Alex Blades
The piercing sound of knuckles beating against the door echoed through my hotel room. The abnormally loud buzzing of the air conditioner filled my brain, adding more to the fire brewing within.
“Emily,” Matt yelled, “come on, open the door. I need to talk to you.”
My bones weighed me down, trapping my limbs beneath the mountain of warmth draped over me like chains. I pulled my legs out from under the heap of blankets and slung them onto the floor.
“Emily, please, just open the door.”
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I answered.
I could feel my legs buckling with every step I took, my muscles sending waves of sharp pain through my body. I fumbled with the latch and slowly pried the door open.
Matt pushed his way through the gap and sat himself down at the round dining table.
“Okay, just make yourself right at home,” I said.
“How could you keep something like this from me?”
“Excuse me? I don’t—”
“Oh, don’t play stupid with me! I heard you talking on the phone with your mom earlier this afternoon. I thought we were finally getting back to the way things used to be before you decided to just walk out of my life. You’re just so selfish sometimes, I swear! You don’t ever think of anyone but yourself.”
“Don’t you dare tell me that I’m the selfish one. Also, you had no right to listen in on my private conversation.”
“It’s not very private when you do it in the car that all of us are traveling in,” Matt said.
“Ryan and Connor didn’t hear too, did they?”
“No, it was just me.”
I slumped my way back to the bed and sat myself down near the edge, avoiding Matt’s hopeless gaze. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m just looking at you like I always do.”
“No you’re not. Stop looking at me like I’m some sort of wounded, abandoned puppy.”
He huffed. “How am I supposed to look at you then?”
I brushed my hair back from my face and lightly nibbled on the inside of my cheek. “I—I don’t know, just don’t look at me the way you are right now.”
I staggered to the sink and grabbed the hair tie from the faucet.
“I could have gotten—” Matt started.
“I’m more than capable of doing it all on my own, thanks. I’m not a helpless child.”
I pulled my hair back in spite of the muscles in my arms struggling to make it over my chest. For the first time in a while, I noticed my own appearance. I stared blankly in the mirror, examining my fading looks for the first time. The circles under my mud colored eyes were intensifying as time went on, and my skin showed a lack of sunlight.
“You still look pretty good,” I heard him say.
“Oh, just shut it.”
Deep down I realized I was only being stubborn and rude to the one person willing to help me. My pride wouldn’t allow me to give in. I couldn’t stop myself; the jabs just continued popping out left and right.
“I’m only trying to be helpful.”
“Well don’t be. I got along just fine without any help before all of this started, and I’ll do just fine now.”
“Fine,” Matt replied.
There it was again, the painful jabs of my words hurting everyone I held dear. Eventually everyone went away, and he would too, I thought. I figured I may as well learn to deal with everything on my own.
“I’m sorry, Matt. I know you’re dealing with your own load of crap right now with your parents and Mara and everything else wrong on this planet.”
“It’s fine. You have to take your anger out on someone I guess. It might as well be me, I suppose,” he replied. “What is it anyway; is it cancer?”
I glanced toward Matt in the reflection of the glass. Every passing second was like another jab to my stomach and a knife to my chest.
I laughed. “No . . . not anything that simple or stereotypical. If it were I would at least have a slight chance of beating it and going into remission. No, I was stuck with lupus of all things. I’d never even heard of it before last year.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked, trying to wipe away the tears so I couldn’t see.
“Yes? No . . . maybe?”
“If we would’ve known, then we never would have taken this trip. If you had told me sooner, we could’ve—”
“We could have what, exactly?” I screamed. “What, w—we could’ve stayed back in Illinois and I would have been the wounded little puppy dog while going through the same thing every day? And for what? The treatments aren’t working for me anymore and I have more bad days than good now.” I slid down to the floor with my back against the wall. I could feel the lump forming in the back of my throat as I choked out the rest of my words. “I feel so awful all the time and my body doesn’t even feel like my own anymore. I just want to feel like a normal person again.”
