Five Feet Apart(14)

For a second she looks taken aback, then her eyes narrow at me. She grabs her latest Prada trench coat off the chair by the door, pulling it on and glancing back to look at me. “I’ll see you on your birthday.”

I lean out the doorway, watching her go, her heels clicking off down the hallway. She stops at the nurses’ station, where Barb is flipping through some papers.

“Barb, right? Let me give you my cell,” I hear her say as she opens her purse, grabbing her wallet from inside. “If the Cevaflomalin doesn’t work, Will may . . . become a handful.”

When Barb doesn’t say anything, she pulls a business card out of her wallet. “He’s been disappointed so many times already, and he’s expecting to be disappointed again. If he’s not complying, you’ll call me?”

She flicks the business card onto the counter before tossing a hundred on top of it like this is some fancy restaurant and I’m a table that needs to be fawned over. Wow. That’s just great.

Barb stares at the money, raising her eyebrows at my mother.

“That was inappropriate, wasn’t it? I’m sorry. We’ve been to so many . . .”

Her voice trails off, and I watch as Barb takes the business card and the money off the counter, meeting my mother’s gaze with the same look of determination she gives me when she’s forcing me to take some medicine. “Don’t worry. He’s in good hands.” She presses the hundred back into my mother’s hand, pocketing the business card and looking past my mother to meet my eyes.

I duck back inside my room, closing the door behind me and tugging at the neck of my T-shirt. I pace over to the window, and then back over to sit down on my bed, and then back over to the window, pushing back the blinds as the walls start to close in on me.

I need to get outside. I need air that’s not filled with antiseptic.

I throw open my closet door to grab a hoodie, pulling it on and peering out at the nurses’ station to see if the coast is clear.

No sign of Barb or my mom anymore, but Julie’s on the phone behind the desk, in between me and the exit door that will take me straight to the only stairwell in this building that leads to the roof.

I close my door quietly, creeping down the hall. I try to duck down lower than the nurses’ station, but a six-foot dude attempting to stay low and sneak around is about as subtle as a blindfolded elephant. Julie looks up at me and I press my back up against the wall, pretending to camouflage myself. Her eyes narrow at me as she moves the phone away from her mouth. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I mime walking with my fingers.

She shakes her head at me, knowing I’ve been confined to the third floor since I fell asleep by the vending machines over in Building 2 last week and caused a hospital-wide manhunt. I put my hands together, making a pleading motion and hoping the desperation pouring out of my soul will convince her otherwise.

At first, nothing. Her face remains firm, her gaze unchanging. Then she rolls her eyes, throwing me a face mask before waving me along to freedom.

Thank god. I need to get out of this whitewashed hell more than I need anything.

I give her a wink. At least she’s actually human.

I leave the CF wing, pushing open the heavy door to the stairwell and taking the concrete steps by twos even though my lungs are burning after just one floor. Coughing, I pull at the metal railing, past the fourth floor, and the fifth, and then sixth, finally coming to a big red door with a huge notice stamped onto it: EMERGENCY EXIT. ALARM WILL SOUND WHEN DOOR IS OPENED.

I grab my wallet from my back pocket, taking out a tightly folded dollar that I keep in there for moments like these. I reach up and wedge the bill into the frame’s alarm switch so the alarm doesn’t go off, then I open the door just a crack and slide through onto the rooftop.

Then I bend down to put my wallet in between the door and the jamb so it doesn’t slam shut behind me. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way before.

My mom would have a heart attack if she saw I was using the Louis Vuitton wallet she got me a few months ago as a doorstop, but it was a stupid gift to give someone who never goes anywhere but hospital cafeterias.

At least as a doorstop it gets used.

I stand up, taking a deep breath and automatically coughing as the cold, harsh winter air shocks my lungs. It feels good, though, to be outside. To not be trapped inside monochrome walls.

I stretch, looking up at the pale-gray sky, the predicted snowflakes finally drifting slowly through the air and landing on my cheeks and hair. I walk slowly to the roof’s edge and take a seat on the icy stone, dangling my legs off the side. I exhale a breath I feel like I’ve been holding since I got here two weeks ago.

Everything’s beautiful from up here.

No matter what hospital I go to, I always make it a point to find a way to get to the roof.

I’ve seen parades from the one in Brazil, the people looking like brightly colored ants as they danced through the streets, wild and free. I’ve seen France sleep, the Eiffel Tower shining brightly in the distance, lights quietly shutting off in third-floor apartments, the moon drifting lazily into view. I’ve seen the beaches in California, water that goes on for miles and miles, people basking in the perfect waves first thing in the morning.

Every place is different. Every place is unique. It’s the hospitals I’m seeing them from that are the same.

This town isn’t the life of the party, but it feels sort of back-roads homey. Maybe that should make me feel more comfortable, but it’s only making me more restless. Probably because for the first time in eight months, I’m a car ride away from home. Home. Where Hope and Jason are. Where my old classmates are slowly chugging their way to finals, shooting for whatever Ivy League school their parents selected for them. Where my bedroom, my freaking life, really, sits empty and unlived in.