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“I love you,” I whisper to him before we’re taken into the operating room.
“Me too,” he whispers back, and my last thought before I surrender to the anesthesia is: You have no idea how much.
CHAPTER 4
PETER
I’M DEAD. THE PAIN IS so severe, so white-hot, that that’s the only explanation. But I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Can’t tell where I am.
Huh. I was hoping heaven would smell less like a hospital room and more like espresso beans. Latkes with applesauce. The perfume Sophie wore the night we stayed home and had what we dubbed “fauxcoming” because I didn’t have the energy for the real dance. She probably didn’t think I noticed because I didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say, because “you smell good” sounded like it might mean something I wasn’t sure I meant. But I noticed.
Maybe . . . maybe this isn’t heaven. The thought hits me hard. Obviously hell would stink like a hospital. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if what I’ve done with my life would earn me salvation or eternal damnation. Given the circumstances, I’ve been as good as I can be. I listen to my parents and try not to complain and always do my homework. But I’ve also never done anything daring, and I don’t know if people who play it safe deserve to go to heaven. I want to believe, though, in heaven and hell. From what I understand of it—which, admittedly, is very little—my Jewish side views those concepts differently, more complexly. But when you’ve been sick your whole life, you have a lot of time to read. A lot of time to philosophize. I’ve read Dante’s Inferno and Albert Camus and Zhuang Zhou, who said that when we die, we simply become something else.
It’s reassuring to think that after you’ve spent nearly seventeen years feeling like shit, the afterlife, or whatever comes next, might be better.
At least, that’s what I tell myself on my bad days.
The pain twists around my abdomen. Climbs up my back. A jolt straight to my brain. No. I’m not ready to die. Who will take care of Mark? I’ve never even left Washington State. And I’m still a virgin. I’m sure my philosophers would agree that it would be cosmically unfair to die a virgin. I bet they all got laid a lot.
“Peter?” My mom’s voice. A hand on my shoulder—and nails.
If I can feel my mom’s claws, hear my mom’s voice, then I must still be alive. . . .
My eyes blink open, and I squint at the bright hospital fluorescents. Machines are beeping. In the corner of my vision, I spot a single GET WELL SOON balloon that must be from my parents.
It takes a while to find my voice. “Did it—am I—”
“The operation was successful,” my dad says, grinning his I’m-a-nice-dentist-not-a-scary-dentist grin. “No complications for you.”
I scrabble under the sheets with the hand that doesn’t have a needle sticking out of it. The bandage on my abdomen is thick and wide. Suddenly what my dad said takes on new meaning. No complications for you.
“Sophie?” I say, unable to form a complete sentence.
“She’s doing fine,” my mom says, and my body relaxes into the hard hospital bed. “She’s in the room next door.”
“Can I see her?” The question doesn’t come out right. I need to see her. Need to know she’s okay. That’s what it feels like: a deep, coursing need that goes all the way down to my toes. My toes, ankles, elbows all need to see her.
“You should rest,” my mom says.
“Dr. Paulson still has a lot to discuss with us,” my dad says.
“I need to see her.” It comes out right this time, and there must be some conviction in my voice, because my parents buzz the nurse and everyone agrees to let this reunion happen.
They wheel me to the adjoining room. Sophie is lying down, but I can tell she’s awake. Freckles cover her cheeks, forehead, nose, chin—she must have hundreds of them. I like every single one.
Sophie smiles when she sees me—or tries to. Her lips move, but they don’t really curve upward. “How’s my kidney?” she asks in a groggy voice. It’s strange seeing her in a hospital gown. Her love for dance usually radiates off her; even when she isn’t dancing, she’s tapping her foot to a song only she can hear or clacking her nails against her phone case. Piano isn’t static, but unless you’re in a band, you’re sitting down.
“It’s, you know. Doing its kidney thing.” Suddenly my brain is so fuzzy that I can’t for the life of me remember what a kidney actually does. Just that I needed one. Really badly. Bad enough that they sliced us both open to fix me. “You look like . . . like shit.”
“Peter!” my mom exclaims. She doesn’t get it. But Sophie’s parents, who are sitting in chairs next to her bed, scrounge up a couple pity laughs.
“It’s a joke they have, Holly,” Sophie’s mom says to mine.
But Sophie doesn’t have the energy to laugh. I don’t have the energy to energy. I close my eyes
only
for
