Girl Against the Universe (25 page)

To say I'm nervous about going to see Jordy is an understatement, especially since Penn is at school and it'll be just his parents and me.

I still do all my rituals in the morning, but there's a different feel to them today. It's less like “I need these to survive” and more like “These remind me of everything good in my life, the things I love and want to protect.” I go to twist my hair into a bun, but I change my mind at the last minute and leave it down. It'll cover some of the scratches and bruises on my face.

I pull into the hospital parking lot about fifteen minutes later. When I find Jordy's room, the door is propped halfway open. He's in bed, covered in white hospital blankets and picking at a tray of breakfast food. The rest of the room is empty, but it still takes me a few seconds to work up my nerve to knock gently on the doorframe.

His face goes through a whole range of emotions when
he sees me—relief, happiness, anxiety, fear. I know what it's like to feel so many different things at once.

“Can I come in?” I ask softly.

“Of course.” He makes an attempt to finger-comb his hair, which I find kind of adorable given the circumstances. There's a bandage above his left eye with a purpling bruise peeking out the side.

“Nice dress.” I gesture at his hospital gown.

He perks up slightly. “You should see the back.”

I smile as I drag one of the chairs to the side of the bed and sit in it.

“So you're okay?” he asks.

“Just this.” I hold up my broken arm.

Jordy rubs at the stubble on his chin. “Doesn't really count as unscathed.” He gestures at his blanket-covered body. “I didn't even break anything. I win.”

“You're so competitive.”

“It's true.” He takes my casted arm in his hands and studies the blue and gray fiberglass wrap. “Looks like we're going to have to work on your one-handed backhand.”

“You're right.” I haven't even thought about tennis since the accident. But there's probably no reason I can't play with my cast.

We both fall silent. The red hand on the wall clock ticks off about fifteen seconds. Then Jordy says, “You're going to break up with me, aren't you? For my own good?”

“I thought about it,” I admit.

He sinks back against the pillows. “Just because you failed a stupid therapy challenge?”

“Actually, I finished it with my mom yesterday.”

“Really?” Hope flickers in his eyes.

“Yep. We went to the crash site.”

“How was it?”

I pull my legs up onto the chair and wrap my arms around my shins. “It's hard to explain. I guess I was hoping for something more, maybe a memory of why it happened or the answer to why I lived. For some sort of closure, you know?”

“And?”

“None of that was there, but I still felt . . . better about things.”

“So where does that leave us?” Jordy asks.

I rest my chin on my knees. “I wish I knew why bad things happen. I wish someone could tell me definitively if our accident was my fault.”

“Our accident was because I'm a crappy driver,” Jordy says. “Or maybe the Universe just really needed that deer.”

I laugh softly. “I swear I saw it watching us after the crash, like it felt guilty.”

“Poor Mitzi! I was going to give that car to my sister for Christmas. That deer
should
feel guilty. Maybe it's the one who called 911.”

“Nope, that was me.”

“Oh,” Jordy says. “So basically I wreck the car, you save my life, and now you're here trying to tell me you
think the accident was your fault.”

“I'm trying to tell you I don't know. I'll never know for sure if someone or something is pulling the strings or if it's all like you said—totally random, and I've just had a few epically bad rolls of the dice. It's hard to imagine being with someone when I'm feeling like that.”

“What about the roll of the dice where you met me?” Jordy asks. “Your life is more than just a bunch of unfortunate events jotted down in a notebook, Maguire.” His words are coming out faster now, amplified by pain and frustration.

“You're right,” I say.

He keeps going like he didn't hear me. “I mean what makes you think you can decide what's best—” He stops. “Did you just say I was right?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not sure a girl has ever said that to me before.”

“Well, I wouldn't get used to it or anything.” My lips curl into a grin. “But no, after the accident I kept flipping back and forth—trying to choose between the presence of happiness and the absence of guilt. Between going back to the Maguire I used to be and taking a risk. And here's what I figured out: the only thing scarier than blaming myself for bad outcomes is accepting the fact that sometimes
no one
is to blame—that horrible stuff might happen to the people I care about, and no amount of five-second checks or knocking on wood will prevent it.”

