The Summer Remains (21 page)

“Shelly, why did I just get asked about Last Great Hope filing papers with the hospital?” I said, and they exchanged sweaty glances. I didn’t want to throw a fit in front of Cooper, but at the same time I was kind of beyond caring by this point. “See, this is
exactly
what I didn’t want. You going over my head to send me off to Epcot, treating me lick a sick little child, giving me anxiety with your theatrics. I told you the first day this happened, please, just let me act normal and keep all this out of my head, and-”

“It wasn’t me,” Shelly interrupted, and I paused.

“What? Then…
who
?”

Slowly she looked over at Cooper, whose face was as red as the meatball sub on his lap.

“Wait, really?
You
?”

“Well,” he said, “we weren’t gonna tell you yet, but…I just thought it’d be great to get you away from the hustle of the hospital for a few days, and so I called them the other day…it’s nothing crazy, no penthouse in New York, but…”

“Listen, Cooper,” I said, trying to let him down softly, “that’s sweet of you, it really is, but like I told my mom the day all this day started, I really don’t-”

Just then Steinberg turned into the room, focused on the clipboard in his hands.

“Steinberg, is this true?” I asked. “Have you all been conspiring behind my back?”

He halted and began to back up the way he’d come.

“Please, someone just tell me what’s going on,” I whined, even starting to annoy myself. “I’m not mad, I just hate surprises.”

“Yes, well, uh, unfortunately,” Steinberg stuttered, “Dr. Dill won’t be available until next Thursday, and so that leaves us a bit of grey area in between, so when Mr. Nichols here came to me, I was, uh, obliged to listen to him.”

I swallowed, or tried to, at least. “But…my hair is falling out, and my ribs are showing, and I can barely wheel myself to the bathroom – how can I leave?”

Steinberg smirked. “Indeed, all that is true. You are very fragile, and you’re being watched very closely, and as you’re one of the oldest living Intresia patients, several doctors around the country are very interested in your case and don’t want you stressed before the surgery.
However
, I have a feeling that I am about to forget to request that the nurses forward me your visitor logs every day, as I have been instructed to do. Furthermore, as long as you cooperate with me on the no walking or eating rules, I have a hunch that I will
continue
to not care who you admit into your room, or who
leaves
your room, as long as you are within an hour’s drive of me. And coincidentally, the place you’ve requested is just under fifty-five minutes from here.”

I tried not to smile at the man who saved my life every day. “But where am I going?”

“I’m afraid that’s up to Mr. Nichols,” he said, and I turned to see the most dazzling smile I’d ever seen on Cooper – and considering that this was Cooper Nichols we were talking about, that was saying a lot. I thought I saw a strange look of understanding flow between him and Steinberg, too, but maybe I imagined it.

“It’s a shame you can’t eat right now,” Cooper said, “because I heard from someone very close to me that the bakeries down in St. Augustine are absolutely to die for – no pun intended.”

“Cooper – really?”

He walked closer and bent down to shield our words from our prying public. It was awkward to be so intimate with him in front of all these people, but I tried to meet his completely overpowering gaze. “Summer, I want to take you somewhere, and I
know
you want to bust out of this joint. It’ll make me happy, and besides, if I smell one more whiff of lavender disinfectant spray, I will lose my mind. But please give me this. Whatever
this
is, whatever is happening between us, I want to finish it.” He wiped my eye and smiled. “Hey, remember when I told you how many seconds of summer there were?”

I nodded.

“Well, get your bathing suit ready – I think I just gave us a couple hundred thousand more.

18

Over the centuries St. Augustine, Florida has been the home of Spanish conquistadors, Caribbean pirates, Minorcan religious refugees, Civil War soldiers, the richest industrialist in America, and Cooper Nichols. It was an oddity, an anomaly, as if God himself had picked up a little European town, cobblestone streets and all, and dropped it onto the marshy coasts of northern Florida. It was maybe a little kitschy, sure, but I loved it to death anyway. (Side note: taking recent events into consideration, I
really
needed to start finding new sayings that didn’t involve the word “death.” Oops.) An oak-filled square ringed by museums and cathedrals sat at the heart of it, and that connected to a long main street called St. George lined with little touristy boutiques and ice cream shops. I guess some of the buildings in St. Augustine weren’t even that old, actually, and you could see the plastic underneath the plaster, but all that just made everything even more charming in a weird little way. The focal point of town was a rambling colonial Spanish fort (
actually
old) at the top of a windswept hill that looked out over a cute little harbor that filled with sailboats and yachts and dolphins in the summer. This town held more memories of my childhood than anywhere, and on weekends when I wasn’t in the hospital and the weather was palatable, my parents and I would drive down and walk around town all day, window shopping and going to museums and eating strawberry ice cream. (Okay, my mom would eat the ice cream while I watched her. Same thing.) It was perfect for my current situation, I guess, since it was beautiful and had lots of stuff to do, but it wasn’t so far away that I’d be out of reach of the hospital if anything went wrong. Cooper was thrilled to get away from that awful place and show me his hometown, and I was kind of weirdly intrigued at the prospect of seeing it through his eyes, too, and so I finally let myself get excited about the trip.

