Chapter 6 Lucy
LUCY
{Two months and ten days ago}
Before the news.
Sunshine poured in through the small window. You’d think it would brighten the room, making it more cheerful.
Instead, it highlighted all the little things about my life that grated.
Adjustable bed with safety rails.
Portable toilet just in case.
Monitors beeping.
Several tonic bottles I was supposed to finish every day for my health.
Still, Brightfield was miles better than some of the hospitals I’d stayed in as a kid.
“Is this right, Lucy?” A small voice dragged my gaze back to my laptop screen.
I squinted at the grainy video feed as ten-year-old Milo worked through the algebra problem I'd assigned. He was holding up his paper, pencil tip pointing at the problem he’d been doing.
His tiny hospital room in New York looked almost identical to mine—same sterile white walls, same medical equipment humming in the background, same reinforced window offering a view of a world neither of us could touch.
The only real difference was that his isolation bubble contained dinosaur-patterned sheets and a collection of action figures, while mine held the accumulated debris of a kid-turned Teen-turned adult who'd been locked away for a million years and counting.
"So, I move the x to this side?" Milo's voice crackled through my speakers, his bald head reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights above his bed.
"Almost," I replied, leaning closer to my screen. "Remember, when you move something across the equals sign, you have to—"
"Change the operation!" he interrupted, his face lighting up. "Subtraction becomes addition!"
"Exactly. Now, what happens to that negative three when you move it?"
I watched him scribble on his whiteboard, tongue poking out between his teeth in concentration.
The tutoring program had been Doc Emerson’s idea—a way to connect isolated patients across different facilities, creating the illusion of normalcy through shared learning.
I'd reluctantly agreed, expecting to hate every minute of forced interaction.
Instead, I'd discovered that explaining quadratic equations to kids who couldn't leave their rooms gave me something I hadn't realized I was missing: a purpose beyond simply staying alive.
A familiar tightness squeezed my chest mid-explanation.
I pressed my palm against my sternum, trying to ease the pressure while Milo continued working through the problem, oblivious to my discomfort.
These episodes had been coming more frequently—moments where my lungs seemed to forget their basic function, where Earth's atmosphere felt too heavy for my damaged body to process.
I forced a deep breath, then another, keeping my face neutral as I waited for the sensation to pass. Pain was nothing new; acknowledging it would only invite more medical interventions, more tests, more pitying looks from doctors who'd run out of answers years ago.
"Got it!" Milo held up his whiteboard triumphantly. "X equals 12!"
I checked his work, grateful for the distraction. "Perfect. Your arithmetic skills are definitely improving."
"That's 'cause you're a better teacher than the hospital tutor. She treats me like I'm stupid just 'cause I'm sick."
"Being sick doesn't make you stupid," I said, swallowing against the lingering tightness in my chest. "It just means you have to be smarter than everyone else to compensate."
Milo grinned, revealing a gap where his front tooth had recently fallen out. "Mom says I can go back to regular school next year if my numbers stay good."
"That's awesome." I kept my smile firmly in place, ignoring the twist of something that wasn't quite jealousy in my gut. "You'll have to email me about all the normal-kid stuff I'm missing. Like recess. Is recess still a thing?"
"I dunno. I've never been."
The simple admission hit harder than I'd expected. Milo had been diagnosed at four; his isolation was the only life he remembered. At least I had vague memories of elementary school before my condition deteriorated—of swings and hopscotch grids and the feel of wind through my hair.
"Well, you'll have to investigate and report back." I glanced at the clock display in the corner of my screen. "We should wrap up for today. Same time Thursday?"
After our goodbyes, I closed the video chat program and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in my joints.
The desk chair wasn’t comfortable, no cushioning fabric.
Just easy-to-clean molded, powder blue plastic.
It took me a ridiculously long time to stand up, my feet tingled terribly.
Walking was going to feel like the floor was made of glass shards.
A few days ago, everything in my room had been sterilized to within an inch of its life—a metaphor I typically shied away from, given my own tenuous existence.
When Brightfield did one of their facility-wide deep cleans, I ended up in a safe little, ten-by-ten bubble until my room was deemed habitable for me again.
The only silver lining was I got to crack ‘bubble girl’ jokes literally.
Closing the laptop and picking it up to tuck under my right arm, I shuffled back to bed, each step a careful negotiation with my increasingly uncooperative body.
Three years ago, I could pace this room for hours without getting winded.
Now, the ten steps from desk to bed left me breathless.
Though Doctor Emerson hadn’t told me flat-out I was worsening beyond help, the truth seemed to be screaming at me every waking hour.
I sank onto the mattress and against the stack of pillows—they crinkled slightly as I settled against them thanks to the plastic-like allergen cases—and opened the laptop again, this time perched against my thighs instead of the barebones desk across the room.
After initiating a browser, it took a quick bookmark click to open the blog I'd started when I turned twenty-one.
"Life in the Bubble: Chronicles of a Professional Sick Person.
" The title had seemed ironically funny at the time, a way to reclaim my identity beyond medical charts and treatment protocols.
Two years and over a hundred posts later, it had become my connection to a world that existed only as pixels on a screen.
Today's half-written draft stared back at me:
I think I’m tired. Tired of trying to take one breath after another. Tired of these four walls. Tired of endless tests. Broken promises. I’m tired. Is it okay to quit? Is that allowed? Being an Omega, right to die laws don’t apply. But if I have no right to live, what’s the point?
I stared at what I’d written this morning and then thought about Milo’s smile when he’d understood the math problem.
I was hurting all over, yet I’d found a way to help someone despite being stuck in this damn room.
I deleted the entire paragraph with a swipe of my finger.
Too whiny, too fatalistic. Too… truthful.
My readers didn't come to my blog for existential despair—they wanted the sanitized version of chronic illness, the inspirational journey of a girl who found meaning despite her limitations.
The truth was messier, darker, and should stay in the shadows.
I started typing again.
Today I tutored a ten-year-old math prodigy trapped in his own bubble across the country.
It helps to connect with other people like me.
We're members of an exclusive club nobody actually wants to join. Not sure why. All you healthy weirdos are missing out. Sometimes I think the kids I help online are the only ones who truly get my sense of humor about tasteless food, relentlessly bitter medicine, and why hospitals always seem to think yellow is the best wall call. Yellow isn’t cheery.
Yellow is waste containers filled with used needles.
Yellow is how dark my pee is when I’m horribly dehydrated and dizzy. Yellow is—
I stopped typing abruptly, realizing that apparently today I wasn’t going to be able to write a decent blog entry. My brain was too full of muck and mire.
Tightness suddenly sprouted in my chest and I lifted a hand, pressing my palm firmly over the area that seemed to be constricting. I closed my eyes as pain began to spiderweb outward from the discomfort.
Tighter.
Ever tighter.
Like someone was turning the tuning pegs of a guitar far past the reasonable point.
And strings were threatening to snap.