Five Feet Apart

“People are always looking at my cannula, my scars, my G-tube, not at me.” 

Stella remarks that she feels defined by her cystic fibrosis and desires to be truly seen. She thinks this after witnessing a happy couple entering the hospital hand-in-hand and expresses her longing for a similar connection. Soon after this thought, Stella meets Will for the first time and begins her journey toward a life lived for her own happiness.

“I squint at the heart, thinking about that fateful last day. Somewhere poetic. A beach, maybe. Or a rowboat somewhere in Mississippi. Just no walls. I could sketch the landscape, draw a final cartoon of me giving the middle finger to the universe, then bite the big one.” 

Will imagines his last day alive as he counts down the days until his 18th birthday. At the beginning of the novel, Will struggles against the tyranny of his mother’s unrelenting efforts to “fix” him or “cure” him of cystic fibrosis. Will does not fear death but imagines it as a free and rebellious act. This perspective of death fuels his selfish and reckless actions at the novel’s beginning and sets the contrast for his later development into a sacrificial, selfless figure.

“I’ve seen parades from the one in Brazil, the people looking like brightly colored ants as they danced through the streets, wild and free. I’ve seen France sleep, the Eiffel Tower shining brightly in the distance, lights quietly shutting off in third-floor apartments, the moon drifting lazily into view. I’ve seen the beaches in California, water that goes on for miles and miles, people basking in the perfect waves first thing in the morning.

Every place is different. Every place is unique. It’s the hospitals I’m seeing them from that are the same.”

Will longs for escape and independence. He feels trapped within the monotony of the hospitals he has inhabited throughout his life. He serves as a contrasting figure to Stella, who initially finds comfort in the familiarity of Saint Grace’s Hospital. Her relationship with Will opens her eyes to the world outside the hospital and to a desire to travel the world and experience it for herself.