Extraordinary Means

  I went straight back to Cottage 6 and knocked on Nick’s door. He opened it looking awful. He was wearing his ratty bathrobe, and his hair stuck out in a million directions. His face looked naked without his glasses.

  “How is she?” Nick asked desperately. “They wouldn’t let me up.”

  He looked so concerned, like Sadie was his to be concerned about, and in that moment I hated him. I hadn’t come to give him news about his friend. I’d—well—I’d come because it was his goddamned fault Sadie was lying in a hospital bed, hurt with what the nurse said were two broken ribs and a concussion, and if I couldn’t kill Michael, Nick was the next best thing.

  “Not good,” I said.

  “I should have gone with her.”

  “Yeah,” I said, an edge to my voice. “You should have.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick asked.

  “That you should have gone with Sadie like you were supposed to instead of getting drunk alone in your room.”

  “Fuck you,” Nick said.

  “Fuck you.”

  I don’t remember hauling back and hitting him, but I must have, because he staggered backward with his hands over his face, cursing, and my fist stung like hell. Instantly, I felt better. But I couldn’t say the same for Nick.

  “Shit! That hurts!” he whined, revealing a trickle of blood over his eyebrow.

  “Might want to disinfect that cut,” I said. “Good thing you keep alcohol in your room.”

  I WENT BACK to see Sadie that evening. The nurse didn’t want to let me in at first, but I kicked up such a fuss that Dr. Barons came down to see what was going on.

  “Ah, Lane,” Dr. Barons said. “I’d like to speak with you in my office.”

  So I followed him down the corridor to his office, where he grilled me on how exactly I’d known where to find Sadie.

  I told him what I knew, about how she was meeting some guy Michael from town who worked at the Starbucks, although I didn’t know his last name. And then I’d filled in the part Sadie had told me, about how Michael had claimed he had TB and accused Sadie of giving it to him, and how he’d attacked her.

  Dr. Barons sighed, looking grim.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked.

  “Positive.”

  He brought in the police next. Two middle-aged cops from town, who put on surgical masks before talking to me, then asked me to go over it again. The whole thing took forever, and I was anxious to get up to Sadie’s room and see how she was doing.

  “Is there anyone else we should talk to?” the beefier cop asked.

  I didn’t even hesitate before throwing Nick under the bus with that one.

  DR. BARONS FINALLY took pity and let me go up to see Sadie, although not before making me put on a surgical mask and scrub the hell out of my hands.

  Sadie’s family was already there. Her mom, young and pretty, with Sadie’s blond hair, filling out paperwork in a chair. Her sister, Erica, twelve and gangly and dark-haired, playing a game on her phone.

  “You must be Lane,” Sadie’s mom said. Her eyes smiled at me from above her surgical mask. “I’m Naomi, Sadie’s mother.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I almost stuck out my hand, a reflex, but remembered not to just in time.

  “Thank you so much for staying with her this morning,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  While Sadie’s mom didn’t exactly seem thrilled to have me there, she at least let me stay. I told her that Sadie and I had been at summer camp together, too, and she asked me how I’d liked it. I lied politely and kept up the small talk, because I wanted her to like me, because I was afraid she’d ask me to leave.

  I must have fallen asleep in the chair next to her bed, because when I woke up, Sadie was staring at me.

  “You’re up,” I said, stretching.

  “Shhhh,” she whispered. She looked slightly better, but still so pale. She tilted her head toward the hallway, eavesdropping.

  Dr. Barons was out there, talking with Sadie’s mom just outside the doorway. He gravely mentioned the fractured ribs and the concussion. But then his voice dropped lower as he said that Sadie had suffered a small hemorrhage in the woods, brought on by the attack. He was worried that if it happened again, she wouldn’t survive it.

  “Her X-rays aren’t hopeful, Ms. Price,” Dr. Barons said, and it took me a moment to remember that Sadie’s parents were divorced. “The ribs are a problem, and every time she coughs, there’s a risk one of them will shift and puncture a lung.”

