Five Feet Apart(6)

I pass the nurses’ station in the center of the floor, waving hello to a young nurse’s assistant named Sarah, who is smiling over the top of the new, sleek metal cubicle.

They replaced that before my last visit six months ago. It’s the same height, but it used to be made of this worn wood that had probably been around since the hospital was founded sixty-some years ago. I remember when I was small enough to sneak past to whatever room Poe was in, my head still a good few inches from clearing the desk.

Now it comes up to my elbow.

Heading down the hallway, I grin as I see a small Colombian flag taped on the outside of a half-open door, an overturned skateboard keeping it propped slightly open.

I peer inside to see Poe fast asleep on his bed, curled into a surprisingly tiny ball underneath his plaid comforter, a suave Gordon Ramsay poster, positioned directly over his bed, keeping watch over him.

I draw a heart on the dry-erase board he’s stuck to the outside of his door to let him know I’ve been there, before moving off down the hallway toward the wooden double doors that will take me to the main part of the hospital, up an elevator, down C Wing, across the bridge into Building 2, and straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

One of the perks of coming here for more than a decade is that I know the hospital just as well as I knew the house I grew up in. Every winding corridor, or hidden staircase, or secret shortcut, explored over and over again.

But before I can open the double doors, a room door swings open next to me, and I turn my head in surprise to see the profile of a tall, thin boy I’ve never seen before. He’s standing in the doorway of room 315, holding a sketchbook in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other, a white hospital bracelet like mine wrapped around his wrist.

I stop dead.

His tousled, dark-chocolate-brown hair is perfectly unruly, like he just popped out of a Teen Vogue and landed smack in the middle of Saint Grace’s Hospital. His eyes are a deep blue, the corners crinkling as he talks.

But it’s his smile that catches my eye more than anything else. It’s lopsided, and charming, and it has a magnetic warmth to it.

He’s so cute, my lung function feels like it dropped another 10 percent.

It’s a good thing this mask is covering half my face, because I did not plan for cute guys on my floor this hospital stay.

“I’ve clocked their schedules,” he says as he puts the pencil casually behind his ear. I shift slightly to the left and see that he’s grinning at the couple I saw coming into the hospital earlier. “So, unless you plant your ass on the call button, no one’s going to bother you for at least an hour. And don’t forget. I gotta sleep in that bed, dude.”

“Way ahead of you.” I watch as the girl unzips the duffel bag she’s holding to show him blankets.

Wait. What?

Cute guy whistles. “Look at that. A regular Girl Scout.”

“We’re not animals, man,” her boyfriend says to him, giving him a big, dude-to-dude smile.

Oh my god. Gross. He’s letting his friends do it in his room, like it’s a motel.

I grimace and resume walking down the hallway to the exit doors, putting as much space as possible between me and whatever scheme is going on in there.

So much for cute.





CHAPTER 2


WILL


“All right, I’ll see you guys later,” I say, winking at Jason and closing the door to my room to give them some privacy. I come face-to-face with the empty sockets of the skull drawing on my door, an O2 mask slung over its mouth, with the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” written under it.

That should be the slogan for this hospital. Or any of the other fifty I’ve been in for the past eight months of my life.

I squint down the hallway to see the door swinging shut behind the girl I saw moving into a room down the hall earlier today, her scuffed white Converse disappearing onto the other side. She’d been by herself, lugging a duffel bag big enough for about three fully grown adults, but she actually looked kind of hot.

And, let’s be honest here. It’s not every day you see a remotely attractive girl hanging around a hospital, no more than five doors down from yours.

Looking down at my sketchbook, I shrug, rolling it up and stuffing it into my back pocket before heading down the hallway after her. It’s not like I have anything better to do, and I’m certainly not trying to stick around here for the next hour.

Pushing through the doors, I see her making her way across the gray tile floor, waving and chatting to just about everyone as she goes, like she’s putting on her own personal Thanksgiving Day Parade. She steps onto the large glass elevator, overlooking the east lobby, just past a large, decked-out Christmas tree they must’ve put up early this morning, long before the Thanksgiving leftovers were even eaten.

Heaven forbid they leave up the giant turkey display for even a minute longer.

I watch as her hands reach up to fix her face mask while she leans over to press a button, the doors slowly closing.

I start climbing the open stairs by the elevator, trying not to run into anyone as I watch it chug steadily to the fifth floor. Of course. I run up the stairs as fast as my lungs will carry me, managing to get to the fifth floor with enough time to go into a serious coughing fit and recover before she exits the elevator and disappears around a corner. I rub my chest, clearing my throat and following her down a couple of hallways and onto the wide, glass-encased bridge leading to the next building.