The Girl with the Iron Lungs

January 20th, 2014

"If you can skate, you can surf," Tony says as he sets a skateboard at Lottie's feet. She looks at it scared, remembering the last time she was on a skateboard, which had also been her first time, she had broken her collarbone and chipped a tooth.

"Um, Tony," she starts, before she's picked up from behind. She yells and thrashes for a second before Mike laughs in her ear and puts her feet on the board. "Dear lord," she says, almost out of breath.

Mike continues to laugh, but lets Lottie's waist go. She sways back and forth, trying to keep her balancing while Tony keeps his foot in front of the wheels so she doesn't go rolling off.

"Are you sure about this, Tony?" Lottie asks, using his shoulders as her grip so not to fall over. (The remembrance of how painful it was to break her collarbone comes fleeting back into her senses when Tony takes his foot off the ground and begin to roll with Lottie, standing beside her. She tightens up, which Tony notices instantly and stops the boards from rolling after going steady for almost ten feet.

"You have to stay calm and relaxed," Tony says. Her shoulders slacken but the muscles in her arms are still tense. Tony sighs and taps her side, motioning for her to step off the board. "No, watch." He says, putting his feet back on the board and pushes off with one good kick. He rolls ten feet before stopping. Tony turns back to them but Lottie is still tense and looks like she's going to cry.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" Tony asks as he goes over to her. Mike looks up from his phone with a frown, putting it back into his pocket while he also goes over to the shaky looking singer.

"I feel so stupid," Lottie says, shrugging her shoulders but keeping her arms tight around her stomach. Tony tries to reassure her, but Lottie just shakes her head. "No, this is stupid. This whole list is stupid. Forget I even said anything about it."

Lottie picks up the skateboard and holds it out for Tony. He hesitantly takes it. "Thanks for the help, Tony, but I can't do this."

Mike huffs out a quick breath of air and pulls Lottie to the side, which surprises both Tony and Lottie.

"Lott, look," Mike says, pulling out a box of his Marlboro cigarettes and handing one to her. "Calm down. Smoke until your nerves stop. I know you broke a bone last time you were on a board, but I didn't pay Tony a hundred bucks to teach you how to surf and you give up before you've even started," Mike says, completely joking near the end as he edges the cigarette to Lottie. She stares at it, and the sudden craving of nicotine that she gets when she drinks suddenly comes crashing down.

Along with the memory of her cancer diagnosis.

"I can't smoke," she says, not meeting Mike's eyes. He's surprised. Lottie has been his friend since the day after she apologized for beating him up because he made fun of her friend's ginger hair. (Later on he would later date said ginger before they broke up because she cheated on him with one of his closest friends who Lottie had also been dating at the time.)

"Who are you and what have you done with Charlotte Vallagas?"

Lottie tries to laugh but Mike is seriously confused as to her sudden change in heart.

"I can't smoke anymore," Lottie says, trying to shrug it off but Mike isn't taking any of it.

"What, why? You're not pregnant, are you?"

Lottie's eyes widen, but by the lack of immediate denial, Mike starts to freak out. "Oh my god, you are!"​

"No, Mike, god. I'm not pregnant!"

"Then what the hell has been up with you the past week?"

Lottie can't breath all of a sudden, and her head gets fuzzy, and she just wants to lay down . . . but Mike is breathing down her throat and she can't move. He notices the sudden change in her demeanor and puts away his box of cancer sticks (ha, cancer sticks . . .) and puts his focus on keeping her calm and conscious.

"Lottie, what's wrong, sweetie? You gotta tell me what's wrong."

She nods, taking deep breaths through her nose and releasing them through her mouth, but Lottie's head is still fuzzy and all she wants to do is lay down and forget this all happened.

"I feel sick," she says, pushing past Mike and Tony to go to her jeep. Once inside, she gripped the steering wheel, just as tight as Mike had just a few nights before after the almost-accident that they had been an indirect part of.

"Lottie?" Mike says softly, walking up to the driver's side of the car.

"Not now, Mikey," Lottie says, and Mike is quiet for a few moments before he opens the door to her seat and rests a hand on her knee, gently rubbing circles with his thumb.

"What's wrong, Lottie?"

"That's all you ask, Mike!" Lottie says, pushing his hand off of her. Mike grows frustrated.

"Well what else do you want me to ask, Lott?"

Lottie looks at him, stares straight into his brown eyes and never truly comes back up to the surface.

"Ask how you can make it better."

Mike sighs and rubs his forehead with one inked hand. "Well, how can I make you feel better?"

Lottie gives one last, sad smile.

"You can't."



