Just Breathe Read online

  I’m leaving it, even though I don’t want to. I need my body. I need my voice to tell her the password to my phone. I recognize all this, but I can’t get myself to speak.

  Two-one-two-three, I scream but nothing comes out.

  I can see myself now, on the ground beside my oxygen tank. I’m falling over, but I don’t even feel that part.

  I must be dying.

  What else could be happening?

  I travel closer to Jamie and whisper in her ear: Forget the Uber. Call an ambulance.

  Miraculously, she pulls out her own phone and dials it while she runs back to where I’m sitting. “I need an ambulance,” she cries into it, checking the tank and all the dials.

  I hover over her shoulder and realize what happened at the same time she does: she turned the oxygen levels too high. I used it all up and now there’s none left. That’s why I felt so much better so quickly.

  And that’s why I’m lying in a heap right now, unconscious.

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  DAVID

  IT’S CRAZY THAT I’VE never figured this out before: I can leave my body.

  One minute, I’m frantic and feel like I’m drowning, and the next, I can slip out of my pain and turn around to look at my body. It’s thrilling and then it’s terrifying. Does this mean I’m dead? Apparently not, because pretty soon an ambulance is here. I follow my body onto it, back to the hospital, watching the EMTs do everything they can to get it going again.

  For now, it looks like their efforts have worked. I’m alive, at least, and stabilized, though I’m in the ICU and hooked up to a ventilator for the first time in my life. Whenever I’ve seen other people on ventilators, I’ve always looked away because it scares me so much. Now I’m surprised. I can’t stop staring. They’re loud and cumbersome, and no one looks good with their mouth taped around a hose, but they work. My chest keeps going up and down. Deeper breaths than I’ve been able to take in a long time. I keep expecting to start coughing, and then I don’t.

  Here’s the strangest part: I can’t feel any of this. I must be in pain, but I can’t feel it.

  I know I look terrible: pale and ghostly, like the touch of a finger would leave a bruise. There’s a little bit of blood crusted around my lips that I wish someone would wipe away, but no one does.

  I don’t recognize any of the nurses. They’re all different in the ICU, which is too bad. I’ve worked so hard over the years to get every nurse on the peds floor to like me. I remember names and compliment scrubs. I never complain about things they can’t help. It makes all of them nicer about things they can control. They sneak me extra ketchup and salt packets. They try not to interrupt when I have visitors.

  But here, it’s different.

  Apparently, they’ve all heard the story of why I’m here—that I broke rules and snuck out—because they frown with irritation as they go about their work. The same irritation they must feel saving the life of a drunk driver or a stupid kid who rode on a motorcycle without wearing a helmet.

  You’d better take care of yourself after this, their faces say.

  One nurse tells another, “He had help, I heard. Someone brought him those clothes.”

  The other shakes her head and taps the numbers she’s recording from one of my machines into her computer. “Some people don’t think they need to follow rules, I guess.”

  I wish I could tell her, I always follow rules. That’s all I’ve been doing all my life. I only broke them this once, I want to say, except that’s not true. I broke the rules three times. I had to if I wanted to spend any real time with Jamie. Now I understand: that’s what I was doing. That’s why I took such a risk.

  JAMIE

  I know he’s still alive.

  That’s pretty much all my mom will tell me when she gets home from the hospital. The EMTs wouldn’t let me ride in the back of the ambulance with David, and they were going to leave me in the parking lot, but at the last minute the driver said if I didn’t have any other way to get to the hospital, I could ride up front with him.

  Once we got there, they didn’t let me stay with him. He was still wearing his hospital band, so they didn’t need to ask me many questions after the first one: “If he’s admitted to the hospital what was he doing outside?”

  I had no choice. I had to tell the truth: I brought him clothes. I helped him leave.

  After that much was clear, a nurse I didn’t recognize told me I should wait in the lobby. Her voice had a warning undertone to it. Then she said, “If you leave, give the front desk a phone number where the police can reach you.”

