Live

He'd lost count of how many times he'd ended up here in a starchy white hospital bed with the too-stiff sheets scratching his legs and the ugly sterile white light beating down on him because of another relapse.

Alright, that wasn't true. He'd come to the hospital nineteen times. Nineteen times of eating bad, bland hospital food and having his arm be poked by the IV on the days when he couldn't eat. Nineteen times of having get-well flowers be stacked on his bedside table. Nineteen times of his mother's tear-stained face and the gentle scraping of pen against paper as nurses in uniforms as clean and starchy as his sheets asked him how he was feeling.

Nathaniel Samuel Gunner was thirteen, a week going on fourteen, when he entered the hospital for the nineteenth time. Acute lymphocytic leukemia had been destroying him from the inside out for the last two years, and sometimes Nathaniel felt more like he was waiting to die rather than fighting to live. He didn't have anything to be fighting for – his grades, when he could go to school, were mediocre, his looks were average in the brown eyes and hair sort of way, his sports ability had been killed by years of chemotherapy and people telling him not to strain himself.

"It's stupid, mum," he said as his mother settled herself into the seat by his bed, clutching her leather purse to her chest. It was coming apart at the seams, but she seemed not to mind. "I'm going to die anyway, so why are we postponing it?"

The lines by his mother's thin mouth and dark brown eyes eyes deepened as she sighed sadly. Her chestnut hair was starting to turn gray, Nathaniel noticed – when had that happened? "Nate, sweetie, you're going to get better. They're going to try a new treatment on you soon; it's sure to work."

"Mum, they've said that about every treatment, and whoop-de-do – none of them have worked yet!" His mother looked so sad, the unflattering light casting shadows over the lower part of her face making her look so old, that Nathaniel almost wanted to take it back. He doesn't, because he doesn't want to admit that he still has a bit of hope that the next treatment will work.

"Please, Nate, just try it. Please." Nathaniel said nothing in reply, falling back onto the stiff pillow and starchy sheets, eyes shut so tightly that stars exploded and he pretended to be asleep. He knew his mom wouldn't buy it, but she'd leave him alone anyway.


---


Nathaniel was used to having a private ward, so when he woke up one morning and found Nurse Melissa helping a frail girl with wavy black hair, tan skin turned unhealthy beige by years of a illness and dark eyes that glittered through her mop of thick locks into the hospital bed opposite his, he was surprised, mildly so. He watched them for a while through his eyelashes – Melissa guided the girl into the bed, turning down the too-tight and clean sheets and arranging her pillows around her as the girl settled in.

Melissa and the girl spoke in quiet voices for a while, which ended with Melissa fetching a red canvas bag so filled with books that the seams were bursting and placing it next to the girl. "Don't strain your eyes by reading too much," she warned her before heading over to Nathaniel's bed to begin the morning routine of  "And how are you feeling today?"

When Melissa bustled out of the room, hands full of dirty dishes from Nathaniel's meal the night before, and Nathaniel was just beginning to drift off again, the girl spoke. "Have you ever read Ender's Game?"

Nathaniel propped himself back up on his elbows. The girl was staring at him expectantly, eyes wide and waiting. Nathaniel had never heard of the book she'd mentioned. "No."

"What about the Giver?" He shook his head. "1984? The Hunger Games? Harry Potter?" No, no, no – Nathaniel had read none of those, and he told her so. The look of sadness on her face made him want to take it back – he knew the plot line of Harry Potter, so maybe he could lie his way through it – but that thought stopped when she suddenly dug through her bag and unearthed a paperback that was falling apart at the edges. "Here," she said, tossing it to him, "Read this. You look bored."

Nathaniel flipped it over as the girl returned to her own book. The Hunger Games was emblazoned in huge golden font across the front, and when he cracked open the much bended spine, the pages were soft and dog-eared. "Thanks," he mumbled, flipping through.

"My name is Rosa," the girl replied, eyes trained on her book, "And once you finish that, I have more."

"Nathaniel. I mean - that's my name. Nathaniel."

"Mm. Be nice to that book; I don't want to replace it."


---


Nathaniel hadn't understood what people loved about books. Sure, they could be interesting sometimes, and yeah, they were a good way to waste a summer afternoon, but he'd never invested much interest in reading when he wasn't in the hospital, or even in it. His mother provided him with video games, ranging from the Xbox360 to a PSP, so he played with those to forget the pain.

Books were different from video games. His video games were always full of blood, and once he'd played through them once, he knew what was going to happen. The plots were simple and easy to follow, the characters predictable and too easy to understand.

