Between Here and Forever

  Plus the cafeteria is the one place in the hospital that doesn’t smell bad. Everywhere else smells like chemicals, like the kind of clean that can strip away your skin if you get too close. And underneath that chemical smell there’s always another one, fainter but never ever gone.

  Underneath, you can smell unwashed flesh and fear and how off everything is. How everyone who’s in here, all the patients lying in all their beds, aren’t here because they want to be. They’re here because they have to be. Or because this is the last place they’ll ever see.

  The elevator comes and I step inside, prepare to see Tess.

  After I’m buzzed in to her unit, I walk to her room. She looks the same; thin, pale, somehow gone but yet still here. Her hair’s been washed, though, and it shines, golden against the white of her pillow. A nurse is fixing one of her IVs, and sighs when she sees me.

  Tess was—is—always good at getting people to like her.

  I suck at it.

  “I’m going to change her sheets,” the nurse says, and I nod, sit down to wait even though the nurse sighs again, and then Claire walks by like I’ve somehow summoned her. I start to wave, but she isn’t looking at me. She’s looking at the unit entrance, and I realize everyone else is too, that all the nurses are turned toward it like something’s going to happen. Weird.

  Then the buzzer sounds and a guy comes in.

  “Tess,” I say, leaning over and whispering in her ear. “You’re missing your big chance. Everyone’s staring just because some guy’s come in here, and you know what that means. He must be cute.”

  Nothing.

  “I’m not kidding,” I say. “One guy, and all the nurses are looking at him. That means very cute. Just like when you walk into a room.”

  Then, weirdly, the guy is actually coming toward the room, toward Tess, the nurse who was babbling at me about sheets before hurrying over to him.

  “Thank you so much for doing this,” she says, all giddy-voiced. “I can’t tell you how nice it is of you to help out, and—”

  And then she stops talking because she walks right into the door.

  I shouldn’t laugh, but I do because it’s impossible not to—she walked into a door, after all—and she glares at me as she ushers the guy in. I get an impression of dark hair and eyes, but not much more because the nurse is fluttering all around him. And also because I just don’t care.

  “Now, I thought you could help me lift the patient up,” the nurse says to him. “Then I’ll—oh, I didn’t get the sheets, hold on. Claire—Claire! Oh good, there you are. Would you grab some sheets, please?”

  Claire rolls her eyes at me, fast, and then says, “Of course,” and heads off.

  “It’ll be just a moment,” the nurse says to the guy, still all fluttery-voiced, and when I look at her, she’s blushing.

  She should be. She’s my mom’s age, at least, and the guy is about mine, I think, which makes what I’m sure she’s thinking a felony.

  As for the guy, he’s pretty disappointing now that I’m finally looking at him. I mean, he’s staring at the floor like a lump. He’s probably uncomfortable being here, where everything is so silent, and everyone’s in the kind of sleep you never ever want to fall into, but still.

  Then he looks up and …

  He looks up, and my brain actually stops working for a moment, because the guy is gorgeous. Not gorgeous in the oh-hey-hot-guy way, but actually truly gorgeous.

  Beautiful, even. His skin is caramel colored, a warm glowing golden brown, and his hair is so black that even the hideous fluorescent lights do nothing to it, don’t make it look greenish or stringy. He’s got the kind of cheekbones I’ve only seen on guys in magazines. Ditto for his nose and chin and forehead, and his dark eyes framed by lashes that Tess would murder someone for.

  He is, in short, human perfection. Even if he has gone back to staring at the floor and has his arms folded across his chest, fingers tapping against his skin like he’s bored. I lean over and nudge Tess.

  “Come on, Tess, open your eyes. This guy is so pretty, I swear he’s better-looking than you.”

  The guy clears his throat at that, and I look at him again.

  “What? Oh, right, I called you pretty. Sorry. But you are. I mean …” I trail off.

  He actually looks at me then, and I feel my face heat, turn back to Tess.

  “Okay, here we are,” Claire says, coming back and handing the nurse the sheets.