  I understood what she wasn’t saying but meant: You’re going to be in big trouble. Get ready. I didn’t stay. I left my name and phone number at the desk and walked home to call my mother and tell her what happened. She came home right away, and for the rest of the night, she called in to track David’s progress, but she told me very little of what she learned.

  Only “He’s alive.”

  And later: “He’s still alive.”

  Around midnight, she said, “He’s in intensive care, on a ventilator. Stabilized for the time being, but that could change at any moment.”

  I knew what she wasn’t saying: I warned you about this. I told you it would be dangerous for both of you.

  She didn’t even know yet that I’d given him my father’s best suit to wear.

  She asks me to sleep with her that night. I know she’s scared of leaving me alone.

  In the dark, we lie side by side, not talking at all. I’ve told her almost nothing about the night. What difference does it make that all of it was his idea? That we’d left the hospital twice before and he’d been fine? Better than fine—his numbers improved each time he got outside and glimpsed the world he was fighting to get back to. If I say any of this, my mom will point out all the flaws in my thinking. Why do you think they were keeping him in the hospital? He’d been using oxygen the whole time you knew him—why did you think it was okay for him to leave the tank outside?

  She doesn’t know that I’ve been watching him since the start of the school year and if I close my eyes, I can still see him healthy, the way he used to be, standing at the microphone in the cafeteria. If I tell her this, I’m scared I won’t be able to stop. I’ll keep going forever. I’ll tell her how dancing with him felt different than any dancing I’d done before. I forgot about my body and my shyness and every impulse that has confused me and held me back in the past.

  He might have asked for the kiss outside but I was already picturing it in my mind. I can still feel it now. I can smell him and taste him and feel his heart beating beneath my hand on his chest. It makes me dizzy to think about.

  I take a deep breath—the kind I never take when I’m with David because he can’t.

  I know I shouldn’t dwell on this part of the night. It’ll only make the future harder, when I won’t be allowed to see him at all.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been lying here in the dark, not speaking.

  I thought she was asleep, but apparently not, because just as I’m reliving our kiss for the umpteenth time, she says, “You’ll probably have to talk to the police tomorrow. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  DAVID

  The ICU is crowded, but no one feels my touch or reacts if I stand near them. No one hears me say, “Excuse me.”

  I’m here, but not here.

  I’m still wearing Jamie’s father’s suit, the one that was stripped off my body when I first arrived. It makes me feel like one of the angels in Wings of Desire. They both wear nice suits, which means that everywhere they go, they are both unseen and overdressed.

  I figure out more rules to this new state I’m in. Though I have to wait for someone else to open the door, I don’t have to stay with my body, which is a relief. It’s hard to look at it for long. Out in the hallway, I see my mother, ashen-faced and stunned. I’ve never seen her look like this—not checking her phone, not issuing orders, not formulati
ng a strategy or a list of to-dos. She looks paralyzed. As if even drinking from the cup of coffee in her hand is more than she can manage.

  I sit down on an empty chair beside her. I think about the angels again and how only children and people in crisis can hear them. It’s okay, Mom, I whisper. I was so alive just before this happened that I can’t die now. I’m sorry I took such a risk, but I was happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I won’t die now, I promise. I can’t.

  Her expression doesn’t change. She breathes but doesn’t blink. She can’t hear me. Or if she does, her brain won’t allow her to believe it. Feeling a presence beside her would be crazy, and whatever else happens, she can’t be crazy right now.

  I walk up the hall to look for my dad. I expect to find him crying, which he tries not to do in front of other people. Eileen and I have a joke about Dad’s “pretending not to cry” voice. Hopefully, he and Eileen will be together, I think, comforting each other.

  But no. I go up one hall and back and I don’t see either one. Why is my mother sitting in the hallway alone?

