayton setting up the orange cones, yelling at everyone to run faster, legs higher.

I really, really want to go home.

At like 5:30 a.m. the medical students show up, flipping through their charts and whispering to one another. Someone adjusts my IV like he's dimming a light.

Don't I even get a good morning?

Then they all go in for my stomach, which makes me scream in pain, and then they get so scared they're doing something wrong—they are just
students
, after all—they run out of the room, and then the real doctors come.

The pain doctors.

“On a scale of one to ten,” they ask, “ten being childbirth, what's your pain?”

“I'm sixteen,” I say. It is not the first or second or third time I have felt the urge to cry this morning.

“Childbirth is the worst pain on earth,” one of the women says, tilting her head to the side.

The man nods.

And how would he know this?

“Okay,” I say. I want to say ten, my pain is a ten, but if I do, that will seem like it is in fact a lot less but I am being a baby. “Nine?” I say, but the pain is ten.

Anyway, the way Nana tells it, this can't be as painful as childbirth.

They both nod and write stuff down, flip their folders shut.

“We need to deal with your pain first, before anything,” one of them says, and they all trot away.

It's not even five forty-five.

At six fifteen there's another knock at the door. Why do they even bother knocking? No matter what, they just walk in, announcing: Time for blood! Adjusting your saline! and truck over to my bed.

“What,” I say. It's more like a growl.

The door opens a crack, and I can see the tip of a head topped with dirty-blondish-red hair, I guess you'd call it strawberry blond, but that sounds more like it's a girl. This is a boy. He's got freckles splashed across his cheeks, and even from the bed I can see his long lashes blinking at me. His eyes are pale blue. It's a sweet face.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you up?”

I look around as if to see if he's talking to someone else. “Seriously?” I say. I am in a paper-thin hospital gown and I am under the covers. I haven't showered since camp, and believe me, it's not like I haven't needed one.

This boy opens the door another inch or so, and now I see he's wearing a blue oxford shirt, untucked, wrinkled, and his jeans are loose and faded. Also, there's a red woven leash wrapped around his hand. It's like he just stepped off a sailboat or could be the lead in a rom-com, or a counselor at the boys' side of camp,
not
a weird one. If I were the kind of girl to throw off my clothes and
dive off the dock I made out with David B on, this is the boy I would want to do that with, the guy I hope sits next to me as we roast marshmallows and sing stupid camp songs. But this is also the boy who would never like me back. Instead of comfy on a surfboard or on the bow of a boat, I've got Dave. Revise that: I had Dave. Now I don't have anyone.

“Can we come in?” he asks.

Yes! Yes! Come in! I think, even though I am as far from being a girl sitting on the lap of a sun-kissed, windswept boy and singing at a bonfire, about to take off all her clothes and run shrieking into the lake, as I have ever been. For the record, I was never that girl, but from here it feels like I could have been or I was about to be. She was definitely the person I might have wanted to be.

Then a little golden snout sniffs his way in along the edge of the bottom corner of the door. I must admit it's pretty damn cute, this boy and this dog half in and half out of my room. And then I think: a dog! A dog. A golden retriever. The boy is really tousled and perfect in that Abercrombie-Hollister-Hilfiger way I've always both admired and abhorred. I normally like the more nerdy, booky, dark, weird boys in school. There's this one guy who wears a different flannel shirt every day and who draws all these girls as they sit in class, chins on hands, daydreaming. Everyone thinks it's creepy, but I always secretly hope he'll draw me. It wouldn't mean anything, but I have often wondered how he would see me. What would he choose to emphasize. My nose? It's long and bigger than I'd like. My hair? I do have good hair.

Why is he here, this boy? How easygoing can a boy with a dog in a hospital really be?

