What We Leave Behind Read Online Free PDF Page B

when it happened. It felt as though she’d loved him her whole life, that he made her laugh and feel special when they were around each other. And one thing she realized in particular was how much she hated to be away from him, even for one night.”
    “My God, your dad must’ve blown a gasket,” I interrupted again.
    “He was pretty roughed up. I remember him telling this story at their anniversary party; the news of Mom’s new boyfriend, how his heart hurt, how he could barely speak.”
    And as if to let us know he remembered also, Adam Levy shifted in the bed and a loud gasp escaped his chest.
    “What else did the letter say?” I whispered.
    “This is the best part. She said that she couldn’t be without him anymore.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “See, you’re not as smart as you think you are. She said she was coming back to California to see him, to see my dad, that it was no life without him in it, and he was the boy she’d always loved, always had. She was coming home for him.”
    “It was him all along?” I asked, images of the two of them swirling through my head. “There was never someone else in Washington?”
    “Nope.”
    “Really?”
    “You sound disappointed,” he said. “Are you disappointed?”
    I wasn’t sure of my answer. “I’m just surprised. I guess I really thought she loved somebody else.”
    Maybe I was a little letdown by Rachel’s pronouncement.  I never thought love could be that simple.
    I spent the next few days dutifully going to school and then sneaking off to the hospital. Beth kept asking to come along, but I told her she wasn’t allowed. I’d watch her walk toward the direction of her house, knowing I was hurting her, but not willing to share Jonas and his father. Sometimes I wouldn’t even tell Mom I was there.
    When Jonas Levy asked me why I was there every day, I lied and said that it was part of the internship program at our school. I explained how the gifted students were required to do internships in their field of interest. “I’m studying to be a doctor,” I told him.
    “Really? That’s funny. So am I. I just finished my second year at Harvard,” he added.
    I didn’t let the prestigious name throw me or the shameless lie I’d constructed. “How are you going to stomach being a doctor with your track record and all?”
    “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
    “Not likely.”
    “Then maybe you should know that I only got sick because I looked through the door and saw you standing there, such a ghastly sight I couldn’t contain myself.”
    Instead of cringing at those words, I smiled. Maybe Adam Levy had something there with that “being mean” theory.
    And speaking of Adam Levy, the man was not doing particularly well. Although he was alert and talking to his family, the life inside of him had begun to deteriorate. By then I was schooled on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and it was, quite frankly, a big fart of a disease. Jonas, who was a lot more advanced in his pre-med studies than I was, explained that “pulmonary fibrosis is a disease of the lower respiratory tract that damages the air sacs in the lungs, prohibiting the proper transfer of oxygen to the blood. Idiopathic,” he added, “means no cause can be found.”
    I loved when Jonas talked like that. He sounded so smart. He was probably the smartest person I ever engaged in verbal banter with, precluding myself. Every afternoon, when the doctor visited Mr. Levy’s room—Dr. Missed Opportunity, I now liked to call him—Jonas would request a debriefing, asking only the most important questions and expecting the most detailed responses. You could see on Jonas’s face how important it was to be included in the updates. When his father’s breathing became more erratic—“Velcro-like” he’d call it—I’d find him knee-deep in his textbooks on the couches in the waiting area. When cyanosis occurred, the blueness around his mouth and fingernails that marked