  “Thank you,” the nurse says. “You can stay and take the soiled sheets away. Abby, can you step out for a minute, please?”

  I nod, leave Tess’s room, and wander out of the unit to the waiting area. Today there’s a middle-aged woman sitting in there, head in her hands. She’s wearing sneakers, and both of them are untied. I can tell she’s either going to cry or start yelling at any second, so I go sit in the stairwell.

  I wait. I’m good at it, I’ve learned a lot about it the past few months, but when I go back to Tess’s room, the nurse, Claire, and the guy are still there, the nurse and Claire talking quietly.

  When I walk in, the guy clears his throat again and speaks for the first time, saying, “Um, can I go?”

  “Oh, something something something,” the nurse says to him but I don’t hear it because Tess’s eyes twitch. They don’t open, but there’s definitely movement there, under her closed eyelids.

  She’s coming back.

  “Wait, please,” I tell the nurse, who does, and turn to the guy. “Say something.”

  “Abby,” Claire hisses, and the guy says, “What?” Even his voice is gorgeous, low and soft.

  I look at Tess. Yes, there was definitely a sort of twitch there.

  “Did you see that?” I say to the nurse. “When he talks, Tess can hear him!”

  five

  The nurse doesn’t agree with me. She says I’m overwrought, and then me and Clement take a little ride in the elevator. The nurse is pissed that it’s him who comes and gets me, and not someone from security, but Clement points out that at least I’m leaving.

  The thing about Clement is that he’s about seventy years old and barely comes up to my shoulder. He sometimes gives bored little kids a “top secret” tour of the hospital, but mostly he just walks around talking to people.

  He’s not a real security guard, obviously. But he did give about ten million dollars to the hospital three years ago. For that kind of money, if you want to spend your days walking around the hospital greeting people, fine.

  “Are you all right?” he says, and Clement is one of those people who means what he says. I like that about him, so I tell him the truth because I know he’ll listen.

  “Tess’s eyes moved.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful! What did the doctor say?”

  I shrug. “Nothing. The nurse won’t call him. She said she didn’t see anything. She made me leave.”

  “Do you think that maybe … sometimes we see things we want to.”

  I know about that. I fooled myself into it once, and won’t make that mistake again. “Hey, I like you, but not that much, so don’t think I did all this just to see you,” I say, and Clement laughs his wheezy laugh and then pulls out one of the seemingly endless supply of cough drops he’s always got on him.

  “You shouldn’t be so worried all the time,” he says. “You’ll give yourself gas.”

  I laugh then too, and he grins at me as we walk outside.

  “Go on home,” he says. “And take care of yourself.”

  “Me?” I say. “I don’t—I’m fine.”

  Before he can reply, I get on my bike and head to the ferry.

  When I get home, I fry up an egg, and then wedge it between some bread and eat it while I watch television. Mom and Dad get home when I’m flipping through the channels trying to decide if I want to watch the gritty crime drama about detectives who track down missing people, or the other gritty crime drama about detectives who track down missing people.

  Mom turns off the television. “You w
ant to tell me about what happened today?”

  “Tess moved. Her eyes were closed, but I saw them moving, like she might blink. Or was going to blink.”

  “Abby …” Mom says, and sits down on the sofa. “You can’t …” She looks down at her hands. My mother’s nails are always neatly polished. This week they are a pale pink. “You don’t know how much your father and I want Tess to wake up, and saying things like that only—”

  “Hurts,” Dad finishes, coming in and sitting down next to Mom.

  “But I did see her eyes move.” This is a good thing, and I don’t see why my parents don’t believe me and why they are sitting on the sofa looking miserable.

  “Remember the first week?” Dad says. “You and me and Mom were there, and you swore she moved her hand when Beth was talking to her?”

  “Her little finger,” I say. “And it happened.”

  “Beth didn’t see it. And Beth is her roommate and friend, honey.”

  “She was looking at Tess.”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, I mean she was looking at her face.”

