by Vi Keeland
Jake: They’re the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. I get lost in them sometimes. They comfort me in a way that nothing else can.
My hand was shaking as I wrote.
Nina: I love your eyes, too.
Jake: I know I’ve been confusing you. I am sorry. We need to talk when you come home.
My heart was palpitating because it didn’t know how to react to “we need to talk.”
Nina: I think we need to talk, too.
I waited for a response, but apparently that was the end of the exchange. I fell asleep confused, not sure whether to be heartbroken or happy that he wanted to talk about us.
My phone was still in my hand when I woke up the next morning, Christmas day. I looked down and realized he had, in fact, texted me one more time, hours later in the middle of the night.
Jake: I’ve got it…Angel. That’s my answer to your question from the plane. What Nina reminds me of.
I didn’t know what exactly had gotten into him, but I was sort of liking it. As I got out of bed, though, giddiness transformed into a lingering fear that had begun to gnaw at me.
Throughout the course of that day, his admission that we needed to talk when I got back, had started to consume me.
I had no appetite during our Christmas ham dinner because my body had basically shut down from worrying.
When my parents and I sat down later to watch, Elf, my mind was not focused on the movie, and I wasn’t finding parts funny that used to make me laugh out loud. The different theories about what he wanted to say to me were flooding my brain.
Then, I came to an unhealthy realization. I seriously didn’t think I could live without Jake and felt like my entire world would crumble without him in it. Even though I wanted to take the next step with him so badly, at the same time, I knew if things stayed the same, I would never have to worry about losing him. There was something to be said for keeping things just as they were.
The fact that he hadn’t texted me again that Christmas Sunday put me further on edge.
***
The following Tuesday Jake was back in New York when he texted me for the first time since Christmas Eve.
Jake: The house is fucking boring without you. Even sniffing your underwear hasn’t put me out of my funk. If I sniff this one five times, will you magically reappear?
Nina: LOL. Get out of my lingerie drawer!
Jake: 36C? I knew it.
Nina: Now, I know you’re lying because you’re off by a cup size.
Jake: 36D? Really? Damn.
Nina: 34D but yes.
Jake: That was a clever way to get your bra size, though, wasn’t it?
Nina: What are you really doing?
Jake: Just sitting around, actually. Tarah and Ryan are going downstairs to Eleni’s for dinner. I might go with them because I have nothing better to do without you here to bug.
The fact that he’d be going downstairs tonight irked me and made me want to jump on the next bus back. If Desiree were working, she would use the opportunity of Jake being a third wheel without my being there, to sink her nasty paws into him.
Nina: That’s nice. Have fun.
Jake: What day do you get back again?
Nina: Sometime during the weekend of January 8th.
Jake: Shit. I won’t be home. I’ll see you that Monday, the 9th, then?
Nina: Yeah.
Jake: Let’s plan to go out that night.
Nina: Okay. Have fun at dinner.
Jake: Where is this lingerie drawer, btw?
Nina: (Rolls Eyes)
Jake: ;-)
***
At the end of the two weeks, I ended up arriving back in Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon. A part of me was hoping that by some miracle, Jake would have skipped Boston just this once, but he was gone.
Tarah and Ryan were nowhere to be found either, so I decided to go out for a jog, since the weather was actually mild for January. Running would be a good way to expend some of the nervous energy that had built up over the past couple of weeks.
After changing into spandex and a hooded sweatshirt, I grabbed my iPod and a bottle of water from the fridge and flew out the door. On my way down the stairs, I could hear groaning coming from Mrs. Ballsworthy’s apartment which prompted me to stop in the stairwell outside of her door and listen in.
Strange.
Usually, the only sounds coming from that place were an expletive or a game show blaring on the television.
The noises continued, and I stood paralyzed, unsure of what to make of it. Suddenly, came the words, “Help! Help me!”
Oh God!
What was I supposed to do? I was terrified of that woman. She scared the bejesus out of me.
Putting aside my terror, I turned the knob, surprised to find that the door was open. I nervously trotted on my tippy toes to the back of the apartment and followed the sound that was coming from one of the bedrooms.
She was on the floor, clutching her chest and turned to me. “Help me, Nina. Help…me.”
“Mrs. Ballsworthy?!” I rushed over to her, and she grabbed by hand squeezing it. I dialed 911. “Yes, I need an ambulance right away to 1185 Lincoln. I think my neighbor might be having a heart attack. Mrs. Ballsworthy, what are you feeling? Can you talk?”
She could barely get out the words. “Chest…tight…pain…arm.”
I responded to the directions of the dispatcher. “Okay…okay. Yes, of course, I’ll stay with her. Yes…she’s lying down. Do you have any aspirin?”
She pointed to bathroom across the hall.
I ran and grabbed a bottle of Bayer that was in the cabinet, rushing back to her and placing one in her mouth in a panic. I opened my water bottle and helped her drink some down.
