Read Zac and Mia for Free Online

how the girl can fight back, but she does, again and again.
    The ward manager asks the mother to leave and I see her take off, her hair drawn back in that tortoiseshell claw, a hand swiping at tears.
    But the fight’s not yet over. I hear the new girl get stuck into Nina.
    ‘Go away.’
    ‘I need to hook up the new bags,’ Nina’s saying. ‘Yours are empty.’
    ‘No!’ the girl yells with more energy than I could muster. ‘No
more
. Leave me a
lone
!’
    There’s a flurry of nurses in the corridor and, soon, Patrick’s shoes as he walks to Room 2 and closes the door behind him. I imagine him standing there, hands clasped, asking delicately about her ‘feelings’. She fights him too.
    It doesn’t end until later, with Dr Aneta and probably something like valium. ‘Fine, give it to me,’ the new girl says. ‘Give me the lot.’
    Now there’s a silence that seeps through our wall. Six centimetres isn’t so solid after all.
    There’s so much she doesn’t understand yet: that it gets better; that it’s not the doctors’ fault.
Don’tstruggle
, I want to say.
Don’t pull the Emergency Exit lever. Take the pills and, for what it’s worth, enjoy the ride
.
    I wish I could tell her this.
    I wish I could tell her how lucky she is.
    Returning to bed after my third piss of the night, I see a star on the floor. It’s as if it found its own way there, skimming under the door and across the smooth lino.
    There’s still a bit of glow left in it. I pick it up and let it lead me back to bed.
    When I’d told the girl about the star on her ceiling, I hadn’t wanted her to return it. Why does she keep getting my messages wrong?
    I hope I haven’t made her sadder.
    I hear her toilet flush. Three a.m.
    I wonder how it feels to lie in a room this size without anyone to share it with.
    I don’t reach for the iPad tonight. I’m not in the mood for updates on the winners and losers. Instead, I keep hold of the star as it fades. I watch until it disappears completely, and even then I feel its shape in my palm.
    Head to head, we lie.
    At least, I think, she’s not fighting me.

5
ZAC
    Around lunchtime, I convince Mum I’m desperate for a spearmint milkshake from the cafe—a guaranteed way to get her out of my room. I need to knock on the wall and tell the girl to take back the star. She wasn’t supposed to return it to me.
    I knock, but a man’s voice answers. The girl’s already gone.
    Cam and I met in the common room way back in April. He was in for radiation and our cycles overlapped, so we’d play long games of pool, though I think he took it easy on me. Fresh from surgery, the scar on his head was a raised, violent ‘C’. ‘
C for Cam. In case you forget.’
It could have been ‘C’ for the other word, the one that can’t be named. Cam’s tumour had been the size of a golf ball and he carried one in his pocket for illustrative purposes. He’d thought his headacheswere caused by getting dumped on Trigg reef too many times.
    ‘I’ve … what do you call it?’ he calls through the wall. ‘Relapsed. Like you did.’
    It’s not fair that the two words should be so close: relapse, remission. They should be at opposite ends of the dictionary.
    His hair’s grown back curly, he says. ‘But now the bastard’s back and I’ve got to get zapped again.’ He’s an electrician, he reminds me, so he can handle it. He boasts he’s been surfing every day since finishing treatment the first time. Last week he scoffed at a two-metre tiger shark. ‘What could it do to me?’ he laughs through the wall. I can almost hear the sea in his voice.
    Nina’s lured into his room more often than mine. There’s not much of an age difference between them, I reckon. I overhear their small talk and the buzz in her voice. When she comes into my room, a grin still plays at her lips, a different shape to the one she usually gives me. Her cheeks are the colour of her ladybird clip. I watch her change my IV fluids and reset the