Chapter 44

THERE’S A KNOCK at the door, and Lilian comes in with a smile and a lunch tray.

“Morning,” she says, even though it’s almost twelve. “Time for lunch.”

It’s still a little strange to think about Lilian as a good guy. I try to sit up straighter, but I still feel like my body is going in slow motion. And I’m still so weak that I need about three pillows to help me stay sitting.

Lilian comes over to help me. The bed is already angled up as much as it can go, so she just readjusts the pillows and punches them into the right shape.

I stare down at the lunch tray she put on the table. I’m sure the food tastes good. They’re colourful and steaming hot, and there’s a blob of green jelly on the side. But my appetite is still somewhere in the garbage.

The spoon wobbles dangerously when I pick it up, but I stick it stubbornly into the macaroni. All last month Lilian had to feed me, and I don’t think I can stand it anymore.

I can feel her laser eyes on me as I scoop the noodles up. She says, “How are you feeling today?”

I make a bunch of sounds through my food that translates to bad, but better than yesterday, I guess, which Lilian seems to get, which is good because I don’t really feel like talking right now.

She didn’t arrange for me to have the room to myself. I guess she thought that would be too conspicuous. I share the room with two other kids who hog the tiny TV all day and watch cartoons. Luckily, they’re both off doing some group activity that I’m definitely not well enough to join yet, so I get to watch basketball. Because my brain is so foggy, sometimes I find myself trying to spark the ball into the net. It’s a good thing I’m still too weak to call up anything, or I would have accidentally smashed the TV already.

“What team are we rooting for?” Lilian asks.

I shrug. I haven’t decided yet.

I manage half of the macaroni before I start feeling sick. I skip the soup and go straight for the jelly before my body tries to convince me it’s a good time to throw up.

“Guess what?” Lilian says with a small smile.

I frown, trying to remember if it’s some special date. It could be. I keep forgetting what day it is. Being in a sepsis-induced coma for weeks does that to you. “What?”

She shows me an envelope, and I drop my jelly spoon.

Zahira.

The first thing I did when I woke up—well, the first thing I did was panic weakly, but when the cracked-apart pieces of my mind finally came back together and I remembered the name of the long-haired, pink-jacketed woman, I begged to see her. I wanted to know she was okay. Lilian told me not to worry, but I did worry, but I was also too occupied with feeling like crap to do anything about it.

Mostly, I was afraid that after everything, Zahira wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I get it, though. I lied to her. I ruined her life. I ruined JJ’s life. I even ruined his car. The weird part is, I was even worried about Aaron. He did drive me to Suddence. I can’t not be at least a little grateful about that.

But then Lilian showed me all the letters that Zahira sent, and the relief nearly made me faint. She opened the letters for me and held them up so I could read them, and all I could think was, We’re okay.

“I’ll let you read it on your own, okay?” Lilian pats my arm. “I’ll bring over some pen and paper.”

She takes my half-eaten lunch away and leaves me staring at the envelope.

We’re leaving in a few weeks. That’s always been the plan. Once I get well enough to be discharged, Lilian will take me out of the country, to where she’s hiding all the other kids like me, just in case They manage to regroup and try to come after us again.

It’s still hard to wrap my head around there being other kids like me. I know Doctor Heed told me about them, when he said we would all go to summer camp together. But that whole time I thought they must have all been vivisected and died already, and after I found out the truth, that nobody actually wanted to cut me apart, I just…I never thought about it. I was only thinking about Suddence. I guess some part of me knew it didn’t matter if there were other kids and if they were still alive. I was never going to meet them, anyway.

But Lilian had gotten them all out. Most of them, at least. She hadn’t been lying when she said she didn’t agree with Doctor Heed anymore. She hadn’t been lying when she called Marisa and told her she wanted to get us out. She’d really wanted to help. And we hadn’t believed her.

The whole “moving away” thing scares me a little. But what scares me more is that I would stop getting letters from Zahira. They’re the only things keeping me afloat right now. It also doesn’t help that the only letter I sent back was pretty crappy.

Dear Zahira,

Hi. As you can tell, I’m awake now. Hooray!

The hospital food isn’t bad. They won’t let me have ice cream though. I’m glad your car is alright. I hope you finally put some paint on the bald spots.

And then I didn’t know what else to write and went to sleep and when I woke up, I added:

Poquito is so cute. Send me more pictures please.

What I really wanted to write was I’m happy you’re okay and you don’t hate me and I wish you can come visit me. What I ended up writing is:

Tell JJ I said hi. And punch Aaron for me. (That’s a joke. But for real. Just punch him a little bit.)

Sincerely, Dany

I didn’t want to send it because it sounded like a robot wrote it. But if I sent nothing, then Zahira might get sad. So I sent it, and I knew it wasn’t enough, but what else was I supposed to say? That they play basketball on TV here? She doesn’t even know I like basketball. My heart feels empty about that. After everything we went through, there’s still so much we don’t know about each other.

