Five Feet Apart(15)

I watch the headlights of the cars driving past on the road next to the hospital, the twinkling holiday lights in the distance, the laughing kids sliding around on the icy pond next to a small park.

There’s something simple in that. A freedom that makes my fingertips itch.

I remember when that used to be me and Jason, sliding around on the icy pond down the street from his house, the cold sinking deep into our bones as we played. We’d be out there for hours, having contests to see who could slide farther without falling, chucking snowballs at each other, making snow angels.

We made the most of every minute until my mom inevitably showed up and dragged me back inside.

The lights flick on in the hospital courtyard, and I glance down to see a girl sitting inside her room on the third floor, typing away on a laptop, a pair of headphones sitting overtop her ears as she concentrates on her screen.

Wait a second.

I squint. Stella.

The cold wind tugs at my hair, and I put my hood up, watching her face as she types.

What could she possibly be working on? It’s a Saturday night.

She was so different in the videos I watched. I wonder what changed. Is it all of this? All of the hospital stuff? The pills and the treatments and those whitewashed walls that push in on you and suffocate you slowly, day by day.

I stand up, balancing on the edge of the roof, and peer at the courtyard seven stories down, just for a moment imagining the weightlessness, the absolute abandon of the fall. I see Stella look up through the glass and we make eye contact just as a strong gust of wind knocks the air right out of me. I try to take a breath to get it back, but my shitty lungs barely take in any oxygen.

What air I do get catches in my throat and I start to cough. Hard.

My rib cage screams as each cough pulls more and more air from my lungs, my eyes starting to water.

Finally, I start to get control of it, but—

My head swims, the edges of my vision going black.

I stumble, freaked out, whipping my head around and trying to focus on the red exit door or the ground or anything. I stare at my hands, willing the black to clear away, the world to come back into view, knowing the open air over the edge of the roof is still barely an inch away.





CHAPTER 5


STELLA


I slam open the door to the stairwell, buttoning my jacket as I book it up the steps to the roof. My heart is pounding so loud in my ears, I can barely hear my footsteps underneath me as I run up the steps.

He has to be crazy.

I keep picturing him standing there at the edge of the roof, about to plummet seven stories to his death, fear painted onto every feature of his face. Nothing like his previous confident smirk.

Wheezing, I make it past the fifth floor, stopping just a moment to catch my breath, my sweaty palms grabbing at the cool metal railing. I peer up the stairwell to the top floor, my head spinning, my sore throat burning. I didn’t even have time to grab my portable oxygen. Just two more stories. Two more. I force myself to keep climbing, my feet moving on command: right, left, right, left, right, left.

Finally the door to the roof is in sight, cracked open under a bright red alarm just ready to go off.

I hesitate, looking from the alarm to the door and back again. But why didn’t it go off when Will opened it? Is it broken?

Then I see it. A folded dollar bill holding down the switch, stopping the alarm from blaring and letting everyone in the hospital know some crazy guy with cystic fibrosis and self-destructive tendencies is hanging out on the roof.

I shake my head. He might be crazy, but that’s clever.

The door is propped open with a wallet, and I push through it as quickly as I can, making sure the dollar bill stays securely in place over the switch. I stop dead, catching a real breath for the first time in forty-eight stairs. Looking across the roof, I’m relieved to see he’s moved a safe distance away from the edge and hasn’t fallen to his death. He turns to look at me as I wheeze, a surprised expression on his face. I pull my red scarf closer as the cold air bites at my face and neck, looking down to see if his wallet is still wedged in the doorjamb before storming over to him.

“Do you have a death wish?” I shout, stopping a more-than-safe eight feet away from him. He may have one, but I certainly don’t.

His cheeks and nose are red from the cold, and a thin layer of snow has collected on his wavy brown hair and the hood of his burgundy sweatshirt. When he looks like that, I can almost pretend he’s not such an idiot.

But then he starts talking again.

He shrugs at me, casually, motioning over the edge of the roof to the ground below. “My lungs are toast. So I’m going to enjoy the view while I can.”

How poetic.

Why did I expect anything different?

I peer past him to see the twinkling city skyline far, far in the distance, the holiday lights covering every inch of every tree, brighter now than I’ve ever seen them as they bring the park below back to life. Some are even strung across the trees, creating this magical pathway you could walk under, head back, mouth agape.

In all my years here I’ve never been on the roof. Shivering, I pull my jacket tighter, wrapping my arms around my body as I move my eyes back to him.

“Good view or not, why would anyone want to risk falling seven stories?” I ask him, genuinely wondering what would possess someone with defective lungs to take a trip onto the roof in the dead of winter.