We found a mattress and dragged it up the stairs for me and Beezie to sleep on. We started to feel a little more at home, and to let ourselves enjoy things a little.
One afternoon all three of us went to Coney Island and ate until we wanted to burst and then rode a Ferris wheel. Beezie threw up all over me, but it was worth it. We put our feet in the ocean even though it was frigid, just to say we’d done it. Beezie screamed and ran in and out of the water, and Sofia stood beside me, shivering. We stared at the waves for ages—coming in, going out.
“She’s getting better?” Sofia asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems about the same.”
“Do you think you’ll go home, Cathy?” she asked. “When she is?”
She looked nervous, waiting for my answer. I could tell she didn’t want me to go.
“I hope so.” But, Ellis, at that moment the thought of going home made me shrink a bit inside. Like it was somewhere safer, but smaller than where I was.
Sofia nodded. She looked like she was trying to sort out a difficult thought. “I wonder if sometimes you can miss something so much it breaks you, and still be happy you left.”
“If anything ever happened to Beezie, I don’t think I’d ever want to see Canaan again,” I said. “Mama would never forgive me.”
“But nothing’s going to happen,” Sofia said. It was the one time I’ve ever known her to be wrong.
It wasn’t long after that that things turned for Beezie. One morning, she couldn’t get out of bed, and I stayed home trying all of our remedies at once. Nothing made a difference. By that night she was gasping instead of wheezing. Chest pains were making her cry. By midnight, she was delirious and sweating.
Sofia happened to be away that night for a birth. We had no one else. I hoisted Beezie onto my back, left a frantic note, and ran twenty blocks—all the way to Mercy Hospital, stumbling several times along the way.
As we walked in the doors, Beezie started to shake.
The hospital was crowded and chaotic, but I pushed my way to the front of a group at the front desk. When the receptionist saw Beezie convulsing in my arms, she called a nurse.
Beezie was terrified at that point, and flailing. She screamed for me as they tried to separate us, so I followed, my legs shaking with fear, as they rushed her down the hall. No one stopped me. They moved her to a bed and began rubbing hot cloths over her chest. When they tried to inject her with something to stop the shaking, she fought them like a wild animal.
The nurses were trying to hold her down when someone pushed into the room behind me, and I looked up to see Sofia sweeping past me, as if she’d been in the room a million times.
Beezie was too delirious to notice her, she was too busy fighting, but Sofia grabbed her hands, trying to keep her from thrashing the nurses so they could do what they needed to do.
“Beezie, how old are you?” Sofia asked, shooting me a terrified glance. “Tell me how old you are.”
Beezie blinked up at her, choking for breath, angry tears streaming down her flushed cheeks.
“It’s important,” Sofia said, though I couldn’t fathom why.
“Six,” Beezie finally choked. “It hurts, Cathy!”
“I know it hurts, Beezie, but pay attention. How many fingers?” Sofia asked, holding up three and staring at Beezie evenly, massaging her hands as one of the nurses finally managed to stick a needle in her arm.
“Three,” Beezie said. She was calming, her breath was rattling but also slowing, though she was still writhing in pain.
“What’s your favorite flower?” Sofia demanded.
Beezie seemed to take in the room a little. She let a doctor remove her shirt, but her eyes kept coming back to Sofia and her firm, steady gaze.
“I don’t know,” she said, and struggled for another deep breath.
“Just think about it,” Sofia said. I could see it didn’t matter what the question was; she was just trying to calm her, to relax her a bit. Like she might do with an animal. I couldn’t comprehend her composure; I could barely breathe myself.
“A lily,” Beezie said, I think because it’s one of the only flowers she knows. Mama used to grow them, remember? But not anymore.
“I’ll tell you what, Beezie,” Sofia said, still massaging Beezie’s hands, holding her tight. “If you let the doctors work on you, I promise I’ll name my first child Lily, in honor of you.”
Tears were still running down Beezie’s cheeks, but she seemed distracted as they pushed more needles into her arm. It was hooked to a tube and the nurse explained it would deliver antibiotics to fight the infection.
“What if you have a son?” Beezie wheezed, after a few moments of watching the doctors fearfully.
“He’ll be Mister Lily Ortiz,” Sofia said.
A weak smile formed on Beezie’s lips, though she kept on shivering.
“He won’t have your last name though,” she said. “He’ll have your husband’s.”
Sofia’s face was firm, and she brushed aside her hair. “I’ll never give up my name,” she said.
I’m back against the radiator again. It’s late. I need to write these last few things, and now I think I’m putting it off, because I feel like if these are the last words I get to say to you, I want to say them right.
The hospital was full of people as badly off as we were, and so Sofia and I had to do most of the nursing. But it was the medicine that really mattered.
For the next three days, we stayed together. We rubbed Beezie down constantly, boiled water for steam, and made her practically live under a tent of towels. I knew that I’d lose my job again, but there was no room for anything else.
And if there is a God, he or she or it had mercy on me, and all of my mistakes, because Beezie lived anyway.
I’ll never forget that morning. I woke before dawn and padded around her bed, trying not to wake her.
I was still in a haze because I’d dreamt about home—Galapagos and the dead brown garden and Mama. So I was still half there in my head as I pulled on my clothes and combed my hair.
It wasn’t until I was dressed that I noticed something wasn’t right. The place where Beezie slept was silent. No wheezing, no coughing, nothing.
I let out a gasp as I swept across the room toward her. But she wasn’t in her bed.
I heard her shuffle in behind me. She was holding a piece of cake she’d hornswaggled out of someone down the hall.
She was blinking at me, and smiled at my look of shock. And then she said, “You look like somebody died.”
I didn’t dare to write it down at first. Even now, I’m still scared to say it. It’s been seven weeks since then, and every day, little by little, Beezie is getting better.
There are two things left to tell you, Ellis, and these are the hardest for me to write.
One is that I’m not coming home.
I will try to explain this to you as well as I can, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain it well enough.