Chapter Text
Dust particles dance in the sunbeams that sneak their way past the curtains. Out in the hallway, a nurse walks by, rubber shoes squeaking against the mottled floor tiles. Inside the room, which smells like bleach and antiseptic badly masked with floral air freshener, Frank is dying.
Of boredom, that is. He escaped the actual death four days earlier and he has the chest scars to prove it! It’d been a close call, though. Waking up afterward sure felt like dying – they warned him about the tubes and the pain, but he’d been totally unprepared anyway. But that was then and this is now, and now he has approximately 50% less tubes coming out of him as well as a quiet room in a quiet ward (shoe-squeaking notwithstanding).
Life, as he still knows it, is good. Even if it is seriously boring.
Slamming his laptop shut, Frank throws his head back on the pillow, mindful of the IVs in his neck. Not even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre can keep him engaged any longer. He’s not interested in movies, has done nothing but watch movies and read books for the past 72 hours. He wants company. The clock on the wall says 11:15 am, which means it’ll be at least five hours before his parents or friends will be off work and able to visit. He sighs, burrowing into the lumpy mattress. Maybe he should try The Shining again.
The knock is gentle but unexpected; he jumps, head whirling toward the door. The girl in the doorway smiles at him. She’s his age, clad in jeans and long sleeves, all black even though it’s mid-summer. Her short hair is dyed dark red, and she’s carrying a huge flower bouquet.
“Hi,” she says, shifting the weight of the bouquet in her arms. The wrapping paper rustles. “You don’t know me, but I’m Jamia Nestor. Evan Nestor’s sister.”
“Uh, okay?”
“Yeah. He’s the guy who …” She gestures around the room. “You know. Saved your life.”
“Oh!” He dips his head to his chest, wherein his shiny new heart and lungs are residing. “Cool,” is all he can think to say.
Jamia smiles again, closemouthed and polite. “Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Oh, shit, yeah! Please, come in, sit,” he says, hiking farther up on the bed to make himself look a little less like a sack of potatoes. “I’ve been so bored all morning I’ve even tried to make the nurses stay longer just to have someone to talk to.”
The only vase is occupied, so she lays the bouquet on the table. Pulling the chair closer to his bedside, she sits, crossing her legs and twiddling her thumbs. She doesn’t say anything. Frank doesn’t either. The clock ticks. Another squeaky nurse passes by outside. Frank coughs.
“So …” Jamia says, tone airy. “This is kinda weird.”
Frank snorts. “Lil’ bit.”
“If it’s too awkward and you want me to leave-”
“Come on, I just said I’ve wanted to talk to someone. It’s just …” He waves circles in the air with his hand to help him reach what he wants to say. “I’m sorry for your loss?”
She huffs and rolls her eyes, but the feeling behind it is faint. Exhausted rather than annoyed.
“Thanks. So, what’s your deal? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Pneumonia.”
She furrows her brow. “But that doesn’t affect the heart?”
“Nope, but it’s a bacterial infection. Infection can cause sepsis, and sepsis can cause MODS – multiple organ dysfunction syndrome,” he says, her eyes growing with alarm as he talks.
“They just shut down?”
“Yeah. Sucked.”
“But you’re gonna be okay now?”
“Probably? My body can reject the organs, or I can get MODS again. I’m gonna have to take medication for the rest of my life.”
“Wow.” Folding her arms on the edge of the bed, she leans forward to rest her chin there. For a moment her eyes grow distant as she chews on her lip. Then they snap back into focusing on him. “That does suck. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs, because what else can he do?
“So far, so good,” he says; she laughs quietly.
“Yeah. I’m glad you … I’m glad he could save you.”
She smiles, and it’s still closemouthed but also bigger, her eyes crinkling with it. Frank returns it. The silence isn’t as uncomfortable this time.
“So.” He pushes the laptop off his legs and rolls onto his side to better face her. “Will you tell me about Evan?”
Jamia’s eyes shine.
—•—
She stays for hours, only leaving when his mom arrives (but not before asking if she can come back later). The second she’s gone, his mom, eyes large and round with confusion, asks him, “A girl?”
As if it’s impossible for him to have female friends. Jesus.
Jamia comes back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. It’s awesome. Jamia is awesome. She’s got great taste in music, she loves dogs, and she’s no-nonsense but not humorless, tough but not cruel. She gives a fuck but takes no shit. She’s the kind of person Frank wants to be when he grows up, and it takes approximately three days for him to decide she’s his new best friend.
“Hey,” she says on her fifth day of visiting him. “You got rid of the tubes.”