“Don’t leave me, Nina.”
“I won’t. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” I said holding her hand for about five minutes until the sound of sirens in the distance got closer.
As my father always used to say, “We make plans, and God laughs.” I was heading out for a jog and somehow ended up in the back of an ambulance with a woman whose only words to me prior to today had been, “Go fuck yourself.”
The woman next to me was no longer that miserable person I thought I knew; she was just…scared. Somehow, the man upstairs chose me to hold her hand through it, and I was damn well going to do my job.
“Mrs. Ballsworthy, do you have any family I can call?”
She was still having trouble speaking but managed to say, “My…daughter.”
“Can you tell me her number?”
She slowly threw out the digits in between breaths, and I dialed as she spoke.
A woman picked up. “Hi, my name is Nina Kennedy. Is this Mrs. Ballsworthy’s daughter?
“Yes,” the woman answered.
“I’m her neighbor. Your mother may be having a heart attack. She is okay right now, but we are in the ambulance headed to the Brooklyn Hospital Center.”
The woman said she’d be following us there right away and hung up.
When we got the hospital, they rushed her into the back and asked me to stay in the waiting area. I discovered her name was Laurice.
A beautiful woman with caramel colored skin and long thinly woven braids rushed into the waiting area, and I stood up. “Are you Laurice’s daughter?”
“Yes. Where is my mother?”
“They just took her in and wouldn’t let me go back. They told me to have you wait here and that a doctor would be out with an update.”
She covered her mouth in shock, pacing the floor. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so. She was coherent and breathing.”
“How did you find her?”
“I live upstairs. I was going out for a jog and heard her yelling for help.”
“Oh my God,” she said then surprised me when she pulled me in for a hug. “You may have saved her life.”
“Anyone would have done the same thing.”
“Thank you for being so di
ligent.” She held out her hand. “I’m Daria.”
“Nina. Nice to meet you.”
Several minutes later, a nurse had come out to tell us that Mrs. Ballsworthy was stable but going into the operating room. I insisted on staying with Daria until her mother was out of surgery. I knew I wouldn’t have wanted to be alone in this situation.
A doctor came out about an hour and a half later, and we both stood up. “Hi, I’m Dr. Tuscano. Who’s the daughter?
Daria raised her hand. “I am.”
“Your mother is going to be fine. She had a clogged artery that caused a mild to moderate heart attack. We performed an angioplasty immediately and put in a stent to keep the artery open. You are very lucky that she was found when she was, because the risk of damage to the heart rises significantly if left untreated for more than ninety minutes. In your mother’s case, I think we got her in time for everything to be okay.”
“When can I see her?” she asked.
“Someone will be out in about twenty minutes to let you know when you can go in. She is stable right now in the recovery area.”
“Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much.”
A look of immense relief appeared on Daria’s face, and we hugged each other.
“Nina, you did save my mother’s life.”
“I am just glad I was there.”
We sat back down and she glanced to the side at me. “Had you known my mother before this?”
“You could say I had met her, but didn’t really know her.”
“Did she ever say anything inappropriate to you by any chance?”
I didn’t know if I should tell her the truth under the circumstances, but there was only one answer. “She told me…to go fuck myself…multiple times.”
Daria looked down at the ground and shook her head. “I am so, so sorry. I need to explain her behavior.”
“It’s okay. I knew it was nothing personal. She does it to all of my roommates and some of the neighbors. Why, though?”
“My mother has had these episodes for the past ten years. One minute, she’s fine and the next, she’s swearing at everyone. It’s some sort of post-traumatic reaction. It started after my father was killed. He was walking home from work late at night, and he was robbed and shot to death. They caught the guys. That’s a long story in itself…but that day, my parents had gotten into a terrible fight. The last thing she said to him from the window as he left was ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Nine hours later, the cops had woken us up to say my father had been murdered.”
Holy crap.
“I’m so sorry, Daria.”
“These episodes didn’t appear right away, but over the years, she started developing flashbacks, and it’s made her act out sometimes. She never forgave herself for the way things were left between them. These swearing episodes seem to be some sort of strange coping mechanism. She is truly a good woman and doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just a very strange reaction to a devastating event. So, on behalf of my mother, I apologize.”
I placed my hand on her back. “You didn’t have to, but thank you for explaining it to me.”
Lesson learned. People are not always what they seem on the surface.
***
I stayed with Daria until she was able to see her mother. We made plans to go to lunch soon, since she insisted on it as a thank you.
As I was walking down the hospital corridor to leave, I got stuck in a maze of hallways. Each time I would turn a corner, I’d find myself lost again.
After about five minutes of hitting dead ends, I happened to stop to catch my bearings in front of one of the patient rooms. A young teenage girl who had lost all of her hair was sitting alone staring blankly up at a television.
