“One hundred point six,” I said. “Apparently my hospital rewards program has no blackout dates.”
Dad didn’t laugh. He was sitting on the edge of my bed in pajama pants and a flannel thrown over his T-shirt, his reading glasses still upstairs, holding the thermometer as if the number might change. Across the room, Pops was still on the phone with oncology.
Pops wrote something on the back of an old appointment sheet. “We’ll leave now,” he said. “Thank you.” He ended the call and looked at Dad. “They want her evaluated at Children’s tonight.”
“Of course they do.” I leaned back against my pillows.
Dad set the thermometer on my nightstand. “How are you feeling, Fiorellina?”
“Hot. And tired.”
He gave me a small smile, then looked at the clothes folded on the chair beside my dresser. “Let’s get you dressed.”
Pops helped me into loose joggers while Dad fetched my shoes and jacket. By the time I was sitting on the edge of the bed, Dad was packing my charger and medication list.
Stetson appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, his hair sticking up and one hand rubbing his eyes. He took in the bag, my shoes, and Pops’ phone before looking at me. “Fever?”
“A hundred point six,” I told him, trying to get my right arm into my jacket without pulling at the tender skin near my port. “They want me back at Children’s.”
Stetson came closer and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m coming,” he said, then turned toward the hallway.
Dad stopped him at the door with my overnight bag. “Not tonight, buddy. Somebody has to stay with Bernard, and this could take all night. Go to school. I’ll call you the minute we know anything.”
Stetson looked back at me instead of answering Dad. His hand stayed on the doorframe, and I knew he was waiting for me to back him up.
“Stay with Bernie,” I told him. “He’ll be miserable if everybody leaves.”
“He’ll be miserable anyway.” Stetson swallowed. “Text me when you know something. Actual updates, Sloane. Not your usual ’still alive, unfortunately’ nonsense.”
“You’re demanding.”
“Extremely.” He stepped aside while Dad helped me into the wheelchair.
Bernard tried to follow us out, tail wagging at the prospect of an unexpected family outing. Stetson caught his collar and crouched to scratch behind his ears. Through the glass in the front door, there they were on the foyer rug while Dad helped me into the Suburban: my brother in his pajamas, one hand buried in white fur, watching until we pulled away.
At Children’s, Pops told the desk I’d just had chemotherapy and had a fever, and a nurse came for us before he’d finished. My temperature had climbed to one hundred point nine. They brought me straight into a treatment room for blood cultures and antibiotics, and I kept my eyes on a spot on the ceiling while she cleaned and accessed my port.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
The nurse looked up, and before she could answer, I rushed to explain. “I went to school yesterday. Only half a day. They said it was okay.” She kept connecting the tubing while I tried to remember whether anybody in the hallway had been coughing.
“A fever doesn’t mean you caused it,” she told me. “You called when you were supposed to. That’s what matters right now.”
I looked at Pops. He’d brought the emergency sheet in its plastic sleeve and was reading it again, although we were already doing everything it said.
“You can put that down,” I told him. “We’re here.”
He glanced at the sheet, then folded it into his jacket pocket. “Just checking.”
Dad pulled his chair closer and rested his hand beside mine on the blanket. I hooked my fingers around his.
Around four, my phone lit up with messages from Stetson.
Stetson: bernard has decided the front door is his new bedroom
Stetson: i brought him his rug
Stetson: he rejected the rug
Stetson: i’m sitting here with him. let me know what they say
I sent back a picture of my yellow hospital socks.
Me: five-star accommodations
Stetson: terrible color. request a refund
By morning, I’d been admitted. My counts were low, and I needed antibiotics while we waited on the cultures.
Nobody promised a discharge date. I ended up back on the oncology floor, close enough to my old room that I recognized the view of the parking lot and the squeak of the supply cart outside the nurses’ station. I’d been home for four days.
At breakfast, Renata asked whether I felt up to a visitor. Lylah had been asking about me, and both our teams had cleared a short visit.
“Yeah,” I said, pushing away the oatmeal, which had formed a skin while I ignored it. “I’d like that.”
A few minutes later, Lylah appeared in her lilac wig and fuzzy socks covered in frogs. She’d cleaned her hands and put on a mask, but she stayed at the threshold until I waved her in.
“Back already?” she asked.
“I missed the oatmeal.” I pushed the tray aside so she could bring the chair closer, and she looked into the bowl.
“Did they even stir it?”
She sat with her phone in her lap. Her eyeliner was thicker on one side, and she rubbed at the corner of her eye before giving up and leaving it.
“Fever?” she asked.
I nodded, and she pulled a face. “That sucks. Did you get any sleep?”
