Neevah
“You sureyou’ll be okay while I’m gone?” Canon asks.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay while you’re gone? You’ve barely left this room since I checked in. Kenneth and Jill need you. The movie needs you. Go.”
“I’ll be here,” Mama reassures him. “By the time you get back, she’ll be done.”
Done with dialysis. Hooked up to this machine for hours at a time motivates me even more to find a match. I know this is how some people manage kidney disease, but this doesn’t fit how I see my life as a performer, dancer, actor. I don’t want to be chained to this machine. I can’t be.
“Okay.” Canon wears his hesitation in every line of his face. “I won’t be long.”
“Tell everyone I said hello.” I want to be on set so badly and I hate how things have stalled because of this.
Canon kisses my forehead and then my lips in a touch that lingers but, with my mama watching, doesn’t deepen. I want it to.
“I love you,” he whispers, pulling back to search my eyes.
“Love you back.” I give him a gentle shove. “Now go.”
“I’ll be back.”
“You mentioned that.” I laugh. “But first you have to go to come back.”
Shaking his head, he grabs his bag, waves at my mother, and strides from the room as purposefully as he goes everywhere.
“Now that is a man,” Mama breathes.
“He sure is.”
I smile faintly, losing some of my shine now that Canon is gone. I’m actually exhausted and slightly miserable, but Canon is already hovering and here pretty much around the clock. He may not be thinking about Dessi Blue, but I am. It’s my break. It will be one of the biggest movies of the year. It’s potentially Canon’s most significant work. It’s Evan and Kenneth and Jill and Trey and Monk and Verity and Linh and all the cast and crew who worked and sweat and sacrificed to make this important piece of not just entertainment, but history. Lost, discarded history. We have the chance to restore, to amplify people and events that have too long been overlooked, and my damn kidneys are not going to ruin that because the director cannot focus on anything other than his sick girlfriend.
But now that he’s gone, I slump into the pillows and watch the machine cleaning my blood and sending it back into my body since my kidneys have abdicated their duties.
The hospital door eases open and Terry walks in carrying an armful of magazines, which she passes to Mama, and a bag overflowing with colorful balls of yarn. She settles into a chair near the door and pulls out needles and yarn.
“You knit?” I ask skeptically. It doesn’t really fit my image of her as the temptress who lured my fiancé into a scandalous affair.
“Yeah.” She shrugs, not glancing up from her yarn. “It’s soothing.”
“There’s a whole group of us at church who do it,” Mama pipes up, reaching into Terry’s bag for another set of needles and some yarn.
“Oh, you go to church, too?” I ask with raised brows, because Terry left church as soon as Mama could no longer make her go. I, however, was still singing in the choir until I left for college.
“Terry’s the choir director,” Mama says, pride evident in her voice.
“Nothing compared to Broadway, obviously,” Terry says, roughly thrusting a needle into the innocent pile of yarn. “Or a big-time movie.”
“At least Mama’s seen you in the choir.” I close my eyes and lean back into the pile of pillows. “More than I can say.”
“I came and saw you that time, Neevah,” Mama says.
“That one time in twelve years.” I open my eyes and laugh. “Not that I’ve been in that many shows. Canon plucked me out of relative obscurity.”
“You just have to rub that in our faces, too, huh?” Terry says, dropping the needles in her lap. “That you’re dating Canon Holt and he’s crazy about you. We get it, Neevah. Your life is perfect.”
“Perfect?” I choke out an incredulous laugh. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m hooked up to a machine that is cleaning my blood, and have to beg for a kidney from the sister who can’t stand me. Also, the big break I have for this movie? Not going so good since the whole production is shut down until I’m well enough to go back to work. What’s so perfect about that?”
“You got out of Clearview, for one.”