He strokes his hand over his neck. “Almost.”
“Almost? You’ve got any left?” She searches his upper body for plastic. He nods toward his crotch.
“One.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” she says, grimacing. “What’s it feel like?”
He nods. “It feels. Not painful, but just the knowledge there’s something there is kinda uncomfortable.”
She emits a full-body shiver as she perches herself on the edge of his bed. He starts to put his laptop away, but she grabs his wrist before he gets far. Her eyes are glued to the screen.
“Are you watching GridSlam?”
His gaze darts between her and the screen, upon which a GridSlam match from last year’s playoffs is frozen. WorldEater, the Arizona team, is about to score a massive amount of points, but in the end, California’s Team Green will win.
“I didn’t take you for a sports fan,” Jamia says, head sort of thoughtfully cocked to the side. “I thought you were an artist.”
“Hey, I have dimensions! I like hockey, too. Imagine that.”
She oohs and aahs, pretending to be impressed. He swats at her with one of his pillows, but she’s strong for her size (and also hasn’t been cut open, hollowed out, and sewn back together one week ago) and snatches it out of his hands.
“Do you like GridSlam?” he asks as she tosses the pillow too far away for him to weaponize it again.
“I don’t really have the time to watch it.”
“Let me tell you about this rad new invention called ‘reruns’.”
“Smartass. I don’t watch much TV at all. I lead a busy life.”
Frank groans. “Don’t talk to me about being busy. I do nothing but walk circles and make my laptop’s cooling systems cry.”
“All right, then let’s talk about GridSlam. Tell me all about it.”
Frank opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. There’s so much to tell, he doesn’t know where to begin and totally stumps himself. Starting from the beginning is usually a safe bet, but he imagines she’s not too interested in the history of GridSlam, even though it has some pretty fun details. In the end, he gives a quick run-through of the most essential bits of history before moving on to the game itself.
“So, it’s two teams with two players each. They play on a platform that’s divided into three: two home bases and the playing field. The home bases have three goals each, and- hang on, I’ll draw a sketch for you.” He opens his notebook, flipping past the pages with song lyrics, poetry, and shitty doodles; she mumbles amusedly about him being even more passionate than she expected. Grinning, he rips a page out and draws a crude but functional picture.
“The home bases are safe – you can stay in them at the same spot as long as you want. But the playing field is crazy. It’s like a grid, and each square is connected to the scoreboard. For round one, tons of squares, that’re randomly distributed across the grid, light up red. If you step on or touch a red square, you’ll award points to the opposing team. Round two also has some of the red squares-”
“-but the squares change, right?”
“Yep. And during round three, all the squares can be red – they move around the grid. If you happen to stand on a square as it turns red, you’ve got one second to move.”
Humming attentively, Jamia points at the three rings he’s drawn in one of the home bases. “And you throw a ball through the goals, right?”
“Yeah. Each goal has different sizes. The smallest gives the most points, obviously.”
“Obviously. So, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t told you the best part yet! GridSlam is like … handball wrestling. While you’re trying to score points with the ball, you’re also allowed to push or pick up and throw your opponents! Like, if you make your opponent fall onto several red squares at once, you can get a ton of points just like that. But the most points get awarded if you manage to push the other team off the platform. Being pushed off also means you’re out of the round.” His face screws up. “Although, they might change that rule after what happened this season.”
Jamia has been quiet for a while. She’s staring at the sketch, rolling one of the paper’s edges between her fingertips. Before he can ask if he lost her in his sports-nerd-rant, her eyes flick up to meet his, then quickly back down again. Guess she’s still listening. He keeps going.
“It was the last match of the season before the playoffs – New Jersey’s last match of the season. Team Venom versus Team Viscera. You might’ve heard of the Venom brothers. They’re Jersey’s reigning champions and pretty famous. Viscera – also a sibling team – has been rising fast the past few years. They have this rad gimmick where they never took off their helmets, so no one knew who they really were. Said they wanted to keep their privacy, which is pretty fucking smart of them considering what some GridSlam fans are like. Anyway, they’re- they were good. But in the fifth round the brother, Hollow, fell off the platform and landed outside of the protective mat and …”
He trails off with a sigh. He didn’t see it in real-time, his organs being in such a bad shape he couldn’t do much of anything. But he checked it out later, curiosity spurred by the entire community talking about the tragedy.
How he wished he hadn’t.