“Not much.” I shifted against the pillows as her phone lit up. She groaned and turned it toward me. Her friend Alexa had sent a picture of a lopsided birthday cake. Across the frosting, in purple letters, it said Congrats on existing, Nessa.
“That’s supposed to be a daisy,” Lylah said, pointing at a yellow blob in the corner. “I promised Nessa I’d help plan her birthday. She refuses to cancel just because I’m stuck here, which is annoying and also why I love her.”
I leaned closer to the screen. “Why is the daisy wearing sunglasses?”
“Because her boyfriend thinks he’s funny.” Lylah zoomed in. “Would you be offended if somebody gave you this?”
“Depends how it tastes.” I took another look at the sunglasses. “I’d still eat it.”
“Excellent. Can you help me pick a song for the video? Alexa’s putting together clips from all of us, and if I choose another eighties song she’ll disown me.”
We spent the next ten minutes arguing over the playlist. I rejected three songs on principle, and Lylah accused me of having the musical taste of a suburban dad. She finally sent Alexa our choice.
She added my name to the message she sent Nessa, then held it up for me to check. While we were waiting for Alexa to answer, Lylah asked if I’d told my dads about the fever right away.
“I called Pops. I didn’t want to, but I called him.”
“I get that.” She set her phone facedown when Alexa’s answer came through. “The worst part is knowing they’re going to tell you to come in.”
“And then they do.” I looked at my bag on the windowsill. Dad hadn’t even unpacked it all the way.
Lylah stayed until a nurse came to take her back to her room, talking about a cooking show she’d been watching. A contestant had forgotten to turn the oven on, and she pulled up the clip so I could watch the judge discover the raw chicken for himself.
“He’s going to win,” she said.
“He served raw chicken.”
“Redemption arc, Sloane. Watch.”
I told her he wouldn’t make the finale. She bet me a vending-machine brownie and refused to discuss it further. I was still laughing when Renata came back to collect my tray.
Chandler came after school on Tuesday, his soccer bag hanging from one shoulder. After checking with the nurse, he put on a mask, cleaned his hands, and took the visitor chair. He stretched his long legs beneath the tray table until his sneaker caught one of the wheels.
“You look like you’re about to rob a very boring bank,” I told him as he sat down, the mask hiding everything but his eyes.
“I’m after the crackers.” He nodded toward the unopened packet on my tray.
“You can have them. They’re unsalted.” I pushed the packet toward him, and he left it where it was.
He set a paper bag on the tray table. Inside was another sealed packet of crackers and a note in Tinsley’s handwriting.
For S. Pops said nothing from the bakery case. These were the least depressing thing I could find. Feel better or else.
I held up the note. “She’s threatening a cancer patient.”
“She said you’d appreciate consistency.”
I propped the note against my water cup. Tinsley had underlined or else twice. That was more like it.
He told me about school, then started doing an impression of Stetson arguing with a referee at their last game.
I told Chandler his impression wasn’t fair because he’d forgotten the hand gestures. He immediately supplied them, waving both arms with such perfect Stetson outrage that I laughed hard enough to make my sore chest complain.
Dad stopped in the doorway, smiling when Chandler tried it again for him. Chandler checked the time and stood. He had soccer practice.
“Go,” I told him before he could start apologizing. “Your team needs somebody who can translate Stetson.”
“Impossible job.” He hooked his soccer bag over his shoulder. “I’ll send you the Dashiell notes.”
Stetson came by after practice. He set his soccer bag beside the chair, then handed me my favorite lip balm and the fuzzy socks I’d forgotten to pack.
“Your socks were under the bed,” he said. “Both of them. Separate ends.”
“You went through my room?”
“Dad told me where to look.”
He dropped into the chair Chandler had vacated and glanced at the IV pole. “They tell you anything new?”
“Still waiting on cultures. Still getting antibiotics. Still not allowed to order a pizza.”
He nodded, twisting the cap of the lip balm between his fingers. “I wanted to come last night.”
“I know.”
“Bernard slept against the front door. I tried moving him. He moved back.”
“Sounds like Bernard.”
Stetson put the lip balm on the tray within reach and stayed until Pops came back with dinner. We talked about his classes, mostly. Before he left, he squeezed the toe of my sock through the blanket.
On Wednesday, Chandler brought his Algebra homework. “Number twelve. Negative four.” Chandler hovered his pencil over his notebook, waiting for my verdict.
“Positive four. You lost the minus sign in the line above.”
He erased it and moved to the next problem. When he asked about number thirteen, I told him he was welcome for the help.
“I didn’t thank you,” he pointed out without looking up.
“Your gratitude is implied.”
He bent over number thirteen, smiling. We got through twenty-two problems before he put the homework away.