Jordy nods. “It's easier to blame someone than to accept
that sometimes we're all powerless. Of course, most of us blame
other
people.”

“I can't control other people,” I say. “I can only control me. But I can't control the Universe that way. The whole time I was just fooling myself.”

“So what now?”

I look over at him, at his bruised and bandaged face. All I want to do is touch my lips to every tiny wound. “Now I choose happiness, even if the whole idea scares the crap out of me.”

“Good choice.” Jordy's smile lights up my insides. Any lingering reservations I had about my decision flicker out. He reaches for my hand. When we touch, I swear I can feel the tension ebbing out of his body. He pats the bed with his other hand. “Sit with me.”

I blush. “Why?”

“Because I want to kiss my girlfriend, that's why.”

I move from the chair to the edge of the bed. Jordy pulls me down so that I'm half on top of him.

“I don't think your nurse—”

“Is going to stop by in the next two minutes.” He presses his lips to mine.

I pluck the TV remote out from under my hip and adjust myself so that Jordy and I are lying side by side. I cradle his face with my good hand, mindful of his injuries and bandages as our mouths connect, gentle, and then harder.

There's a cough from behind me. I pull away from Jordy
so fast I nearly tumble off the side of the bed. A gray-haired man in a white coat is standing in the doorway. He's holding a tablet in his hand. “You might want to be careful of the chest tube.” He goes to the other side of Jordy's bed and lifts up a clear canister that's partially full of blood. Flexible plastic tubes travel from the container to beneath the thin hospital blanket.

“Hey, dude. What's up?” Jordy asks.

“I'm Dr. Cantor. I'm a vascular surgeon,” he says. “Are your parents around?”

“My mom's here. She went to get breakfast but should be right back.” Jordy frowns. “Vascular surgeon. What's wrong with me?”

Dr. Cantor smiles. “Nothing we can't fix.”

“Your mom is here?” I hiss. I scoot from the bed back to the chair just in time.

Jordy's mom strides into the room holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a small container of fruit in the other. She looks back and forth from me to the vascular surgeon, her thin lips pinching together in the center.

Jordy beats Dr. Cantor to the punch. “Mom, you remember Maguire, right? She's my girlfriend now.”

“Um, hi,” I say. “Nice to see you again.”

She forces a smile. “You too, dear. I'm glad you're all right.” She turns to Dr. Cantor, who is tapping away on his electronic tablet. “Can we help you?”

“You're Stanford's mother?”

“I am.”

“When the ER physician was checking the placement of the chest tube yesterday, he noticed an anomaly on the chest film.”

“An anomaly?” Jordy's mom asks.

“Yes, on the X-ray,” Dr. Cantor says. “We did a CT scan to get a closer look.” The doctor looks questioningly at me.

Jordy rests his hand on my casted arm. “She stays.”

“All right.” Dr. Cantor turns his tablet toward Jordy's mom. “Stanford has what appears to be an aortic aneurysm.” He highlights an area on his screen, but it all just looks like random shapes to me. “Sometimes we just monitor them, but this one is large enough to require surgical repair.”

“The accident gave him an aneurysm?” I shrill. I know it's not my place to be asking questions, but I can't keep the words from spilling from my lips. People
die
from aneurysms. All of my resolutions about choosing happiness and relinquishing the illusion of control start to crumble.

“What does that mean, exactly?” his mother asks.

“An aneurysm is a weakening in the wall of a blood vessel. They can become life-threatening if left untreated, but the accident didn't cause it. I believe it's been growing inside of Stanford for a while.” He pauses. “Are you familiar with Marfan syndrome?”

Jordy's mom purses her lips. “It's some sort of genetic thing, right? Seen in taller people? There's no one in our family who has that.”

“In about twenty-five percent of cases, it appears spontaneously,” Dr. Cantor says. “With no family history whatsoever.” He clicks through a few pages on his tablet. “I notice you told the ER doc that you've been having some issues with fatigue during your matches.”

