Almost two weeks had gone by since my aunt, my sister, and I left our tiny Georgia farm town, but unopened boxes and duffle bags still littered every free corner of my room. Various articles of clothing, from bras, to jeans, to a stray sandal here and there, were strewn haphazardly on top of the big round chair at the foot of my bed. Things that I considered wearing but decided against? Send it to the chair. Things that weren't clean but weren't dirty enough for the hamper? To the chair it goes. Things I might wear within the next 7 to 10 business days? Chair.

I liked to think I had organized chaos, but in reality it looked like I had just hit self-destruct on all my belongings.

I eased my eyes shut and tried to take in a few more peaceful moments before having to trudge back to the hospital. Nikki's appointments were every Friday, but with Aunt Mel getting her bearings at her new job teaching art at the community center, some of those first few appointments fell on me. The days between Saturday and Thursday came and went quicker than I could change my socks, and I tried to tell myself I could handle the pungent combination of antiseptic, shriveling old people, and baby powder without wanting to puke. The actual sick person handled it with supreme optimism.

As if on cue, the door to my room flung open, smashing against a wall and sending knickknacks on my desk that I refused to throw away before moving clattering to the floor.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" Nikki barged into my room with her usual brand of dramatic flair, bouncing around gracefully on her dance-trained toes.

I groaned and covered my face with a pillow.

"I've never seen someone get so excited about going to chemo before," I muttered, my voice muffled by the pillow. Nikki knocked the pillow off of my head and leaned down close to me. Tendrils of her blonde hair brushed over my face and made my nose twitch.

"I'm pretty sure I'm the only person you've ever seen go to chemo," she pointedly corrected me. "We're going to be late if you don't get your ass up."

She jostled me and pulled the covers off my bed, exposing the tatty sweatpants and oversized t-shirt that served as my pajamas while my real ones were packed away somewhere. She grinned down at me, and the skin next to her eyes crinkled, and when a ray of morning light from my window hit them, they looked like little pools of honey. I cringed thinking about my own eyes - almost the same color as hers - but with all the glow and allure of dead grass.

"Let's go. You've got 15 minutes, sunshine." She jostled me again and hit me with a pillow. "At least try and get yourself together."

I tried to grab my blanket from her, but she yanked it away. "You mean sweatpants aren't appropriate for sitting around a hospital?"

"You're the only 22-year-old girl I know who leaves the house in sweatpants." She smacked me with a pillow again. "What do I keep telling you? You can never be too prepared, you never know who you'll run into."

I inwardly groaned thinking back to my encounter with the guy who did run into me, with his crooked grin and his messy hair. Was he sneaking around the hallways again, dodging doctors and looking for another poor soul to run over? Or maybe he was just sitting in some hospital room with that same lost look in his hazy blue eyes.

I better prepared myself for Nikki's appointment this time, with several books stuffed into my tattered tote bag. If I read one more article about Justin Bieber or Real Housewives of Atlanta, my brain cells would start to rot.

But I didn't think I'd ever be fully prepared for all the needles, the cold machines, or the sick-smelling air. If Nikki was bothered, she didn't show it. She settled into her chair and started her absentminded social media scrolling, sighing every so often or making off-hand remarks about friends back in Georgia - who gained weight or who's been screwing who. Sometimes when she got quiet, and the sound of the beeping machines and pumps took over, she looked like she had been replaced by somebody else. Somebody I didn't recognize, with less light in her eyes than Nikki. Somebody hollow.

     "You know what I could really go for?" She casually twirled a lock of blonde hair around her finger.

"Let me guess." I tapped my finger on my chin. "An iced latte?"

Nikki grinned. "An iced vanilla latte with soy milk and extra whipped cream. It's coffee, not rocket science."

"Right, how could I forget?" I said with an eye roll.

Nikki squealed and clapped her hands. "You're the best big sister ever."

"I'm only doing this because I think I'm going through caffeine withdrawal," I called over my shoulder as I left the room.

It took me much less time to make it to the coffee shop on my second trip without having to navigate the harrowing maze of hospital hallways. The smell of fresh brewed coffee filled the tiny corner of the hospital behind the cafeteria, like its own little oasis of caffeine and croissants.

"What can I get you?" the petite brunette behind the counter chirped.

It took me a few moments to rattle off Nikki's complicated latte, and despite being in a hospital, ordering an IV drip of coffee straight into my veins wasn't acceptable, so I settled on an Americano. When I pulled out my wallet to pay, the barista stopped me.

"Oh, it's already been taken care of," she waved me off.

I must have looked puzzled because the barista pointed over my shoulder. When I turned around, my heart jumped into my throat as I came face to face with the blue-eyed guy from the week before. He wore the same black shirt and gray Nike sweatpants from our first encounter, and although his hair looked freshly washed, it still looked as if he stuck his head out of the window of a moving car. He got up from the small round table he was sitting at and stood next to me, and I caught a whiff of cigarettes and citrus coming off his t-shirt.

"Hey," he said with that same faint, unassuming grin.

"Were you waiting for me?" I asked as I narrowed my eyes on him.

"I told you I owed you," he replied with a shrug. "I really did feel bad for knocking you over. I was just hoping you'd come back around the same time."

"Here you go, love," the barista handed me our drinks. She then slid a smaller cup across the counter to the guy.

"I figured you'd want a double shot on ice," the barista said to him with a playful smile. It took everything in me not to gag.

"Thanks Marina," he winked at the barista. "I owe you."

I cringed hearing the way he said I owe you - warm, charming, and exactly the same way he said it to me last week.

The barista giggled and turned away sheepishly.