But books...full of twists and turns, The Hunger Games was exciting, new. He couldn't stop reading. Nurse Melissa turned of the light at nine that evening and Rosa started snoring at ten, but he kept reading by the light of the pocket flashlight his mother had given him years ago. There was blood in this story, but it was blood spilled that someone cried over, blood the characters didn't want to stain the ground. Cruel rich people forced young children to hunt and kill and caught at the center was a girl who was only there to save her sister and try to protect the boy who'd come with her from her village.

He finished at a hour so late that even the murmurs of the late-night staff had died away and the moon was glowing silver in the indigo sky. Dawn was not far off, and Nathaniel was shaking, breathing hard, as he gently set the worn book on his spotless nightstand.

Never, in any video game he'd ever played, had there been a story so amazingly gripping, no graphics as vivid as the words on the pages he'd just flipped through. Video games had nothing on books – for the had few hours, he had forget he was ill at all.

Something bubbled up, and his head cranked up to look at Rosa, slumbering peacefully. His throat burned, like he would die if he couldn't say everything going through his mind, but the feeling died as he looked at the gently snoring girl, her hair spread out over the white pillow.

So he lay back on his bed instead, marveling over the story he'd finished as his eyes slipped shut. Later, Nurse Melissa would ask him why he was so tired and why was he shaking, did he feel cold? But for now, Nathaniel felt like he'd come across the most amazing thing in the world.


---


Rosa seemed to have endless supplies of books. During the week Nathaniel stayed in the hospital for treatments, she gave him seventeen books, and he devoured them all. Ranging from science fiction to murder mysteries, Nathaniel read stories of horror and love, betrayal and sacrifice. Melissa had to tear the books from his hands to get him to go to bed at night now, and Rosa was forever asking him which character was his favorite, did he enjoy that scene too, wasn't that a great story?

Rosa was almost as interesting as the books she possessed. Within minutes on the second day of her in his room, he knew her entire family (her mom, dad, two younger sisters and older brother and bratty cousin who lived down the street with the aunt she adored) favorite color (teal or lavender, she couldn't decide, though a nice shade of crimson was always appreciated once in a while) and favorite food (hamburgers with extra pickles and ketchup).

She liked cats and wanted to go work as a wildlife vet and part-time author in Africa. She was Hispanic, and hated social studies but loved math and science. She had acute myelogenous leukemia and might not live to see her seventeenth birthday if they couldn't get her disease into remission within the next year and a half. She was already fourteen, two months older than Nathaniel, and had already come to terms with the fact that she had a fifty percent chance of dying.

"But it's not like I'm going to stop fighting," she said one day as Nathaniel tossed back her paperbound copy of Marley and Me, the book landing with a solid thump on her still too-starchy sheets. "There's far too much I haven't seen yet."

"You're weird, Rosa."

"I know." She smiled, showing all of her teeth, strained to a light yellow because she enjoyed drinking coffee. She was shifting through her piles of books, dropping some to the floor as she looked for one to give to Nathaniel "You're weird too, Nathaniel."

"No I'm not. I'm average."

Rosa tossed him a hardcover copy of Ender's Game as she replied, "But you're not really. You're a fast reader and you're funny. You're not like a lot of the guys I know."

"I've been sick most of my life," Nathaniel muttered as he scanned the back of the book, reading the description. "That doesn't exactly allow me to make friends with other people with all the school I miss and time I spend here in the hospital."

"Do you even try when you're out of the hospital? To make friends, I mean." Rosa asked, staring at him with her huge dark eyes. Her gaze was always too steady and too clear, and Nathaniel always felt uncomfortable when she turned her soul-searching look on him.

"Not really..." he admitted, looking away. His fingers were twitching, tapping out a anxious rhythm against the cover of his book. "I mean, my leukemia's not as bad as yours, but there's also a chance that they won't be able to get mine into remission and I'll die. I don't really want to make friends and then suddenly have to leave them like that."

"So why did you make friends with me?"

The question startled Nathaniel, and he jerked his head back up to see Rosa's gentle smile. His fingers slowed and stilled. "Are we friends?"

"I would say so," Rosa replied, intertwining her fingers and resting her chin on the back of her hands. "We talk, we share books, we argue. What else would you say would qualify someone as your friend?"

"Not only sitting around in a hospital? I dunno. Friends usually do things together, like go to the movies and go hang out."

Rosa laughed, low and rich, dark hair spilling over her pale and drawn face. "We're sick. We're not allowed to leave. But tell you what. Once we get out of here, let's go "hang out" and do something out in the real world. Deal?"

Nathaniel hesitated, then shrugged, smiled and whispered loud enough for only Rosa to hear, "Deal."


---


He was discharged four days later after chemotherapy and another round of quiet conversations with his doctors and parents. Rosa stayed behind for more treatment, Nathaniel's number and email written down on a scrap of paper and tucked into one of her many books as she watched him be guided from the room with the help of Nurse Melissa and his father. Rosa had given him a book, Speaker for the Dead, with the stern order, "Return it next time I see you."