  I pass a clock that says seven forty-five, which confuses me at first. Wasn’t it already seven when we got to Starlight? And then I realize—time has flown by. It’s the morning, and more time has passed than I realized. Would Eileen have gone to school this morning? Did Dad take her?

  Suddenly, I wish I’d talked to Eileen about Nick and whatever happened that night she left Starlight with him. For a day, I meant to, and then I put it off, because I wasn’t sure what to say. But what if I come out of whatever state I’m in with too much brain damage to form a coherent thought? What if all I have are these feelings I should have expressed but never did? To Eileen, to our parents. Most of all, to Jamie.

  It’s too much to think about. I’m grateful when I spot my father through a window at the end of the hallway. He’s standing outside the front door of the hospital, talking on his phone.

  It takes a while to get down to him. I can follow other people onto elevators, but I can’t push buttons, so I have to wait for someone else to hit Lobby. Eventually, I get outside, and he’s still there nodding as he listens to the person on the phone. Who could he be talking to this long? Dr. Chortkoff? Eileen? I can’t imagine him speaking for so long to either one. It also occurs to me: cell phones might not be allowed in the ICU, but the reception is fine everywhere else in the hospital, so why did he come outside for this call?

  “Fine, yes,” he says. “I appreciate your time. We’ll get you that information as soon as possible.”

  As he hangs up, I touch his shoulder. I’m going to be okay, Dad. I know I am. I had to leave. I couldn’t make sense of anything in the hospital. I felt like I was losing my mind, but I’m better now. I promise I won’t ever do anything stupid like that again. I don’t need to.

  He holds the door for a woman coming out, which makes it easy for me to walk in ahead of him. Alone in the elevator, I keep talking: DAD? I’M HERE! I’M WITH YOU. CAN YOU FEEL ME? He watches the lit numbers as the elevator goes up. He’s thinking about his phone call and what he’ll tell my mother. He’s obviously nervous, which makes me nervous.

  “He needs some more information,” he tells Mom as he sits down beside her. “But he promised he’s going to get back to me this afternoon.”

  He gets no more response from my mother than I got twenty minutes ago. She doesn’t look at him or seem to register what he’s saying.

  “Or someone from his office will. But I got a good feeling from him. I don’t think he’s giving us the brush-off.”

  Are they consulting a new doctor? Trying to get me moved up the organ donor list? Or worse—get me off it? I don’t understand.

  “I told him we’re just investigating for now and neither one of us is sure how we want to proceed from here. Linda? Can you answer me?”

  She nods. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, there’s a commotion across the hall. Two technicians push a crash cart over to the corner where my body is lying.

  My mother stands up and moves toward my body. I get ahead of her because my first instinct is to block her from seeing something bad happening, but of course I can’t. It’s impossible to shield her. I wish I could look away myself, but I can’t.

  My body is convulsing. It looks like a seizure. My legs thrash, my arms strain against the straps holding them down. I don’t feel the pain I must be in, but my face is red and covered in sweat. I’ve never heard anything like the animal cries coming from my throat.

  I can’t die now, I think. I can’t. Not when I’ve got so much I have to say to people.

  The doctors pull out paddles I’ve seen only on TV before. Bedding and gown are yanked away. Within seconds the paddles are on my chest.

  “Ready . . . clear . . .” THUNK!

  Everyone turns to one machine, bleeping chaotically a second earlier. After what must be a set length of time the doctor nods. “Again.”

  They do it twice more until finally they get the reading they’re looking for: steady line . . . BLEEP! . . . steady line . . . BLEEP! Everyone relaxes.

  The doctor wipes the sweat off his head with a bandanna he must keep in his back pocket for this purpose and leans over me. “Why don’t you give yourself a break from these little dramas? You can’t get better if you keep crashing, buddy.”

  I don’t understand. Does this mean it’s happened before? Have I been here longer than I realize? It’s impossible for me to tell what day it is. No one leaves a newspaper lying around an ICU. Gradually, I’m beginning to understand the gravity of all this. I really might die.

