“I began to notice,” she said. “I was the one who was different. And I hated it. Even though I was small at the time, and I didn’t understand it fully, I got real angry about it. I would hide when it came time for my therapy. I’d kick and scream at my parents and call them mean names. Sometimes I made my mother cry.”
Eric smoothed the lock of hair behind her ear. “Funny, you don’t look like a meany to me.”
She shook her head and looked up into his face. “I was awful. I hated everybody, and yet I was dependent on them, too. Without the thumps, I couldn’t breathe. A person gets addicted to breathing, you know.”
“Thump or die, huh?” He chuckled.
“Exactly. Except that some days the thumps aren’t enough. I was in and out of the hospital six times when I was twelve. No matter what I did, my lungs kept betraying me. About that same time, I decided I must be a most terrible person and that I was being punished. I believed that God hated me.”
“I’d probably think the same thing.”
“I met Vince during that phase. He had CF like me, and so we used to talk about God and having CF and feeling cursed.” She looked at Eric, her expression shy. “We made some earth-shattering discoveries about life.”
“I’d like to hear them,” Eric said.
“We decided that everybody suffers one way or another at some point in their lives. Nobody gets away scot-free. Suffering is just something people have to do—a kind of dues paying for the privilege of living and being happy. And sometimes it seems to me until you know the one—suffering—you can’t know the other—happiness. It’s like they play off each other. Do you know what I mean?”
“I understand, but I don’t know why you have to suffer so much and someone else—someone who’s a jerk or a creep—like a murderer—doesn’t seem to suffer much at all.”
“There you go again,” Kara chided, while toying with the edge of the blanket. “You’re asking that life be ‘fair.’ Nobody knows how much anybody else hurts. We can’t walk around in another person’s skin—not even for a moment. Sometimes, people reach out, and that’s really special. But we just have to look for happiness in each day, no matter what’s happening to us.”
“Are you happy now?”
She watched the firelight reflect in his eyes. Inside, she felt a melting sensation, as if she might dissolve and soak into the floor. She raised one trembling finger and traced the outline of his mouth. “Yes. I’m happy now.”
He caught her hand and held it. “Kara, I’ve never known anybody like you.”
“You mean a terribly skinny girl with scratchy breathing?”
He lowered his ear to her chest, resting his head ever so gently. “It sounds to me like a kitten purring.”
Kara touched his hair, and he raised his head and stared into her eyes. Eric lowered his mouth to hers, hesitantly at first, barely brushing her lips. He cradled her head on his arm and stroked her hair with his free hand. She felt warm and protected, totally lost in his embrace. He drew back and stared down at her, his gaze serious. “Kara, I don’t want to—”
She silenced him by kissing him fully. Not once in all her life had she experienced the sensations pouring through her now in Eric’s arms, and she didn’t want them to end. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Please hold me.”
His arms slipped around her. She clung to him fiercely while her breath came raggedly. She was so filled with wanting and yearning that she ached. She heard the crackling fire, the howling wind. Time seemed to stand still. She raised her head and offered her lips for Eric’s lingering kiss.
Seventeen
“JUST HOW SICK is Kara?” Eric practically accosted Vince in the locker room. “She seemed fine over the holiday, but when I went to see her at the hospital last night, she was getting tests and I couldn’t go in. The nurse told me she was really sick again. What’s going on?”
“It’s another infection.” Vince tossed his books into his locker and stripped off his jacket. “Have you talked to your sister?”
“I haven’t seen her. She left for work early.”
“Kara told me you spent Friday with her.” Vince’s statement sounded matter-of-fact, but Eric sensed resentment.
“We just hung around. Christy worked all holiday. I wanted Kara to have a good time.”
“She’s not some charity case. You aren’t responsible for her good times.”
“Hey, back off,” Eric warned.
For a moment, he and Vince glared at each other. “Sorry, man. I was out of line,” Vince said. “She’s important to me, and right now, I’m worried about her. It’s hard when you really care about someone.”