How long has it been since I got here? Two months in a coma. One month recovering. I’m still recovering. I only just got strong enough to hold a pen last week, when I wrote the letter. It was like I had to make my body remember how to do everything. There’s a physical therapist who helps me with all that, and it’s been helping very, very slowly.

I have a mental therapist too, but that one’s not going so well. She just keeps trying to get me to talk about what happened to Marisa. I don’t even want to talk to myself about Marisa. And she keeps saying everything will be okay, blah blah blah. Yeah. I’m about to move across the ocean to a whole different country with people I don’t really know, but sure. I’ll be alright.

And she gave me a new diary. I threw it in the trash the moment she left.

Well, Lilian fished it back out and now it lives on my bedside table, but I haven’t touched it. Even looking at it makes me all jittery on the inside, and I have to look away and think about literally anything else before panic crashes over me. I don’t know. It feels like there’s been a lot of that. A few months ago, any life I pictured with Marisa were gone, and there was nothing left. I was so sure I didn’t have a future. I never pictured anything after Suddence.

And now, all of a sudden, I have all this time ahead of me, and it freaks me out. It makes my fingers all cold, and my ears start ringing and my heart wants to jump out of my chest and just book it. I still feel empty and wrong, and I miss Marisa so much but I can’t think about her because it just makes me cry, and—and—am I supposed to live the rest of my life like this? Just wake up and feel bad and then go to sleep again?

Calm down, Dany.

I open Zahira’s letter, and like I asked, there are about five pictures of Poquito inside.

Dear Dany,

I’m so glad to hear you’re awake! And I’m glad to hear the hospital food doesn’t suck. (And yes, I did punch Aaron on the arm, just like you asked.)

I hope you’re doing good! I know being in the hospital isn’t easy. I had to get surgery for my appendix when I was like, six, and all I really remember is that it was miserable. If I could, I would totally post some ice cream to your room, but I don’t think the hospital would appreciate that :(

I hope you like the pictures of Poquito. Maybe one day you can come visit him for real. Then you can see that Shirley definitely doesn’t have bald spots anymore.

I wish I could send you some pizza, too. The pizza here is surprisingly really good. Maybe next time I’ll drip some pizza grease on the letter.

Get well soon!

-Zahira

I stare at the words one day you can come visit. She knows we’re leaving. It’s just wishful thinking.

Lilian comes back with a pen and a piece of lined paper. “What’d she say?” she asks.

I give her the letter and pick up the pen, but I don’t know what to write. I would love to come visit you! Unfortunately, we’re leaving in a few weeks and it might be dangerous to see each other, so I’m going to pass. I don’t believe that Shirley isn’t bald anymore. Show me a picture and prove it.

I end up poking my pen on the paper instead and eventually dig a hole through it.

Lilian glances up from Zahira’s letter. “You alright?”

I stop poking and try to rub away the blot of ink I left on the plastic table. It smears and stains.

“When you…” I press my lips together, trying to put the question in the right order. “When Marisa called you, what did you guys talk about?”

Lilian looks surprised, and I know it’s because it’s the first I’m talking to her about Marisa. It’s the first time I’m saying her name, period. Already, I can feel ice cold panic clawing at my heart, and I want to say never mind and do something else, but I take a deep breath and push the panic back.

Lilian has a faraway look in her eyes, and I realize maybe I’m not the only one who has trouble thinking about Marisa.

“In the beginning, we fought a lot,” she says slowly, like she’s sifting carefully through her memories. “I tried to get her to come back, and she was telling me how terrible my dad was, and I hated her for a while. The calls never went past a minute. I think she was afraid of being traced. But once it was clear she wasn’t going to come back, we kind of…settled.”

I try to imagine Marisa hiding in the motel washroom, calling Lilian when she thought I wouldn’t notice. I picture anger, bitterness, fear. And sadness. My heart cramps.

“She talked about you, mostly.”

I blink in surprise. “Me?”

“Yeah,” she says with a smile, but I can’t miss the tears in her eyes. “She talked about how you liked basketball, and musicals.”

“It’s just the one,” I say a little defensively. It feels weird to be talking about Marisa like this, like she just left the room to get a snack instead of being gone forever. But it’s nice, in some way. Like I’ve been trapping her for too long in my heart and now I’m finally letting some air in. It hurts, feeling like she might escape. But there’s some relief, too.

“What about you?” I say. “What did you talk about?”

She sighs, and it seems to sag her whole body. “I don’t know. I complained about the weather. I talked about visiting my family. Sometimes it felt like the good old days, when we were seventeen and the worst thing we had to care about was our finals. It was…” She turns away, wiping her eyes “It was nice. Being able to talk to her. Despite everything.”

I stare down at the blank paper, my eyes blurring with tears, too. Quietly, I say, “I miss her.”

I didn’t realize how much I needed to say that until now. Something unlocks in my chest, and all the grief comes flooding out. I bury my face, trying not to cry, but it’s impossible. I miss her. I miss Marisa. But she’s never coming back.

Lilian puts a comforting hand on my back, and without thinking, I lean into her. She wraps her arms around me, and she feels warm and soft and safe.

“I miss her too,” she says. “I miss her too.”