I looked up at him as he chewed on the plastic straw of his drink. Locks of hair fell onto his forehead, and I was overcome with an insane urge to push his hair back. Thankfully I had two drinks in my hands to keep them occupied.

"I'm Brooklyn, by the way," he said, still grinning a knee-weakening grin at me. I had to stop myself from saying "I know," because I remembered the way the nurse called his name from down the hallway, like a dog who had escaped his backyard just to spite his owners.

"I'm Nat," I replied. "Well, Natalie, but Nat to most people."

I bit my tongue before I could embarrass myself any further. Guys didn't normally frazzle me, but the heat spreading across my cheeks said otherwise, and those gorgeous eyes of his made my heart rattle. I felt small under his gaze, even though all he did was smile at me and continue to chew on his straw.

"Well...do you wanna sit down?" he asked, gesturing to the tiny round table he was sitting at before. For a moment, I hesitated. His coffee debt to me was repaid, and I sure as hell didn't owe him anything, but the smile he wore was so warm and inviting, I wanted to wrap myself in it like a blanket.

"Okay, just for a minute, though." I exhaled as I sat down across from him, the rickety plastic chair creaking underneath me.

"So, I take it you're not a patient." A blotchy redness crept up his neck when he spoke.

I blew a piece of hair out of my face. "I'm not. My sister is."

"Oh...is she okay?"

I glanced at his hands as he took another sip of his coffee. His hospital bracelet barely clung to his wrist, faded and on its final strings of life. My mind flashed to my sister, up in her room with tubes and pumps sticking out of her body, clinging onto life's little strings in her own way.

"Um, sort of," I replied with a shrug. "She has non-hodgkin's lymphoma, and she was recently approved for a clinical trial the hospital is running. So here we are."

He pressed his lips into a thin line, and the redness on his cheeks started to deepen. "Well, it's nice of you to be here for her."

When I looked up at him, he gave me a faint smile, and my heart clenched. As attractive as he was, there was no hiding the sick look that glazed over him. His skin was naturally tan and freckled, but there was a dull sallowness to him, decorated with bruise-colored bags and bloodshot eyes. Scruff grew in patches along his jaw, and hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty clumps. He looked suffocated, like he desperately needed sun and fresh air.

"What about you?" I asked, desperate to get the subject off of my sister.

His grin faded, and the lines in his forehead deepened as he furrowed his brows.

"You really wanna know?" He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "It's pretty morbid."

"I can handle it." I nodded.

Brooklyn let out a heavy breath and rubbed his forehead. "Well, I have this rare, brain-eating bacteria. The doctors don't think I'll even make it to next month."

It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room, and I must have looked like someone just slapped me across the face. Brooklyn's expression was blank, but I could see the corners of his mouth start to twitch. Eventually he burst out laughing.

"You should have seen your face," he said, still laughing and holding his sides. "I'm sorry, it was too easy."

"Oh my god, I thought you were really dying!" I leaned over and smacked his forearm. "So what's really wrong with you? Or are you just hanging out in a hospital pretending to be sick and looking for people with coffee to knock over?"

"Nah, you're the only lucky one," He grinned again, but the lines in his forehead faded as his expression softened. He cleared his throat and pressed his hands together in front of him. "So, here's the thing..."

His sentence was cut off as a waifish, red-haired woman in blue scrubs walked into the coffee shop area and approached our table.

"I've been looking for you for 30 minutes," she said as she tapped Brooklyn's shoulder. Her voice was kind, but her words were threaded with annoyance.

Brooklyn turned around in his chair to face the woman. "Come on, Leslie. I can be out of my room by myself. I'm not a prisoner, you know."

The red-headed woman sighed. "Yes, but you are not allowed to miss your group session. Which you did."

Brooklyn clicked his tongue. "Maybe if you hadn't taken my phone and my watch, I would know what time it is."

The woman pointed to a white clock on the wall above the cash register.

"Oh, would you look at that." Brooklyn crossed his arms and scrunched his face up. "It's a clock."

I had to stifle a laugh.

"Let's go," the woman said and beckoned him to the hallway. "You've got less than two weeks left Brooklyn, don't ruin things now."

He rose from his chair and tugged at the hem of his t-shirt.

"Well, I guess that's my cue to leave." He glanced down at me, and a soft rosiness painted his cheeks. "I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Yeah," I returned his smile. "If you don't get into any more trouble first."

He gave me one last grin before following the nurse out into the hallway.

I sat by myself for a moment, trying to come down from whatever cloud I had just been floating on. I barely knew the guy, but that smile of his put my head in the sky. My phone buzzed in my sweater pocket, thankfully tearing me out of my thoughts.

NIKKI: where are you???

My heart jumped into my throat as I ventured back through the hallways of the hospital to Nikki's room. I pressed the cold drink in my hand to my forehead to cool my nerves, mentally preparing myself for a dramatic interrogation.

I eased the door to Nikki's room open slowly, and much to my relief, she hadn't moved an inch, face still buried in her phone.

"Caffeine delivery," I said as I held her drink in front of her face, rattling the ice around in the plastic cup.

Nikki yanked it out of my hands and took a long sip. "God, I felt like a pregnant lady, I was craving that so hard. You're the best Nat, thanks."

I returned to my plastic chair across from Nikki and picked at my cuticles. I couldn't get his smile out of my head, and I couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not. Nice guys seemed like an extinct breed, and I found myself wondering what kind of catch there was to Brooklyn, and why he outlasted the meteor shower that seemed to wipe out all the other nice guys.

"What's got your panties in a bunch, princess?" She quipped.

I didn't realize how badly I had zonked out, until I looked down at my fingers and realized I had picked at the skin around my nail until it bled.

"Uh...nothing," I shook my head. "It's nothing."

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