As we left the hospital in my mom’s green minivan on Friday morning, though, something bad happened – like
cringe-worthy
bad. Shelly leaned into the car, over Cooper’s chest, and said: “Have fun, Summer. Looking back on it, I’m
so
glad you disobeyed Steinberg’s orders and found someone.”

I got away from her as quickly as I could, but Cooper had still heard, and he pulled away from the hospital with a clenched jaw. He’d known I’d kept the surgery from him, sure, but knowing that I’d actually
gone against my doctor’s explicit orders
to find him? That was on a new level of low that made his eyes shut down and his lips fold into his mouth. I had
no idea
how to move forward.

On the drive to St. Augustine we passed a few little burnt-out beach towns still reeling from the migration of tourists to fancier resorts in south Florida. The abandoned aqua-hued motels were almost cinematic in their faded seaside glamour, mirroring the broken-down feeling within me. For some reason Cooper kept playing one Saviour song in particular on repeat called
Chasing Glory
as we drifted southward, mouthing all the words as he drove, looking distracted and detached as he stared out at the road:

I can tell that you’re lonely

I’m the daughter of a bad man, you can’t hide those scars from me

You’re smilin’ big in that American flag tee

But the ghosts show their teeth from underneath

(So come with me)

You know who my flames burn for

I can’t hide that either anymore

You say you don’t know

That you’re the one I’d lay it all down for

(So come with me)

Don’t got no money, no plans

Just dreams to chase and
this pen in my hand

So come hop in this faded van

Let’s go win some glory, baby, make one last stand

(So come with me)

They say we’re the new lost generation

And with my burned-out eyes, I can’t deny that

So let’s drive and drink and play the Replacements

‘Til the future we’re running from doesn’t look so black

(Just come with me)

I must’ve heard the song ten times by the time Cooper pulled off A1A and headed towards the bridge to St. Augustine. He was still acting weird and tense, and when he stopped at the gas station by the marsh and hopped out to get gas, I saw him scowling in the rearview mirror.

“Do you want anything?” he asked as he stopped by my window after pumping, the earnest boy from the bedside speech nowhere to be found. “You said you liked Strawberry Mentos once, or was that a lie, too, just like the rest of them?”

“…I’m fine,” I breathed. With angry regret in his eyes, he turned and stomped into the gas station, leaving me alone and reeling in the car.

So, side note: when I was in Sunday School, my teacher talked a lot about original sin. She said humans were constantly trying to go around and look for salvation because in the end everything went back to one simple fact: we had been born sick. She likened it to doing something really bad and breaking our parents’ trust: once you crossed that line, you could never go back, and every fight you might have with them afterward would really be about the original sin of your first transgression. And this is what I thought of as the minivan climbed the steep, tall bridge to St. Augustine, a spongy marsh stretching out under us, a coffee-brown river ribboning out to the horizon in the midst of the sawgrass. The original sin of our relationship was that I’d told the biggest lie of all: I was healthy. Maybe everything would always go back to that, no matter what happened in the present. No matter how forgiving Cooper claimed to be, perhaps I would still never be able to scrub that sin off my skin.

“Cooper,” I finally said as we got into town, “listen.” I was addicted to his magic, even when it stung, and I wanted to make this right again. “I’m really glad I came here with you, and I’m excited, but still, I can’t be punished for lying to you forever. I’m trying to enjoy my time before the surgery, and rude little comments like that aren’t going to help. Trust me, all I want is for us to drift back into summer world and have it be like it was before the hospital. Please help us get there.”

Finally we rounded a corner and pulled up to our hotel, the Casa Monica. The fanciest place in town, it looked like an old Spanish fortress and had multiple turrets and towers jutting up into the blue Florida sky.

Cooper turned to me. “You’re right,” he said with an expression like he’d just swallowed half a lemon and was trying to pretend it wasn’t sour. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. I want to get back to how it was the last few months, too.” He sighed. “Let’s just try to forget about the surgery, forget about your issues, forget about everything and just have a beautiful weekend under the oaks. Can you forgive me for being such a massive anus head? Is that feasible?”

I smiled. “It’s more than feasible. You have a deal, sir.”

“Have you stayed here before?” the concierge guy, Frank, asked as he waited for our keys to print in the lobby.

“Not really, but I’ve been to the bar a bunch,” Cooper said as he looked around at the Moorish Revival space (I’d taken an interior design course during one particularly misguided semester of college and had retained a bit of information). His eyes were huge and filled with this weird, boyish excitement, and it was pretty adorable.