  Dad rubs a hand over his forehead and then leans back into the sofa, closing his eyes. “Abby, we don’t want you to think that your sister—” He breaks off, clearing his throat. “Don’t be angry at Tess.”

  “I’m not,” I say, but he gives me this look, this I-see-through-you look, and I go upstairs and slam my bedroom door.

  I know what I saw today. Tess heard something in that guy’s voice, something that grabbed her, and now I know exactly what I need to do.

  I can’t reach her, but maybe someone else can.

  I get up, open my door as quietly as possible, and slip down the hall into Tess’s room. It hasn’t been touched since the accident, and her bags from school are still on the floor, and photos of her and her college friends are sprinkled all over her desk.

  I slide my hands over them, see Tess smiling in the sunshine. She has my dad’s bright smile, all warmth, and I wonder about the guy she was smiling at. Did she like him? Or did she like the guy with the black shirt who shows up in the next photo, eyes on Tess and full of longing as she reads something he’s holding in one hand?

  Or what about the guy two photos later, the one who is grinning at her as she examines a tattoo on his arm, watching her fingers on his skin? Or is it the guy holding the camera in all the photos?

  Whoever he is, he hasn’t come to see her—none of them has—and Beth, as nice as she is, is just her roommate and can’t and won’t make up for that.

  But that guy today could. I can almost see her sitting up and smiling at him now.

  I wonder if she can see it too, and think that maybe, just maybe, she can.

  six

  I head over to see Claire when I get to the hospital after school the next day. She’s standing in the tiny alcove the hospital has set aside for smokers, hidden off to the far side of the building. Milford is a no-smoking town, and self-righteously proud of it, but Ferrisville isn’t, and since Milford people can afford to go to better hospitals—and do—this is where people from Ferrisville come. And a lot of them, like Claire, smoke.

  I fan the air around me and her, and she makes a face at me.

  “I thought you were quitting,” I say.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “How?” I squint, pretending I can’t see her through the haze of smoke.

  She sighs and stubs out the cigarette. “Fine, Mother. Hey, what did you think of that guy yesterday?”

  “He can make people walk into doors.”

  She laughs. “That was the best, wasn’t it? You should see Eli when he’s working in the gift shop, though. People stop and just stare at him like this …” She makes a zombie face.

  “You one of them?”

  “No, I’m off guys forever after everything with Rick,” she says. “Trying to get him to pay child support—ugh.”

  “Guys suck,” I say, and she shakes her head at me and says, “Yeah. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with all that crap. Tess always …” She trails off, like she’s said something she shouldn’t.

  Like she’s said something I don’t know.

  Like I don’t know that Tess is easy for anyone and everyone to love and I’m—I’m not.

  “Hey, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with all the stuff Tess did. All those guys calling and telling her that they loved her, or sending her stuff, or wanting to take her out, and me? Well, I don’t have that problem at all.”

  Claire bites her lip. “You know what I meant, Abby. You’re very—you have—”

  “I have a sister I have to go see,” I say, stopping her before she has to try and finish her sentence. “And the sooner she wakes up, the sooner she can go back to breaking hearts. See you later.”

  Look, I know I’m not pretty. As Tess once told me, not so much to be cruel, but just because she always wanted to know about our family and its history, I have my mom’s mother’s eyes, a muddy brown-green with weird blue flecks in them, and dark blond hair that likes to defy my brush and nature and just stick up wherever it wants to. Also, I’m built like a twelve-year-old girl. (That part no one had to tell me. It’s just obvious.)

  And it would be fine if I was still twelve, but barely filling out an A cup at seventeen is pathetic. As is the fact that I can buy—and wear—boys’ pants because I’m barely five foot two. And also have no hips to speak of.

  But now I know the guy I saw yesterday is Eli, and that he can be found in the gift shop. He must be fairly new to the hospital—I know everyone who works here—and I can work with that. I know what I saw yesterday.

