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  “What does it do?” I slipped the mask back onto my face and inhaled deeply.

  He looked at me for a moment as though he was deciding whether or not to tell me. Then he made his decision. “Most cancer therapies attack fast-growing cells. They don’t distinguish between the fast-growing cancer cells and your body’s own fast-growing cells. That’s why certain side effects are common: hair loss, nausea. Hair is made up of fast growing cells. So is the intestinal lining.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t exactly news to me. I’d spent a lot of time killing exactly those cells. He took a moment to unclamp the IV line. Property Five began to drip into me.

  Here we go, I thought.

  Dr. Harry continued, “Different cancer treatments affect different parts of a cell. Property Five works on the microtubules.”

  Okay, that was new. No one had ever talked about those before, whatever they were. He left a pause for me to say I didn’t understand. Which was pretty smart since I kind of didn’t.

  “The last thing I remember in science class is homeostasis,” I said, leaving the mask on. The oxygen was too precious. And it helped with homeostasis.

  “Seventh grade science. Our educational system leaves much to be desired.” He frowned for a moment as though he were actually thinking about how to fix that but then continued, “Microtubules are in some ways the skeletal structure of a cell. Though they’re more complicated than that. They’re involved in many of a cell’s processes. So, you see anything you do to change their makeup changes a cell’s behavior.”

  “You mean, like the cancer cells die.”

  “Yes. Without microtubules cancer cells die.”

  I lifted the mask. “Thanks for explaining all that. I kind of understand.” Or at least I thought I did. My guess was that he’d dumbed it down a lot, which was why he seemed to be so careful with what he said.

  “How long does it take to go through this bag?”

  “About two hours. Do you want to switch to the cannula?”

  “That would probably be good.”

  “I’m going to step out. I’ll send Miss Haggerty in to do that.”

  Without a nod or a goodbye or even a friendly smile, Dr. Harry walked out of the room. He seemed like a really stiff guy. For some reason, I hoped I lived long enough to make him laugh. I wondered if I should try and sleep. Sleep was supposed to be healthy, and there certainly wasn’t anything else to do. I was stuck there for the next few hours, at least.

  I closed my eyes. Ready to sleep. But adrenaline raced through my veins right next to this new poison. What if it worked? What if Property Five actually saved me? What would I do with my life? It had been so long since I’d thought about having a life that I really had no idea. The question was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to think about what I might do if I had a life in front of me. If I thought about having a life, I’d want one. I’d want to make those dreams come true. Or at least try. And there was still a very big, very real possibility that Property Five would fail.

  I didn’t want to hope where there was no hope.

  Even with the oxygen, my breathing grew worse. I think ten minutes passed. Maybe more. I began to wonder if Miss Haggerty was coming back or if she’d just decided to ignore me. I struggled to take a deep breath, except it didn’t feel deep. It felt like someone had stuffed my lungs with cotton balls. I was breathing, but it was having little effect.

  Finally, she came into the room carrying a cannula in a clear plastic bag. She smelled like cigarette smoke, which maybe explained why she’d taken so long. Had to have her ciggie break. She walked around the table to the IV stand and checked it. I heard her say, “Huh.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Did Dr. Harry say why he stopped the antibiotic?”

  “He felt it was a good idea to get the Property Five started. Is that not right?”

  The frown on her face told me maybe it wasn’t. I was pretty sure he could have given me both at once. So, why hadn’t he?

  “I’m sure it’s fine. Dr. Harry knows what he’s doing,” she said, remaining expressionless. She opened the plastic bag to get to the cannula.

  “Can you increase the oxygen first? I can’t breathe.”

  She reached down and fiddled with the oxygen canister. Then she began switching me over to the cannula. There was only a moment or two between the time she took the mask off me and when she managed to get the cannula into place but still I began to gasp. My mouth opened wide, and my neck strained as though either of those things would help me get air into my thickening lungs. Neither did. Panic filled me. I wanted to run but knew I couldn’t even get off the table.