January 25th, 2014

For almost a week, Lottie had sat in her apartment and watched rerun after rerun of Friends. The show spoke volumes to her, along with the ten half-gallon buckets of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream that she had eaten, and the three pizzas that had been devoured (all except the crust. She had always given her crust to Mikey because it was his favorite part).

She hadn't bothered to charge her phone after the twenty calls from Mike killed the battery, and she was pretty happy with the silence (other than the few sounds of traffic from outside and the sound of her doorbell ringing when someone brought her take out and the sound of her tv as another episode played).

Usually when the doorbell rang to her little apartment, however, Lottie had ordered take out. She didn't remember calling in another order, but figured she would get up and check anyways. There was a bag of chips in her hands as she opened the door, stuffing another handful in her mouth. Lottie groans when she finds Mike standing there with a pissed off expression and her week's worth of mail. She tries to shut the door, but her recent laziness has weakened her reflexes and Mike easily maneuvers himself into the apartment.

"The hell is wrong with you, Lottie? You haven't answered any of my calls. For all I know, you could have been dead!"

I will be dead, Lottie thinks, but by the raise in Mike's eyebrows she realizes she said it outloud.

"What?"

"Nothing," Lottie mumbles and continues to eat from her bag of chips, curling back into the semi-permanent dent she's put in the cushion of her couch while Mike takes an extended look around the dark apartment.

"What is going on in that head of yours? This is so unlike you," Mike says, wiping off crumbs from the small couch and sitting down beside his best friend. "You know you can tell me anything, Lottie. Anything."

"There isn't anything to tell, Michael," Lottie says, keeping her eyes on the television screen while she bunches up her fourth bag of sour cream and cheddar ridge chips that she's been through in the past five days.

"Could have fooled me, Charlotte."

Lottie looks to Mike with a glare, not pleased with the sarcasm that comes dripping from his mouth. He sends a look back, not quite a glare but it's still not a nice look.

"Tell me what has been going on, Lott. You're really scaring the guys and me. We're worried about you."

He rests his big hand on her small knee, and she looks at the inked skin before pulling her knee away and looks away because she wants to tell him that she's going to die in less than six months but a sudden coughing fit racks at Lottie's lungs.

After longer than ten seconds, and the coughing only gets worse, Mike is up and looking for a bottle of water. When he comes back, Lottie's hands and lips are coated in a red, sticky substance that makes Mike's heart stop dead in his chest. Lottie finally stops coughing, but she also notices the blood and when she looks up at Mike, he knows instantly that this is what she wasn't telling him.

"I'm taking you to the hospital," he says, dropping the bottle of water and instead grabs a kitchen towel from the door to the left of the stove with intentions to wipe off the bodily fluid and tote her straight to his car where he would rush her straight into the emergency room.

"Mike, no, you don't need to."

He stands flabbergasted in front of her. "Lottie, do you hear yourself? You just cough up blood! Something is wrong and we need to figure out what before-"

"I know what's wrong with me," Lottie says, silencing Mike. He stares at her, waiting for her to tell him. Lottie wants to know if she should lie or tell him the truth. Make something up; something so bad but not as bad as what is truly wrong.

Tell him the truth.

"I have an ulcer in my throat. The doctor said it should be healed up in a few weeks. Nothing to worry about."

Mike looks at her, and he notices her tell sign almost instantly. Her tongue licks at her dry lips, and her cotton mouth is evident from the need to grab the bottle of water he had got for her and drink from it.

"I know you're lying to me, Lottie," Mike says, and she tenses up slightly, ready to defend herself. "But I'm not going to push it any farther because I love you and I know you'll tell me when you're ready."

Lottie can't meet his gaze and stands up to go wash off her hands. Her throat hurts and it is difficult to breathe while she gains her bearings, trying to not let the attack have an effect on her. She stands in her bathroom, watching as the water rolls down the sink and into the drain, breathing carefully and thinking about how she's going to get through these next five or so months if this is just the beginning of her degrading lungs.

"Hey, Lottie?" Mike calls as he walks to meet the singer in her bathroom. She's quick to clean herself up before he can see her at her worst. Lottie redoes her ponytail, feeling how oily her hair had gotten over the five days she sat on her couch and not bothered to shower.

Mike walks into her room and looks around, not surprised to find the Lottie's bed still made since she has been sleeping on the couch whenever she gets tired. She watches as his lips thin out and his head shakes, but Mike turns to her and puts on a small smile.

"Go take a shower and get dressed. We're going out tonight."

Lottie frowns. "Where are we going?"

Mike's smile turns into a grin. He has a mischievous glint shine in the corner of his eye, before he pulls a pack of post-it notes from his pocket.

"Jaime got a new car."

Lottie grins back, happy that the incident from earlier has been pushed to the side, and grabs a fresh towel from her laundry basket.

"Gimme fifteen minutes."