Five Feet Apart(34)

“You’re going to be just fine, Stella.”

His voice is deep. Soft. I know in that moment, even though it could not be more ridiculous, that if I die in there, I won’t die without falling in love.

“Promise?” I ask.

He nods and stretches his arm out, holding up a gloved pinky across the distance. I take it and we pinky promise. The smallest contact, but the first time we’ve ever touched.

And right now that doesn’t scare me.

My head snaps in the direction of the door as the sound of footsteps comes closer and closer. Dr. Hamid appears, a surgical nurse pushing through the door with her.

“Ready to get this show on the road?” she says, shooting me a thumbs-up.

My head whips around to the chair where Will was sitting, fear gripping my chest.

It’s empty.

And then I see him, behind the gray curtain, his back pressed up against the wall. He holds his finger to his mouth and pulls his face mask off to smile at me.

I smile back, and as I look at him, I start to believe what he said.

I’m going to be fine.

*

A few minutes later I’m lying on the operating table, the room dim except for the blinding light directly above my head.

“All right, Stella, you know what to do,” a voice says, holding up a mask in a blue-gloved hand.

My heart begins pounding nervously, and I turn my head to face them, meeting their dark eyes as they put the mask over my nose and mouth. When I wake up, it will all be over.

“Ten,” I say, looking past the anesthesiologist to the operating room wall, my eyes landing on a shape that’s oddly familiar.

Abby’s lung drawing.

How?

But I know of course. Will. He snuck it into the operating room. A single tear falls from my eye and I keep counting.

“Nine. Eight.” The flowers all start to swim together, the blues and the pinks and the whites all twisting and turning and blurring together, the colors coming off the page and reaching toward me.

“Seven. Six. Five.” The night sky suddenly comes to life, swimming past the flowers, the stars filling the air around me. They twinkle and dance above my head, close enough for me to reach out and touch them.

I hear a voice humming, somewhere in the distance. “A Bushel and a Peck.”

“Four. Three.”

The edges of my vision start going black, my world going darker and darker. I focus on a single star, a single point of light, getting brighter and warmer and more overwhelming.

The humming stops and I hear a voice, far-off and muddled. Abby. Oh my god. It’s Abby’s voice.

“. . . back . . . don’t.”

“Two,” I whisper, not sure if it’s in my head or out loud. And then I see her. I see Abby, right there in front of me, blurry at first and then as clear as day. My dad’s curly hair, and her larger-than-life smile, and her hazel eyes identical to my own.

“. . . more . . . time . . .”

She’s pushing me away from the light.

“One.”

Darkness.





CHAPTER 14


WILL


I quietly push open the door, looking both ways before sneaking out of the pre-op area and almost running smack into a nurse. I quickly look away and put my face mask up to disguise myself as she heads inside.

I take a few quick steps and hide behind the wall next to the stairwell, noticing a man and a woman sitting on opposite sides of the empty waiting room.

Squinting, I look from one to the other.

I know them from somewhere.

“Can I ask you a question?” the man says, and the woman looks up to meet his eyes, her jaw tightening.

She looks like an older Stella. The same full lips, the same thick eyebrows, the same expressive eyes.

Stella’s parents.

She nods just once, looking wary. You can practically cut the tension with a knife. I know I should leave. I know I should open the stairwell door and get back before I get in trouble, but something makes me stay.

“The tile in my bathroom is, uh, purple? What color bath mat do I—”

“Black,” she says, putting her head back down and looking at her hands, her hair falling in front of her face.

There’s a moment of silence and I see the door into the hallway quietly open, Barb sliding through. Neither of them notices her come in. Stella’s dad clears his throat. “And the towels?”

She throws up her hands, exasperated. “It doesn’t matter, Tom.”

“It mattered when we painted the office. You said the rug—”

“Our daughter’s in surgery and you want to talk about towels?” she snaps, her face livid. I’ve never seen Barb look so displeased. She crosses her arms, standing up a little straighter as she watches their back-and-forth.

“I just wanna talk,” her dad says softly. “About anything.”

“Oh my god. You’re killing me. Stop . . . .” Her voice trails off as they both look over to see Barb, her face steadily growing angrier and angrier until it has the same look that she gives us when we get in trouble.

She takes a deep breath, pulling all the air from the room. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, losing Abby,” she says, her voice deathly serious. “But Stella”—she points at the pre-op doors, where somewhere in the distance, Stella is lying on a table about to be operated on—“Stella is fighting for her life in there. And she’s doing it for you.”