I look down at my gown. I have two on—one tied in front and one in the back—just like the ones I'm sure everyone's wearing to the Metropolitan Ball. Plus, there's that lack-of-showering issue, and that the last time I looked my hair was knotted, and also greasy, itchy at my scalp. My skin has developed this kind of . . . gray fog surrounding it, as if I'm here for smoke inhalation. And I'm not going to lie; there hasn't been a whole lot of teeth brushing either. I am the most disgusting I have ever been.

“No!” I say, turning away. “I'm busy?”

He cocks his head sideways. “Not really seeing the busy part,” he says. The dog continues to inch his way in.

“Seriously,” I say again. “I am.” I cross my arms. I am actually grateful for a visitor who isn't someone in my family or a nurse with a needle. I'm not sure I want this boy and his dog to go away, like,
forever
. “Thanks, though,” I tell him.

“Okay.” He backs up and so does the dog, at the exact same time. I think—truly—of synchronized swimmers. “We'll try you later,” he says from the hallway. “When you're less loaded down with so many activities. When your calendar clears.”

I have to laugh. Everything hurts when I do this. I have to go to the bathroom. The door is already closed and I doubt he can hear me.

“If that boy was headed to see me,” Thelma—she speaks!—says from the other side of the curtain. She sleeps all the time. I mean All. The. Time. “Well, I wouldn't mind seeing his boots next to my bed is what I mean. But a dog? No sir. No dogs in here.”

“Hi,” I say.

“It'll be okay,” says Thelma.

“The dog was so cute,” I say quietly, and I can hear the squeak of sneakers and the click of nails on the tiles as they make their way down the hallway together. I miss Mabel. Her dog body. Her bones. I hear a faraway knock and then a meek greeting and then the two of them going into some other lucky person's room.

There is no Wi-Fi in here. None. Nothing. No cell phones at all; they screw with the heart monitors or something. But I do have my iPod. I'd brought it for camp, because cell phones are forbidden there too. The way my phone has been banned this summer, you'd think it was radioactive. But this was all part of the “camp experience.” And thank God I did bring my iPod. I imagine having my music here as some kind of soundtrack to this horror movie I'm living. Often I think of it: like the songs that would be playing while the medical students all march in (Pink, “Blow Me”), or as my mother comes walking through that door (Missy Elliott? Don't know why, but I think it . . . ).

Or when I'm alone in here. For that, it would definitely be Birdy. I love her. Dee-Dee says I look a little like her, which would be amazing because I think she's beautiful—thin but not workout thin, perfect skin—but I think Dee-Dee says that because of her long, light-brown hair and her crazy shaggy eyebrows. Those are both like mine, and I still don't know why I'm so bizarrely scared of plucking my eyebrows. All I've ever wanted was to be one of those girls who, like, takes a wisp of hair from each side of her head and gently pins it back. Maybe a braid or two. But my hair and my face, and also my
personality, they're not like that.

But still, if I were a singer-songwriter and I could be anyone, I would be Birdy because (a) she was, like, five when she wrote her first album, which is incredible, and (b) I love her low, pretty voice and (c) I love her lyrics. There's other stuff loaded up, too. A Fine Frenzy. Snow Patrol. Parachute. Drake. But also David Bowie and Miss E and Bob Dylan and the Beatles, especially the White Album, which Zoe got me into, probably because Tim got her into it. What if “Blackbird” was playing as the nurses came to take my blood? I think.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly . . .
Now I realize, though, that it's not just in here; I have always liked sad songs. They have always been my life's soundtrack.

So I've got the White Album and Birdy and some Broken Social Scene and I also have this Brontë novel—
Wuthering Heights
—that I'm supposed to read to prepare for school. I've been carrying it around all summer. I haven't read that much, but it's good! Like crazy dark, gothic good. But in here? I can't concentrate on a thing. And this book and the landline make it feel like pioneer times. So even if it's limited cable, I'm thanking God for television. Thank. God.