The kid (because he couldn’t have been very old, not with the way he talked and acted in interviews) disappeared past the platform edge, the audience yelling in either disappointment or ecstasy. The match continued as usual for a minute or two, until the squares shut off. There’d been confused murmurs and isolated screams from the crowd, while the players looked around in bewilderment. Then the cameras cut off. The official broadcast didn’t show anything, of course, but you don’t need a broadcast when audience members with smartphones are in attendance. Frank will never scrub the image of the kid half on the mat, half off it, from his retinas. How he laid so still, how his head lolled when they tried to revive him.
“It was fucking brutal,” he says, hands cramping from how they clutch at his blanket. Shivers run through him, prickling his skin and giving him goose bumps from within. His stomach is one giant knot. “I saw this video of it online, and you can tell something’s wrong. He was just so limp when they-”
Jamia jumps to her feet. Frank shuts up. Her back is to him, head hanging low and shoulders shaking.
“Sorry,” she says, her voice thick and wet-sounding. “I, um … I just remembered I have something to do. I gotta go.”
She grabs her shoulder bag from the chair, not looking at him or saying a proper goodbye, and then she’s out the door. Frank doesn’t get it at first. It actually takes an embarrassingly long time for him to connect the dots. But when he finally does, oh. He’s so fucking stupid. The biggest idiot in the whole fucking world. What was he thinking, talking about a kid, a brother, dying horribly with someone whose kid brother just died?
He shouts her name, calls apologies after her, but she must either be already gone or ignoring him, because she doesn’t come back.
—•—
She doesn’t come back at all. Not the day afterward, or the day after that. Frank seriously is the biggest fucking idiot. Way to ruin a new friendship, moron. Great job hurting someone who’s already grieving, you dick. He doesn’t have her contact information, so he can’t text and tell her he didn’t mean it. Sure, he’s got her full name and could find her by googling, but … there’s a major creep-factor on that one. Besides, she probably doesn’t want his apology. She doesn’t want to hear from him at all. He ruined it.
Three days after he fucking blew it, he’s up and walking around the room. The nurses have given him his painkillers, done the bloodwork, and checked his piss, and while everything is fine so far they still want him to move a bit more. He’ll be the first to admit he’s been moping in bed lately, but not even his desire to wallow beats his desire to avoid blood clots, so here he is. Shuffling circles like a mad animal pacing in his cage. He can’t fucking wait to be discharged.
Someone clears their throat behind him; he pivots so fast he has to grab onto the bed frame to keep from falling. Jamia’s in the doorway, looking no different than before except for the sheepish expression on her face. Frank’s mouth hangs open like a fish. Jamia is back.
She’s back.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Her breath hitches, the sheepishness exchanged with alarm. “What?”
“I’m sorry. About last time. I shouldn’t have talked about someone dying right after Evan … It was so insensitive of me.”
She blinks at him twice. Then she snorts so hard her whole body shakes.
“It’s fine, dude, you don’t have to apologize for that. I wasn’t angry at you or anything.”
“Oh. But then,” he says, frowning, “why did you leave?”
“I- Well, I mean … Hearing you talk about it did bring Evan to mind. But I’m not upset with you, because I know you didn’t do it on purpose. And I’m …” Her gaze drops, her hands fluttering about as if she’s not sure what to do with them. She ends up crossing her arms. “I want to apologize for essentially ghosting you.”
Frank gapes. “What? No, that’s- Jamia, I hurt you! I get you not wanting to come around!”
“All right, so you’re sorry and I’m sorry. Let’s forget about this and move on,” she says with a shrug, her arms wrapping tighter around her and voice going shrill at the end.
Frank opens and closes his mouth without saying anything. There’s a deep crease between his drawn-together eyebrows and his mouth pulls towards one side in a half-pout. Jamia narrows her eyes at him; he glares back. That’s when she deflates, shoulders slumping as the breath rushes out of her lungs.
“Look,” she says, finally stepping away from the doorway and into the room. “The past weeks, everyone’s been so … considerate. Gentle. And I know I should appreciate it because they mean well, but I can’t. I hate it. They all treat me like I’m some tiny piece of cracked glass, and if they as much as breathe on me wrong I’ll explode into dust. I won’t! That’s why I like coming here. Here I’m just Jamia again, not the girl with the dead brother. I need this place to get away from it, but if you’re gonna act like them, I-”
Her voice starts out strong, but the longer she talks the faster and breathier and weaker the words become. When she stops in front of him, her chest is heaving and her eyes are glistening. She swallows, but it’s not enough. When she tries again the thickness in her throat has doubled. It infects Frank, too; his eyes are blurry by the time her tears fall.