  Sadie’s eyes filled with tears as the weight of what Dr. Barons had said sank in.

  “Between the rib fractures and the damage from her tuberculosis, it isn’t looking good,” Dr. Barons finished.

  “Is there anything we can do?” her mom asked.

  “What she needs is protocillin,” Dr. Barons said gravely.

  “But I thought that was three weeks away.”

  “It is. And, unfortunately, she doesn’t have that kind of time. I’m so sorry, Ms. Price,” Dr. Barons said.

  Sadie closed her eyes, blinking away tears. I reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze, wishing we’d never eavesdropped on that conversation. There are some things you shouldn’t overhear, some things that are too terrible to comprehend when other people are discussing them, even though they’re happening to you.

  Sadie didn’t look so much overcome by sadness as defeated by it. And I don’t know how I managed to hold it together. How I sat there, stroking the back of her hand, breathing raggedly but not crying, because I wasn’t going to do that in front of her.

  “Lane,” she said after a while.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m so sorry. I always felt like there was something off about me, and now I know. I’m broken.”

  It wrecked me all over again to hear her say that.

  “You’re not broken.”

  “Then how come I can’t be fixed?” she asked, shaking as she held back tears. “If I’m not broken, how come no one can fix me?”

  WHEN SADIE’S MOM came back in, you could tell she’d been crying. Dr. Barons trailed behind her, looking grim.

  Sadie squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. And then I held her hand, like they’d told us to at camp during off-grounds trips, as though it would prevent us from being separated.

  “Sadie, good to see you’re awake,” Dr. Barons said.

  “I heard you,” she told him. “Out in the hallway.”

  Dr. Barons blanched. Sadie’s mom looked horrified.

  “I’m happy to answer any questions you might have,” Dr. Barons said, trying to put on a smile.

  “I just have one,” Sadie said. “Can you give me the medication for multi-drug-resistant TB?”

  I hadn’t been expecting that at all. But the moment she said it, a small flicker of hope lit itself inside of me as I remembered back to that day in French class, and our dialogue about the medication that Mr. Finnegan had called an extraordinary means of preserving life.

  Sadie’s mom looked to Dr. Barons, who sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “That’s a last resort, and not one we usually consider. The risks are too high,” he said.

  “But it could work,” I pressed. “It could make her better.”

  Sadie’s mom and I stared at Dr. Barons, and he shook his head.

  “It really is an extraordinary means of treatment. The survival rate is too low, and the chance that it would work is too slim.”

  “But it might!” I insisted. “Please!”

  “Mr. Rosen,” Dr. Barons scolded. “You seem extremely agitated. Do you need to be given a hospital bed and a sedative again?”

  I folded my arms and glared.

  “I don’t care,” Sadie said. “It’s my choice, isn’t it?”

  Sadie looked to her mom, who nodded, her lips pressed together.

  “Of course, sweetie.”

  “Well, I want the medication,” Sadie said matter-of-factly. “I know the risks. Twe
nty-five percent chance it’ll work, twenty-five percent chance it’ll kill me. And if it doesn’t do anything, then we already know what to expect. Mom, don’t, please . . .”

  Sadie’s mom had started sniffling again, and she pressed her hands over her mask, as though to hold back her despair.

  Dr. Barons handed Sadie’s mom another tissue. He kept a packet of them in the pocket of his white coat, I noticed, and I wondered if he always carried tissues, or if he’d put the packet in special, before breaking the news.

  “Why don’t you take the rest of the day to come to a decision, and I’ll check back tomorrow?” he said.

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” Sadie said, coughing softly. She splinted her ribs with a pillow one of the nurses had given her, going so white I thought she might faint.

  Dr. Barons gave Sadie’s mom a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and then paused in the doorway.

  “Young man, shouldn’t you be getting back?” he asked me.