Eric sighed, regretting his show of temper. He knew the way Vince cared about Kara, and knowing she’d been with Eric had to have been hard on him. He told himself he should never have gotten involved with Kara or Vince. He should have simply ignored them and stuck with his usual good-time crowd. Yet, he hadn’t, and deep down, he knew there was no going back. What was worse, he didn’t want to go back. Kara mattered to him. “Come on,” he said to Vince. “Let’s do some bench presses. I’ll spot you.”
Vince gave Eric a sad, imploring look. “I want her to have a good time, too. I don’t want her to keep going through the ringer this way.”
“Between us, we can give her a good time. Lighten up. She’ll be out of there before long. She’s licked it before, and she’ll do it again.” Yet, even as he spoke, Eric saw doubt in Vince’s eyes. And fear.
Kara felt frightened. It was getting harder and harder to breathe, no matter what the doctors did. Her heart was racing, and although the cardiologist examined her and ordered medication, he didn’t have any medical wonders to stop the downward turn her condition was taking. She felt lethargic, groggy, despite being on oxygen almost all the time. Dr. McGee took her into surgery and inserted a catheter in her arm for hyper-alimentation—a procedure to get nourishment into her starving body more efficiently. The hospital routine around her faded in and out, and the only way she measured time was by the rattling of the food trays three times a day, the faces of the nurses as they changed shifts, and her parents’ visits.
This time, Kara insisted on having visitors. She wanted to see her friends for as long as she could. She wanted to be surrounded with healthy people. Christy popped in every chance she got. As Kara worstened, her mother spent most nights in the room with her. She told Kara she’d taken a short leave of absence from her job. “You shouldn’t have,” Kara insisted.
Her mother’s expression was obstinate. “I’d much rather be here with you. Honestly, Kara, this nine-to-five workday is totally overrated!”
“I’m more exciting than a high-powered position in an international ad agency?”
“No doubt about it.” Her mother touched her cheek gently.
Kara smiled wryly. “That’s hard to believe, but I’m glad you’re here with me, Mom.” Kara looked at her mother, at the worried set of her mouth, the tiny lines around her eyes. Kara just knew time was running out. She thought about the One Last Wish letter she’d received.
The letter was at home, tucked safely away in her dresser drawer. She’d read it so many times, she’d memorized it. “The miracle is not in the receiving, but in the giving and in friendships that reach beyond death.”
Kara smiled to herself. She finally had the solution of what to do with the money. The answer was so simple. Kara took hold of her mother’s hand. “Come closer, Mom.” She patted the edge of her bed. “Sit down. There’s something I need to tell you—and something I want you to do.”
Vince came every day after school, sat by her bed and read to her, passages from the Bible, poetry, magazine articles, novels. If he came to an especially sexy passage, he’d stop and joke, “Now, turn your thumb down if you think your modesty can’t take this.”
She’d smile and hoarsely whisper, “In your dreams.” Who could have a shred of modesty left after being poked and probed and examined by every person who passed through her room
wearing a white lab coat?
When Eric visited, he appeared ill at ease, so Kara made an extra effort to be cheerful. Nothing she did recaptured the magic they’d shared during the Thanksgiving holiday. She longed to have him look at her the way he had that night when he’d held her and kissed her.
She understood his ambivalent reactions. “Civilians”—people who’d never been unhealthy—were put off by her world. Hospitals weren’t places for people who didn’t have to be there. “It’s nice to have you come and see me,” she told him. “You’ve been wonderful to me.”
“Maybe I’ll bring my English teacher by, and you can give me a testimonial.”
She attempted a laugh, but the effort hurt. “It’ll cost you. I don’t just toss out testimonials for nothing, you know.”
He leaned over her bed and looked her full in the face. “So, what will it cost me?”
She felt the familiar sensations go through her that only he could elicit. “I’ll have to think about it.”
He stared at her, the look of mischievousness giving way to one of tenderness and sadness. She felt uncomfortable. She didn’t want him looking at her that way. Not with pity. She broke his gaze by glancing away. “I guess I should let you get some rest,” he said.
