What They Are Looking For

The biopsy took place on Monday.

It was done at Children’s on the seventh floor, in a procedure room just two doors away from Dr. Giacherio’s office, and the whole thing lasted about forty minutes. This included the time needed to numb the area and the time it took for me to get used to the fact that I could still feel pressure even though I wasn’t feeling any pain. Dad was sitting in a chair against the wall, his phone face down on his knee, staring at the wall above my head with a look that said he thought the best thing to do right now was to avoid looking directly at what was going on.

I didn’t blame him. I was also trying to avoid looking directly at what was happening.

The worst part wasn’t the needle going in. The worst part was after it was over, sitting in the waiting room with my leg wrapped in compression and a folder of post-procedure instructions along with a follow-up appointment already set. Dad was reading the instructions twice because that’s just how he was, and I was gazing at a framed picture of a mountain range on the wall, thinking about how someone had picked that specific print for this room. Someone had gone through a catalog of waiting room art and chosen mountains. I wondered if they thought it would be soothing.

“You okay?” Dad asked.

“Yeah.”

He folded the instruction sheet. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I know.”

“But we can.”

“I know, Dad.”

He tucked the sheet into his pocket. Outside the window, the parking structure blocked most of the view. We sat there for a few more minutes until they called us back to go over the discharge instructions in person, which were the same as the ones we had already read, and then we headed home.

Tuesday was the LDH retest. It was a quick visit, just a blood draw that took about twenty minutes, including parking. Pops drove us there. He kept the radio low while we were on the way, and when we arrived at the hospital, he just turned it down instead of off. On the way back, he turned it up again without saying anything. It seemed like a small detail. But it really wasn’t.

The phlebotomist was quick and friendly, and she asked if I wanted a sticker afterward. I said yes. She handed me a little cartoon dog sticker that reminded me a bit of Bernard, and I tucked it into my jacket pocket without thinking about why I wanted to keep it.

On the kitchen wall, the family calendar had three new notes in Dad’s handwriting from the previous week. Sloane, Children’s, 9am. Sloane, lab, 2pm. Sloane, MRI, 2:30. No one really acknowledged the calendar; it was just there, adjusting to the new information like water shifts around an object dropped into it.

School felt like its own kind of performance. I adapted to it quicker than I thought I would, becoming a version of myself that navigated the hallways, answered questions in class, ate lunch at the table, and laughed at the right times. It wasn’t too different from who I had always been, just a bit more fragile. Like a copy of a copy, still understandable but not as clear.

My friend group supported me without realizing it. Noelle would text me in the morning before I even got out of bed. Emory commented on everything. Maekynzie treated every lunch like it was the last one before something big happened. Tinsley would say one true thing each day, speaking as if words were a precious resource. Everything felt the same as it always had, and I clung to that familiarity like you would hold onto a wall when the ground feels shaky.

Chandler sat next to me at lunch. He handed me napkins I hadn’t asked for. He didn’t mention anything about it.

On Wednesday, Dad took the day off.

He didn’t announce anything. He was just sitting there in the morning, at the kitchen table with his laptop, coffee, and reading glasses, dressed in the jeans and Henley he usually wore on Saturdays. I came downstairs, he looked up, said good morning, poured me some coffee, and that was it. He was there like furniture, solid and quiet, occupying just the right amount of space.

I had breakfast while he worked, and Bernard was underfoot the whole time; it felt completely normal yet also not normal at all.

School was pretty uneventful until third period ended, and I was at my locker.

I had my Algebra II textbook in one hand and my phone in the other, trying to juggle both, which is why I didn’t see Evan until he was already leaning against the locker two down from mine, hands tucked in the front pocket of his hoodie.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He had that laid-back vibe he always had, like being in a school hallway was something he had accepted and moved past. His cognac-brown eyes were direct but not too intense, which is harder to achieve than it seems.

“Are you going to the game on Friday?” he asked.

The volleyball game. My team. I still had my jersey, and I wore it on game days because Coach Mathieson hadn’t taken me off the roster, and I wasn’t going to mention it.

“Maybe,” I replied.

“I’ll be there.” He said it casually, like he always did, without any pressure, as if it was just a fact and not an invitation. Like he was simply adding a detail to the Friday schedule, and I could do whatever I wanted with that.

“Cool,” I said.

“See you.”

“See you.”

He walked away, and I watched him for about two seconds before turning back to my locker. My thumb pressed into the spine of the textbook without me even realizing it.

As I glanced up, I saw Tahni walking down the hallway.

She had her phone in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, striding confidently as if she owned the place, which she pretty much did. She noticed me, then looked in the direction Evan had gone, and then back at me, all in a split second without missing a beat.

