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The doctor plunks a tablet on the table and glances down into her lap, then up into my face.
“Hi there.” Her face is stuck somewhere between kind-and-understanding and gravely serious. Which makes my stomach do a flip.
“Can you te
ll me how my boyfriend is?” I manage hoarsely.
My voice breaks on the word “boyfriend,” as I remember that he’s not. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. How fucked up is it that I still want him?
A box of Kleenex slides across the table toward me and I realize I’m crying again. I take two tissues and dab my cheeks.
“Is he okay?”
Her mouth flattens. Her face looks like no. “What do you know about Kellan’s health, Cleo?”
I look worriedly into her wide brown eyes. To see where she is leading me, so I can shelter myself. But I can’t tell. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I... think he has a drug problem. Maybe?”
She blinks, completely poker-faced. I watch her chest rise on an inhalation. “What makes you think that?”
My throat tightens—and I can tell I’m right in my guess. He does have a drug problem. Shit.
“Like I said, I found a bunch of pills at his house... recently.” I rub my finger over a ragged cuticle. “Also, the ambulance. They said... I saw pain patches. On his back.” My stomach twists so hard I have to swallow to be sure I don’t throw up on the table. I look at her. She says nothing. “Is he okay? You’re scaring me.”
“Cleo...” The doctor leans toward me. Her eyes widen. “What do you know about Kellan’s mental health?”
My throat tightens as if she’s slung a noose around it. “Nothing.” I bring a hand up to my chest. “Is there something I should know?” My voice wavers.
The short-haired doctor sits back in her chair. She looks almost relieved. “In June, he was admitted for an overdose attempt,” she says, stroking her hair out of her eyes.
I gape. “He was?”
She nods. “He spent two nights in the psychiatric unit here, but he was discharged. I’m going to tell you about that,” she says slowly, “but first you need to know he’s being transferred to another hospital.”
“He is? Why?” My heart pounds as my head throbs.
“We’re moving him to New York. It will be a plane transfer, and it will happen soon. There is an option for you to go along, if you want that.”
I swallow. I blink, and tears fall down my cheeks again. “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he stay here?”
She leans toward me, reaching across the table. Time slows as I watch her red lips move.
“Cleo—I’m sorry to have to share this news with you, but... Kellan is in the most advanced stage of leukemia.”
HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR whole life rearranged by something someone told you? It feels like surgery in a second. Like someone reaching in and moving things around so fast you’re different before you even realize what they’ve done. Maybe they’ve removed a part, or maybe something’s added. Maybe everything’s the same, but shifted slightly leftward.
Surgery on the heart changes the way the blood is pumped to every other part.
It makes sense. I can’t deny that much. It makes so much sense now that I know the truth.
When he disappeared from the deck off the windowed room that afternoon—after the grow house? We’d been playing rough, and he had asked me for a safe word. I said “sloth.”
The next day, he took me out for chicken pizza. Then the roasting of pecans. So many questions from him. Then Snow Queen, The Unicorns, Olive’s grave. What could make more sense than this?
They say God has a sense of humor. But it isn’t funny, is it?
I remember when we fell asleep on the couch and Kellan had that nightmare. How I draped my arm around his shoulders. All those other times, when he was always reaching for my hand. Between the dirty talk and his pretty, perfect cock, he was always reaching for me. Trying to fill every second with sex, at least when I first met him. Trying to interest me in taking over his business, because he was “leaving.”
How many sick people are getting marijuana at no cost because a bunch of college students pay for it?