“That’s why you went on this trip with us? To feel normal again?” I could hear Matt’s feet pitter-patter across the carpet. His hands grasped mine and he gracefully lifted me from my pool of tears. His arms pulled me in tighter, wrapping me up in a cocoon. “I’m sorry I called you selfish. I never should have said any of that.”
“It’s fine.”
For a moment, everything stopped. The continuous buzzing of the air seized to exist and the orchestra of bees rushing through my skull was, for once, bearable.
“Hey, Matty,” I said.
He chuckled. “You haven’t called me that since middle school.”
“Thank you.
“For what?” he asked, looking at me again.
“For helping me back to the bed because both of my legs are asleep,” I whispered.
Matt scooped up my body lightly and cradled me. He held onto my body and carried me back to the bed and helped me crawl up. I sank back into the blankets and settled my head against the pillows propped up against the headboard. He grabbed the remote from the bed side table before I could and started flipping through the channels.
“Rude,” I said.
“Do you really think I’d let you play those Kardashian chicks all night?” he laughed. “What’s up with this air conditioner?”
“I don’t know. I called them about it, but they never came to fix it.”
I brushed my hands through my hair once more, but noticed a slight discoloration of my fingers. I felt Matt’s eyes burning holes into the side of my head.
“It’s nothing; it’s just another symptom. There’s no need to worry about it, but do you mind just turning off the air for a bit?”
I sat quietly with my head facing the wall and Matt continued flipping through the channels. An internal white noise machine played a drumline on a loop against my eardrums and
I felt my heart pulsing against my chest. The subtle hum of the T.V. was the only thing filling the gap between the two of us.
Everything came back in floods. My body was like a piece of candy in a taffy puller, my muscles stretching past the point of exhaustion. The force of gravity around my chest heightened
with every breath of fresh air, and there was little I could do than to let it pass and hope tomorrow would be an easier day.
“You okay?” Matt asked.
“I’m fine, it’s just a hard thing to really wrap your mind around.”
“Can you help me?” he asked as he took me by the hand. “I want to understand.”
I nodded my head at the other side of the bed. Matt hopped up.
“It’s not the simplest thing to explain,” I said. “Some days it doesn’t even feel like I’m sick and everything’s great. Then there’s other days, like today and most of my days lately, that it just feels like I’ve permanently got the flu. It’s kind of like every muscle and nerve ending in my body has been modified to feel everything.”
I looked into his eyes. I’d lost him.
“Okay, that’s not helping things I see. Alright, do you remember how you felt after Mara’s party back in like seventh grade and you fell down those stairs?”
“When we were playing truth or dare and someone dared Suzie Finkle to make out with me?”
“Yeah, that one,” I replied. “You couldn’t move for a few days after that. That’s exactly how I feel almost every day.”
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“Just promise me you won’t treat me like a victim or something. It’s just something I have, it’s not who I am.”
The two of us sat in silence, or what could be considered silence with the unavoidable buzz of the air conditioner.
“You know, I was totally saving my first kiss for Tiffany Coleman.”
“Oh, whatever. In your dreams, lover boy. Tiffany never even knew you existed,” I chuckled. “I heard that after she dropped out she moved out of state, got knocked up, and she’s working at a truck stop now.”
“Dude, you literally just made all of that up. She graduated early and went to some Ivy League school.”
“Well, it sounded good to me. I just remember Mara taking care of you that night and making sure your foot wasn’t broken after the fall.”
Matt smiled. “Yeah, she was really good with that sort of stuff. She would have been an amazing doctor.”
It was the first time we’d really talked about our memories with Mara since her funeral the month before. It really makes you think of how everything can just change in a moment’s notice.
“I really miss her,” I said. “I really regret not being with you two those last couple years of high school.”
“Yeah, you were a real jerk for that. We even stayed up on Saturdays poking needles in your voodoo doll.”