She paused at the locker next to mine.

“Hey.” She gave me that warm smile she saved for people she wanted something from. “I noticed you were talking to Evan.”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“He’s super cute, right?” She tilted her head a bit. “He keeps asking me to show him around. It’s honestly so much, like I can’t leave him alone for even five minutes.” She laughed, carefree and possessive, the kind of laugh that made it clear she wasn’t looking for sympathy and was definitely claiming what was hers. “Anyway. It’s sweet that he’s making friends.”

She walked away before I could respond, which was her intention.

I lingered at my locker a moment longer than needed. Making friends. She had said it like I was just a project Evan had taken on to keep himself busy while waiting for her.

I shut my locker and headed to Algebra.

The thing about Evan was that he really didn’t know. He’d smiled at me in the hallway three times since lunch, and each time it was just a smile, no hidden meaning behind it. It was so simple and normal that I found myself teetering on the edge of it, like standing at the top of an easy slide. I could just go down it.

I wondered what it would be like to be a girl that a boy liked, someone who could just think about that. Who could replay the lunch encounter and the moment by the lockers, analyze the tone of ‘see you,’ and spend twenty minutes figuring out what ‘I’ll be there’ really meant. Was it an invitation disguised as a statement, or just a fact about where he’d be on Friday?

Both of those options were open to me. The analyzing. The wondering. I had the ability to do that.

But I also had a biopsy result waiting somewhere in a lab.

I shut my locker. I was going to be late for Algebra.

The MRI was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Pops picked me up from school at two, which meant I had to leave during study hall. Chandler was across the library when I was packing my bag. He glanced up. I nodded once. He returned to his work without asking anything, and I walked out. It was a moment that took about three seconds and conveyed everything that needed to be said.

The machine was louder than I had anticipated. They gave me earplugs and a blanket and slid me in. The sounds it made were huge and rhythmic, completely unconcerned with the fact that somewhere within them was the answer to a question I’d been carrying for weeks. I focused on the inside of the machine, counted my breaths, and tried not to think about what the images would reveal. Instead, I thought about Bernard. How he would plop his full weight on your feet when you sat down, without asking, fully committed to that choice. I thought about that for forty-five minutes, and it helped more than it probably should have.

Then I was out. Then the technician said someone would be in touch.

Someone would be in touch.

Pops drove home with the radio playing again. At one point, he reached over and placed his hand over mine on the console, just like he had done in the ER. I turned my hand over and held his for a minute while looking out the window at the passing highway.

“You’re doing good,” he said.

I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure if that was true, and I didn’t want to agree to something I couldn’t confirm.

That night, I lay in bed with the light off, going over what I knew.

There was a mass on the left femur, about two inches. Elevated LDH. All signs strongly suggest. Biopsy done. MRI done. PET and CT still pending. Results for the first three were still awaited. Each answer felt like another door leading to another waiting room.

I thought about what I didn’t know.

That took longer.

Outside my window, the neighborhood was quiet, that specific 2am quiet that felt borrowed from somewhere else, too complete to be real. I had been staring at the ceiling long enough that the darkness had turned into something I could navigate, the familiar shapes of my room surrounding me like a set. Volleyball trophies on the shelf. The team photo from last spring. The poster Noelle had given me as a joke, which I had actually hung up because she had framed it and everything. Everything was exactly where it had always been, unchanged, waiting for me to catch up to it.

I thought about the MRI machine. I thought about Evan saying he’d be there with that easy, carefree attitude he had. I thought about the shape on the X-ray that I could still visualize when I closed my eyes, that particular wrongness that you couldn’t unsee once you had seen it. I thought about the cartoon dog sticker in my jacket pocket. I didn’t know why I had kept it. I knew why I had kept it.

My phone lit up.

Chandler: still awake?

I stared at it. The screen dimmed, so I tapped it to keep it lit and stared at it some more. Chandler lived four blocks away. He had school tomorrow. He had always had a complicated relationship with sleep, but 2am was still 2am.

I typed back: yeah.

The three dots showed up. Then:

me too.

I placed my phone on my chest and stared at the ceiling. The dots had returned quickly, which indicated he’d been lying there with his phone. This meant he’d been awake. It also suggested he’d been pondering something, or trying to avoid it, and had picked up his phone at 2am to text me first.

I didn’t inquire about what he was thinking. He didn’t ask me about my thoughts either.

We didn’t communicate anything further. I drifted off to sleep with my phone still resting on my chest and the screen long since turned off, and somehow that was the most at ease I’d felt all week.