  Miss Haggerty’s face paled. She got swimmy and swirly, then she stopped having outlines and sort of blurred into the room. I reached out, for what I’m not sure.

  “I’d better get Dr. Harry,” she said, fleeing the room.

  I stared at the ceiling, trying to focus, struggling for breath, my heart racing as though I was being chased. Bracing myself on the table, I pulled and pulled for air. The ceiling was made of acoustic tile. It had been painted the same putty color as the walls. I wondered if it dampened sound, if patients—the ones not struggling to breathe—had screamed in that room and not been heard.

  The door popped open and Dr. Harry rushed in, Miss Haggerty behind him. He ignored me, going right for the IV stand. I thought he might change it out and put the bag of antibiotic fluid back on in hopes of bringing the infection back under control. Instead, he played with the clamp until the drip was constant. My hand began to burn. He turned and unlocked a drawer. Moments later he gave me a shot in the upper arm.

  Though I was struggling, light-headed, darkness closing in, I managed, “Wha—”

  “Prednisone. It will help open the airways,” Dr. Harry said.

  I felt faint. Nauseated. Things went gray, then black—

  —then I was looking down at the room, as though I was floating near the ceiling, as though I was taking in the scene from a security camera. Except the quality was good. Really good. I could see everything in a super realistic way. And I was calm. My breathless panic had passed.

  Looking at myself on the table, I was almost blue and it didn’t look like I was breathing. Miss Haggerty was tense. Dr. Harry intense. But I didn’t care. It was nice on the ceiling. Up there with the putty-colored tile.

  “Doctor, he’s not breathing.”

  “Check his pulse.”

  Miss Haggerty felt around my wrist. I knew before she did she wouldn’t find anything. My heart wasn’t beating. I wasn’t breathing. I felt relief. As though I’d been pretending to be alive for a very long time, and now I didn’t have to pretend anymore.

  “I’m not getting a pulse,” she said. I barely heard her. I was thinking about my mom. She would feel bad, but she would feel bad no matter what. Maybe this final effort, this trip to The Godwin Institute to save me would help her find peace. She’d tried. She’d tried very hard. What more could she have done? Would she find solace in that? I hoped she would.

  Miss Haggerty was pushing on my chest. I knew what that was called from TV, now what was it? Compressions. She was doing compressions. They looked painful. I was glad I wasn’t going to wake up to cracked ribs. I waited for a white light to appear. For a tunnel. I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew. I didn’t know a lot of dead people.

  Not much happened.

  I watched as Dr. Harry ordered Miss Haggerty to stop the compressions so he could give me a shot. I could see where it might be difficult to find a vein when someone was pounding on the patient’s chest. I felt bad for them. It must feel shitty to lose a patient. Like it’s your fault, even though it’s not. People work that way a lot, blaming themselves for stupid stuff they couldn’t do anything about while totally letting themselves off the hook for things they could have easily changed.

  Dr. Harry opened the cabinet and pulled out a portable defibrillator. They were going to shock me. I knew it wasn’t going to work. I was too dead to be
revived. But it was still interesting to watch. Things weren’t happening like they do on TV. Dr. Harry didn’t yell “Clear!” like a TV doctor. It wasn’t even dramatic. He seemed almost bored. He pulled up my shirt and put the paddles on me. Snapped at Miss Haggerty to “Get back.”

  I watched my body flop on the table. Haggerty cowered by the counter—okay, she was dramatic. She actually looked scared. There was a pause, the doctor fiddled with the defibrillator and shocked me again. Nothing happened, and I was glad. I’d be able to move on soon. All of this would be over. It would be behind me. Whatever came next was about to come. And I wanted it.

  And then suddenly there was nothing but dark and pain and more dark.

