Five Feet Apart(13)
So, naturally, everyone laughs, including Stella. Only, her laugh is filled with nerves.
She looks over at her sister warily. Abby says something to her that the microphone just barely picks up.
“Bushel and a peck.”
What does that mean?
It works, though, and like magic the nervousness melts away from Stella’s face.
Her dad starts to strum away at his guitar and I hum along before my brain even consciously registers what they’re singing. Everyone in the audience is swaying along too, heads moving left and right, feet tapping with the beat.
“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord . . .”
Wow. They both can sing.
Her sister is rocking this clear and strong and powerful voice, while Stella’s is breathy and soft, smooth in all the right ways.
I hit pause as the camera closes in on Stella’s face, all her features coming alive in the glow of the spotlight. Carefree, and smiling, and happy, up there onstage next to her sister and her dad. I wonder what made her so . . . uptight yesterday.
I run my fingers through my hair, taking in her long hair, the shadow of her collarbone, the way her brown eyes shine when she smiles. Her adrenaline gives her face a twinge of color, her cheeks a bright, exhilarated pink.
Not gonna lie. She’s pretty.
Really pretty.
I look away and—wait a second. There’s no way. I highlight the number with my cursor.
“A hundred thousand views? Are you kidding me?”
Who is this girl?
*
Not even an hour later, my first post-all-nighter nap was interrupted by a blaring alarm down the hall, and then my second attempt was foiled later by my mom and Dr. Hamid busting into my room for an evening visit. Bored, I stifle a yawn and stare out at the empty courtyard, the cold winds and the forecast of snow driving everyone inside.
Snow. At least that’s something to look forward to.
I rest my head against the cool glass, eager for the world outside to be covered in a blanket of white. I haven’t touched snow since the first time my mom shipped me off to a top-of-the-line treatment facility to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug to fight B. cepacia. It was in Sweden, and they’d been perfecting this thing for half a decade.
Clearly, it wasn’t “perfected” enough, because I was out of there and back home in about two weeks flat.
At this point I don’t remember much from that particular stay. The only thing I remember from most of my hospital trips is white. White hospital sheets, white walls, white lab coats, all running together. But I do remember the mountains and mountains of snow that fell while I was there, the same white, only beautiful, less sterile. Real. I’d been dreaming of going skiing in the Alps, lung function be damned. But the only snow I got to touch was on the roof of my mom’s Mercedes rental.
“Will,” my mother’s voice says, sternly, cutting right through my daydream of fresh powder. “Are you listening?”
Is she kidding?
I turn my head to look at her and Dr. Hamid, and nod like a bobblehead even though I haven’t heard a single word this entire time. They’re going over my first test results since I started the trial a week or so ago, and as usual, nothing’s changed.
“We need to be patient,” Dr. Hamid says. “The first phase of clinical trials on humans started just eighteen months ago.” I eye my mother, watching her nod eagerly, her short blond bob moving up and down at the doctor’s words.
I wonder how many strings she had to pull and how much money she had to throw away to get me into this.
“We’re monitoring him, but Will needs to help us. He needs to keep the variables in his life to a minimum.” Her eyes focus on me, her thin face serious. “Will. The risks of cross-infection are even higher now so—”
I cut her off. “Don’t cough on any other CFers. Got it.”
Her black eyebrows jut down as she frowns. “Don’t get close enough to touch them. For their safety, and yours.”
I hold up my hand in mock pledge, reciting what could probably be the CF motto by this point, “Six feet at all times.”
She nods. “You got it.”
“What I’ve got is B. cepacia, making this conversation null and void.” That’s not going to change anytime soon.
“Nothing is impossible!” Dr. Hamid says enthusiastically. My mom eats this line up. “I believe that. You need to believe it too.”
I pair an over-the-top smile with a thumbs-up, before turning it into a thumbs-down and shaking my head, the smile slipping off my face. It’s such bullshit.
Dr. Hamid clears her throat, looking at my mom. “Right. I’ll leave this to you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Hamid,” my mom says, shaking her hand eagerly, like she just managed to sign a contract for her most burdensome client.
Dr. Hamid gives me a final thin-lipped smile before leaving. My mom spins around to look at me, her blue eyes piercing, voice biting. “It took a lot of effort to get you into this program, Will.”
If by “effort” she means writing a check that could send a small village to college, then she definitely put in quite a bit of effort just so I could be a human petri dish.
“What do you want? A thank-you for shoving me in another hospital, wasting more of my time?” I stand up, walking over to face her. “In two weeks I’ll be eighteen. A legal adult. You won’t hold the reins anymore.”