No, her mind cried. I don’t want to rest. I want you. But she told him, “Of course. I am a little tired.” She watched him start for the door. “Will you come back?” she asked, suddenly anxious about seeing him again.
“Of course,” he said, giving her a puzzled look. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“No reason,” she said, believing there was every reason for him to stay away. He left and Kara felt an urge to cry.
* * *
“Santa’s elves have come bearing gifts,” Vince declared when he and Eric arrived the next day wearing Santa hats and carrying boxes and paper bags.
“What’s going on?” Kara asked. She was sitting upright. Now, she slept with the head of the bed permanently elevated and her head and shoulders propped with pillows in an effort to make breathing easier.
Eric opened one especially long box and began taking out parts of an artificial tree. “Vince said you had to have one of these fake ones in your room.” She nodded. A natural tree might make her wheeze.
It took them almost an hour to set up the tree, as they argued and kidded one another over the directions.
“What do you think of these?” Eric asked, dangling a long string of twinkle lights. “I’ve got them in all colors and in white. Which ones do you want?”
“All of them,” she said. “A tree can’t have enough lights.” Elyse showed up with a bag of silver and gold tinsel, popcorn and cranberry chains, and hundreds of small, red decorative bows. “Are you in on this, too?” Kara asked, smiling.
“You didn’t think I was going to let these two comedians handle this by themselves?” She held up the popcorn chain. “And do you have any idea how long I worked on this thing? This is an act of love, girl. I have bloody fingertips from my sewing needle to prove it.”
Kara watched them work, loving them and wishing she could be helping. There had been times that she’d been in the hospital when she had been able to get up and around, but not this time. She was confined to her bed, attached to a flexible oxygen tube.
“Do you like these doodads?” Eric asked, holding up a garish display of glass ornaments.
“They’re perfect.”
He turned to Vince. “See. I told you she’d like them.” He turned back to Kara. “He said all my taste was in my mouth.”
Vince shook his head. “No—I said if you had taste, it would be in your mouth.”
By the time the trio finished, lights twinkled, tinsel glittered, and the whole room looked like Christmas. “Wait a minute,” Vince said, stepping forward with another bag and handing it to Kara. “This is for the top.”
Carefully Kara opened the sack and extracted a breathtakingly lovely angel. Her face was fine hand-painted porcelain, her hair a swirl of golden curls, and her gown a cloud of white satin. “My guardian angel,” Kara whispered.
Everyone watched while Vince perched the ornament atop the tree and stepped back. “Put this on the tree, too,” Kara said, handing Eric the red satin pillow he had won for her at the arcade. “On the branch right below her.”
He did and stepped aside. “You did great work,” Kara told them, wiping away a mist that had crept into her eyes. “Just wonderful.”
“It looks okay,” Eric mumbled.
Kara glanced from one to the other. “You’re the best friends a person could ever have.”
Elyse hugged Kara. Vince stooped and kissed her tenderly. Eric did the same, but more quickly, as if the public show of affection embarrassed him. “Merry Christmas.”
Kara’s eyelids were growing heavy, and a listlessness had stolen over her like a thief. “Until tomorrow,” she told them, wishing she weren’t so tired. Once they left, in spite of feeling tired, she couldn’t sleep. She gazed lovingly at the tree. Its beauty caused a lump to lodge in her throat. She fixed her gaze on the angel and whispered, “Watch over us all, Guardian Angel.”
Eighteen
ERIC HEARD THE persistent ringing of the phone. His bedroom was pitch-black, and the digits from the clock radio on his dresser glowed three A.M. He buried his face in his pillow and groaned. Finally, he heard the ringing stop and the muffled, sleepy voice of his sister. As he snuggled contentedly under his covers and sleep began to steal over him, his tranquillity was disrupted. Christy flipped on the overhead light and shook his shoulder.
“Eric! It’s Kara! I’m going to the hospital. Do you want to come with me?”
