Whatever it was, I’d just chosen my one Afterschool day of the week: Tuesday. I was really looking forward to Art Club because I’d get to hang out with Harper—my only chance to be with her outside a classroom. Unless things had gotten too weird with us—yesterday’s phone call was definitely awkward, or something. I probably needed to apologize. Or explain things better. Or just explain things more.
“Norah?” Ms. Perillo had written a problem on the whiteboard.
My brain scrambled.
“Twelve,” I blurted.
“Nice.” She wrote the number 12 next to the problem. “Rowan, can you explain Norah’s answer?”
I smiled and silently thanked Ayesha.
* * *
Mom and Dad signed me out of school at ten thirty that morning. As I got into Dad’s car, I was super-jittery. This was strange, because all I’d done for the last two years was get scans and tests, so after a while I stopped worrying about them. I mean, having checkups was what I did. But maybe the fact that I was starting to have some kind of a normal life made me focus on this afternoon’s appointments in a different way.
“Ready, Freddie?” Dad asked. It was what he always said when we were leaving the house for Phipps. Or when a needle was about to go in. Or when a scan was about to happen and I needed to lie still.
“Yep,” I answered. “Let’s do this thing.” My line.
Mom turned around from the passenger seat to kiss the air in front of me. Then she smiled, but I could see in her eyes that she was struggling not to cry. This worried me. Because if she got weepy before we were even on the road to Phipps, how would it be afterward, at the airport, when we needed to say good-bye? Assuming everything was okay with me and she could leave, knock on wood.
Dad put on the radio. Traffic and weather on the eights. The stuff normal people cared about. Then sports.
We arrived at the hospital at eleven forty-five. Pediatrics was the whole seventh floor. We took elevator C—and as soon as we arrived on seven, a funny feeling washed over me, like I was safe at home after a long, rocky voyage. It was so strange: When I was here every day, all I wanted was to escape, return home, return to school, return to my life—and my first minute back, I felt a sense of relief so strong it was like my bones all melted.
And right away, three nurses from the day hospital came running over to greet us, smothering me in hugs, exclaiming about how great I looked, touching my hair. Esme at the reception desk grinned as she asked if I had “fever, cough, cold, or rash,” or had “been to a foreign country in the last month.” When she wrapped the paper identification bracelet around my wrist, she confessed that I looked so grown-up she hardly recognized me. This had to be what she said to all the kids when they’d finished chemo, because I hadn’t “grown up” in the past month at all. But I still liked hearing it.
We took seats in the waiting area. Dad read e-mails on his phone, the way he always did when he needed to shut out the hospital. Mom went to the snack room to get herself a coffee. And a cup of milk and a doughnut for me—glazed, if any were left; otherwise, cinnamon. We knew how everything worked here: how they only had free doughnuts on Mondays. Where to sit for the best wifi. How long we’d have to wait to see our team of doctors and nurses. It was all so familiar, a routine we’d memorized when everything around us was a blur.
But today, for some reason, I didn’t take out my sketchbook. Instead, I watched the other kids in the waiting area. Some were just sleepy babies in strollers, their parents so freaked they were barely speaking, or else laughing and chatting superloudly, pretending that if they treated this whole thing like a crazy dream, maybe they’d wake up soon. There were also grumpy, bald teenagers with earbuds, trying to ignore their moms. A goth-looking girl with a shiny black wig. A boy with a college tee and a laptop, giving dirty looks whenever a toddler started shrieking. And, of course, plenty of kids my age: a girl wearing a blue crocheted hat and glitter nail polish. A boy with a Batman baseball cap and a deck of Magic cards. A girl with a bandana and a BAD HAIR DAY tee, curled up in her chair with Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods.
All these kids seemed sick, I thought: quiet, tired, flattened. Not like me.
And when the girl with the bandana looked up from Percy Jackson, I smiled at her. “Great book,” I said.
She blinked as if I were speaking Martian.
“Here’s your doughnut, Norah,” Mom was saying brightly. “Lucky you, they had one glazed left.”
Lucky me. I took it from her, hiding it in the napkin. I couldn’t explain it then, but I felt guilty about eating it in front of all these kids. Even though my short hair might have communicated: I was sick like you not very long ago. And look at me now, pigging out on junk food.
“Norah Levy?” Esme called out. Mom and Dad turned to me, startled. We’d all settled in for the regular wait. Maybe checkups worked differently once you weren’t a patient anymore and you had real things to do in the real world.
She led us to Dr. Glickstein’s office. Nurses and nurse practitioners and assistants I’d never spoken to before all smiled at me as we walked down the brightly lit hallways to Dr. Glickstein’s office. I wondered if they were smiling because they could see I looked better—or if they’d always smiled at me and I’d just been too
