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Chapter 4
“Tia, you have a visitor.” Trina poked her head into Tia’s room and smiled.
“Who?” Tia asked absently.
“Um…he said his name was Brian.”
“He?” Tia repeated, then, “Brian?!”
“Uh-huh. Should I send him in?”
“Um, no, I’ll meet him in the lobby, Trina, can you just tell him that?”
“Sure thing, hon.”
Tia pulled her hair back into a ponytail, looked at herself in the mirror, and took it back down. Then she darted out the door.
Brian was sitting in a chair, flipping through a sports magazine. She stopped for a moment and watched him as he studied a diagram of a golf course. He snapped it shut and turned to the table next to him, sifting through the pile of magazines and finally just closing his eyes and resting his head on the wall. His foot jiggled rapidly.
“You look nervous,” Tia spoke up.
Brian opened his eyes. “Oh, hi, Tia,” he greeted. “How are you?”
“I’m good. The question is, how are you?” Tia motioned to still jittery foot.
“Hospitals make me nervous,” he explained. “Do you mind if we take a walk outside or something?”
“’Course not,” Tia agreed.
*~*
“So, I was thinking I’d never hear from you guys again,” Tia
remarked as they walked down the sidewalk. She saw Brian turn his head and
look at her quickly, surprised.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, busy?” she tried.
Brian didn’t say anything, but he looked at her for a moment before
returning to his gaze to the sidewalk. “We’re not like that. We
try to keep in touch with people we meet.”
“That’s a good thing. I like that in you guys.”
“Thanks. So Tia. I was thinking…about all that stuff you told us.
It was pretty brave of you to do that.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“You hadn’t even known us for long and you totally opened up to
us. Even Nick.”
Tia laughed. “To tell you the truth, I only wanted to meet you after
I saw you on the hospital bed in your video.”
A flicker of something passed in his eyes, but it was gone before Tia could
decipher it.
“There was a reason for that.” Brian shifted his gaze to the sky.
“My heart surgery was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced.
It was like…when I went in, I left my body and somehow…floated
above it. I couldn’t feel my body, and my body couldn’t
think…”
Tia was silent.
“And – and they told me…it was supposed to be 45 minutes long.
I was under surgery for 2 hours because they found another hole. When I think
that I almost died, I want to cry. Sometimes I do.”
“You can,” Tia spoke up. “It’s ok to cry, Brian.”
“I know,” he said. “They all make sure I know that. It’s
just they can’t always be there when I am, you know? They don’t
always know what to do…”
“I know how you feel.”
Brian and Tia looked up at each other, and each smiled slowly.
“I can’t believe how easy it is to talk to you about this,”
Brian laughed.
“We’re both going through the same thing, that’s why. We know
what we’ve been through…”
“…And where we’ve been…”
They smiled again.
“Anytime you wanna talk, Brian, I’ll be here.”
~*~
Brian hung up with his mother and lay back on his bed. He could still hear
her voice in his head.
“Tia sounds like a wonderful girl, Brian. I think you’ve found
yourself a great friend.”
Tia understood him. He didn’t know how she did it, but she could see
things about him that no one else could. She had this way of looking into
his eyes and knowing everything he was feeling and thinking. And he would
never comprehend it.
*~*~*
“So is that good?” Tia asked, staring at the doctor.
Dr. Smith glanced at Trina. Tia’s heart pounded and she squeezed her
eyes shut. The silence in the room was deafening. The slight click on the
wall clock was driving her crazy. Any second now, she’d smash it with
her fist.
“Tia,” Trina’s voice said softly. Tia opened her eyes and
met the nurse’s gaze. “Listen to the doctor.”
Tia barely nodded.
“Tia, your red blood cells aren’t cooperating as much as we were
hoping. The white cells are reproducing, and they’re going at a very
fast rate.”
“So does this mean I’m going to die sooner than we thought?”
Dr. Smith’s eyes stared at the spot on the wall above her head.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Tia asked in a small voice.
“Tia, you know how much I hate this – “
”I know. Just please tell me.”
“You have maybe four, five months at the most.”
Tia nodded slowly and dug her fingernails into the leather arms on the chair.
Suddenly the lights were too fluorescent and the x-ray sheet too bright.
“That’s unless your treatments start working better,” Dr.
Smith added, but it didn’t have much effect on Tia.
~*~
“Tia? Can I come over? I need to talk,” Brian said.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Brian, now’s now a good time.”
“Oh.” She could detect the disappointment in his voice easily.
“I-I thought you said-“
“I know,” she said quickly. “It’s just…I’m
in the middle of something.”
Right, she thought euphorically. In the middle of watching infomercials on
CNBC. Unexpectedly, Tia choked up and let out a strangled cry.
“Tia?” Brian asked worriedly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she managed. “I just really have to go.”
She slammed the phone down and stared at it, her tears splashing onto the
receiver.
~*~
Brian stared in disbelief at the phone, then hung it up slowly. Something
wasn’t right. Tia had sounded…terrified. And pained. Brian frowned
and stretched back on the bed, closing his eyes.
If she didn’t want to talk to him, he couldn’t do a thing about
it.
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