And they did end up seeing each other again. Rosa was released a week later after more rounds of chemotherapy and the doctors said maybe they had done it, her leukemia might be in remission.

They went to the movies together. The Last Airbender was playing, and the world was golden with the glow of summer. They ate bad, overly buttered popcorn and shared a sugary drink that made Nathaniel's teeth ache. Afterwards, he returned her book and they made a promise to get together again soon before they parted ways.

And they did. Three days later, they went to the pool together and splashed each other and shared a melting chocolate ice cream when the sky clouded up and the life guard made everyone get out in case it started thundering. And a few days later, Rosa joined Nathaniel's family at the dinner table, eating burned hotdogs and laughing at Nathaniel's father's bad jokes.

It was perfect, wonderfully calm, until August came and Rosa's leukemia came back full force. She returned to the hospital the day before school started.

When Nathaniel visited, she was pale and drawn, skinny as a stick without enough energy to even hold one of her beloved books.

"They're transferring me," she said, listlessly. Her long, rich hair was falling out; she was already nearly bald from the chemotherapy. Her voice was so quiet Nathaniel had to lean into hear it. "There's a hospital that's more equipped to deal with my type of leukemia. I'm leaving tomorrow."

"You'll be coming back, right?" Nathaniel asked, fingernails digging into the soft skin of his palms, hands of a boy who had never done hard labor. "Ros, you'll come back, right?"

She looked at him steadily with her soul-searching eyes, and for once, Nathaniel met that stare and held it. She smiled, tiredly. Her face was so pale. "I don't know, Nathaniel. My parents are already making plans to move. My papa's found a job in that area. And I don't know. Maybe."

"That's not a good enough answer." Crescent moons were what shapes his nails made on his palms by now. He was shaking. "Tell me you'll try, Ros. Please."

She studied him, the same way she had studied him the first day they'd met. Whatever she saw, it must have pleased her, for she nodded slowly, dark eyes half-lidded, worn out smile still plastered on her face. "I will, Nate. I'll try. Just...promise me you'll keep reading. Keep trying. Life is worth the effort."

"It won't be worth it if you're not there," he snapped, hands flying out to grab her forearms. His nails had broken skin, and there were trickles of blood making the way from his body to hers, dribbling in rivers down her arms. Rosa watched in mild fascination as Nathaniel gripped her, breathing hard and trying very hard not to cry.

"Cheesiest line I've ever heard, but you get points for trying," she said finally, tearing her gaze away from the trickling blood. "I promise I'll come find you again, Nathaniel I have your email. If they can get the leukemia into remission, I'll mail you. I'll find you, don't worry."

Nathaniel knew that was the best he was going to get out of her, and so he let his hands drop away, resting heavily on the itchy sheets. "Get better soon, Rosa," he said, and then he left.


---


Time passed. Nathaniel went to high school. The doctors got his leukemia into remission in the middle of freshman year. He tried out for the basketball team but didn't make it, so he joined the track team.

He made friends – loud noisy boys who joked and threw food about, who would sneak up behind him in the hallway and pull him into a headlock so they could give him a noogie. He dated a few girls, and learned that kissing felt nice. His grades improved until he had a all A and B average and a decently high GPA.

He continued to read. The librarians at his school all knew him by name and always had a stack of books to give him whenever he came in. He wasted whole days where he should have been studying reading books of magic and love, danger and anger.

He waited. Nathaniel waited for Rosa's email, call, visit - whatever – to come.

It never did.

He didn't want to think she died – Rosa was too strong for that. So maybe she forgot about him, moved on, had her own life. Maybe she had lost his email. Whatever the case, she didn't come.

So he tried to forget about her, even though her voice sprang to mind every time he cracked open a new book, telling him what she loved about this story.

He graduated high school. He went to college, a nice one on the East Coast where he double-majored in creative writing and medicine. Nathaniel ended up going to medical school, where he fought tooth and nail to keep his grades high and he graduated in the top twenty percent of the class.

He went to the city where Rosa had gone for treatment and started work at the hospital where she had been transferred to. He never let himself look up her file. He didn't want to know what had happened to her. It had been years by now, and he was nearing thirty. He had to move on.

When he wasn't working at the hospital, he wrote. He wrote a story about a girl with a fire for life who never said die, who battled a deadly curse set upon her as she traveled the globe, inspiring those around her to pick up their heads and make the best of what they had. The story had so many twists and turns, and sometimes Nathaniel felt like just deleting the whole thing and never writing again.

But he continued on, until it was finished. A monster of a story at nearly two hundred pages long, it contained everything he felt and all his wishes for Rosa, that she had gotten well and grown up.

