Beautiful: Truth's Found When Beauty's Lost Part 13

There was Tanner, who had bone cancer, but he came and went with his chemo treatments and surgeries.

Billy was mentally handicapped and had water on the brain. He was hooked up to machines, but would rise up and smile his all-tooth-and-gum smile when he saw her.

Jessica had been burned like Ellie. But she had been asleep in bed with her mother, who forgot to put out her cigarette. Jessica's mother was dead, and the little girl had burns over 80 percent of her body.

As Ellie walked with slow, pain-filled steps down the hallway, pa.s.sing these rooms, she could find some measure of grat.i.tude. She would mostly heal, as Dr. Crane said. No part of her body was missing or maimed. Everything worked. Her mind was clear. But the grat.i.tude she felt was drowned out by anger-anger not only for herself, but for all of these kids who had to feel this pain and endure a broken existence.

There were other visitors. Short-timers who were "kept for observation." There was a kid who swallowed an Indiana Jones Lego figure, a boy in a bike accident whose father yelled at nurses and acted like his son's broken leg was a major catastrophe. There were kids with bad flus, the croup, and infections-from toddlers to teens.

One afternoon, after one of Ellie's minor surgeries to the deep burn on her hip, there was a tap on her open door.

Natty's mom from Room 17 peeked inside. "Natasha was hoping to visit for a bit. Do you mind?"

"That's fine." Ellie and Megan were watching TV-an episode of CSI they'd both already seen, but they'd found nothing else they liked.

Mrs. Allen pushed the wheelchair, an IV bag dripping from the rolling metal stand. Natty smiled when she saw them, the kind of admiring grin seven-year-olds have for teenagers.

"How are you?" Megan asked.

"I get to go home soon!" Natty said with a happy glance up to her mom.

"Maybe by the end of next week. She's really improving."

"I can't wait." Natty's face was sickly white, and her brown eyes looked too large for her small head. Her hair was gone except for a soft brown fuzz.

Natty looked like an alien in a way, though Ellie felt bad even thinking it. She'd seen a picture of the little girl with thick, curly hair-a school photo with her frozen but pretty smile, a purple background, and Natty wearing a ribbon in her hair that matched her polka-dot s.h.i.+rt.

Ellie smiled at her. "I bet you can't. How long has it been?"

"Four months and almost one week," Mrs. Allen said with a sigh as she bent down and pulled Natty's socks farther up her ankles.

"We haven't been home in so long," Natty said with an exaggerated sigh. "We live in the mountains. There's a huge eagle's nest in the top of this tree that I can see from my window. Dad said he's seen two birds in it, so maybe there will be babies soon."

"I bet there will be." Megan pulled out her box of art supplies and set it on the small table. "Do you want to draw with me?"

Ellie raised an eyebrow. She'd never seen her sister be this nice to anyone.

"Sure!" Natty looked up at Megan as if her sister were the best person on the planet. "You're so pretty, Megan. I wish I looked like you."

Ellie's hand automatically went to the left side of her face.

"I'm going to draw a picture of you and Ellie."

Even at age seven, Natty was polite enough not to draw one part of Ellie's face as it really looked. The finished drawing was of two big girls and one little. They all had hair and smiles, flowers surrounded them, and a smiling suns.h.i.+ne dropped rays of light upon them.

The room phone rang as Natty and her mother were leaving. Megan picked it up when Ellie motioned to her. People still tried calling her from time to time, but Ellie mostly ignored them. She felt bad about it and knew she should at least write some e-mails or thank-you cards, but each day went by without her doing so.

"It's Ryan," Megan said, putting her hand over the phone.

"Say that I'm asleep."

"He's here."

Ellie shook her head vehemently.

"Here," and Megan shoved the phone onto her lap.

Ellie stared at it with her hands out, then finally picked it up. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Hi." His voice was filled with concern. "They won't let me in without permission."

