“I have an idea.” Shannon steps behind my wheelchair and grasps its handles. “Let’s go visiting.” She opens the door and rolls me into the corridor. “I want you to meet a couple of people.”
She doesn’t have to push me—the wheelchair is motorized—but I like it. It’s kind of intimate. “Are you going to introduce me to your parents?”
“No, they’re a little freaked out right now. They supported my decision to come here, but they can’t really handle it. I think they’re on another floor now, trying to talk to the general.”
I open my mouth, intending to tell her about Mom, who was so devastated by my decision that she locked herself in her bedroom again. I had to say good-bye to her from the hallway, shouting the words through the bedroom door. But I can’t tell Shannon this story. It’s too upsetting. I swallow hard and think of something else.
“So who are we going to visit?”
“Some of our fellow volunteers. I met two of them this morning, right after I got here. The other two haven’t arrived at Pioneer Base yet.” She stops in front of a door marked with the number 102. “This is Jenny’s room. All six of us have been assigned rooms on this floor.”
“And Jenny is…?”
“She’s the girl with the rich parents, remember? The obnoxious dad who yelled at General Hawke?”
“She volunteered? I thought her parents were totally against it.”
“I don’t get it either. All I know is she’s scared. She didn’t say much when I tried talking to her this morning, but I want to try again. Maybe you can tell her one of your weird jokes or something.”
Shannon knocks on the door and calls out, “Jenny?” After a few seconds we hear a faint “Yes?” and Shannon opens the door and wheels me inside.
It’s a small room with an Army-issue cot and an olive-green footlocker. Sitting on the edge of the cot is the painfully thin girl I saw two days ago in the Pioneer Base auditorium. She’s wearing the same clothes as before—a cashmere sweater and a frilly blue hat to hide her baldness. Luckily, she’s alone, no obnoxious parents in sight. She’s a tall girl, but she looks smaller now because she’s bent over double. She’s hunched over the side of the cot with her forehead almost touching her knees, as if she’s about to vomit. As we come into the room, she raises her head and looks up at us with a frightened grimace. But after a moment she goes back to staring at the floor. Her arms are folded across her chest and she’s shivering, even though the room is quite warm.
Shannon pushes me near the cot. Then she steps around the wheelchair and sits down on the thin mattress beside Jenny. She rests a hand on the girl’s back and leans in close. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?”
Jenny says nothing. She’s shivering so violently I can hear her teeth chatter.
Shannon rubs her back, trying to warm her. “You want me to call the medics?”
Jenny shakes her head. “I’m fine,” she whispers. She keeps her eyes on the floor.
“No, you’re not fine. You need to—”
“Please, don’t.” She raises her head again and looks at Shannon. Now I see the tears on Jenny’s cheeks. “I’m not sick. I mean, yeah, I’m dying of cancer, but I’m not sick right now.”
“Then why are you—”
“I’m sorry, Shannon. I just need to be alone now, okay? My parents left a few minutes ago to get some coffee, and this is the first chance I’ve had to…to think.” Jenny clenches and unclenches her hands. Then she abruptly turns away from Shannon and focuses on me. “You’re Adam Armstrong, right? The scientist’s son?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.” I’m thrown for a second by the look on her face. She’s so emaciated I can see the skull under her skin.
“Adam, I’m really sorry about this. Shannon told me about you, and I know she wanted to introduce us, but now I’m feeling so… I’m just…”
“No problem. I understand.”
Shannon nods in agreement. “Yeah, we’ll come back later.” She stands up and gets behind my wheelchair again.
Jenny seems relieved. She takes a deep breath and manages to smile. Then she narrows her eyes and looks at me a little closer. “You’re…you’re going to be the first one, right? The first one to…?”
She doesn’t need to finish the question. “Yeah, I’m first in line for the procedure. Tomorrow morning at nine.”
I state this fact as calmly as I can, but my stomach twists as I say the words. Jenny bites her lip, and a different look appears on her skeletal face. It’s a look of pity. She feels sorry for me. “Good luck, okay?”
My chest starts to hurt as Shannon pushes my wheelchair out of the room. The familiar pain knifes through me, making it hard to breathe. I guess I’ve managed to stay cool so far by not thinking too much about the procedure. But Jenny’s obviously thinking about it. Maybe I should do the same.
Shannon wheels me down the corridor. Her breathing sounds a little rough too, actually. “Well, that was a fun visit,” she says, trying to make a joke out of it.
“Yeah, I feel so much…confidence now. I’m not worried…at all.”
Shannon stops the wheelchair and grips my right arm, the one I can still move. “This next visit will be better. I promise.” She squeezes my arm, then points at another door, marked 103. “This is DeShawn’s room. He’s with his mother, Ms. Johnson. She’s a nurse at a veterans’ hospital in Detroit, but she’s been taking care of DeShawn full-time for the past year. She told me the whole story this morning.”
Shannon knocks on the door. A woman’s voice, loud and cheerful, shouts, “Come in!”
This room is larger than Jenny’s and full of medical equipment. I’ve seen these types of machines at Westchester Medical Center—the ventilator, the heart-rate monitor, the cough-assist device—but the equipment here is newer, sleeker. The machines surround a hospital bed, and their tubes converge on a boy lying on the mattress. At first glance the boy looks small, as puny as a preteen, but that’s only because his arms and legs have wasted away to skin and bone. His torso is full-sized, and though his head is tilted at an unnatural angle, he has a handsome, dark-skinned face. His eyes are closed and I assume he’s asleep. His rib cage rises and falls as the ventilator pumps air into his tracheostomy tube, which sticks out of a gauze bandage at the base of his throat.
The pain in my chest gets worse. DeShawn has muscular dystrophy. I remember seeing him in the auditorium two days ago and feeling relieved that my own illness wasn’t as advanced as his. But now when I look at his body and mine I don’t see that much of a difference. I’m just a few months behind him, that’s all.
While I stare at DeShawn, his mother greets Shannon with a hug. Then she steps over to my wheelchair, blocking my view of her son. Ms. Johnson looks tired. Her eyes are bloodshot and their lids are drooping, and it looks like she’s been sleeping in her clothes. But she smiles as she bends over me. “Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this.” She grasps my good hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Adam.”
I feel a little uncomfortable. Although I’ve never seen this woman before, she’s treating me like a long-lost cousin. But I like the fact that she took my hand. She’s not squeamish like most people. “Nice to meet you too, Ms. Johnson.”
“You look just like your father, you know that?” Still holding my hand, she glances at Shannon. “Back me up on this. Doesn’t he look like Mr. Armstrong?”
Shannon nods. “Adam’s weirder, though. He’s got a strange sense of humor.”