And the landline. Nora called me on it my first day in here. My mother was unpacking a few things from home—a brush (ha!), a toothbrush (ha-ha!), some underwear (well, okay), and so on, and I, who had nothing better to do than watch her do these things, answered the phone on the first ring. I imagined it was just after dinner at camp, and the campers were singing in rounds. (
In a cabin in the wood, little man by the window stood,
saw a rabbit hopping by, knocking at his door . . .
)

“Hi,” I said to Nora when she called.

She just started talking. I was wrong; I'd forgotten; camp was over and she was already home in Baltimore. Everything was moving so fast outside of this place. I was losing track of it.
Wait for me!
I thought before she began talking. It was a weird thought. “I'm still seeing Angelo,” she said. “We're kind of dating. It's real, Lizzie. Like post-camp real.”

Post-camp real. David B and I didn't even say good-bye. I had been looking to fall by then anyway, looking to finally turning my friendship with Michael Lerner into something . . . else. More. I have loved that guy since the eighth grade. Like,
loved
him, always hoping, in this crazy kind of pining-little-girl way, that he would one day change, that he would suddenly see me differently. Or see me at all. But he never has, and now it's all changed anyway. So for all these reasons, hearing Nora's good news made me insane. Insane with rage; insane with envy; insane with sadness. Had I asked her if she was dating Angelo? Had I asked her
anything
?

Wait for me.

“You know. Angelo,” she said, as if I hadn't heard her the first time.

“Hmmm,” I said. The nausea, which is always there now, I can't get rid of it no matter what I do, began to rise in my throat. My mother hummed to herself as she folded my underwear, piling it into neat stacks.

“So that's been, like, really brilliant. Blinding. With Angelo, I mean.”

Nora and her British slang. I'm not sure if she studied it or overheard it on her family trip to London or read it in some novel, but man has it made its way into her . . . lexicon.

“Once he kissed me when we were picking blackberries,” she went on. And on. “In the daytime. I'm such a tart!”

“Cool,” I said. But I really didn't care. Like Really. Didn't. Care. I was impressed, though. I couldn't even imagine ever kissing anyone in the sun.

“Cheeky girl,” said Nora. She actually said this, and even I know cheeky means you have to have said something . . . sassy. “So what's going on with you?” she asked.

“It's money in here,” I said. “You don't know what you're missing.”

Nora was silent.

My mother, bent at the waist, stopped for a moment and then resumed her organizing.

“No really, it's like the best vacation I've ever had.” I thought of the pain meds but refrained from making a drug reference due to my mother's ever-presence. Better than smoking pot, I wanted to say, but that wasn't true anyway. Nora and I smoked together once this summer, and we just lay on our backs in the woods and looked up to the sky and watched the leaves rustle on the trees.

Nora cleared her throat. “Sorry, Lizzie,” she said. “I'm so sorry. I was just calling to say I hope you get better soon. Everyone missed you a lot at the last bonfire. It was all so sad.”

It seemed so far away from me, already. I might never be able to go back there, never again be that girl singing along to some guitar like nothing had ever happened, setting my marshmallows
on fire. That's how I liked them. Blazed.

What if I'm just sad forever? I thought. It's almost like I was never there.

Nora kept apologizing to me.

“Thanks,” I said to Nora.

I couldn't picture her in Baltimore—what did Baltimore look like? What did Nora's room look like? Were there Clash and Sex Pistols posters on the wall? Daniel Radcliffe? Bloody Edward Cullen? I just didn't care anymore—and so instead I pictured the lake lit with candles, paper boats flaming and then blazing bright before going out. How would I just push a boat out on the lake and make a wish now? A wish: no more pain or fear.

“Bye,” I said, and hung up.

But if I had let that boy in, if I'd let him in and said hello, if he'd been mine then,
mine
, just the thought of him, maybe I wouldn't have been so angry. If I'd had him to think of and wonder about and hope and hope and hope for, maybe I wouldn't have felt that there was nothing ahead of me. And then maybe I wouldn't have felt so left behind.