“Oh, ha-ha. You’re so funny. Hey, remember the time we all went out to her aunt’s cabin and decided to raid the wine cabinet?”
“How could I forget? She never did go near anything resembling poison ivy after that,” Matt said.
“I wanted to feel bad for her, but it was just too funny not to laugh.”
Matt shook with laughter, and as much as I wanted to be a good sport and laugh along, gravity continued crushing down on my every muscle and lungs.
He took my hands and wrapped them in his as he pulled me in closer for warmth. I repositioned my head on his chest and listened to the sounds of his heart beating in a repetitive rhythm against my own heart.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“For carrying you to the bathroom because you have to go now?”
“No,” I laughed, “for being there for me, and for always having my back, even when we weren’t talking. Just thank you for everything; you’re my best friend.”
The two of us sat for hours just talking. It’s amazing that even in one of my worst moments, Matt was able to keep me sane. It was like I was just me again and not the girl with an autoimmune disease that had to be tended to, even if it was just for one night.
It was just after midnight when I realized we’d fallen asleep together. I repositioned my body slowly, trying not to stir him from his sleep. I peeled my body from his grasp and struggled to plant my feet to the carpet.
“Hey,” I heard Matt say from behind me. “Hey. We must have passed out.”
“I see that.” Matt pulled himself up and stared blankly into nothingness. “Are you planning on telling Connor?” “Hmm?”
“Don’t even go there. I know you two have a little something there, don’t you think he deserves to know?”
“Let me see . . . no . . .”
I fumbled with the strings of my hoodie, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
“I think he should know. If you don’t tell him, then I will.” “You wouldn’t dare,” I said.
“Oh, believe me, I would, and I will. You really don’t believe me?” “Gosh! You’re so freaking persistent and annoying.”
“You know I’m right,” Matt said.
My fingers again found my outrageous split ends. I ran my hand through the tangles of my hair, trying to find some way to force my mouth into forming actual words that didn’t involve um or uh.
“I know it isn’t exactly easy putting yourself out there like that, especially after all the times Connor’s put his foot in his mouth on this trip, but you never know if you don’t try. I never spoke up to Mara when she said she wanted to go off and tour for the summer, and I regret that every day of my life. If I had, things would be different,” he said.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to tell Connor how I feel. I physically cannot tell him that I want us to be together. Why would he want to be with someone like me?” “You mean someone completely amazing?”
“No,” I cried, “someone with a potentially fatal disease. He deserves so much more than a life full of doctor visits and possible heart attacks or liver failure and a girl that is sometimes too sick to even leave her bed. I can’t ask him to put his life on hold for all of that. I’m not worth that kind of trouble.”
Matt grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. His eyes glistened in the overhead light, casting off shades of blue and gray. They had seen pain and suffering, but never left behind their kindness.
“You are worth it and you are beautiful. He would be so insanely stupid not to want to be with you. Your disease does not make you undesirable or weak; you are not your disease. It shows just how strong you really are, so don’t ever let it dictate who you’re going to be. You control this, not the other way around.”
“But . . .”
“No ifs, ands, or buts about it,” he said. “Get up and go talk to him. Now!”
I staggered to my feet and felt every emotion as they coursed through my veins. My head pounded with each step I took. With what seemed like every ounce of energy I had left in my body, I reached for the door and turned the knob. I looked back at Matt and his eyes stared back into my soul.
“It only takes five seconds of courage,” he said to me.
I took another short breath and took one step after another down the hallway.
The sign ahead of me read 224, and was outlined in metallic silver. I slid my hand across the door, trying to decide whether or not the right choice was to turn back and just forget any of it had happened.
Remembering Matt’s words, I beat my fist softly against the wood of the door.
“Just five seconds,” I whispered.
I could feel every fiber of my being tremble helplessly again, fearing whatever outcome was awaiting me on the other side of the door. Just as I heard the lock click from inside, my body switched into fight or flight mode. Then I saw him. In my search for a coherent sentence, all I could manage to say was, “Hi.”