His colleagues forced him to send it out to publishers. He did, not expecting anyone to publish it. He was surprised when one wrote back, saying they were interested and could he send them the rest of the manuscript?

A year later, his story Fire Girl hit the bookstores. It wasn't a overnight success, but it sold well and people enjoyed it, so Nathaniel was happy with that. He had dedicated the story to Rosa and told the world of what she had done for him, and that was enough.

It was winter. He was thirty-four now, six months away from his thirty-fifth birthday. He lived in a apartment a mile away from the hospital, and white snow beat against the window as he sat in his tiny living room, curled up with a blanket by his space heater reviewing a patient's records when the phone rang. He didn't recognize the number, but he picked up anyway.

"Nathaniel? It's me, Rosa." She sounded older. Her voice had the melodious quality of a grown woman, rich and deep, like her laugh had been all those years ago. He was shaking so badly that he had to grip the phone with both hands and he fought to keep his own voice steady.

"It's been a while, Ros," he said evenly, trying to put as much confidence and self-assurance as he could into his words. She didn't buy it. Her laugh was as rich and beautiful as it had been when they were still kids in the hospital together.

"Sorry. I lost your email. I didn't stop thinking about you, though. I read your book – that's how I found you again." There was still a hint of a chuckle to her words. Nathaniel smiled, feeling something in his chest loosen. She was alright. She lived. She had read his book, so she knew how grateful he was to her. "I'm heading back to Africa soon – I got my vet degree and there's a wildlife preserve in Kenya that needs me to do a routine checkup soon. Can we meet before I leave?"

"Sure," he replied, shutting his eyes and inhaling deeply. He wondered how much she'd changed, in all these years. "Where do you live?"

"Not far from you, actually." She laughed again. "I live with my parents when I'm not in Africa. Yeah, yeah – weird for a woman in her thirties, I know, but I don't see the point in buying a house when I'm gone half the year." She told him the address, and laughed again when he made a mad dash across his tiny apartment to scramble for some paper in what he called his office but was really just where he dumped everything he didn't feel like dealing with.

"See you soon," she said, and even after he said goodbye and the sound of the dial tone filled the air, Nathaniel felt elated, like things could only get better.


---


He saw her the next day. She was taller than him by three inches, slender and strong. Her hair had a shine it was missing when she was fourteen and she had chopped it short so it dangled around her chin. Her cheekbones were sharp, eyes gleaming. There were laugh lines by her mouth and she was the most beautiful woman Nathaniel had ever seen in his life.

He felt awkward as she pulled him close for a hug. She wasn't bony – muscle made her too soft and sturdy for that. She smelled like disinfectant and roses.

"I've missed you," she told him, with a sweet smile only for him.

"I miss you," he replied, and with a wicked grin, "But I haven't missed your cooking at all. You still awful at it?"

She hit him, and as the two of them laughed, linking arms and strolling towards Rosa's favorite cafe, Nathaniel knew it was all going to be okay.


---


They got married the next year by a lake so wide that Nathaniel couldn't see the other side even if he strained his eyes to the point of a migraine. Rosa laughed and told him not to try; she didn't want him to go blind. She was stunning in her silky, form-fitting white dress, the sun beaming down on her hair and bringing out the hints of green in her dark eyes. The tuxedo was hot and itchy by the armpits, but Nathaniel was too ecstatic with the fact that he was marrying Rosa for it to distract him.

They danced together for hours during the wedding reception until Rosa had to sit down because her shoes were wearing a blister on her heel. They honeymooned in Europe together, spending three weeks biking and camping together with laughter filling the air all the time.

When they got back to their hometown, they moved out into a bigger house, a twenty minutes drive from the edge of town. Rosa sometimes had to leave for months on end for her job, but they got by.

They were thirty-nine when their daughter Estrella was born. She was as beautiful as her mother, with thick black hair and sparkling brown eyes and a rich, deep laugh. Nathaniel watched with pride as she grew strong and fit, and thankfully she didn't develop leukemia.

Estrella was nine when her sister Tierra was born. They grew so fast that Nathaniel was convinced his girls had taken Miracle-Gro, for one day they were babies bouncing on his knee and the next he was bawling as Estrella, and then nine years later, Tierra stepped up to take their college diplomas.

Nathaniel and Rosa, old by now, sat on their back porch in the evenings and watched the sun set. Rosa always made them lemonade with too much sugar and burned coffee cake. The evening as cool and the stars were just coming out one night when Nathaniel turned to Rosa and said, "You were right, you know."

"About what?" she turned to face him, dark eyes bright and curious. She was still beautiful with her silver hair and wrinkled skin and Nathaniel couldn't think of anyone he loved more in this world. "Life's worth the effort."

Rosa smiled with teeth stained light yellow by years of drinking coffee. "Of course I was right. Now hush, and listen to the crickets sing."

So he did.