Five Feet Apart(58)

“One step at a time,” he says, holding my gaze. “This is your chance. And that is what we both want. Don’t think about what you’ve lost. Think of how much you have to gain. Live, Stella.”

I can feel Abby’s arms around me back at the pond, holding me close. I can hear her voice in my ear, saying the same words that Will is saying now.

Live, Stella.

I take a deep breath and feel the familiar fight for air that I have every single day. When I was with Abby, I said I wanted to live. I’ll have to worry about how after. “Okay,” I say, nodding to Dr. Hamid, and the decision is made.

Relief fills Will’s eyes, and he stretches out, placing his hand on a medical cart sitting between our gurneys. I reach out, putting my hand on the other side. There’s stainless steel between us, but it doesn’t matter.

His hand is still on the cart as I slowly start to roll away. To new lungs. To a new start.

But away from him.

I hear my parents’ footsteps behind me, and Barb’s, and Dr. Hamid’s, but I look back at Will, one more time, his eyes meeting mine. And in that look I see him when we met the first time in the hallway, running his fingers through his hair. I see him holding the other end of the pool cue while we walk through the hospital, telling me to stick around for the next year. I see him cut through the water in the pool, the light dancing off his eyes. I see him across the table from me at his party, laughing until tears stream down his face.

I see the way he looked at me when he said that he loved me, only a few hours ago, on that icy pond.

I see him wanting to kiss me.

And now he smiles that lopsided smile from the day we first met, that familiar light filling his eyes, until he’s out of view. But I still hear his voice. I still hear Abby’s voice.

Live, Stella.





CHAPTER 28


WILL


I fall weakly back onto my gurney, my entire body aching. She’s getting new lungs. Stella is getting new lungs. Through the pain, my heart thumps happily. My mom’s hand wraps gently around my arm as Julie puts the oxygen mask over my face.

And then I remember.

No.

I sit bolt upright, my chest searing as I shout down the hallway. “Dr. Hamid!”

In the distance, she turns back to look at me, frowning, and nodding for Barb to follow her while the attending nurse keeps rolling Stella through into her surgery. I look at the both of them before I look down at my hands.

“I gave her mouth-to-mouth.”

The room goes absolutely still as everyone processes what that means. She probably has B. cepacia. And it’s all my fault.

“She wasn’t breathing,” I say, swallowing. “I had to. I’m so sorry.”

I look up, into Barb’s eyes, and then over at Dr. Hamid. “You did good, Will,” she says, nodding at me, reassuring me. “You saved her life, okay? And if she contracted B. cepacia, we’ll deal with it.”

She looks at Barb, and then at Julie, and then back at me. “But if we don’t use those lungs, they’re wasted. We’re doing the surgery.”

They leave, and I slowly sink back onto the gurney, the weight of everything pressing down on my entire body. Exhaustion fills every part of me. I shiver, my rib cage aching from the cold. I meet my mom’s eyes as Julie puts the O2 mask back over my mouth, watching as my mom reaches out to gently stroke my hair like she did when I was younger.

I close my eyes, breathing in and out, and let the pain and the cold give way to sleep.

*

I glance at my watch. Four hours. It’s been four hours since they took her back.

Shaking my leg nervously, I sit in the waiting room, staring anxiously out the window at the snow. I shiver despite myself, reliving the icy shock of the water from just a few hours ago. My mom kept trying to get me to go back to my room, put on more layers, but I want to be here. Need to be here. As close to Stella as I can be.

I pull my eyes away from the window, hearing footsteps coming steadily closer and closer. Looking over, I see Stella’s mom sitting down in the chair two away from mine, a cup of coffee clutched in her hands.

“Thank you,” she says finally, her eyes meeting mine. “For saving her life.”

I nod, fixing my nose cannula, the oxygen hissing noisily out. “She wasn’t breathing. Anyone would have—”

“I mean the lungs,” she says, her eyes traveling to the window. “Her father and I, we just couldn’t . . .” Her voice trails off, but I know what she’s saying. She shakes her head, looking over at the clock hanging above the OR doors. “Just a few more hours.”

I smile at her. “Don’t worry. She’ll be out making a ‘Thirty-Eight-Step Lung-Transplant Recovery Plan’ in no time.”

She laughs, and a comfortable silence settles over the both of us until she goes off to get some lunch.

I sit alone, still nervous, alternating between texting Jason and Hope and staring at the wall, images of Stella swirling around my head, separate moments over the past few weeks jumping out at me.

I want to draw it all.

The first day we met, Stella in her makeshift hazmat suit, the birthday dinner. Each memory more precious than the next.

The elevator doors slide open, and Barb, as if she’s heard my thoughts, emerges carrying an armful of my art supplies.