“You, you going to stay in that bed all day?”
“Just trying to get lucky.”
“Oh,” he finally stammered. His face was flushed but his eyes could not leave her face. No one was supposed to be in that room. He was just supposed to put on new sheets and take out the trash like he always did when he was here. Simple.
She was watching the small box TV on the highest shelf of the sterile white cabinets across from her.
Her eyes never leaving the screen she asked, “What’s your name?”
“Tom.”
Her hands shook slightly while she changed the channel using the large white remote which could do everything from turning on the TV to calling a nurse. She had to be at least ten years older than he but Tom could already see from the small frame sitting on the bed that he was at least a foot taller. Her eyes finally lit up and her hand eagerly pressed another button on the remote, turning up the volume to let the smooth sound of waltz music fill up the room. “I’d love to dance like them,” she said softly, more to herself than him.
His eyes never left hers as she took in the scene.
“Do you know how to dance?”
“Some.” He felt an overwhelming need to get her attention. “They make us take this dumb ballroom dance routine in gym class.”
Her eyes finally met his again and she teasingly asked, “I bet you get a lot of girls.”
His face reddened in reply. Lengthy arms reached over to pick up the trash can, even though he already saw nothing was in it. His volunteering here was mandatory. His mother worked at this hospital and didn’t believe that he, a seventh grader, was mature enough to stay home for the hour and a half until she got home each day.
“So, what’s wrong with you?” He finally stammered. Instantly hating himself for saying it.
“Same as you really,” she said with ease. “Just dying.”
Tom just as easily went pale in the face.
Seeing him her face took on a cocky expression and she said, “A bit faster though.”
He tried to say something clever, anything really to relieve the quiet tension she had created and the redness refusing to leave his face. Suddenly those same large green eyes that he swore were laughing at him a moment ago stared pass him and grew so lifeless that he was almost afraid to look behind him into whatever terror was there. A nurse stood there, her large figure and rough voice indicating a kind of hardness about her. Her eyes took Tom in and he could instantly see that she disliked his presence there.
The nurse’s sharp tone cut through the smooth music. “It’s time for the IV.” Though the words were clearly meant for the woman on the bed, the nurse’s eyes were intent on staying on Tom.
“Bye Thomas,” whispered the woman from the bed.
The soft voice brought his attention immediately back to the small figure hidden under thin sheets. “Bye.”
Walking to the car with his mother he barely felt the snow relentlessly hitting his face. His foot kicked a piece of ice on the road. He kicked it softy, every few steps reaching it again and giving it another punt. “Bye.” He repeated that word again and again in his mind. “Bye.” The way he said it, it sounded weak and scared.
“How was school today?” He heard his mother say beside him.
“Good. It was good.”
How could he have asked her what was wrong with her? He always had to make a fool of himself.
“So what do you think about ordering some Chinese today?”
“Sure.” No one had ever talked to him like that lady had today. Who was she? He had odd sensations playing back what she had said to him and the way her eyes laughed. Tom gave the ice one last kick down the parking lot and got into the car.
Getting dressed in the morning became a complex obsession that Tom felt powerless to stop. Never before had he cared so much about how he looked. His mother noticed too. Seven times that month he missed his bus and by the third time, his mother was fed up with the amount of time he spent examining himself in the mirror and had him walk the two miles to his school. This particular morning he finally decided on the t-shirt with his favorite wrestler and managed to sneak out of the house with the new sneakers he rarely wore since his mother always complained he’d ruin them in snow. Tom didn’t mind walking much. In the quiet he spent his time going over the conversations he would have with the woman that which for some unknown reason fascinated him. But the quick wit and clever sayings he rehearsed while alone never seemed to carry their weight while with her. He walked smiling through the icy sidewalks and snowy paths carved by others which by now had turned the snow into a dirty brown mush, and so in turn, his shoes.
“Hey, Nola!” He said a bit too loudly as he strolled into the glossy white hospital room. Three faces met him there instead of the usual one.
“Hi.” She said, but the man and woman beside her said nothing.
“I’m going home today, Thomas.”
“When are you coming back?” This slipped out of his mouth before he had fully realized what he had said. He turned away quickly, fidgeting with a light bulb in the lamp by her bed.
“If I had any luck, never,” she laughed softly. “Did you come here straight from school again?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have anything to eat?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you come to dinner then?” the older woman beside Nola chimed in, speaking to Tom in the tone one does to a toddler. Then to Nola, “Your father and I would love for you to have to have some of your friends over once again.”
Tom said nothing, just continued mindlessly touching the lamp.
“Are we friends, Thomas?” Nola voice teased.
“Sure,” Tom abruptly yelped, wincing at the thought of how high his voice was.
“We need to get other opinion about your condition,” the mother said while filling up Tom’s plate high with macaroni and cheese and broccoli, as if just talking about the weather. “Ooo! And I forgot to mention! I just read that drinking apple juice has the same benefits as many prescription drugs. After dinner I’m stopping by the store and grabbing a few for us.”
“We’ve gotten plenty of opinion, mother. They can’t all be wrong.”