  I know what—who—Tess needs in order to wake up.

  seven

  I tell Tess his name as soon as I see her. She doesn’t respond, but that’s okay. I bet she needs to hear his voice again. When she does, she’ll do what she did yesterday. She has to.

  If Tess doesn’t wake up, then she isn’t—then she won’t be here. Not truly here, you know? And she’s always been the bright star my family revolves around. She’s been the person who people in Ferrisville talk about with reverence in their voices. Tess is pretty, young, kind—all the things people want each other to be. All the things people so often aren’t.

  The only problem is, I don’t know how to get the guy up here. I think about it as I tell Tess about my day, mostly lingering on the candy bar I bought before last period because Tess is a sucker for candy. She even ended up living with Beth because of it.

  When I went to visit them last fall, she told me she knew she had to swap roommates and move in with Beth the very first day she came to campus.

  “I walk into my room,” she said, “and there’s this girl sitting on the floor eating a Nibby Bar. You know, the one with the cocoa nibs in it?”

  I’d nodded and made a face because Tess’s love for bitter chocolate, up to and including chocolate with pieces of twiglike chocolate in it, made no sense to me.

  “And I think, wow, this is going to be amazing, because I love Nibby Bars too,” Tess had said. “But it turned out Beth lives across the hall, and just stopped by to say hi. I knew things would work out, though. And they did!” She’d turned and grinned at Beth, who shook her head at Tess, but still smiled.

  “How about some candy?” I ask Tess now. “A nice bar of chocolate, maybe? I’ll get you one, I swear. You just have to open your eyes.”

  Tess doesn’t move.

  “Fine,” I say, and my voice comes out more angry than I mean it to. I swallow hard and look at the floor.

  “Someone wanted a copy of, um, Sassy You?” a voice says out in the nursing area.

  The voice. It’s that guy. Eli. I hear someone else murmur something, but I don’t listen.

  I don’t listen because behind Tess’s closed eyes, I see something move. I see her body hearing something. I see it responding.

  I know what I have to do, and so I go out and say, “It’s mine. I mean, I want the magazine.”

  The guy
—Eli—looks at me. If I thought he was really looking at me, and not seeing someone who wanted a copy of the world’s stupidest magazine (and if I looked like someone he’d want to see), I swear my knees would melt. (That’s right, melt. Screw going weak. Eli is beyond that mortal power.)

  “Um, excuse me, but I asked for that magazine,” one of the nurses says. “Mrs. Johnson loves it.”

  Mrs. Johnson is in worse shape than Tess. She can’t even breathe on her own, and no one ever comes to visit her. I guess all her family is dead, or something. She just lies there in her room, all alone, day after day, air pumped in and out of her lungs, keeping her breath flowing, her heart beating. The nurses don’t pay much attention to her, and the first week Tess was here, I had nightmares about Mrs. Johnson every night.

  I started sneaking into her room once in a while and saying hello to her, and the nightmares stopped. I still do it, and although I’ve never spoken to her, I’m sure Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t want a copy of Sassy You, with its stupid articles about how to get guys to want you “all the time!” and profiles of celebrities whose greatest achievements are tossing their hair around, smiling, and swearing that their latest trip to rehab “changed their lives.”

  “So, who gets it?” Eli says, looking at the nurse and then at me. “I gotta get back down to the gift shop. Nobody else is there today.”

  I point at the nurse and go back to Tess.

  “Sorry,” I whisper. “I’ll—” What? I have no idea how to approach him. I don’t approach anyone.

  But this is for Tess. For Tess to wake up.

  “I’m going now, but I—I’m going to get Eli for you, okay?” I say. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  I pretend her mouth curves up into a smile. I pretend she can hear me. I take the copy of Sassy You the nurse swore Mrs. Johnson wanted from where it lies unopened on the stack of magazines the nurses “read” to Mrs. Johnson by standing there and reading the magazines themselves, and shove it in the trash.

  “Sorry you had to see that thing,” I tell her. “And, hey, I’m going to get Tess to wake up. She has to, you know. Otherwise …” I trail off.