Read Online We Were Never Here by Jennifer Gilmore - Free Book Online Page A

and I can see the blood transfusion is done. There’s no timer that dings or anything, but the dripping through the clear tube seems to have stopped. There’s just the residue, like that stuff along the glass when you drink tomato juice, which, for the record, I will never ever be able to do again.
    Bodies.
    Connor looks down at his Vans. And then he looks up at me.
    â€œYou’ll be back,” he says.
    And for the first time I believe it might be true.

Day 11: Frog, Prince, Fairy Tale
    Then it’s back to the torture, back to the night rounds and then the morning rounds. Except after the morning rounds on Day Eleven, Connor and Verlaine come.
    Again.
    â€œHey!” Connor says, peeking in. It’s so, so cute because Verlaine peeks in the same way, just at the bottom of the crack in the door.
    I sort of love them. I nod. I can’t wait for Verlaine to jump up onto my bed, sweet as a lemon drop, and for Connor to sit at the end of it and maybe touch my feet through the blanket. Or maybe just sit in my mother’s chair. Whatever.
    He glides in. Today he has on a long-sleeved polo shirt and . . . wait for it . . . it’s purple! He has a backpack, and he’s wearing the straps over both shoulders. He’s so preppy, but it’s exactly right for him. He is just so different from me, different from the old me, the me on the inside, but I make a mental note to perhaps make a costume change tomorrow.
    He stands at my bed, clutching Verlaine’s leash. Verlaine is smiling, his tongue sort of hanging out of his mouth, waiting and hoping.
    I don’t want to say, You guys! Come sit down on my bed , which is basically a hotbed of germs and disgustingness, so I just lie there, waiting.
    â€œWhat?” I say when no one else says anything.
    He taps his toes.
    â€œLet’s go for a walk,” Connor says.
    I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I can’t help but think that my mother or the doctors and nurses have sent Connor here to make me get out of my bed, which, while it is a hotbed of germs and disgustingness, is my hotbed. It is mine and I am its. I cross my arms and turn my head.
    â€œCome on, Lizzie,” he says.
    I can’t help but note that he has said my name after a sentence. I can’t decide if this is more amazing or less amazing than his sneakers and his purple shirt. Just the sight of those sneakers makes my heart lurch. I try not to think that Connor is probably here in my room saying my name after a sentence because it’s his job to say my name post-sentence. It’s probably in the Candy Striping Handbook, right there along with take patient’s wrist and run fingers along it, ever so softly. He’s just doing what he’s supposed to do, which is to be nice and bring his dog around to make people—sick people—happy. Connor has no feelings for me at all. He wouldn’t when I was healthy, and he certainly wouldn’t now that I’m not.
    So I’m trying not to think that, in addition to being here and in pain and recently transfused and about to lose my colon, I could also get my heart broken. Is that irony? Someone somewhere is mocking me.
    â€œNot today, guys!” I say in my most sparkly voice. “I’m tired.”
    â€œYeah,” he says. “Today. Now, even. I went home for Verlaine and came straight here just to get you up.”
    â€œThat’s so nice of you,” I say, but my heart’s not in it. No, my heart is in it, but I don’t want it to be, and I’m trying to make what I say make it not in it. I am his job, I think again. I admit, I am crushed.
    â€œNice? I’m actually getting paid by the hour. In cotton swabs and alcohol rubs. So take your time.”
    Maybe he read my mind. I laugh anyway.
    From behind the curtain, Thelma laughs too. “Go, already,” she says.
    She has this big, deep laugh I’ve never heard her use. But why would I? Who laughs