Instantly, he was awake. “What about her?”
“We’re losing her.” Christy’s voice shook. “She’s bleeding severely from her lungs, and her heartbeat’s erratic.” Eric stared, unable to comprehend the message. Losing her? “I don’t understand—”
Christy sat on his bed and took his hand, as one might a small child’s. “I asked Kara’s parents to call me if Kara took a downward turn. We’re all so close …” Tears filled Christy’s eyes, and it took her a moment to regain her composure. “Kara’s lungs are too weak to keep working, and now with her heart failing, there’s nothing they can do …”
“She’s worse? But I was just with her when we decorated a Christmas tree for her room. She seemed fine.”
“Eric, each day brings complications. Medically, there’s just so much that can be done.”
“But all those doctors—”
“They’re not miracle workers. She’s just too sick this time.”
“She pulled out before. She will again,” he insisted stubbornly, and jerked away. Eric refused to accept what she was saying.
“I’m worried about Vince, too,” Christy added.
“Is Vince sick?” Eric had seen him at school that day, and he’d looked fine. Had the phone call divulged more than bad news about Kara’s condition?
“He’s not sick, but if something happens to Kara, he could be.”
“What do you mean?”
Christy sighed. “When one of the community with a mutual illness dies, the others in the circle—especially those closest to the victim—get sicker. They give up hope. Sometimes, we lose more than one within months of each other.”
Eric recoiled in horror. “But Kara won’t die. She can’t. This is some false alarm.”
“Are you coming?” Christy gazed down at him, an urgency in her voice.
“I’ll follow in my car.”
“Be careful,” Christy said. “There’s ice on the roads.”
Once she was gone, Eric got out of bed and moved around his room feeling empty and confused. He kept telling himself that there was some mistake. By the time he drove to the hospital, he’d convinced himself that Kara’s crisis was a stupid error. But when he stepped off the elevator, a sickening sensation settled in the pit of his stomach.
Kara’s parents were huddled together outside the door of her room
. Christy stood with them, and to one side, Vince stood against the wall. Eric came up on them slowly, hearing snatches of conversation about the prognosis, as they waited for doctors who were at Kara’s bedside.
Eric approached a haggard-looking Vince. “I came as soon as I could.” Eric felt a need to explain himself. “What’s going on?”
Slowly Vince raised his head and focused his red-rimmed eyes. “Kara’s dying.”
The directness of Vince’s words fell on Eric like blows. He backed off. “How can you know that for sure?”
“I know.”
“But I just saw her. She seemed kind of groggy, but she was talking to me.”
“She was groggy because carbon dioxide’s been building up in her blood. Her lungs are so shot, they can’t make use of the oxygen she’s breathing. Kara’s suffocating to death.”
Eric shuddered and felt sick to his stomach. Christy approached them and quietly said, “I’ve asked Kara’s parents if you two can go in and see her when the doctors leave. They agreed it would be all right.”
Eric felt hot and cold all over. He wasn’t sure he could face seeing her in this condition. The moment the team of doctors emerged from Kara’s room, Vince pushed away from the wall and headed through the doorway. Torn between staying and going, Eric looked away. Christy patted his shoulder. “Go on.”
Almost against his will, Eric stepped inside. Kara was connected to machines and looked so frail. Her pulse fluttered visibly in her throat, making him think of a captive sparrow. He edged closer.
Vince was bending over her, pressing her slender hand to his lips. Her nails and lips were bluish, starved for oxygen. Eric saw that her eyes were open. Her gaze rested tenderly on Vince’s face. She was unable to speak. Her gaze drifted to Eric, and she held his eyes with hers. Her face held no fear. With her gaze, she seemed to tell him, “I love you, Eric.”
The unspoken words sent shivers down Eric’s spine, and his knees went weak. He felt woozy, and numbness snaked through him. For a moment, he thought he might black out. Eric stepped backward, toward the door. At the doorway, he turned and ran, brushing past his startled sister and Kara’s parents.