“That's right,” Jordy says. “And I'm taller than anyone else in my family, too.”

“Many Marfan patients have heart valve issues that can cause fatigue or shortness of breath.”

“So if I have this, this thing, it would explain why I've been getting tired?”

“Yes, there's a good chance it might.”

“Can you fix it?” Jordy asks.

Dr. Cantor steps close to the bed. He studies Jordy for a moment and then takes his hand and does something with his thumb. “We'll need to run some additional tests so we know more about what we're dealing with. But yes, theoretically, we should be able to fix whatever is causing your fatigue.”

“So then I can still play tennis?”

Dr. Cantor looks back and forth from Jordy to his mom. “You should be able to get back on the court after you recover from your surgery, and then we'll see how things progress. Marfan patients are at a higher risk to develop additional aneurysms, but we could monitor you with regular CT scans.” He clears his throat. “We'll talk about the potential risks involved with competing professionally after I get your test results.”

Jordy looks down at his hands and I want to reach out for him. I can't even imagine everything that's going through his head right now. So much scary information to receive all at once.

“So we just need to take things day by day?” his mom asks. She grips her coffee cup with both hands.

“Well, like I said. This is all academic until we have more information. The important thing right now is to repair the aneurysm.” Dr. Cantor pulls a pager from the pocket of his lab coat and frowns at it. “I'll have one of my residents schedule you for additional testing later today, and I can fit you into my surgical schedule tomorrow.”

Jordy's mom pales slightly. “So soon? I need to call my husband.”

Dr. Cantor nods. “We really shouldn't wait.”

“Mom. Tomorrow is fine,” Jordy says. “I'm eighteen. I can make decisions for myself, remember?”

“All right, but let me just update your father.” Pulling a cell phone from her purse, she ducks out into the hallway.

The doctor turns back to Jordy. “Do you have any questions?”

“Just one right now. If this accident hadn't happened and I didn't get that chest X-ray, could I have died before anyone diagnosed this?”

The doctor nods. “The aneurysm would have continued to grow until it eventually burst, unless it caused you pain prior to that point. A lot of aneurysms are asymptomatic.
Your accident could have very well saved your life.”

Jordy looks over at me, and I know what he's thinking. I drop my eyes to his hospital blanket and study the woven pattern as I blink back tears.

Dr. Cantor clears his throat. “I'm going to leave you alone to discuss things. I'll have one of my residents bring the consent paperwork by later. But no . . . strenuous activity until after the surgery, all right?”

I blush. “We're not. I mean—”

“We hear you loud and clear, Doc.” Jordy says.

He turns to me once we're alone. “You hear that? Your bad luck saved my life.”

“Well, it was either me or that deer,” I say jokingly. But inside I'm thinking about how every single thing that happened to me in the past few years played into this moment. If my life hadn't unspooled exactly the way that it did, I wouldn't have ended up in Pacific Point, on the tennis team, with Jordy. Not that someone or something took away three members of my family and replaced them with a boyfriend. People aren't replaceable—it doesn't work like that. Just that the Universe had taken them for its own reasons, and like my mom, I had created something good in the aftermath of tragedy. Maybe I was wrong about the never knowing. Maybe you do get your answers, at least some of them, if you're patient.

“Are you scared,” I ask.

“Yes,” Jordy says. “But for once I think my mom is right.
One day at a time.” He pauses. “Do you think your mom will let you be here for my surgery tomorrow?”

“I think she will.” I reach out for Jordy's hand and embrace his warmth.

“Awesome. I'll feel better knowing my good luck charm is close by.” His lips curl upward into his perfectly perfect smile.

I grin right back at him. “Good luck charm, huh? I like the sound of that.”

CHALLENGES

1. Make the tennis team.

2. Ride in a car with someone besides Mom: Jordy.

3. Spend a day in a crowded place: Tennis tournament.

4. Take something back from the Universe: Rock climbing.

5. Ride public transportation: Team bus.

6. Face a specific past fear: Roller coaster.

7. Relinquish control to someone else: Jordy, scene of accident.

GOAL

Plane ride to Ireland for memorial service.