Chapter 6 #2
“According to my notes, I’m planning to blow out of my mother’s house the moment I turn eighteen.
I think that’s why she stuck me in here.
They thought I was too dumb or confused to understand their conversation this morning.
But I can figure out what ‘medically incompetent’ means.
If she can prove I can’t make my own medical decisions, I won’t be considered an adult even after my birthday. ”
“That’s bad,” I said. “Can she do that?”
“She’s already working on it.” She lifted the brush from the page. It was completely blacked out.
“I want to help you.”
Her gaze held mine. “I’m not sure anybody can.”
“I’d like to try.”
The art teacher wandered over, frowning at my plain green spiral and Ava’s black page. “You ruined your perfect picture!” she said.
“I sure did.” Ava tilted her head to the woman. “I think it would help me a lot if you brought me back here tomorrow to try again.”
I had to bite back my smile. Nobody was going to put one over on her.
Ava was a fighter.
Things got pretty grim for me the next day.
I hadn’t had a seizure and I was due to be evicted from the hospital in less than twenty-four hours.
We’d tried everything. They gave me antihistamines.
Kept me up all night. Bike rides. Strobes.
I breathed heavy for huff tests until I thought my head would pop off.
But nothing.
The hospital protocol didn’t force me to go hungry, but Gram and I agreed that I would stop eating on top of everything else. Insurance refused to pay for any more hours with the pricey nuclear medicine guy, so my day was even emptier than before.
Despite all that, I was on a natural high. No sleep? No problem. No food? I could live on air as long as Ava was close by.
She didn’t have a cell phone. Given her mother, that didn’t surprise me. As we left art therapy yesterday, we agreed that at the top of every hour, we would walk to our doors and wave. Since the wires to the wall let us go as far as our bathrooms, the door was easy.
She didn’t always make it, and unlike me, she didn’t have sleep deprivation orders keeping her up around the clock. But we’d managed six waves since we parted.
We attended another art class. Ava asked me to paint her a flower, and I drew yellow daffodils because they were my mother’s favorite.
She peered at them. “They seem familiar. What are they?”
“Daffodils. My mom liked how they had fluffy snouts.”
She leaned over the image. “They’re so happy.”
“Yellow is a happy color.”
“Are they listening?”
“The flowers?”
“Yes. They look like they are listening, you know, the way they lean over.”
I laughed. “They do. I suppose we can tell the daffodils our secrets.” I leaned down to the page. “I like her.”
She laughed too and bent close to the page. “I like him, too.”
She chucked her page and started over, making her own secret-loving daffodils. We wrote the wrong name and room number on the backs so they would be delivered to each other after they dried.
The nurses seemed to be conspiring to help us, possibly for Ava’s sake as much as mine. I kept my door propped open so I could see Ava’s room, and I’d spotted the social worker go in and out twice.
I had no idea how she was coping. She didn’t know any music, any current events, not even the President. I had to keep myself in check when we were in art class, or else I felt the need to explain everything from radio to virtual reality.
But I did show her things that mattered.
When she said she’d never heard music, I pulled out my phone and split my earbuds between us while we painted.
I played AC/DC and told her the crashing melodies helped when I felt life weighing on me.
She agreed that it canceled out all the noise in her head.
Lots of teen girls liked Taylor Swift, so I played some. At first she didn’t like it, then she heard a love song and insisted I play it over and over again. The longing spoke to her, and she kept her head on my shoulder. I’d listen to Taylor all day if this was the result.
But when I played Lizzo, Ava went wild. She stood up and danced in front of the whole art class.
She figured out the repeating chorus, but didn’t realize some of the words were completely inappropriate around kids.
The teacher shut her down in a hurry. Still, she insisted I let her hear it again later as we walked back to our rooms. DeShawn even took us the long way through the labyrinth of halls to stretch out our time together.
When I sat back down on my bed after art, Gram said, “Well, isn’t this a lovely romance?” She’d stopped knitting Pokémon hats and was working on a pillow shaped like a heart.
“Feeling inspired?” I asked.
“I may be old,” she said. “But I’m nothing if not sneaky.”