  Except I can’t die yet. I have to talk to Jamie first. I have to see her so she knows that she did nothing wrong. Dancing with her clarified things for me in a way that reading a dozen essays on happiness couldn’t.

  I don’t want to scare her with too much at once. I don’t want to make her feel responsible, but I want her to know how much I’ve learned from her example about carving her own path. I want her to know that I meant what I said about breaking up with Sharon. That doesn’t mean she has to start going out with me. It means that I see how much of my relationship with Sharon sprang from my fear of being alone. I want to be with Jamie, but if she doesn’t want that or isn’t ready, I’m not afraid of being alone anymore.

  I go over to my body. Maybe there’s some way I can force myself back into it—a scary prospect that will mean feeling all the pain of being on a ventilator with a tube down my throat and everything else I’ve just endured, but escaping that pain is leaving my body adrift. Maybe that’s why it keeps giving up.

  The problem is I can’t do it. I can’t get myself back into my body. I touch my hand and feel nothing. I sit down on the bed. Nothing.

  Can you hear me? I say to myself. Apparently not, but it doesn’t matter, I keep going: You have to stay alive to see Jamie again.

  Time warps in this strange state of half sleep.

  I hear a nurse tell my mother, “It’s only been two days. We wouldn’t expect much response at this point. We have no idea how long his brain went without oxygen. There might be damage, but there also might not be. We just have to wait and see.”

  Another fear hits me, harder this time: What if I survive all this but have no ability to tell anyone what I’ve realized? What if I see Jamie and can’t tell her how I feel?

  JAMIE

  I understand the mistakes I made were big enough that I can never work in the hospital or, for that matter, casually eat dinner there with my mother again.

  My punishment was swift and unequivocal. I’m not only terminated from my position with the Smile Awhile group, I’m told that I’m not allowed to go to the hospital or visit David. I endangered a patient’s life by violating policy and accompanying him out of the hospital without a discharge or doctor permission.

  At that point, they didn’t even know the full extent of it—that we’d left twice before without being caught. That comes out later, when I try to explain to my mother what I was thinking.

 
; “We’d done it before, and he was fine. Better than fine! He was breathing better after we got outside. His numbers were up the next day!”

  I watch my mother’s face take in what I’m saying: That my lapse in judgment extends further and runs deeper than she’s imagined.

  She says, “He might have said that, Jamie, but it wasn’t true. Kids as sick as David lie all the time. They can’t control much in their life, so breaking hospital rules makes them feel like they’re still in control of something.”

  I think about this. I don’t want it to be true, but it’s hard to argue against her point. Why had we risked everything for a bad lunch at Denny’s?

  “The point isn’t the food,” he’d said. “The point is getting outside.”

  He might as well have said, The point is breaking the rules.

  I was wrong about a lot of things. Mostly, I was wrong to think I could help David the way I wanted to. I was coming back from a dark place that I was no longer in but had no perspective on. I gave him advice on topics I had no authority on. From G-tubes to college to not doing his homework and watching old movies instead. His health threw him off the course he’d lived his whole life on, but I stood in his room, wearing a stupid green smock, and welcomed him to the emptiness of my lonely world. You don’t have to be ambitious anymore! Look at me! Taking non-honors classes and paper folding all day! Stay for a while and you’ll see: you can fill up your days and survive okay, if surviving is all you need to do.

  I see all my mistakes too clearly now.

  I stopped seeing Rita three months ago, not because I was better or well, but because I didn’t know what to say about my life. I don’t do art anymore. I don’t work hard in school. I don’t follow my passions because passions produce too many feelings, and I don’t do well with those. Therapists are tricky. They ask a lot of questions, and you don’t do well if you don’t feel like answering.

  I thought not going to therapy would be fine if I stayed busy and filled my time with other things. Now I can feel myself going down again.