Chapter 190 Can I stay?

Chapter 190 Can I stay?
The nurse had just finished hooking me up when Michael placed a book on the bed beside me.
The Salt Path.
He'd mentioned it that night in the park, back when we'd barely known each other and somehow already felt like we'd been circling one another for years. Like we'd met in another lifetime and spent this one, without realizing it, drifting slowly back toward each other.
Michael had said the book felt fitting. I knew what he meant. There was something about walking forward when you had no guarantee the road would lead anywhere good. About losing things and continuing anyway. About carrying what you couldn't put down and somehow still finding reasons to keep moving. It felt fitting in ways neither of us wanted to say aloud.
Outside, the sky was a dull sheet of grey. The kind of weather that made the windows look tired. Oddly, I liked it. It made everything feel slower. Like the whole world had collectively decided to quiet down for a while, as though it were holding its breath along with us, waiting for the right moment to exhale and let the sun through.
Michael picked up the book and turned it over, reading the blurb. "It was adapted into a film, apparently."
I looked at him.
"I hate when they do that."
His eyebrows lifted. "Adapt books into films?"
"Yes."
"Sometimes they do it right."
"They don't."
"That's a very sweeping statement."
"They should let books be books."
He smiled. "How many adaptations have you watched?"
"Enough."
"That's not a number."
"The problem," I said, "is that you read something and build the entire world in your head. The characters look a certain way. They sound a certain way. The places feel a certain way. Then someone makes a film and suddenly there's a casting director somewhere deciding that the person you've spent three hundred pages imagining is actually Chris Hemsworth."
Michael's mouth twitched. "I don't think Chris Hemsworth is the problem."
"He's an example."
"A very attractive example."
I scoffed and rolled my eyes before muttering...“He's not even that good-looking.”
Michael's lips curved into an amused smile. “I think he's objectively attractive....But,” he added, reaching over to brush his thumb along my cheek, “he's never been you. So I'm not particularly swayed.”
I was about to ask him what adaptation he feels did a book justice when someone knocked.
We both turned toward the door just as it opened. The first thing I saw was blonde hair. Then Chloe Sanders stepped into the room.
She looked exactly like she always did and somehow completely different. Nervous, anxious...a little lost. Her backpack hung from one shoulder, and she was rubbing her hands together like she hadn't quite decided what to do with them. Her eyes moved quickly from me to Michael, then to the IV beside the bed.
She froze for half a second.
"Chloe?"
She looked at me. "Hi, Mr. Ashbrook."
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"What are you doing here?"
She glanced vaguely behind herself.
"I saw you earlier."
I waited, she waited too. For a moment, I thought that was all she had come to say. Then she shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder.
"I wanted to say hi."
There was something so painfully Chloe about that sentence that I didn't know what to do with it. Michael was the one who broke the silence.
"Hi."
She turned toward him and gave him a tiny wave. "Hi."
I studied her for a moment. "Are you sick?"
She shook her head quickly. "No. I had an appointment." Then she looked down at her hands. I could practically see her deciding whether I had earned the rest of the sentence. I waited, and eventually, she quietly added, "They assigned me a therapist. He works here."
"Assigned?"
She nodded, and that was it. I knew better than to push. Chloe had never been much of a talker. Even at school, getting more than a few sentences out of her at once had required patience and the occasional strategic silence. Her being here at all was strange enough. And sitting there with an IV running into my arm, I suddenly felt painfully aware of myself. Of how exposed I was. How little of the version of me she'd known at school remained visible in this room.
"So," I said, trying to give us something ordinary to hold onto. "How's school?"
"Fine."
"Everyone doing okay?"
She shrugged. "We're on break."
I smiled faintly, realizing I'd completely lost track of the school calendar. "Oh, right."
"And you?" I asked, recalling the last time we'd crossed paths in that same hospital. "How're you doing?"
She blinked. Her eyes flicked toward Michael, then back to me. "I'm..."
She stopped. Her fingers found the dangling strap of her backpack and started worrying it between them. She swallowed, took a slow breath and let it out. Then she looked at me. "Are you going to be okay, Mr. Ashbrook?"
Her voice cracked around the last word. I glanced at Michael and he was already watching me. Chloe's eyes looked tired. There was something sorrowful in them that made her look older than sixteen.
"Do you really have cancer?"
I couldn't bring myself to lie, so I nodded. A small hum escaped me before I managed to say it properly. "I really do."
Her head dropped. She stared at the floor for a few seconds, then looked around the room as if she were suddenly aware she had walked into somewhere private. When she looked back at me, her voice was cautious.
"Can I stay?"
I hesitated.
She was my student. A sixteen-year-old who shouldn't have been sitting in a hospital room watching her teacher receive chemotherapy. But I'd always suspected Chloe had lived through more than most sixteen-year-olds should have had to. And I could see it now. She wanted me to say yes. She was hoping I would.
So I nodded.
"Okay."
Michael immediately stood and offered her his seat. He pulled it closer to the bed, and Chloe sat down carefully. Then he found another chair and placed it on the opposite side.
He picked up The Salt Path and gestured to it. "I was about to read."
Chloe nodded. "Okay."
"You ever read it?"
She looked at the cover and shook her head.
"There's a film adaptation too," Michael said. "I know your generation prefers those."
A tiny smile appeared on her face. "I don't. They completely ruined Percy Jackson."
Michael and I looked at each other. And somehow, without saying anything, we both smiled. There was something strangely comforting about that. Something ordinary. Michael opened the book and started reading. His voice settled into the room And a few pages in, Chloe reached down into the backpack she'd placed beside her chair. She pulled out a ball of yarn, then a crochet hook. And quietly, almost mechanically, she began to work. Her fingers moved quickly. I watched them while Michael read. There was something hypnotic about it. Something about the repetition that made the room feel less like a hospital.
I kept listening to Michael's voice, but my eyes drifted back to Chloe's hands. She didn't look happier, I wasn't sure happiness was even the right word. But she looked lighter somehow, less trapped inside whatever had followed her through the hospital doors.
Michael kept reading. Chloe kept crocheting. The chemo kept dripping quietly into my veins. And outside, the grey sky remained exactly where it was, holding its breath.