After we finished Algebra, Chandler pulled out his Dashiell notebook and his phone. On the screen, Dashiell was asleep beside the closed yellow umbrella from the training room.
“An umbrella?” I asked, holding the phone closer.
“He wouldn’t go near it at first,” Chandler said. “I left it on the floor and sat on the other side of the room. Took him twenty minutes to come over.”
“That’s my boy.” I looked again at the dog curled beside the umbrella. “Don’t take it personally if he’s scared of it again tomorrow.”
“I won’t.” Chandler took his phone back.
Chandler turned the notebook so I could see his notes. He’d recorded each small step, including the ones that hadn’t gone well.
I tapped one of his notes and reminded him not to rush the leash transfer. If Dashiell backed away, he needed a minute, not somebody coaxing him through it. Chandler turned the page to show me the next step he’d planned.
“You’re getting annoyingly good at this,” I said, trying not to sound too pleased.
“I learned from an annoyingly good teacher.”
He didn’t look up when he said it. I reached for the notebook, but he had one more picture to show me first: Bernard sprawled across the rug beside my bed downstairs, his paws in the air.
Chandler explained that Pops had let him grab my charger and that Bernard had been asleep like that when he walked in. I told him it was Bernard’s dignified pose.
“Very intimidating,” Chandler agreed, eyeing the dog’s upside-down paws.
I handed back his phone while he put his books away. I caught the strap of his backpack before he could lift it. “Thanks for coming.”
“I wanted to.” He rested his hand on the strap beside mine, waiting until I let go before he picked it up.
Lylah was at my doorway when he came out. “Bye, lover boy,” she called after him.
Chandler’s ears went pink above his mask, but he only lifted a hand and kept walking. I called her name in warning. She looked back, completely unrepentant, and informed me that he seemed nice.
“He is nice,” I said before I could stop myself.
Her eyebrows rose, and I pointed at her. “Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.” She spread her hands.
“Your eyebrows did.”
On Thursday evening, Lylah came by moving more slowly than she had the day before. She lowered herself into the chair and leaned back, quiet for a moment. I waited until she looked at me before asking if she’d had a bad day.
“Not my favorite.”
She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push. Instead, she studied my hair, twisted into a loose bun. “Has anybody talked to you about when you might start losing it?”
I told her the doctors said it could happen soon. My scalp had been tender for two days, tight, like my ponytail was too high even when my hair was down. Lylah touched the edge of her wig and said people were going to have opinions. Some would tell me to shave it, others to wait, and somebody would definitely say it was just hair.
“Do you have an opinion?” I asked, looking at the lilac waves framing her face.
“I’d get a softer pillowcase.” She gave me a tired smile. “The rest is up to you.”
I looked at the loose strands escaping my clip and asked how she’d handled it herself.
“The first time, I let my mom help me cut it. The second time, I bought a wig before I even needed one.”
She adjusted the lilac waves. “Same girl, same hair, different answer. Nobody tells you that part.”
“I don’t know what I want.” I picked a loose strand off my sleeve, winding it around my finger.
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“You okay?” I asked.
Lylah looked up from my sleeve. I nodded toward the chair. “You’ve barely moved since you sat down.”
She smiled down at her feet, but it faded quickly. “I’m tired. They’re changing some things with my treatment, and I’m tired of talking about it.”
“Then we don’t have to.”
I turned up the television so we could follow the game show on-screen. Lylah tucked her feet under the chair and watched with me, occasionally asking for a drink of water. When Renata came to take Lylah back, she stood carefully, accepted a steadying hand, and pointed at me.
“Remember. Your hair, your rules.”
After she left, I loosened my bun and ran my fingers gently through it. A few strands caught between them. I looked at them, then dropped them in the trash and put my clip on the tray table.
Pops came back that evening carrying a clean T-shirt for me and the book he’d been trying to read all week. Dad stood to let him have the chair, but Pops caught his hand before he could move away.
“Come here a second.” Pops pulled him close and rested his forehead against Dad’s shoulder. Dad’s arm went around his back, his hand settling between Pops’ broad shoulders. I turned the television down when neither of them moved.
“Did you eat?” Dad asked against his hair.
“With Stetson. There’s some in the fridge for you.” Pops lifted his head, and Dad kissed him. As Dad reached for his jacket, Pops caught his sleeve and tugged him back for another. “Call me when you get home.”
“I will.” Dad kissed the top of my head on his way past. Pops sat down and opened his book, but by nine he’d been on the same page for twenty minutes.
“Pops?” I waited until he looked up from the book he’d been pretending to read. “I almost didn’t tell you about the fever.”
