The monitor was loud. He made it loud, blocking out all other sounds, the murmurs of the media outside, the security telling them to scram. The heart monitor was a conductor that led the orchestra of deafening silence. The heart monitor let him breath, let him wash the other sounds away with a light flutter of his eyelids. He didn’t know how long his eyes were closed. When he opened them, it was to the nurse’s soft voice.
“Logan,” she said. “They’re gone. Would you like to try walking?”
Each step was a mountain. When he got into the courtyard, his chest was heaving, his pale skin a vermillion as he pushed his way outside. The oxygen tank he pulled clinked in the transit of the automatic doors. He yanked it through, careful not to tangle his chord. The boy coughed. It seemed that a few people coughed from around the courtyard to meet his own.
A step forward. Gravity crushed his frail body. As he struggled to keep inhaling, an arm reached for him, his blurry mind not processing the figure that helped him to a nearby bench. Perhaps he pushed himself too far. Spots dappled his vision as he sat, smoothing his hospital gown against the splinters. The figure sat next to him.
“You okay there, buddy?”
The boy sat there panting, saying nothing. Sweat dripped off his face. His lungs felt light as air.
“You’re pretty out of shape there, man.”
“Lung...transplant…”
“From the world’s most obese organ donor?”
He looked at the figure, brow furrowed. It was a girl, a few years younger than him from how she looked. She grinned at his look, kicking at the ground with her combat boots. She had a hospital gown on...with combat boots.
“Sorry, I must be pissing you off,” she said, leaning back, kicking her feet back and forth. “I’m Magda.”
Her hand shot out. He examined it for a few moments.
Eyebrow still low, mouth still ajar, he shook it.
“Logan.”
“What’re you in for, Logey?”
“I...told you.” He wiped his forehead and shook his head. “Don’t call me--”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember. The lung thing.” She planted her palms on the bench, hooking her fingers under it. “Where you from?”
“North D...um, here, Seattle.”
“Had to think there, huh, Logey?” She rocked, placing a finger to the side of her head, tapping it lightly. “I think you ran out of oxygen in your brain.”
“I think you ran out of manners…”
Magda let out a sharp ‘Ooooh!’ Birds flew from the trees. Logan jumped.
“Good one, Logey. I like you.”
He placed a hand on his forehead. He needed some water, maybe some medicine. The bench being his island, however, he succumb to pitting back, pinching the bridge of his nose. Magda blinked, tilting her head, shoving at his shoulder. “You okay, man? I can get someone if you want. I can’t carry you back.”
“I’m fine. I’ve just seen better days, is all.” Being dead for almost 72 hours didn’t make your body a nicely habitable place.
“I know how you feel.” The girl’s tone was suddenly significantly more stoic than it had been. “When my heart starts skipping beats a lot, I need to press this.” She raised her wrist, pointing to a bright red button tied in an electronic bracelet. How didn’t he notice it? It glowed softly, dimmed by the late sun.
“Why are you here?” Logan tried to say it with some kind of personality, like a felon in prison, but it came out tired.
“Heart cancer,” she smiled. It looked so genuine, the smile. “It’s super rare, according to my bum doctor. My heart’s just basically one big tumor.” Her index finger glided from her wrist to her fingers; her middle finger was just a stub.
“They found a tumor here first. Then here…”
To her wrist.
“Then here.”
Her elbow.
“And here.”
Magda pointed to her heart. It was like she was giving a show-and-tell presentation. Logan tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
“That sounds terrible.”
“I’m going to die, but,” she wrapped a finger around her braided blonde hair. “It’s all cool. I don’t want to spend my life here anyway. A lot of weirdos here. I once saw a girl painting with her feet. She had no arms.”
Logan smiled wryly. He did not feel like smiling, but he felt like he owed it to her.
“Where do I fall?”
“Below her. You’re pretty weird, Logey.”
“Logan.”
“Logan.”
His ceiling was exceptionally plain in the darkness. He lay in his bed, arm over his head. She floated through his tired mind, a mind that was once ready to pass out. He couldn’t sleep. She was going to die. He was going to die. He did die.
He was alive.
Could she…?