  EIGHT

  Clawing my way out of a thick, soupy darkness, I came to in a large room with several hospital beds. Ten, actually, though I didn’t know that at first. Counting shit was not the first thing on my very fuzzy mind. What was on my mind was trying to figure out if I was alive or not.

  On the one hand, I felt pretty crappy so I was probably alive. Presumably, death was painless. God, I hoped death was painless. To be dead and in pain would suck. On the other hand, the room was eerie bright and everything around me seemed to glow. That was kind of tipping the scale toward my not being alive.

  Not to mention, I was extremely cold. Another check mark on the side of death. My hand itched where the IV went in, the room smelled of antiseptic cleaner, my chest hurt like a mother. Ribs aching where they’d been cracked—shit, I’d hoped to miss out on that—and there was stinging where my Hickman line went in. I reached up and felt around with one hand and found the line gone. Why was it gone? I sort of remembered Dr. Harry saying he wanted to take it out but wasn’t that going to be in a few days? I couldn’t remember exactly. It seemed important for a moment and then didn’t.

  Trying to sit up, I saw three of the four walls had windows. They were partly open, and fresh air drifted casually into the room. I could see the lake out the window; it was blue and serene. On the side of the building was a stand of trees and someone’s dilapidated garage. The window behind me, nearest my bed, had a couple of flies clinging to screen, trying to find a way in.

  On the other side of my bed, in a molded-plastic chair, sat a guy around my age, maybe a year or so younger, with the most amazing brown eyes I’d ever seen. He had thick dark hair, an impish smile, pale skin with a bluish tint, and incredibly long eyelashes. Like everything else in the room, he seemed to glow making me wonder if he was an angel.

  “Am I dead?” I asked.

  “I hope not. It’s kind of dull around here. I’m counting on you to liven things up.” I couldn’t imagine myself livening anything up, but it was kind of nice that someone thought I could.

  “Who are you?”

  “Goth.”

  “What?”

  “It’s short for Goliath. Goliath Gunderson. Goth.”

  “Seriously, your parents named you Goliath?”

  “It’s biblical.”

  “Not in a good way.” Suddenly, I felt like maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “I mean, you’ve probably heard that before.”

  “Yeah, a few times. I’m going to change it someday. I just can’t decide between Brian or Dave. Which do you think is more boring?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. Or mocking me. Or both. All I really wanted to do, though, was lay back down and drift off into the dark of sleep. But Goth was staring at me, so it would be rude to drift off.

  “My name is Jake. Jake Margate.” I felt a bit embarrassed about having such a regular sounding name.

  “I know your name. Dr. Harry told me you were coming.”

  “Oh, all right. Are you in the study?”

  He nodded.

  “So you’ve already gotten Property Five?”

  “No. Not yet. Dr. Harry says I’m not ready.”

  I wondered what that meant. Why was I ready and Goth wasn’t? He certainly looked like he was doing better than I was, at least at that particular moment. “How long have you been here?”

  “A week, ten days, something like that. It’s hard to keep track. So what do you like to do for fun?”

  I had no idea how to answer that question so I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Breathe.”

  And then, to prove my point I took a deep breath. Or tried to, anyway. The breath I managed was shallow, and my lungs still felt as though they were filled with cotton balls. And moving my chest hurt like hell. Obviously, I still had a lung infection. It hadn’t just gone away overnight. However, it didn’t seem to matter as much. There was a cannula on my upper lip. They must have the oxygen levels turned up to the max since I didn’t feel panicked or oxygen-starved. I barely felt the need to breathe at all, which was good.

  I noticed Goth nodding his head. “Yeah, breathing is the best.”

  There was something about him that seemed familiar but I was sure I’d never seen him before. Too tired to keep sitting up, I lay back down and said, “I thought you were an angel when I woke up.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “I’m not…” Sleep was creeping up on me, like a slimy creature from a lagoon.

  “You’re not what?”

  “Disappointed.”

  NINE

  The next time I woke up, it was my mom sitting in the molded-plastic chair. She was watching old episodes of Devious Maids on my iPad.

