Chapter 33
Flying
“This hospital food’s awful.”
“Believe it or not, it’s gotten better,” Lucy said. “You can’t imagine just a few years ago. There were so many complaints, they finally changed it.”
“What did they serve, actual manure?”
“Yeah, on Mondays through Fridays.”
I smiled and flashed her a deck of cards. She frowned. That was the only game I could sometimes beat her at. She’d come see me when she was alone, and we’d hang out in my room or by the coffee machines. “You never thought about playing professionally?”
“Me?” She looked at me with surprise.
“Yeah. At chess, I mean. You’re good. When I was at college, there was a team, they competed against other schools. I think you could even get a scholarship for it.”
“Yeah. I’d have liked that. In another life.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think I have long left. Actually there are some new treatments in advanced trials but I feel like I’m ready to throw in the towel. I don’t want to go through it again.”
I stopped shuffling. “Don’t joke like that.”
“I’m not joking. I’m tired, Will. So tired. I’m sorry to dump all this on you, but it’s just too hard with my family. They think I’m strong and brave and…”
“You are.”
“But what if I give up?”
Silence fell over us as a woman walked over to the coffee machine and got a double espresso.
When she left, Lucy grabbed a marker and traced out a little star on my cast. This was a tradition now.
Every day she drew something else on my leg.
Always something small. I didn’t mind. I doubt I would have minded anything she wanted to do.
My life was a shipwreck, and Lucy was an island in the middle of the ocean.
The time we spent together was the best part of my day.
I didn’t have to confront my parents or the lawyers they’d hired, we could just be there, without expectations, and I didn’t have to feel like I wanted to disappear because I’d been so stupid, I didn’t have to feel the guilt gripping me.
When Lucy and I played games, I had to concentrate so hard that there wasn’t room for anything else.
And another thing. After scratching the surface, I found something deep there.
Sharing time with Lucy meant journeying into the past, and brief as it was, I remembered now and then that I’d been another person—a weird, lonely, different boy but one whose heart was whole.
I remembered myself sitting next to her in the back of class, looking at all these shiny things that were really just a reflection of the purity of her soul, as if that life represented in a glass jar full of glimmers allowed her to be free of all the world’s noise and ugliness.
“Explain it to me. I want to understand.”
“I think just as it’s important to know when to fight, it’s also important to know when to throw in the towel.
And to be honest with you, I already did.
A few months ago, I got pneumonia, and I barely came back from it.
Before I lost consciousness, I thought to myself I was ready to say goodbye.
I didn’t expect to wake back up. I went out, and I thought I’d died.
I was actually going to this group therapy for families that have suffered a loss, and I felt like a ghost. Like it had been months since I’d really been there.
I only ever talked to my grandpa about it. ”
“What did he say?”
Lucy grinned. “Grandpa doesn’t talk a lot. Words aren’t his thing, but his eyes speak for him. You can’t look into his eyes and not know what he’s thinking.”
“What did you see then?”
“It hurt, but he understood.”
“Lucy, I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Just listen, that’s enough.
” She took the deck from my hands and started shuffling the cards herself.
“Grandpa wants me to live for myself, you know? And my parents want me to live for them, and they never could have me the way they wanted. So it’s different.
Letting someone go is easier when you don’t feel like you possess them.
So, like…” She sighed and shook her head.
“Continuing with treatment would just mean dragging out the inevitable. What’s wrong with me isn’t going to go away. ”
“Did the doctors tell you that?”
“No, because they treat me like I’m a child. That’s the problem when they watch you grow up, the hospital people just assume they know you. But I don’t need the doctor to tell me, I know. I just do.”
“And you really don’t have any motivation to go on living.”
“No. Not anymore. Just one…”
“What?”
“My sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah. I never mentioned her to you? Her name’s Greta.
She’s special, but she doesn’t know it. If life were a chess game, she’d spend every day of it trying to figure out her first move.
Just staring at the board and wasting time like an idiot.
I wish at least that one of us could do stuff, see the world, fall deeply in love.
It’s a waste, living this life and never falling in love, don’t you think? ”
“I don’t know if it’s that simple.”
“Of course you don’t, you’re the same.”
“As your sister?”
“Pretty much, yeah. She’s true to herself, though.
She was peculiar, different, from the time she was a girl, but that never bothered her—she thought it was fun.
She changes a lot, she has her sunny and cloudy days, and it’s hard to know what provokes them.
She doesn’t trust herself, that’s why she’s scared to make a move; she thinks she’ll lose the game as soon as she starts.
” She paused and looked up at me, and there was something weirdly penetrating in her gaze.
I had told her over those weeks who I was before the accident and how I didn’t know who I was after.
“The thing is, Will, you wanted to break the rules. Things don’t work that way, and if you try, it usually turns out bad.
You changed too much. But still, both of you are lost, and both of you are waiting for something to happen. ”
“Right.”
It’s hard to accept your own demons when someone throws them in your face. I tried to think, and I ran my finger across the arm of the wheelchair, feeling the little seams hidden on one side.
“I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just telling it like it is. I’m planning for my existence to be over and you don’t know what to do with yours, that’s the main thing. What I know is this: Life’s like a cake, but the person divvying it up doesn’t serve everyone an equal portion.”
“I wish it were different,” I whispered.
“Me too.” She lowered her guard, and I could see the boundless sorrow in her, which she rarely let out. “But it is what it is. And so I want to do something for my sister. Just in case. You never know. The best defense is a good offense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m still not sure, but I have ideas.” She bit her lip pensively and then her eyes opened as though something had suddenly occurred to her.
She grabbed a marker and bent over to draw something new on the cast that held my leg firm: a long line running from ankle to thigh and opening in branches like a tree.
“What are you doing?”
“Can you imagine if everyone who was lost like you and Greta had a map? One full of unuttered wishes, forgotten dreams, possibilities they were too scared to try for? A map of longing. Wouldn’t that make things so much easier?
Taking a step isn’t hard if you know where to go.
Think about it. It would be like whispering in my sister’s ear which move to take to get the game started. And then she could…”
“What?”
“She could fly.”