  “To what?” I asked.

  But I could feel Sadie’s mom wanting me to leave, since the nurse who’d taken Erica to get dinner would probably be back at any moment.

  “I think for the rest of the night, it needs to be just family,” she said.

  “Yeah, okay,” I conceded.

  I pulled off my surgical mask and bent down to give Sadie a kiss on the cheek. I rested there a minute, my temple pressed against hers, feeling the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and the warmth of her skin, and the reassurance that she was there, and alive, and that it was possible we’d get past this.

  “I’m going to be okay,” Sadie promised as I left.

  “I know you are,” I said, except they were just empty hospital words, the kind that you wish were true because the alternative is too painful to bear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SADIE

  THE MEDICATION WAS going to work. I was sure of it. Of course my mom was skeptical and kept telling me about some miracle herb she wanted me to try. I told her it sounded great, just so she’d stop talking about it, because she was making me depressed.

  When Dr. Barons came back the next day, I told him my mind hadn’t changed. I still wanted the treatment. He seemed surprised, and not altogether pleased, that I wanted to take the risk. But for me it wasn’t a choice. It was the only chance I had, and one of the things I’d learned at Latham was that you don’t pass on second chances.

  And a secret part of me liked the idea that my fate would still be uncertain. That I was back to where I’d been for the past eighteen months, unsure whether Latham was it for me, or if I’d go back to my former life after all. Except now I knew—if I did get better, if I did get to pack my things and take my protocillin and go back to high school, I’d call Lane every night before bed, and somehow, together, we’d get through it. Maybe we’d even get bagels on the weekend, or drive up to see one of Marina’s plays, or check out just how ridiculous Nick’s house was, since he’d let it slip there was a tennis court in the backyard. Maybe we’d even buy some albums at the thrift store and drag a record player out to Modesto, where Charlie was buried. Maybe we’d even come back to Latham and sit on one of the porches of the boarded-up cottages and reminisce.

  DR. BARONS LET my friends come visit that afternoon, and they showed up dressed like that night at the movies, when everyone else had worn pajamas, and we’d looked like we were stopping by on our way to a dance.

  Nick smelled like he’d swigged a little too much liquid courage, and from the look on Lane’s face, they’d had a conversation about it earlier.

  “Wow, booze o’clock,” Marina told him. “Have a piece of gum.”

  She tossed him a package of gum, and he took a piece, muttering his thanks.

  Marina smoothed her dress nervously. Out of everyone, she was the most uncomfortable in the medical building. She was still perched on the edge of her seat, like she might need to run away at any moment.

  “Loving the outfits,” I said. “Whose funeral?”

  They all stared at me in horror.

  “I’m kidding,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes for just a moment. I got tired so easily now, and the pain meds made me feel like I wasn’t all the way awake.

  Lane adjusted his tie self-consciously. He looked gorgeous, his hair a little too long, and just the right amount of messy. I remembered the last time he’d worn that tie, for our fake-dance photo.

  My mom wasn’t in the room, thank God. She’d taken Erica to town for lunch, so it was just the four of us, me in my pajamas, and everyone else in their fancy clothes and surgical masks. I knew they’d meant the outfits to be amusing, but the idea that they were something I wasn’t stung. I hated that I was too sick to participate, like I was no longer one of them.

  “Round of Bullshit?” Marina asked, taking out a deck of cards. Everyone pulled chairs around the bed, and Marina shuffled the deck. I was the first one out, and after I lost, I lay back, listening to them play and pretending we were lying on the grass in the sunshine, instead of in a hospital room.

  My mom and Erica came back while Nick and Lane were dueling it out to win the game, and they watched, smiling, at Nick’s energy, and Lane’s psych-out tactics. And I was glad my mom got to see my friends, and a little of my life here, because I knew she worried I was making it all up, like I had when I’d written letters home from camp about how the girls were all my best friends, and then when she’d come to pick me up, no one had hugged me good-bye.