“I like you, Frank. You just had a- a fucking heart-lung transplant, and you’re still the most normal guy in my life. And you treat me like I’m normal, too. I like you. You’re funny and nice and the most alive part of my life. So, please, please, don’t change on me now.”
Sniffling, Frank sucks in a breath. His voice is hoarse, as if he’s the one who’s been crying.
“I won’t.”
“Thanks.” Jamia sighs, wiping her cheeks. She looks at him from beneath her lashes, hesitant and small. “Can I … Can I hug you? Is that safe?”
He smiles wryly at her.
“I’m not cracked glass.”
She punches him in the shoulder. While he laughs, she pulls him into a firm embrace. It’s warm and safe – a big sister hug, or so Frank assumes. Her hand slips between them, the flimsy hospital gown the only barrier between her palm and his scar.
—•—
“Have you ever played GridSlam?”
Frank looks at Jamia in surprise. She doesn’t acknowledge him at first, rather focusing on the black and white aliens on his laptop screen. They’re lying together on the hospital bed, sides pressed closed as they watch old episodes of The Twilight Zone and snack on lentil chips.
Frank had resolved not to talk about GridSlam again – it might bring up bad memories, so he figured he’d let it become an unfortunate footnote in their friendship. He raises both eyebrows at her in question. She raises hers back, and rolls onto her side. Frank pauses the episode.
“I thought you weren’t into GridSlam?”
“But you are.” She shifts positions, using her arm to prop her head up. “You were so enthusiastic about it. Seems only logical for you to have at least tried it out.”
He smiles. “I did, actually. Played in an amateur team for five years. We did it the old school way with many players that switched out between rounds.”
“What’re you called?”
“Pencey Prep.”
“Pencey Prep?”
Her eyes light up with recognition and … excitement?
“Yeah …” Frank says. “You’ve heard of us. Are you sure you’re not into-”
“I don’t live under a rock,” she says with a laugh. “I have friends who like GridSlam, and they must’ve mentioned you. Also, amateur tournaments plaster their posters literally everywhere, so I’ve probably seen you on them too.”
“Right,” he says.
He doesn’t believe her. It’s not like it’s completely implausible, but … he just doesn’t believe her. Just because she’s heard about them in passing, why would she assume they’d be good enough to make it onto the posters? They were good enough, and they did make it onto a ton of posters, but how would she know? She’s probably a closet-sports fanatic. Frank has no idea why she would be hiding it from him, especially after he’s made it so clear he won’t judge. Ah, but who cares. She must have her reasons. If he pushes her, she might clam up even more, so he’s better off letting her tell him on her own. He can suppress the curious itch for her.
“Anyway,” she says, popping another chip in her mouth and licking the grease off her fingertips. “You said you ‘played’. You’re not anymore?”
“Nah, we disbanded a while back.”
“Because of …”
She nods at his chest. He sighs deeply.
“Partly. It was a whole perfect fucking storm. We had agents showing interest, but that would’ve meant breaking up the team, so it was difficult. We couldn’t come to any agreements. Some didn’t want to go pro, others didn’t want to keep playing at all, and then this.” He frowns down his neckline, from where pale skin and black stitches stare back at him. “The pneumonia was bad enough. When I got sepsis … I guess the others saw it as a sign it was time to end it.”
“Did you … Were you among the ones who wanted to go pro?”
He tries to laugh, but it comes out bitter. He stops.
“So fucking much.”
Making a sympathetic noise, she takes his hand, stroking the knuckles with her thumb. “I’m so sorry, Frankie. Are you at least still friends?”
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry. Remember Hambone? The big guy who came by that one time? He was on the team. And I live with both him and one of the other guys. But probably not for much longer, because mom wants me back home during the recovery period.”
“Yeah, you mentioned,” Jamia mumbles. Her thumb still strokes his skin in an even rhythm, but her gaze is glassy, her thoughts somewhere else. He pokes her, and she shakes herself out of it. When asked where she went, she only smiles and gives a non-answer before rolling back, barely saving the chips from getting crushed, and tells him to restart the episode.
—•—
One week later, Frank is finally going home. Home to mom, sure, but losing a bit of independence and gaining her fussing over him will be better than the hospital. He’ll be able to shower whenever he wants. And go outside at any time. Do things. Eat stuff. Not wear a sheet or piss through a tube.
It’s going to be awesome.
He spreads out on the bed, starfishing like it’s a king size. The nurses came by earlier to remove the catheter and soon his mom will pick him up and drive him home. The first thing he’ll do is put his piercings back in – his face feels naked without them; the second is lie in their tiny yard with his guitar. He might not even play it, just hold it and feel the grass against his skin and the weight of the acoustic on his belly.
