Five Feet Apart(5)

I smile sheepishly at her, but how could she blame me? Poe was the first friend I made when I came to the hospital. He’s the only one who really gets it. We’ve fought CF together for a freaking decade. Well, together from a safe distance, anyway.

We can’t get too close to each other. For cystic fibrosis patients, cross-infection from certain bacteria strains is a huge risk. One touch between two CFers can literally kill the both of them.

Her serious frown gives way to a gentle smile. “Settle in. Relax. Take a chill pill.” She eyes the medicine cart, jokingly. “Not literally.”

I nod, a real laugh spilling out, as a fresh wave of relief fills me at the news of Poe being here too.

“I’ll stop by later to help you with your AffloVest,” Barb says over her shoulder as she leaves. Grabbing my phone, I settle for a quick text message instead of a mad dash down the hall to room 310.

You’re here? Me too. Tune-up.

Not even a second goes by and my screen lights up with his reply: Bronchitis. Just happened. I’ll live. Come by and wave at me later. Gonna crash now.

I lean back on the bed, exhaling long and slow.

Truth is, I’m nervous about this visit.

My lung function fell to 35 percent so quickly. And now, even more than the fever and the sore throat, being here in the hospital for the next month doing treatment after treatment to stem the tide while my friends are far away is freaking me out. A lot. Thirty-five percent is a number that keeps my mom up at night. She doesn’t say it, but her computer does. Search after search about lung transplants and lung-function percentages, new combinations and phrasing but always the same idea. How to get me more time. It makes me more afraid than I’ve ever been before. But not for me. When you have CF, you sort of get used to the idea of dying young. No, I’m terrified for my parents. And what will become of them if the worst does happen, now that they don’t have each other.

But with Poe here, someone who understands, I can get through it. Once I’m actually allowed to see him.

*

The rest of the afternoon goes by slowly.

I work on my app, double-checking that I worked out the programming error that kept coming up when I tried to run it on my phone. I put some Fucidin on the sore skin around my G-tube in an attempt to make it less fire-engine red and more of a summer-sunset pink. I check and double-check my “At Bedtime” pile of bottles and pills. I reply to my parents’ every-hour-on-the-hour texts. I gaze out the window as the afternoon fades and see a couple about my age, laughing and kissing as they walk into the hospital. It’s not every day you see a happy couple coming into a hospital. Watching them holding hands and exchanging longing glances, I wonder what it would be like to have somebody look at me like that. People are always looking at my cannula, my scars, my G-tube, not at me.

It doesn’t make guys want to line up by my locker.

I “dated” Tyler Paul my freshman year of high school, but that lasted all of a month, until I came down with an infection and needed to go to the hospital for a few weeks. Even just a few days in, his texts started to get further and further apart, and I decided to break up with him. Besides, it was nothing like that couple out in the courtyard. Tyler’s palms were sweaty when we held hands, and he wore so much Axe body spray, I would go into coughing fits every time we hugged.

This thought process is not exactly a helpful distraction, so I even give number 22, “Contemplate the afterlife,” on my to-do list a try, and read some of Life, Death, and Immortality: The Journey of the Soul.

But, pretty soon, I opt to just lie on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the wheezing sound of my breathing. I can hear the air struggling to get past the mucus that takes up space in my lungs. Rolling over, I crack open a vial of Flovent to give my lungs a helping hand. I pour the liquid into a nebulizer by my bed, the small machine humming to life as vapors pour from the mouthpiece.

I sit, staring at the drawing of the lungs while I breathe in and out.

And in and out.

And in and . . . out.

I hope when my parents come to visit over the next few days, my breathing is a little less labored. I told them both that the other one was taking me to the hospital this morning, but I actually just took an Uber here from the corner a street over from my mom’s new place. I don’t want either of them to have to face seeing me here again, at least until I’m looking better.

My mom was already giving me troubled looks when I needed to put my portable oxygen on just to pack.

There’s a knock on my door, and I look over from the wall I’m staring at, hoping it’s Poe stopping by to wave at me. I pull the mouthpiece off as Barb pops her head in. She drops a surgical face mask and latex gloves onto a table next to my door.

“New one upstairs. Meet me in fifteen?”

My heart leaps.

I nod, and she gives me a big smile before ducking out of the room. I grab the mouthpiece and take one more quick hit of the Flovent, letting the vapor fill my lungs the best I can before I’m up and moving. Shutting the nebulizer off, I pick up my portable oxygen concentrator from where it’s been charging next to my bed, press the circular button in the center to turn it on, and pull the strap over my shoulder. After I put the cannula in, I head over to the door, pulling on the blue latex gloves and wrapping the strings of the face mask around my ears.

Sliding into my white Converse, I push my door open then squeeze out into the whitewashed corridor, deciding to go the long way so I can walk past Poe’s room.