"Ryan. Please. I just don't want to see anyone."

"It's me, Els."

"I know. It's just . . . really, no."

She tried to give her lame reasons, but the truth was, she wasn't the same Els from a few months ago. It wasn't just her face either. She was in pain, intense pain, all the time. She didn't want to talk or hear about life in high school. She just wanted to heal and to heal alone.

"I'm coming every day until you let me see you."

And he was back the next day. Someone would tell her that he was there-the nurse, her sister or parents. He sat in the waiting room for at least an hour and then left. He did it again the next day. And the next.

"Your young man is here again," a nurse told her.

"Why doesn't he leave me alone?" Ellie slammed her fist onto a little origami bird that decorated her nightstand-a gift from someone, she didn't know or care whom. She smashed another and another.

Megan stood and gathered up the flat paper birds, saving several from destruction. "Just because all this happened, the world doesn't revolve around you." Megan was angry. "You thought it revolved around you before, and nothing's changed."

Ellie shook her head. "I don't think the world revolves around me. I don't want to be here. I just wish people would forget all about me."

"Well, that boyfriend of yours isn't going to forget about you."

That boyfriend of yours.

"Whatever it is you want to say to me, why not just say it? Your insults and sarcasm never worked with me before; why would they now?"

There was a flicker of a smile on Megan's face that quickly left. "I just want you to stop ignoring Ryan."

Ellie was silent for a minute, putting her hand up to her face. "I'm not ignoring him."

"He's not going to give up."

"He will eventually."

"And it's right to do this to him?"

"What am I doing to him?"

"He's your boyfriend. He's here to support you, and you won't let him see you."

Ellie thought about arguing more, going over the reasons and explaining why it wasn't her fault that he wouldn't go away. She could say that she'd write him a letter, an e-mail or text or something. But he was there, down the hall, sitting in the waiting room, again.

"Okay. Fine. Let him come in so I can tell him to go away."

Megan did smile that time and left the room. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor, and in enough time for Ellie to regret what she'd done, two sets of footsteps could be heard approaching. She tried to fix her hair into a ponytail, but the left side had been trimmed and wouldn't fit in a rubber band. Her burns were covered in a thick, s.h.i.+ny cream and had started to itch and burn. It was useless to think that she might look good.

There was a pause in the footsteps. Ellie could see his shoes at the door.

She didn't know what to expect when he came around the curtain. She heard him talking with Megan, a low whisper that she couldn't understand. Ryan had been there when she was barely conscious in the burn unit, but what would he do when he saw her now? What would they talk about? She determined to get rid of him quickly.

And then he was there, peeking around the curtain. Smiling the old smile. "It's about time, but I will say . . ." He walked in and pulled up a chair next to her bed. ". . . I've gotten pretty good at Scrabble by playing by myself." He set a travel Scrabble game on the bed. "Be warned."

"Uh, okay," she said.

"I also have this cool little game. It's a chess, checkers, and backgammon set in one convenient little box. Games-on- the-go." He had brought a backpack and began unloading games. Some books came next, which he set in a stack on the bedside table.

"I've also read a number of good books in the past months." He paused, but she didn't respond. "Yes, I can see you are stunned. Underestimating me as usual. I had trouble with d.i.c.kens, I will admit. But Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn just can't be beat."

She couldn't stop her smile, a smile that hurt her face and surely appeared mangled and deformed. She looked away and adjusted herself on the bed to further hide her injuries. Ryan was already setting up Scrabble.

Two hours and a number of games later, he took her hand and kissed it. Then he leaned over her and kissed her forehead.

"Did that hurt?" he asked with concern.

Ellie shook her head.

"I'll be back, then."

She didn't respond. What could she say? She wanted him back just as much as she wanted him to leave.

Megan stared at her face in the dresser mirror, with James leaning in close from behind.