“Looking pleased with yourself.”
He beams at the door. Jamia beams back. She’s carrying one of those white gift boxes for clothes in one hand and a paper bag in the other.
“Of course I am. I’ll be out of here in four hours!”
She hums. “It’ll be strange not to come here anymore. But I’m happy for you.” She puts the bag between his knees and the box on his thighs. He eyes them curiously, but before he can tell her she didn’t need to get him anything, she says: “It’s my birthday tomorrow. Turning twenty.”
“Really? Rad, we’ll be the same age for like four months. These an early gift?”
“Nope, they’re for you. I’ll hopefully get my present after you open them.”
He furrows his brow. “Uh, okay? What-”
“Open and you’ll see what I mean.”
She pushes the box farther up his lap. The excitement on her face bleeds into him; he removes the lid. He doesn’t know what he expected underneath the pink tissue paper – maybe a cool sweater or nice jacket – but he knows it wasn’t a catsuit.
It’s black with white stripes. Pulling it out and holding it up, he realizes the stripes are actually bones, a skeleton printed onto the fabric. It’s also not a catsuit – it’s a GridSlam uniform. Team Viscera’s uniform.
Jamia must think he’s taking too long staring at the suit, because she reaches into the paper bag on her own. Out of it, she brings a GridSlam helmet, a matching black with a skull on it. Frank is so fucking confused. His eyes dart between the helmet and the suit, then to Jamia. The excitement is still there, but rounded out by nervousness. She licks her lips and inhales hard before speaking.
“They won’t fit because they’re Evan’s and he’s bigger than you, but we’ll fix that. We’ll get new ones. This is mostly symbolic, anyway.”
And now he’s even more confused.
“Evan was into Team Viscera cosplay?” he asks. It startles a laugh out of her.
“No. No, he was … We are …”
Frank’s gaze falls back to the uniform in his lap. The cogs in his brain turn so violently they shriek. Team Viscera uniforms. A brother-sister team where the brother recently died. Jamia running out in tears. Organs suddenly available for transplantation. Evan Nestor.
Frank whips his head to Jamia. She’s chewing on her lip, her face pallid with nerves. Her hands are shaking. Frank’s heart breaks even further, so he says:
“I’m so sorry!”
It shocks the color back to her face. Her eyes double in size and she takes a step back.
“You- what?”
“I said all that about Hollow, about Evan, right in front of you. I tried to describe your brother’s death to you. I’m so sorry.”
Jamia splutters. It’s like a gasp for air, an incredulous laugh, a general noise of incomprehension, and something else, something unidentifiable probably even to her, all at once.
“Are you serious? That’s what you’re focusing on? I’ve been kind of lying to you for weeks, and this is your first thought?”
Which, huh, she has a point. Deceiving a friend like that is kinda shitty. It’s something he could be justified in getting angry about. And yet.
“Your whole thing was staying anonymous,” he says while scratching his neck. “Telling a guy you just met doesn’t make sense … even if he’s got part of the team inside him.” She snorts with amusement. He grins at her, before frowning. “Why are you telling me?”
She snorts again, this time with nervousness. Shuffling her feet, she makes a flailing motion with one arm towards the Viscera gear. “Because I want you to be my new partner.”
It’s a good thing Frank is already seated, because his legs go numb. All of him does. But it’s not an unpleasant numbness, not the cold kind from when you have been stationary for too long, invisible pins pricking at your flesh. No, it’s warm and a little hazy, like waking up trapped underneath a heavy blanket in front of a fire.
“Jam, I …” he says softly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. People have been telling me I should retire, but I can’t. That last game was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but GridSlam is my life. I can’t just stop. I don’t want to. Evan wouldn't give up – he'd do everything to win, for both of us. That's what I'll do now, and I want to do it with you.” She sits next to him on the bed, grasping his hand that isn’t clutching the uniform. “I looked up Pencey Prep. I’ve seen clips of you playing. You guys were good, but you, Frank? You’re great. And you’re a great person. You’re talented, you love the sport, you want to go pro, and I like you as a person. That’s exactly what I want in a partner. So what do you say?”
Frank heaves a breath, and slowly lets it out. His head is empty of thoughts and swimming with emotions. He knew his answer the moment she asked. There only is one answer. When he voices it, Jamia's grin is the biggest he’s ever seen, wide and full of white, even teeth.
It still can’t possibly be bigger than his smile.