He closed the book, and suddenly I wished I’d waited until he finished the chapter. “Before I called,” I said. “For a second I thought maybe I could just go back to sleep. I didn’t want to end up here again.”
“But you called.” He set the book aside and leaned forward. “Next time, wake us up. Every time. I’d rather run downstairs for nothing.”
“I know.” My eyes burned, and I pulled the blanket higher while he moved his chair beside the bed. He asked if I wanted the television off, but I told him to leave it on. Neither of us watched much of it.
Uncle Jake came Friday afternoon with a deck of cards and Dad’s glasses case. He held the case up from the doorway, his mask slipping down his nose until he pulled it back into place.
“Did he leave those at home again?”
“Kitchen counter,” Uncle Jake said. “Right next to his keys. He remembered those.” He cleaned his hands, set the case beside Dad’s laptop, and pulled up the chair. “Hey, baby girl. Feel like losing at something?”
“Depends. Are you still cheating at rummy?”
“You keep saying that. Nobody’s proved it.” He took the cards out and waited while I cleared a space on the tray. When he bent to shuffle, the sandy patches at his temples showed against the strawberry blond. Chandler had the same little crease between his eyebrows when he was concentrating.
Dad closed his laptop, but his phone rang before we finished dealing. He checked the screen and silenced it.
“Take it, Nick,” Uncle Jake said. “We’re busy.”
Dad looked at me, and I nodded toward the door. “Go. I’ll call if he starts hiding cards.”
Uncle Jake waited until Dad had gone into the hallway before sliding the rest of my hand across the tray. “He used to accuse me of that, too.”
“Were you cheating?”
“Once.” His blue eyes narrowed above the mask when I reached for the discard pile. “Your turn.”
We played two hands before I asked him to shuffle again and forgot to pick up my cards. He put the deck aside without asking if I was tired. I leaned back while he told me about Bernard stealing a glove from his jacket and refusing to give it back.
“Stetson sent me a picture,” I said. “You were on the floor.”
“I needed the glove.” He found the picture and passed me his phone. Bernard was halfway under the kitchen table with it between his paws. Uncle Jake sat at the other end, holding out a treat, while Pops laughed in the background.
“You were negotiating with him.”
“I thought we’d reached an agreement. Then he took the treat and kept the glove.”
I zoomed in on Bernard’s face. He looked very pleased with himself, which was probably why Uncle Jake had kept the picture anyway.
When Dad came back, Uncle Jake left the cards in my nightstand. “We’ll finish when you’re home,” he said, and Dad walked him to the elevators.
By Saturday, my fever had stayed down, and the cultures hadn’t shown an infection that needed more treatment in the hospital. After reviewing my counts, the team cleared me to recover at home with follow-up visits. Pops asked questions while Dad wrote down the answers.
Bernard greeted us at the front door with his entire body, tail sweeping back and forth so hard it knocked against the wall. Stetson held his collar while I got inside with my wheelchair.
“Careful, you giant snowdrift,” I told Bernard as he stretched his nose toward my hand.
I scratched behind his ears, then cleaned my hands while Dad wheeled me into my room. Bernard followed us. By the time Dad set my bag beside the bed, he’d curled up on his rug as if he’d been saving it for me.
Pops put the emergency sheet back on the fridge, still in its plastic sleeve. He straightened it twice while Stetson got my water bottle from the kitchen and brought it to my room. Pops followed with a mug for Dad, who was still checking the discharge papers beside my bed. Dad took a sip and leaned into Pops’ side for a second before going back to the papers.
I slept most of Sunday. Monday wasn’t much different, except that my phone kept lighting up with the group chat.
Noelle: i can bring sour gummy worms thursday if sloane wants company
Chandler: I thought I was coming Thursday.
Noelle: then i can do friday
Chandler: Oh. Okay. Good.
Tinsley: shocking display of healthy communication
Chandler: Please don’t make this weird.
Emory: too late
Maekynzie hadn’t said anything in the group chat. There were still two private messages from her after my first treatment day, both unanswered. I read them again, then set the phone aside. I wasn’t ready to answer.
Tuesday morning, I woke before anyone else. The house was quiet, and a strip of gray light fell across the comforter. Chandler’s gray beanie hung over the back of my desk chair, where he’d left it when he brought my charger. I’d meant to text him about it.
I pushed myself up against the pillows. At first I thought there was a loose thread on the pillowcase. Then I saw another, and another. Long blonde strands lay across the cream fabric, tangled together where my head had been.
I touched one with the tip of my finger, and it came away without any resistance. For a while, I sat there looking at the pillow, remembering what Lylah had said. Your hair, your rules.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet. I only knew that yesterday, I’d gone to sleep with my hair spread across the pillow like always. This morning, part of it was still there after I’d gotten up.