Just as I was about to move on, the girl noticed me staring and said, “Are you a candy striper?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know…a candy striper. They’re those lame hospital volunteers. They’ve been coming around a lot lately.”
“No, no, I’m not.”
“Good…because they suck. They come in here with their fake smiles, like I’m supposed to believe this is Disney World or some shit.” She paused. “I have cancer, by the way.”
“I know…I…I figured—”
“Because I look like Caillou?”
“Caillou?”
“Awkward cartoon character on PBS, bald for no good reason.”
“Ah.”
“Seriously, what are you here for? Are you here for me?”
I looked into her hopeful eyes. “Maybe I am.”
“Good. Because today, I want to talk about sex.”
“Excuse me?”
“What’s your name?”
“Nina.”
“Don’t be a pussy, Nina.”
“What?”
“Pardon my language, but I don’t really hold back anymore. Life is too short not to get the point. Anyway…I said I wanted to talk about sex, and from the way you’re dressed, you seem like you’d be open to that. I have been waiting for someone just like you to show up, actually.” She waved her hand. “Get in here, and close the door.”
I looked behind my shoulders, then down at myself self-consciously and entered the room. Was I on Candid Camera? I swear, between Mrs. Ballsworthy and now this, today definitely felt like the Twilight Zone.
Landing on a chair next to her bed, I asked, “How old are you anyway?”
“I’m fifteen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Skylar,” she said, shutting off the television.
“What do you want to know, Skylar?
“I can’t talk about these things with my mother. She’d die.”
I sighed, gearing up for her questions. “Okay…”
“My first question is…how early is too early to have sex?”
Oh goodness. Why me?
I laughed to myself at the absurdity of the situation I had just gotten myself into then thought about how to respond. “There is not really one answer to that question…but fifteen is definitely too early.”
“What if someone might not live to be old enough?
You could have heard a pin drop. I was at a complete loss for words.
Thankfully, she continued before I had to come up with an answer. “See…there’s this boy. His name is Mitch. He’s my best friend and has been since we were young, but he doesn’t know I am actually in love with him. We live in New Jersey, but I’ve been here in Brooklyn for my treatments for the past few months because my father lives here, and my doctors are based here. So, I moved temporarily and haven’t seen him in a while. I’m really afraid he is going to forget about me.”
“Why would you ever lose him if he’s truly your best friend?”
“I don’t think he’d intentionally stop being my friend, but a lot of girls are into him because he’s hot. They don’t even know him like I do. They just want to get a piece and well, he’s a guy, so…”
“Have you told him how you feel?”
“Things started to get a little weird between us right before my diagnosis. He was looking at me differently, and I was starting to think something might happen. I have always held onto this fantasy that I would be his—you know—first. And he would be mine. If I’m not around, though, whether it’s because of my treatments or…otherwise and he meets someone, I may never get the chance. Every second that I’m away, I feel like I’m losing him.”
A stiff drink would have really come in handy right about now.
“Does he come visit?” I asked.
“That’s the thing. He’s been begging me to let him. He doesn’t know which hospital I am at because I won’t tell him. I don’t want him to see me like this, but I miss him so much…it’s killing me.” She reached over to her phone and pulled up a photo. “That’s him. That’s Mitch.”
“He’s really cute,” I said as she handed it to me. He was. With dark, longish hair under a Yankees cap and big blue eyes, I could see why she was feeling like that about hi
m.”
She looked hopeless. “What am I gonna do?”
“Well, Skylar, I would say a wise old man, but in reality…a wise, pierced, tattooed man once told me, you can choose to stay in the present and let go of the fear or you can choose to engage it.”
“He sounds hot.”
“He is. The point is…you are worrying about what might happen instead of using this time to be with the person you care about. He wants to see you. What are you afraid he’ll think? You’re beautiful.” She was. Not many people can pull off bald, but she looked angelic.
“You want to see beautiful?” She scrolled through her phone and handed me another photo of Mitch and her. She had long flowing auburn hair, a little more meat on her bones and color in her cheeks, and the two of them looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch ad.
“You were gorgeous then with your hair, and you are gorgeous now without it. What can I do to make you see that? You need to let him see you.”
She seemed to be struggling with my suggestion but eventually shook her head in agreement. “Okay, then. I’ll need your help. I’ll need props.”
“What?”
“Props! For the Skylar Seymour Pretend I Don’t Have Cancer Extreme Makeover Edition. I have a wig, but it’s lame. I’ll need a really good one, like with real human hair and highlights like yours. It needs to be unbeweaveable. And I’ll need some makeup and chicken cutlets.”
“Chicken cutlets?”
“Those boob enhancers. I wouldn’t expect you to know what those are, Dolly Parton.”
I looked down at my breasts. She had a point.
“I need to look even better than before.”
“Even though I think you look perfect right now, I will do whatever it takes to make sure you feel confident enough to see him.”