  “There you are,” she said when she saw that I was awake.

  I found the remote control for the bed laying next to my hand. I raised myself up so I could get a better look at the room. It looked to have been two separate rooms now joined together. The walls were painted in the same putty color as the examining room. The floor was thick wooden slats painted gray. It had a very odd, old-timey feeling for a hospital. But then I reminded myself it wasn’t a hospital. It was a research institute.

  At the far end of the room was an archway through which I could see the reception area and the pink-sweatered back and shoulders of the day nurse. Five beds lined each side of the room. The other beds were empty and stripped except for two on the opposite side of the room. Those held a couple of very elderly men, each surrounded by machines monitoring bodily functions. Neither man seemed to be conscious.

  None of what I saw was what I was looking for. “Where’s Goth?”

  My mother scrunched up her face. “Goth? What’s a Goth?”

  “It’s short for Goliath.”

  “No one would name a child Goliath. That’s cruel.”

  I couldn’t disagree with her. “I thought he was an angel. I thought I was dead.”

  “You’re nowhere near dead. They said you had a rough night, though. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I shouldn’t have left. But here’s the wonderful part—Dr. Harry is absolutely certain the treatment worked.”

  “Why? Why does he think that?”

  “Because he’s the doctor.”

  That didn’t make sense. Why would a doctor be absolutely certain something worked after less than twenty-four hours? Was the fact that I was still alive proof that Property Five had worked? That was crazy. Cancer drugs took weeks to prove effective. Months. Years even.

  “I don’t think Goth was an angel. I think he was real.”

  “I’m sure he is real. There’s another ward on the other side of the building and a whole second floor. Or he could be outside. It’s a big property. Lots of places to hide a boy named Goth.”

  I hadn’t expected that. I’d expected her to tell me I was dreaming.

  “What’s the rest of the Institute like?”

  “I haven’t seen much. There’s the reception area, which you got a look at before you fainted. And the exam room we were in. And the ward on the other side of the building, of course. And there’s the upstairs. Dr. Harry mentioned testing. I think that’s upstairs. Oh, I almost forgot, there’s a solarium in the back. Dr. Harry took me there to talk. It’s lovely.”

  “They took out my Hickman.”

 
“You’re not going to need it.” She clicked off the TV show and gave me an extra big smile, something I hadn’t seen in a long time. I gave her the side-eye.

  “I’m cold. Can I have another blanket?”

  “Sorry. I had enough trouble getting them to give you this one.” This one was thin, hardly a blanket at all “They’re lowering your temperature on purpose. It’s part of the treatment.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly. You know how doctors are. They don’t like to tell you things.”

  I stared at her. This was my mother who’d known everything about my treatment for the last five years. “You let him get away with not telling you?”

  “Dr. Harry got you through the night. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.” The relief in her voice was palpable. She must have been pretty sure I was going to die when I’d made her leave. “And you shouldn’t either. Just do everything you’re told, and you’ll get better. And isn’t that the only thing that matters?”

  I’m going to get better? Things were barely making sense. “Didn’t you at least google whatever it is?”

  She pursed her lips at me. “No. I didn’t. I trust Dr. Harry. Besides, there’s no cell service here and no wi-fi. If you insist, I’ll do it when I get back to the B&B.”

  Something was wrong. I couldn’t figure out what, though. “How is the B&B?”

  “Nice enough. I slept about two hours. Now that I know you’re okay, I’m going to go back and get some real sleep.”

  I heard the day nurse singing a Lady GaGa song under her breath, except she was turning it into a country song. Which was weird. And lame. What was weirder was that I glanced over at the reception area, and she wasn’t at the desk anymore. In fact, I couldn’t see her anywhere. So, how could I hear her? What was that about? Was I hallucinating or something? I looked at my mother with enough confusion on my face to make her ask, “What? Is something wrong?”