Five Feet Apart

Stella returns to her room in a panic: “all the pain and the guilt I’ve been pushing further and further down rears its ugly head, making my knees buckle under me” (120). She recalls how, last minute, she was unable to attend the trip to Arizona, a trip from which Abby never returned. Stella remembers her disbelief over Abby’s death, her complete abandonment of her regimen, and the intensified strain on her parents’ marriage. She reflects, “My parents couldn’t talk to each other. Couldn’t even look at each other” (121). Despite Stella’s best attempts to hold her family together, her parents “were separated after three months. Divorced in six” (121). The emotional strain resulted in Stella’s strict adherence to her routine as a means of prolonging her life for the sake of her parents.

Stella reminisces on how Abby gave her three gifts that have helped her survive so many of the difficult trips to the hospital: her stuffed panda named Patches, the many drawings she has collected over the years, and her friendship with Poe, whom Abby introduced to Stella on her first day at Saint Grace’s. Distressed, Stella asks Poe to meet her in the hospital lounge.