Even If Saving You Sends Me to Heaven

I sat next to Zane all day. Apparently the side effect he’d picked up from the radiation treatment was fatigue. He drifted in and out of sleep.

I played close attention to his incoherent thoughts. He began to remember small things. In the middle of the day, I had to slide my hand out of his and disappear. Once he remembered enough to think that I was a hallucination, I didn’t want him to be able to see me.

He may have slept all day, but when he woke up just in time for the nurse to bring him dinner, he was wide awake.

She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

Zane cut straight to the chase. If you’re wondering if I remember, I do. I remember everything.”

“That’s good,” she said. “What about your friend Arianna? Did she leave?”

Zane snorted. “Thanks for playing along with it. She was a hallucination, right?”

The nurse nodded, setting his dinner on the table next to his bed.

Zane involuntarily looked around the room. “She seemed so real,” he murmured to himself. I couldn’t contain my smile.

The nurse shrugged. She was about to leave, but Zane stopped her. “I don’t have to stay in this room, do I?” he asked. “Can I at least walk around the hospital, or am I a prisoner?”

She smiled wryly. “No, you can walk around.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, although he didn’t feel like any less of a prisoner.

Zane was simply bored out of his mind. He lay back in his bed and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t do it. He was sick of being tired and tired of sulking and basking in his miserable pain. He wanted to get his mind away from himself.

It was late when he got out of his bed. He wandered aimlessly around the hospital until he eventually found himself on the roof. He sat on one of the hard benches and let the cold night breeze turn him cold. He embraced the feeling, closed his eyes, and felt goose bumps rise on his flesh.

He sat there for a few minutes, almost at peace, until a boy a few years younger came up on the roof and sat next to him.

The boy, who had no hair, examined Zane with his prominent brown eyes. “You look cold,” he remarked.

“I’m fine,” Zane retorted icily.

“Yeah, I like it up here,” the boy continued agreeably as if Zane was being friendly to him. “It’s the only way to get outside. I hate being inside this hospital.”

Zane finally turned and looked at the boy for the first time. At first he had been annoyed, but something about this boy made him feel comfortable. I think he missed having someone to talk to. He noted the boy’s hairless head and asked curiously, “How long have you been in here?”

The boy’s eyes sparkled at Zane’s new friendliness. “Like three months. What about you?”

“I’ve only been here a few days and I’m already sick of it,” he admitted, smiling slightly for the first time in a while.

They boy grinned and thrust out his hand. “I’m Aaron, by the way,” he introduced himself.

Zane nodded and shook his hand. “I’m Zane. How old are you?”

“I just turned thirteen,” Aaron replied. “My mom threw me a surprise party here three days ago, and all my friends came.”

Zane concealed his short bout of jealousy and said, “Sounds like it was fun. I’ll be eighteen in a few months. What brings you out here this late at night?”

Aaron frowned and looked at his hands. “I couldn’t sleep. The chemo does that sometimes. I didn’t want to wake up my mom.”

Zane nodded and looked away too. “Yeah, the radiation therapy made it hard for me to sleep too. I couldn’t stand being alone in that freaking room anymore,” he confessed.

He and I were both surprised by how honest he was being with this boy he’d just met, and neither of us really understand why.

Aaron cocked his head to the side and asked the worst question possible. “You’re all alone? No mom or dad?”

Zane shook his head, but he was less annoyed than I thought he’d be. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone. “My mom died when I was young. I never knew my dad. I live with my uncle, but he doesn’t really care,” he told Aaron.

“No friends? No girlfriend?”

Zane winced. “My friends are the kind of people who live in the present. I doubt they’ll come to visit their dying friend. My…” he trailed off, and I knew the boy had gone too far. He wasn’t ready to talk about Mara.

“Look, I want to go try to sleep now,” he explained to Aaron as nicely as he could, starting to stand up. “Thanks for talking to me, though.”

Aaron pursed his lips in frustration and stated, “I like you. Tell me your room number so that we can eat dinner together tomorrow night. That way you won’t be alone.”

Zane smiled genuinely at Aaron, who was growing on him despite his prying. “Six twenty-three,” he called over his shoulder to Aaron as he walked away.

As Zane lay sleeplessly in his bed, he thought about the charming boy he’d just met. He liked Aaron too, but he was bothered by his illness. He worried that Aaron was dying like he was.

Once he thought he felt someone’s eyes on him. He sat up abruptly, turned on the lamp, and searched the room for my face; of course, he couldn’t see me.