I Fell in Love with Hope(81)

I kneel, his empty hand settling in mine.

“Would you like to play another game tomorrow, sir?” I ask.

“Sweet child you are,” Henry says, patting my face again. “Aren’t they, Sam?”

My knight and I exchange a glance.

A proud look flickers in his yellow.

“Yes,” he says. “They are.”

—

I walk Sam back to his room when the sky grows dark. Henry hassled Nurse Ella to let us stay a little longer. She agreed so long as we promised to get to bed without argument afterward. Henry told us his stories, his adventures, the kind of fairy tales with a touch of reality that held Sam’s attention the whole way through.

“I’ll see you in the morning?” I ask as we reach Sam’s room.

Sam and I are rarely apart. From sun up to sun down we’re eating, playing games, doing lesson work with the other kids, sitting through treatments and exams together, going outside when we aren’t supposed to, getting scolded, visiting other patients, and gambling with Henry. The nurses say we’re joined at the hip.

When Sam heads to sleep, he demands attention beforehand. He wraps his arms around my waist, his hands spanning my shoulder blades, pressing me into him. At times, he’ll hold me for a few minutes, murmuring silly things– that I smell nice, that he wants to bite me through his mask for no reason at all, that I should sneak into his room so we could sleep in the same bed like we did as little kids.

Tonight, Sam doesn’t embrace or murmur. He tells me to be quiet, grabs me by the wrist, and drags me with tip-toeing silence down the hall.

“Sam?” I stumble into the nurse’s rest break room after him. “What are we doing?”

“Shh,” he whispers. It’s completely dark. Sam maneuvers blindly till he reaches for a doorknob to what I always thought was a closet.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Henry told me about this exit. It’s a surprise,” he says.

He unlocks the door which, miraculously, opens to the outside world. The night casts a blue shadow. Sam closes his hand around my wrist like a baby would around my finger, the skin around his eyes so creased I know he’s smiling with an open mouth. “C’mon.”

Sam’s shoes beat against the water on the empty sidewalk. Street lamps lay gold halos on the concrete, making the puddles seem like a sheen layer of oil. Sam tows me through them, hopping to avoid the ones we could sink into.

His legs are long, thin, but powerful. His muscles stretch like rubber bands to accommodate the impatience of his bones. They carry him and I down the street and into a clearing, the grass wet with fresh rain.

A few years ago, Sam couldn’t run long distances. His lungs weren’t used to the heat under his mask, but Sam aged like any other boy would. Now, he helps Henry out of bed in the mornings. He carries boxes from the back doors to the front desk. He carries me sometimes, says he remembers the days I was the one who used to carry him.

The clearing ceases just beside a building that resembles our hospital. Adorned in bricks, a few stories high, with checkered windows. Only, rather than stretches of city at its front doors, this place folds out into a courtyard, one with string lights, tents, and a hundred adolescents dressed in evening wear.

Sam brings me to the edge marked by a fence and short line of saplings. The band’s music travels to us, voices and instruments faded by the distance.

“What is this?” I ask, some aftermath of adrenaline shaking in my voice.

“A school dance,” Sam says, amused by my amazement. “I heard some girls talking about it at the park the other day. I know we can’t go in, but I thought–”

Sam swallows. The party wanes at the fence line. It illuminates his clothes that I didn’t notice earlier: slacks Nurse Ella just got him and a dress shirt buttoned to the crest of his collarbones. The boys out there are wearing suits, ties, clothes Sam’s never even touched the likeness of. He mutters curses like he’s done something wrong and tries to fix his sleeves.

“Sam,” I say, taking his hands, stilling them. He stares at the gloves, the separation it marks. I slip my fingers beneath them at his wrists. “What did you think?”

“Um–” he stutters, and the sound rouses warmth in my chest. His newfound confidence sometimes falters. Sometimes, his childish bouts of shame return with rosy shades on his cheeks.

I have the urge to tease him for a change.

“Do you want to dance with me?” I ask, taking a single step forward, mimicking the scene we’ve trespassed. Sam blushes harder, the heat solid. I move his hands to my waist and hold his shoulders.

“We’ve never danced properly before,” he says, his breath catching on the air as I start to sway.

“Yes we have.”

Nurse Ella used to leave the radio on for us. Sam rocked his head to the beat. He jumped on the bed. He pulled at Ella’s skirt, asking her to dance with us. When she shooed him off with her newspaper, he taught me little moves he’d read about in his fairytales, said we were knights in a great ballroom.

“Did you forget?” I ask.

“No, I just–” Sam’s fingers flex, like he wants to touch me more, like there’s still too much between us. “Hold on.”

He takes off his gloves, shoving them in his back pocket.

“Sam, we’re outside,” I warn, my fingers closing around his shirt collar.