Crash Into Me | ✓

two

Almost two weeks had gone by since my aunt, my sister, and I left our tiny Georgia farm town, but unopened boxes and duffle bags still littered every free corner of my room. Various articles of clothing, from bras, to jeans, to a stray sandal here and there, were strewn haphazardly on top of the big round chair at the foot of my bed. Things that I considered wearing but decided against? Send it to the chair. Things that weren't clean but weren't dirty enough for the hamper? To the chair it goes. Things I might wear within the next 7 to 10 business days? Chair.

I liked to think I had organized chaos, but in reality it looked like I had just hit self-destruct on all my belongings.

I eased my eyes shut and tried to take in a few more peaceful moments before having to trudge back to the hospital. Nikki's appointments were every Friday, but with Aunt Mel getting her bearings at her new job teaching art at the community center, some of those first few appointments fell on me. The days between Saturday and Thursday came and went quicker than I could change my socks, and I tried to tell myself I could handle the pungent combination of antiseptic, shriveling old people, and baby powder without wanting to puke. The actual sick person handled it with supreme optimism.

As if on cue, the door to my room flung open, smashing against a wall and sending knickknacks on my desk that I refused to throw away before moving clattering to the floor.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" Nikki barged into my room with her usual brand of dramatic flair, bouncing around gracefully on her dance-trained toes.

I groaned and covered my face with a pillow.

"I've never seen someone get so excited about going to chemo before," I muttered, my voice muffled by the pillow. Nikki knocked the pillow off of my head and leaned down close to me. Tendrils of her blonde hair brushed over my face and made my nose twitch.

"I'm pretty sure I'm the only person you've ever seen go to chemo," she pointedly corrected me. "We're going to be late if you don't get your ass up."

She jostled me and pulled the covers off my bed, exposing the tatty sweatpants and oversized t-shirt that served as my pajamas while my real ones were packed away somewhere. She grinned down at me, and the skin next to her eyes crinkled, and when a ray of morning light from my window hit them, they looked like little pools of honey. I cringed thinking about my own eyes - almost the same color as hers - but with all the glow and allure of dead grass.

"Let's go. You've got 15 minutes, sunshine." She jostled me again and hit me with a pillow. "At least try and get yourself together."

I tried to grab my blanket from her, but she yanked it away. "You mean sweatpants aren't appropriate for sitting around a hospital?"

"You're the only 22-year-old girl I know who leaves the house in sweatpants." She smacked me with a pillow again. "What do I keep telling you? You can never be too prepared, you never know who you'll run into."

I inwardly groaned thinking back to my encounter with the guy who did run into me, with his crooked grin and his messy hair. Was he sneaking around the hallways again, dodging doctors and looking for another poor soul to run over? Or maybe he was just sitting in some hospital room with that same lost look in his hazy blue eyes.