She turned the pillow to the side and showed off a secret pocket that could be accessed between the seams.
“I thought you could use a way of sending her a message that her mother wouldn’t suspect.”
“Gram! You’re like a love spy!”
“I have my ways.”
“I don’t think her mother will let her keep anything from me,” I said. “I’m not exactly on her good side.”
“I’m aware. I’ll be posing as a hospital volunteer. I’ll make sure the young lady knows this heart is from you.”
I gave her a big, squeezy hug. “You’re the best.”
“I know.”
As the day wore on, Gram and I ran out of ideas on how to make me have a seizure. So did the nurses.
I was due to be ejected from the hospital by the afternoon, so they decided to use the final hours to test a different medicine to see if it would alter my EEG as it entered my bloodstream.
Gram consulted with the neurologist. I half listened, only commenting when they talked about side effects, like my liver dying or my hair falling out.
They settled on one, and I took the first dose while I was still wired up. Ava and I kept up our hourly waves at the door. Since I had nothing left to lose at this point, I asked DeShawn to pass her a note. To my surprise, he did, slipping it into her hand while she was at the door.
An hour before I was due to leave, I got a note back.
I had asked Ava how I could get in touch with her after we left. I already knew she didn’t have an email address or phone number.
She copied the home address from her medical form onto the piece of paper, saying she hoped it was her current one. That was my only way to find her.
“What do I do, Gram? I can’t just show up at her house. Her mom would never let me in.”
Gram was putting the finishing touches on her heart pillow. “You could send her letters.”
Typical Gram. So old-fashioned.
“I’m sure her mother checks the mail and would toss them.”
“Ava is smart. If she knows things are coming from you, she’ll find a way to get the mail herself.”
I couldn’t count on it. As the minutes ticked down to when I would no longer get to wave at Ava from across the hall, I made a decision. Gram wouldn’t like it. But she was my gram, and she would forgive me.
I asked her for the heart pillow she was planning to take Ava as we left.
I scribbled a note, explaining how to turn on my cell phone and what the cord was for. I took nothing for granted.
While Gram packed the room, I shoved my cell phone and power cord into the hidden compartment of the pillow and buttoned it.
I had to admire Gram’s work. She’d knitted loops and buttons all around the edge of the pillow, but only one of them released the secret compartment.
I could only hope Ava would figure out how to open it.
Otherwise, I had sent my phone to a dark and lonely death.
I missed my last hourly wave to Ava because the tech arrived to pull my electrodes. I hoped to jump into the shower immediately and get rid of the glue and grease from having spent so many days in the hospital without a proper shower. I wanted Ava to see me looking normal at least once.
But the nurses were already gathering my towels and sheets and clearing the room.
Gram warned me not to pass Ava’s door. “If that mother of hers sees us together, the jig is up.”
So we avoided that side of the unit until we turned the corner.
“I’m going back to do the old lady act and leave the pillow,” she said. “You wait here.”
I hated not saying goodbye to Ava, but Gram was right. I had to sacrifice this last meeting for the hope she’d get my pillow and my phone, and we’d talk outside the hospital.
I stood around the corner with my duffel, waiting to hear if the pillow plan had worked, when pretty much the luckiest thing of my life happened.
On the other side of the courtyard, I spotted Ava.
She was no longer wired and walked down the opposite hall with the counselor who had led the support group.
This was my chance. I raced to her.
“Tucker!” Morena said. “You’re not wired. Are you leaving?”
“Yes, right now,” I said. “I need to borrow Ava for five seconds.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
I didn’t listen as I pulled Ava out of earshot.
“My grandmother made you a secret pillow. It’s shaped like a heart.
Hopefully, it’s on your bed or somewhere in your room.
I hid my cell phone inside it, and a note about how to use it.
I’ll have another phone by tomorrow, and I’ll text you.
It won’t make any noise at all. Just check it every once in a while and plug it into the wall if it goes dead. ”
Ava’s face lit with happiness. “You thought of everything.”
“I’m never going to give you up.” I pressed a quick kiss to her lips.
Morena stood only a few feet away, arms crossed. “Come along, Ava.”
I let her go, elated. I had done exactly the right thing.