  I GOT THE medication on Monday. Dr. Barons came in and hung the bag off my IV drip, choosing the lowest setting. My mom pulled over a chair and held my hand, even though it didn’t hurt. For a moment, it reminded me of what Marina had said, about how Amit’s parents had hovered and treated him like an invalid after he went home. But I pushed away the thought, and other, troubling thoughts, like men following me through a carnival, and Michael lunging toward me in the woods, and the way my mom had already gone through two large bottles of hand sanitizer.

  I closed my eyes and pretended it was next summer, and Lane and I were camp counselors together, making sure the kids in our cabins didn’t get bullied. I pictured him in a pair of cutoffs and his loafers, with one of those lanyard key chains around his neck, both of us in matching staff T-shirts. I pictured us eating s’mores at a campfire, the chocolate all over our hands. I pictured us sneaking into the same shower stall after I bet him that he didn’t have the nerve. And I pictured the antibiotics dripping into my body, and binding tight to the infection, and making me better.

  Except they didn’t.

  My fever spiked that afternoon, and one of the nurses gave me something so I’d stop shivering, but the pain in my chest was so bad by that point that I knew. It wouldn’t work. I wasn’t extraordinary enough.

  If living and dying were really the same thing, then I’d been dying for seventeen years, and I didn’t have much longer now to go. But I knew that might happen. I accepted it a long time ago. My miracle wasn’t a cure. It was a second chance. But second chances aren’t forever. And even miracles have an expiration date.

  Mom’s eyes crinkled as she smiled down at me, her hand in mine, her voice murmuring.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

  I closed my eyes, wishing I believed it.

  It’s so strange how the moment of your birth is this fixed point in time, but the hour of your death is always changing based on what you eat for dinner, or where you cross the street, or who you trust when you’re alone in the dark woods. But I like to think of all those little moments that add up to the final one, because it meant that my death would be my own, the result of my life, and not just something that happened to me.

  Thinking about it like that made it more bearable, that we go back to God when we’ve had our turn, that some of us roll the dice less than we’d like, but that we’re the ones who are rolling them.

  When I first came to Latham, I thought this place existed to protect the outside w
orld from us, but now I know it’s the other way around. Latham protects us from them.

  And the thing about trying to cheat death is that, in the end, you still lose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  LANE

  I COULDN’T HELP but hope that Sadie would make it. That, miraculously, she’d live until the first batch of protocillin arrived. That what she had, like the rest of us at Latham House, was curable. But deep down I knew the truth.

  The treatment she’d asked for didn’t work, and she started to get sicker.

  There were days where Sadie slept most of the time, where I bargained my way into the room and sat reading in a chair by her bed.

  Sadie’s mom sat there, too, filling in Sudoku squares with a pencil and the occasional tear. A boyfriend, or fiancé, came and went, bald and sagging, bringing bags of health food and looking like he didn’t know what else to do. Marina sat with Sadie’s little sister, playing board games and bringing her a stack of fantasy novels. And Nick came by, with drooping flowers he’d picked down by the lake, although I couldn’t tell you whether it was Nick or the flowers that looked more wilted.

  On Wednesday, Sadie and I were alone in the room, and she was propped up in bed, making me paint her nails a bright purple.

  “B-minus,” she said, inspecting my work. “You missed, like, half my thumbnail.”

  “It’s hard!” I complained.

  “Well, you better fix it, since I’ll probably wear this for the rest of my life,” she joked.

  My jaw tightened.

  “Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “Not funny. Please unremember every not-funny joke I’ve ever made.”

  “So basically everything?” I said.

  “Basically everything,” Sadie echoed, leaning back and closing her eyes.

  For a moment, I thought she’d fallen asleep, and then she asked, very softly, “What do you think happens to us when we die?”

  I wasn’t expecting that, and I wasn’t sure I had an answer.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Maybe it’s different for different people.”