“Nice!” Frank said. “We’ve got a lot of history here. At different times this building has been the fanciest Gilded Age hotel in Florida, an infamous courthouse, and then finally the remodeled hotel you see today, which is famous as a honeymoon retreat because of its romantic suites overlooking the town square. They say people either come here to face death, or fall in love.”

“What about both, at the same time?” I asked before I could stop myself. Cooper looked over at me, looking equal parts heartbroken and admonishing. It was the heartbroken half that shut me up.

“Uh,” Frank said after throwing us a weird glance, “yeah, anyway, let’s go check out that suite.”

“But we don’t have a suite,” I told him. “Last Great Hope arranged for a standard room with a pool view, or whatever?”

Frank took the keys and turned to me with a tight smile. “That has been changed at the request of Dr. Michael Steinberg. Shall we?”

Our room was beyond beautiful, of course. Actually, I don’t even know if I can call it a
room
, because it was more like a palatial New York apartment, a three-story situation on the corner of the hotel in one of the towers. The first floor was a plush lounge area with a little bar and a few antique couches, and after climbing a steep staircase we reached the middle bedroom level, with a giant bed with a red velvet headboard that looked out over the town square. Up another stairway was another bedroom, this one with two large beds that you could jump across. And we did just that, or at least Cooper did, jumping from bed to bed while I took iPhone pictures from the edge of one of them. Finally he fell next to me and sort of nuzzled me with his leg to test my mood, and after I looked at him to assure him I wasn’t mad anymore, we started making out like teenagers drunk on love and Natty Lite. I knew my breath probably smelled like hot garbage after being in the hospital for so long with barely any sink access, but what could I do?

Before we could get very far, though, he pulled away. I noticed how alive my body still felt at his touch, and wondered if that feeling would ever go away.

“Gah,” he said, “we’ve got all weekend for that! You’re so distracting. Let’s get ready for me to show you around. I can’t wait to be your cheesy tour guide.”

He got up and started rustling through his bags. Of course he did. I reminded myself that I now looked like more of a Hospital Patient than ever, and that hooking up with me would’ve been more of a chore than anything else. I had to give him time to adjust to my quickly-eroding looks before jumping his bones.

“But I’ve been to this town a million times,” I told him, trying not to sound too crestfallen. “Why can we do that we both haven’t done before? And hey – what’s in that box?”

A small, rectangular velvet box fell from his backpack – a
definite
jewelry box. Panicked, he bent down, retrieved it, and stuffed it back in.

“Nothing,” he snapped. “We’re just here to hangout, okay? You’ve never been here with a native St. Augustinian. Let’s just go get ice cream before dinner, and then come up here and use the beds for trampolines until we get sleepy. Then I’ll push them together and make one giant bed for us.”

“Okay,” I said, shivering a little for some reason. I was getting
very
thin, sure, but something told me nerves had nothing to do with my sudden chill. What was going on? Was that box the reason for this trip?

And suddenly my doubts jumped out at me. Was actually Cooper still furious with me, and had my mother simply guilted him into making up with me and taking his Sick Little Wheelchair Girlfriend on one last trip where he’d give me some cheesy proposal in the Spanish district or something? Was that why he was so angry? Is that what everyone thought I wanted? To force him down the aisle before I bit the dust?

I told myself I was acting psycho and tried to calm down. Cooper and Shelly could’ve been talking about
anything
the other day over that Subway sandwich. Once again I was being the Queen of Self-Doubt and needed to tell my brain to shut the hell up.

“Ice cream and jumping on beds,” I said as I looked up at him again. “Sounds great. You know, I’m so glad I never grew up.”

“And I’m so glad I found someone to stay a kid with,” he said as he kissed me on the forehead with chapped hospital lips and then headed for the bathroom.

To kill time, I pulled out my phone and scanned the latest Facebook engagements. Spoiler alert: it was the height of summer, and there were four.

As afternoon fell into early evening, busting a hole in the oppressive heat blanketing the city, Cooper walked me across the square to the head of St. George Street. We weaved our way down the cobblestone path through the tourists and sightseers, stopping here and there to check out a boutique or little tchotchke shop or candy store or whatever. I wasn’t really embarrassed to be in the wheelchair in public, but I still felt like a total burden, and I was embarrassed on Cooper’s behalf that everyone was staring at us. Because that was the nature of humans, to stare at what didn’t make sense to them – and this tall, strong boy pushing around this frail girl who no longer looked young nor beautiful definitely did
not
make sense. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and that kind of just made me sink deeper into love with him than before.

“You’re
sure
you’re fine with the wheelchair thing?” I asked him for the tenth time after sweat started to show on his forehead. “I think I can rent a little motorized scooter thing from the visitors’ center if we need to.”

“Sum,” he said, “I played football for a year in high school. I was a defensive end, which meant I spent my afternoons pushing against three-hundred-pound lineman at scrimmages. You are a feather compared to them.”