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

in here?
    â€œCan you give me a second?” I say, to all of them really. I can’t even imagine what it would be like for one of the orderlies to pull back the blanket to reveal my . . . gowns . And my hospital socks.
    â€œNo problem,” Connor says. “I’ll go grab Collette and wait for you outside.”
    I smile. “Sounds good.”
    Not a moment later the nurse comes in, sneaking up in her sneakers like all the nurses do, which makes me realize why they call them sneakers.
    Collette is fleshy and blond with really dark roots, and she’s dunked herself in so much perfume I might crash from the overpowering smell if I don’t stop and drop from weakness. “You’re heading out!” She adjusts my wires. She doesn’t unclip me so much as she untangles me and helps me sit up and swing my legsover the side of the bed. “I’ll get those two cuties now,” Collette says when she’s done.
    A few moments later—three heartbeats—and Connor is back. “Well, look who’s up and about!” he says. He and Verlaine are, like, bopping together, in tandem. Connor holds out his elbow. “May I?” he asks.
    Again I think of gowns, for me a long one, maybe green silk, that ends when I’m all the way across the room. I touch the L of his arm with one hand and lean the other on my little coatrack stand, which glimmers with the pouches of all the stuff that isn’t curing me.
    â€œWhere are we going?” The little plastic circles on the bottom of my socks make my feet stick on the linoleum. The elastic digs into my ankles.
    â€œOh, everywhere.” He walks toward the door. Verlaine practically hops beside him, his nails clicking on the linoleum.
    Outside my room is another world inside another world. It’s all like one of those beautiful Russian nesting dolls Nana once gave me. One fits in the other that fits in the other that fits in the other. But where is the end? How does the outside tell me how many are inside?
    I guess you just keep walking. I do: I shuffle out into the hallway—the sock rubber seems to make this more difficult—next to Connor but falling a little behind.
    â€œLook at you!” a nurse says.
    â€œHiya, Marion,” Connor says.
    â€œYou got her out!” she says. “You guys heading to the nightclubon six?” She chuckles.
    How amusing, I think. The humor bar in here is a little low for my taste.
    â€œHow does it feel, honey!!!” she asks me.
    I cannot stand the way everyone seems to be speaking in exclamation marks. I drop what I now see is the tight grip I had on Connor’s elbow.
    Something small but solid whirls by us, and Connor reaches his hand up and catches it. A frog’s tongue to a fly. Perfect. I can see Connor walking through the world in his own way. With power. He has it.
    You know who doesn’t have it? Me. What little I had—the good hair, the field hockey stick—is gone now. I’d say you really don’t know power until you’ve got none, but that’s not really true. The girls I know at school, the evil, cruel ones, they know what they’ve got. Lydia and Dee and I, we were never like that.
    He turns the object over in his hand. A rubber chew toy.
    â€œFor the sweetest dog in the world,” Marion says, winking.
    Connor beams, and the light inside him somehow manages to burn brighter. “Awesome,” he says. “He can’t have toys in here, but I’m keeping it for him.” He wags the rubber bone at Marion and sticks it in his back jeans pocket.
    â€œCome on,” he says, as if now we have the keys to somewhere. To anywhere.
    He and Verlaine are just ahead.
    All I can do is drag myself and all my IVs and wires along and follow behind.
    Wait for me.
    We walk the long hallway and then turn the corner, and there are these large orange armchairs set out in front of a big window, which looks out onto a massive