Everything to Change

“What are you doing here?” She asked loudly, blushing as her words drew the attention of the others in the room.
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I thought you could use some company.” The boy ran his fingers through his hair nervously and held out a small stack of magazines, the covers of which naturally caught her eye. He was always so scrupulous when it came to detail- it was what made him an enviable boyfriend. He had brought all of her favorites.
“I told you, you don’t need to be here. I’m fine on my own.” She had to look away as she said it; in fact, she crossed her legs and turned her whole body away from him, even if it did open her to the rest of the room. The black woman sitting across from her caught her eye for a moment and then abruptly looked away. She was tapping her long nails against a book in her lap, had been doing it for at least twenty minutes. All of the appointments were running behind, and the woman was starting to get anxious.
The boy sat down anyway. “I have candy, too,” he offered. When the girl didn’t say anything, he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“Do you ever think about dying?” She wished she hadn’t asked it even before her tongue had rolled over the last word. Dying. She was too young to be thinking about things like that, but she thought about them anyway. She thought she had better start sometime, and it almost seemed like the least that she could do.
“Don’t say that,” he commanded her quietly, looking around the room to see if anyone else had heard. The girl had actually spoken very softly, but in such a small space it seemed like the sound might carry. “It’s not like that. You don’t need to think about that.”
She turned her head back to look at him; her blue eyes looked gray and gloomy in the florescent light. “It was just a question. Do you really never think about it?” She noticed that the boy’s cheeks were flushed. It could have been because the room wasn’t air conditioned, and the ceiling fan didn’t seem to be doing much work; but she thought he might be embarrassed, which made her mad. She didn’t know what he would have to be embarrassed about: he could leave, if he wanted to. She wished he would.
“Well, no, I don’t. Are you happy?”
“Did you really just ask me if I was happy?”
He sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Of course I’m not happy!” She was being loud again, but this time she didn’t care who heard her. She looked indignantly across the room to see if anyone was watching them and was pleasantly surprised to see that everyone else in the waiting room was dutifully pretending that they hadn’t heard anything.
“I don’t know why you would ask that. What about this would make me happy?”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it like that.”
She looked away from him again, this time deciding to stare at one of the informational posters on the wall. The girl had already read it several times since she’d arrived, about an hour before, but it seemed like a good place to focus her gaze, and her anger. She could feel him watching her still, probably waiting for her to speak.
“Well, I think about it.” Finally, she looked at him again. “And it scares me. I never used to be scared when I thought about it, but I’m scared now.” On an impulse, she reached out and took the magazines out of his hand. “I don’t want these,” she said, and threw them casually in a pile on the floor.
“You don’t need to be scared. Everything’s going to be fine.” His voice shook just the tiniest bit when he said fine, and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. He didn’t care at all about the magazines; he had just brought them so that he would have something to do with his hands. “You have nothing to worry about.”
She sighed. “Everything is going to be different now.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said quietly, and took her hand. The boy half expected her to pull her hand away and was happy that she didn’t. He wrapped his fingers around hers protectively and squeezed. “This doesn’t change the way I feel about you. You know that, right?”
“Mary?” A nurse plaintively interrupted the near-silence of the room.
“It’s Marie,” the black woman with the long nails corrected loudly. “MAH-REE.”
The nurse showed her through a small door at the back of the room, and the boy and girl watched her leave.
“I’m after her, I think,” said the girl. Her voice was thick, the tears plain as daylight on her face. The boy reached up with his empty hand to wipe her face, but she turned away from him again. He waited again for her to speak, but ten minutes passed with nothing but a few quiet sniffles passing between them. The door to the parking lot opened and another couple walked in, both looking like they might at any moment kill the other. The boy watched them for awhile, but then the man saw him looking and he had to look away.
The girl was still ignoring him; he thought she had stopped crying, though, and that was a good sign.
“Hey,” he said tentatively, and waited for her to turn.
“What?” She didn’t move. He squeezed her hand and whispered her name just loud enough so she would be the only one to hear. She sniffed again but still wouldn’t move.
“Why won’t you look at me?” He didn’t want to be insensitive; he wanted to be there for her. He wanted her, even if she only wanted him to leave.
She sighed again. “Everything’s going to be different now. I don’t want it to be, but when I look at you, that’s all I think.” She turned, finally, her eyes puffy and her face still tear-stained. “I don’t want to do this.”
It was his turn now to look away. He even dropped her hand, which hurt but didn’t surprise her at all.
“What else are you gonna do?”
She sniffed and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t know.”
Another nurse came in, wearing scrubs with smiling yellow suns all over them. The nurse called the girl’s name, and she stood up, walked over to the little door at the back of the room. The nurse smiled at her, and then looked over her shoulder to where the boy was still sitting, as if frozen in another time.
“Will you be driving her home?” The boy’s eyes darted questioningly to the girl, who half-turned to look at him.
“No, my friend Jenny is coming to pick me up. She said she’d be here around four.” The boy nodded, not at all surprised. The nurse nodded too, and turned away from the room again, motioning for the girl to follow.
“Oh, wait,” the girl said, one foot already out into the hallway beyond. “Just a second,” she said, and then turned back to the waiting room, back to the boy. She walked quickly, and as he opened his arms, she threw her own quickly around his neck and pulled herself close to him.
He wrapped her tenderly against himself, their bodies touching at so many points, and in an instant they both saw everything that they would never have, because today would change everything, and they both had to admit it. She pulled herself back slightly, just enough to see the side of his face, and when she looked at him she saw a whole other life spreading out before her, a difficult and beautiful life that only he could give her. As his hands squeezed her lightly, she tilted her head and kissed his cheek, right in the corner of his mouth.
“Goodbye.”