OK, honey. Senioritis. It’s going around. Feel better. Get some rest.
I didn’t love lying to her (I felt physically fine), but it was a small transgression and, in the scheme of things, another day missed wouldn’t really matter. I got dressed and went downstairs, made coffee and took it outside to the porch.
It was muggy outside—it grew muggier every day, a crescendo of humidity that would break only when the first summer thunderstorm hit, and then for a few hours in the dead of night.
Aunt Helen was right about my tendency to hide away when things weren’t perfect. My anxiety made it worse, made me feel like something terrible would happen sometimes when I left the house. I generally avoided crowded places, instead preferring to stay at home with a good book. Or to be with Em. It was probably telling that she was really the only good friend I had.
Of course she was my first thought. I considered texting her and asking her to skip school with me (she would no doubt be thrilled), but then I thought that if there was a point to Aunt Helen’s letter (to all her letters, really), it definitely wasn’t to get me to spend more time with the people I already spent all my time with.
She was trying to nudge me out of my comfort zone. That much was obvious.
It was nice, in a way. Annoying, in a way. Like everything our families make us do.
I was halfway through my cup of coffee before I figured out where I could go. Where Ishouldgo.
My anxiety started up before I even left the house, but I pretended not to notice it (because that worked so well last time?). I charged through the motions: putting on my shoes, getting into my car, driving, parking, turning the car off. Only then, when I was in the hospital parking lot once again, the hospital where she had died, did I let myself feel fully the emotions that this place held.
How many people had died here? How many peoplewere here now who wouldn’t make it through the end of the week, through the end of the month? Would I die here one day? My parents? Abe?
I put my hands on the steering wheel and felt the rising panic in my chest. Such a familiar feeling, so easy to let it overtake all sense of rationality. I struggled to picture the driftwood structure again, I closed my eyes and assured myself that I was fine, that nobody ever died from a panic attack, that panic attacks were only caused by the fear of the physical sensations of fear itself.
My heart rate slowly returned to normal. I didn’t feel perfect, but I felt better. I got out of the car and walked into the hospital, past the reception area to the fifth floor. The cancer ward. And in particular: the children’s cancer ward.
I checked in at the front desk.
Abe had done this many times when he’d needed a break from sitting by Aunt Helen’s bedside. He’d always ask me to come with him, but I never had the courage to walk into a room full of kids who were that sick, to look them in the eyes, to talk to them and spend time with them.
It had felt too overwhelmingly sad.
But that seemed incredibly selfish now; if I was sad, what must they be feeling?
I recognized the guy at the children’s ward reception desk. His name was Jamie, and he’d gone to my high school. He was a few years older than me and practically famous—he’d won the state lottery jackpot a week beforehe graduated. His payout was twenty-three million dollars. He’d been on all the news shows and in the papers and everything. He was a quiet guy with modest taste in the face of sudden wealth. He’d bought a bowling alley in town and a small house in the middle of cow country with the winnings and kept his job at the hospital.
He looked up when I approached the desk. He was wearing pale-pink scrubs covered in kittens. He had longish, messy hair and a beard. His smile lit up his face.
“Lottie, right?” he said.
“Yeah. Hi.”
“I’m sorry about your aunt. I knew her, you know.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She would come in here and read to the kids a lot. After her chemo. Parents were always freakin’ out, I guess she was famous or something? Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to that. Your brother too. I used to see him a lot. He’s a rad guy.”
“I’ll tell him you said so.”
“I haven’t seen him since she passed away. People drift in and out of here, and that’s okay. There’s always someone new, someone who is able to give a little bit of their time.”
“Like me.”
“Oh, is that why you’re here? That’s awesome.”
“I was just thinking I could read something? That’s what my brother used to do, right? Read to them?”
“Yeah, and he did all the voices too, he was a big hit. Healways read this story about a brother and a sister. I think they were immortal or something? Always on the run from some guy in a jacket?”
“The Overcoat Man,” I said.