“Nonsense. There is that new doctor in the next town and I also heard he is single,” the tone carrying more than its share of innuendos.
Tom felt a sudden jolt but pretended to be fixated on the macaroni that was cold when he dug in the middle. All the while he listened to what Nola would say.
“Why would I date?”
“Have you given up trying; you just want to throw your life away?”
Nola reached over and pilled on a heap of mash potatoes and butter. “No, there is just nothing left to-”
“Nola you’re going to kill yourself with all that butter! There is a new treatment we can try. Dr.–”
“Well!” Nola shouted, arms shooting out in the air. “Pardon me for dying!”
Silence overtook the room and moments passed. Nola then rubbed her face and then burst out laughing. Tom’s face tensed. He felt the upward pull of his mouth and soon gave way to uncontrollable laughter. Both Tom and Nola were laughing hysterically, tears streaming down their faces.
Her mother stared in astonishment at the both of them and then merely replied, “Oh, be serious.”
Though it was only a little past six pm, night had already fallen, leaving them to walk only in the company of the stars and streetlights. They drove silently down the long road lined by the houses on the lake front.
“Let’s get a slushie Thomas.”
“It’s a bit cold out for that.”
“I know, it’s the best time to drink them, they won’t melt.”
They stopped at the tiny store right before the beach entrance. The cold liquid could be left going down the throat and into the stomach as Tom sucked on his straw.
He had to keep alternating his hands from pocket to pocket to keep them warm holding the cold cup. They didn’t say anything to each other, just sat on the bench facing the lake.
Tom was beginning to get cold, but didn’t say a word about it. The lake water had frozen over and the snow and ice covering the water below almost seemed like the pictures of the arctic he had seen in class. He closed his eyes and then opened them, half expecting a polar bear to be slowly strolling over the icy terrain in the distance. Only the bears black nose and eyes visible in its white surroundings. He wondered what happened to the waves that normally lousily splashed the shore. They had to still be there, somewhere. Maybe further down the lake, where he couldn’t see them. Tom took a long sip of his slushie, loudly slurping up the last bit. He moved his head back and forth cradling it in both his hands.
Nola smiled up at him. “Brain freeze?”
“Yeah, a big one.”
Fresh snow was already starting to fall, slowly resurfacing the lake with a new white coat. The stars and moon reflected their light on the substance, making the snow oddly light up the night. The lake stood so silent that it seemed to him that they were the only ones in the universe now. The cold air and snow covering every inch gave no indication of the usual smells of the water. Now he could only smell the coconut aroma of her hair as she playfully tossed it, as if modeling.
She put the straw in her mouth pretending it was a cigarette, letting her breath smoke in the chilly night. Tom laughed and played along with her. Suddenly he felt much older than he was.
Tom strained his neck to look at the sky with the pink straw still hanging out of his mouth. The stars seemed to extent forever. He told her how he liked his science teacher. How they were learning astronomy. About Saturn, Mars, and his favorite, Jupiter with all its moons. How he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up. He had never said so much to her, to anyone really.
“We can’t be the only ones out here; the universe is just too amazing for that.”
“Maybe we are, and that makes life all the more precious.” She said, staring straight ahead and not even bothering to pear at the sky.
Tom did not know how to reply. He suddenly felt like a child again. It was silly for him to be out in this kind of weather, this late, and with her. His mother would be wondering why he wasn’t home yet. Mother would question him extensively. Nola interrupted his thoughts, not so differently like she had done most every moment since he met her.
“The wind almost sounds like music,” she whispered. She started humming along with the wind adding to it as if to form a melody. “You like to dance?”
“No, not really,” he replied.
She was standing by now, humming some waltz while her arms moving wildly and her body twisting like a ballerina.
He wasn’t even sure she had heard him. “None of the girls want to dance with me,” he paused and his face took on the most serious expression as if letting her in on a secret, “My hands get clammy.”
She floated over and already had his arms in her own when she said, “Dance with me.” And then as if to reassure him, “This girl wants to dance with you, and there’s no way your hands will stay clammy in this weather.”
As he stood he was shivering but he couldn’t tell if it was just because of the cold. They danced slowly at first. He stepped on her foot, causing her to fall back and instinctively grab him, taking them out into the ice. They both laughed and danced and slid on the ice. His teeth were blue from the slushie as he smiled broadly.
She hummed louder and louder, faster and faster, the cracking of the ice occasionally lending percussion to her melody. They were further in now. No longer harbored by the safety of the land but in the middle of the frozen wilderness. They danced wildly, jumping from place to place. He spun her then, causing her to lose balance and her entire body crashed down hard onto the ice. The ice finally gave in, the water underneath it embracing her body. Tom stared into the tiny hole Nola’s body had made. He could see nothing but the dark water rising.
Tiny waves of water soaked Tom’s sneakers and the ice around him. The humming was gone and all he could hear was the cracking of ice below his shoes.
The ice chased Tom to the shore, but even after he reached the land he continued to feel the panic of its presence. He ran. Ran from the polar bears, from the stars. Away from the wilderness that had almost succeeded in taking him in.