Should I Stay?

Chapter 18

I can't stop thinking about 'You & I'

It's been years since I've listened to or thought of that song, but after Gramps left my bedside, I've been singing it to myself over and over.

Dad wrote the song ages ago, but now it feels like he wrote it yesterday. Like he wrote it from wherever he is, for me.

Like there's a secret message in it for me. How else to explain those lyrics? I'm not choosing.

What does it mean? Is it supposed to be some kind of instruction? Some clue about what my parents would choose for me if they could? I try to think about it from their perspectives. I know they'd want to be with me, for us all to be together again eventually. But I have no idea if that even happens after you die, and if it does, it'll happen whether I go this morning or in seventy years. What would they want for me now?

As soon as I pose the question, I can see Mom's pissed-off expression. But Dad, he understood what it meant to run out of fight. Maybe, like Gramps, he'd understand why I don't think I can stay.

I'm singing the song, as if buried within its lyrics are instructions, a musical road map to where I'm supposed to go and how to get there.

I'm singing and concentrating and singing and thinking so hard that I barely register Diana's return to the ICU, barely notice that she's talking to the grumpy nurse, barely recognize the steely determination in her tone.

Had I been paying attention, I might have realized that Diana was lobbying for Harry to be able to visit me. Had I been paying attention, I might have somehow got away before Diana was -as always- successful.

I don't want to see him now. I mean, of course I do. I ache to. But I know that if I see him, I'm going to lose the last wisp of peacefulness that Gramps gave me when he told me that it was okay to go. I'm trying to get the courage to do what I have to do. And Harry will complicate things.

I try to stand up to get away, but something has happened to me since I went back into surgery. I no longer have the strength to move. It takes all my effort to sit up straight in my chair. I can't run away; all I can do is hide. I curl my knees into my chest and close my eyes.

I hear Nurse Ramirez talking to Diana. ''I'll take him over,'' she says. And for once, the grumpy nurse doesn't order her back to her own patients.

''That was a pretty dickheaded move you pulled earlier,'' I hear her tell Harry.

''I know,'' Harry answers. His voice is a throaty whisper, the way it gets after a particularly scream-y concert. ''I was desperate.''

''No, you were romantic,'' she tells him.

''I was idiotic. They said she was doing better before. That she'd come off the ventilator. That she was getting stronger. But after I came in here that she got worse. They said her heart stopped on the operating table...'' Harry trails off.

''And they got it started. She had a perforated bowel that was slowly leaking bile into her abdomen and it threw her organs out of whack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it had nothing to do with you. We caught it and fixed it and that's what matters.''

''But she was doing better,'' Harry whispers. He sounds so young and vulnerable, like Louis used to sound when he got the stomach flu.

''And then I came in and she almost died.'' His voice chokes into a sob. The sound of it wakes me up like a bucket of ice water dropped down my shirt.

Harry thinks that he did this to me? No! That's crazy!! He's sooo wrong.

''And I almost stayed in Puerto Rico to marry a fat SOB,'' the nurse snaps. ''But I di'int. And I have a different life now. Almost don't matter. You got to deal with the situation at hand. And she's still here.'' She whips the privacy curtain around my bed.

''In you go,'' she tells Harry.

I force my head up and my eyes open.

Harry.

God, even in this state, he is beautiful. His eyes are dipping with fatigue. He's sprouting stubble, enough of it that if we were to make out, it would make my chin raw. He is wearing his typical band uniform of a T-shirt, skinny pants, and Converse, with Gramps's plaid scarf draped over his shoulders.

When he first sees me, he blanches, like I'm some hideous Creature from The Hobbit or something. I do look pretty bad, hooked back up to the ventilator and a dozen other tubes, the dressing from my latest surgery seeping blood.

But after a moment, Harry exhales loudly and then he's just Harry again. He searches around, like he has dropped something and then finds what he's looking for: my hand.

''Jesus, Lucy, your hands are freezing.'' He squats down, takes my right hand into his, and careful to not bump into my tubes, draws his mouth to them, blowing warm air into the shelter he's created.

''You and your crazy hands.'' Harry is always amazed at how even in middle of summer, even after the sweatiest of encounters, my hands stay cold. I tell him it's bad circulation but he doesn't buy it because my feet are usually warm. He says I have bionic hands, that this is why I'm such a good piano player.

I watch him warm my hands as he has done a thousand times before.

I think of the first time he did it, at school, sitting on the lawn, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I also remember the first time he did it in front of my parents. We were all sitting on the porch on Christmas Eve, drinking cider. It was freezing outside. Harry grabbed my hands and blew on them. Louis giggled. Mom and Dad didn't say anything, just exchanged a quick look, something private that passed between them and then Mom smiled ruefully at us.

I wonder if I tried, if I could feel him touching me. If I were to lie down on top of myself in the bed, would I become one with my body again? Would I feel him? If I reached out my ghostly hand to his, would he feel me? Would he warm the hands he cannot see?

Harry drops my hand and steps forward to look at me. He is standing so close that I can almost smell him and I'm overpowered by the need to touch him.

It's basic, primal, and all-consuming the way a baby needs its mother. Even though I know, if we touch, a new tug-of-war- one that will be even more painful than the quiet one Harry and I have been waging these past few months- will begin.

Harry's mumbling something now. In a low voice. Over and over he is saying: please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Finally, he stops and looks at my face.

''Please, Lucy,'' he implores. ''Don't make me write a song for you, in the hope you'll hear it and wake up.''