He sat up. What if he showed her his power? He recalled when they parted, he being helped into a wheelchair by hospital staff. She told him her room number if he wanted to hang out. 147. He clutched his sheets.
The girl from the void flashed through his mind.
He’d never leave people waiting there again.
He had to try.
The boy opened the door to his room. A few nurses remained in the hall, checking medical records in yellow envelopes. He slipped out, keeping an eye on them, back pressed against the wall.
Room 147. He ducked behind yellow janitorial bins, made the excuse that he was taking a walk and heading back to his room, and crouch walked numerous times. When he made it to room 147, he was out of breath. He had no time to waste, though. He slipped in.
Her voice was immediate.
“Logey? The hell you doing here?”
She was not in her bed; rather, she sat on the window sill, looking out at the world through her own dimmed reflection. Of course, that’s what she was doing. As he opened the door, she’d turned to him, eyebrows cocked.
As in the courtyard, he was too out of breath to speak. Those new lungs were absolutely killing him. He stumbled forward, holding the wall for support. She watched him in confusion.
When he reached her, he opened his palm. The panting boy stood there, hand outstretched, palm out, looking at her with the exhilarated, impatient, exhausted look of a man who’d just run a marathon.
“Give me….your hand.”
“If you wanted to ask me out you could have waited until tomorrow.” The girl bit her lip. “I have the right to call the nurse and get you apprehended, bud.”
“Give me...your hand.”
She hesitated, raising her hand but lingering over his own, fingers recoiled, like a cockroach was scuttling across it.
Then, she placed her palm on his. He could feel her heartbeat through her wrist as he grazed it. Magda stared at him like he was a ghost, a figment of a dream, but she didn’t move. He pressed his finger to the base of her arm. The pulse heightened.
“You’re into some weird stuff, Logey…” She tried to laugh to hide a tremble in her voice.
Her wrist illuminated suddenly under the skin in a hot green. Magda yanked her wrist away.
“What the hell was that!?” She recoiled her wrist, rubbing it. The tired boy stayed in place, hand still open.
“I’m going to heal you,” he said.
“The fuck you mean?” she snapped. “What are you!?”
“Weird.” He tried to smile weakly. He ended up coughing violently. She still looked at him with those wide eyes, like he was an alien. When Logan stabilized, he saw that look, giving an impatient wince.
“Listen,” he said, stepping closer. She pressed herself closer to the wall. “Two weeks ago, I died. I died and stayed dead for 72 hours.”
“I’ve heard of you…” Magda’s animosity wavered, like a glitch over a monitor.
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” He outreached his hand. Her fingers twitched. “Magda, I can use the same power that did that to help you. I can heal you of your cancer. Please, let me help you…”
She said nothing. The girl that always seemed quick to reply said nothing.
“Please,” he whispered.
The building began to be alight with the pounding of drops, slow at first and suddenly overwhelming. The window streaked with the onslaught of a rainstorm. She spoke silently, but her voice cut through the noise.
“What is it like to die, Logey?”
He felt his pulse grow cold, his heart panic. He was taken aback. He was forced to remember.
“Bad,” he smiled. Tears snuck like snakes down his cheeks. “Worse than you could ever realize.”
Thunder rolled in the distance. The rain reached an apex, threatening to bring the roof down.
The blonde girl put her hand into his.
The rain had silenced after downpouring the entire night. It was silent when he woke up, when he opened his eyes to see passerines darting across the trees outside. He stretched. His muscles hurt. Despite this, though, he rocketed off the bed. Magda! Where was Magda?
He recognized himself in his own room. Someone must have brought him back.
Did he pass out?
When did he pass out?
He made his way to the door and opened it. He was met with the breeze of doctors and nurses running by, the hallway a stampede. Through the flurry of footsteps, he heard their frantic words.
“What do you mean the cancer is gone!?”
“Benign! The tumors are benign!”
“Someone call her parents!”
Logan closed the door. A sleepy smile painted his face as he slowly backed away, stumbling, making it to his bed. Throwing back the covers, he got back to his place lightly, watching the passerine birds fly away.
He closed his eyes to the sound of his heart monitor, the machine drowning out the noise outside his room in an orchestra of silence.