"I think I'm over the piercing thing," she said, wondering why it had mattered so much in the first place. She'd been furious that her parents wouldn't let her pierce her eyebrow when she was sixteen. Then Lu had pierced hers, which infuriated Megan more-Lu was always doing what Megan wanted to do. Completely unoriginal.

"You'd look hot with a nose piercing-maybe a ring. Or one on your lip. I can't believe you don't have even one."

Grabbing James around the neck, she pulled him close, making him laugh. "You just can't believe it, huh? Because all your other girlfriends were all tatted and pierced, and you've got this pure little piercing virgin-seems you should like that."

"Well, when you put it that way, guess it is sort of cool."

He kissed her, turning her around to kiss her longer. Megan loved the way he held her elbows and leaned her against the wall.

"So, wanna get it done today?" he asked, pulling back.

She touched the gauges in his ears and wondered what they'd look like when he got old and didn't have the round wooden plugs stretching out his earlobes. Would his earlobes go back to normal?

"I don't know." There was no excitement in getting a piercing now. Perhaps because she could, or perhaps because as unique as everyone around her wanted to be, they all ended up looking like each other. The gauges in the ears, the tattoos, the piercings, the various radical hairstyles. Everything to the extreme. Everything to shock and show the anger and pain under their skin. The rebellion that ended up becoming a stereotype.

"Will you still like me if I don't do it?"

He considered a moment, then grinned. "Of course. I just thought you wanted this. And you say I never care about your life. I'd go to the hospital with you on the days I don't have rehearsal. You slam the door to your life on me, babe."

James didn't sound too broken up about it, though his words sounded good. Megan wondered if he would be as determined to be as close to her as Ryan was to Ellie, if she were the one lying in the hospital bed. But that wasn't hard to answer. No way.

"What do you want to do tonight?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the couch and pulling on his black army boots.

Megan didn't want to do anything. More and more, everything felt meaningless. The parties, the music, the anger, fights, hookups, complaining about everything . . . she just wanted to escape.

"We should go to Europe this summer," she said, leaning down to kiss James only on his bottom lip. The idea awakened her with sudden images of dark, smoky bars, funky art galleries, ancient streets and cathedrals. "Maybe Eastern Europe? Prague, or maybe Budapest, 'cause Prague is getting too touristy. Maybe Moscow?"

"The band is touring this summer. Why don't you come with us?"

She sat on the arm of the worn-out couch. "I could be your little roadie?"

He grinned. "You could be my woman."

"I thought I already was."

James paused a moment too long. "Sure. Yeah, you are."

"What does that mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything."

He shrugged, and she hated how attractive he looked with his hair a bit rumpled.

"We just never said we were exclusive. I'm willing to be that."

"I thought we'd been exclusive for a while."

He paused again, as if deciding whether to lie or tell the truth, which revealed all she needed to know. Megan looked around the floor for her shoes.

"I need to get out of here."

James swore. "Go, then."

He headed to the kitchen for a beer, and she walked to the door.

A number of surgeries were scheduled, keeping Ellie in the hospital to protect against infection. Her leg wasn't healing as they'd hoped. Ellie tuned it out, letting her parents nod in concern and write down notes about her prognosis. The old Ellie would've been on top of everything, searching the Internet for natural treatments and surgical procedures. Now she avoided it all. Mom had brought her laptop, but all Ellie used it for was to play Spider Solitaire and to listen to music. She avoided the social networks and her e-mail.

Ryan brought flowers every Sunday and Wednesday, and came almost daily for at least an hour. Sometimes on Sat.u.r.days he'd surprise her and watch TV with her all day long. Ellie felt guilty every time he came, and lonely every time he left. He was wasting his life on her. Wasting senior year.

Ryan didn't know what was really beneath the thick creams and bright-red scabs. He didn't know the half-monster of a girlfriend he had, or that she'd be this way for a long time, perhaps forever. She may never have full strength in her left leg or left arm. And the scars would be there. Already she noticed that he couldn't look her in the face for long.