Madeline Whitter is a teenage girl who has SCID which stands for severe combined immunodeficiency. This is in fact a very real and life threatening disease that effects around 40-100 babies born every year. Individuals with SCID are more prone to viruses and bacteria and they have a harder time fighting them off than individuals without it.
Madeline who is called Maddy is the story has basically lived her whole life indoors. She only sees three people in person on a regular basics. Her mother Pauline (who’s also her doctor), her nurse Carla and Carla’s daughter Rosa. That is until Olly and his family move in next door. Olly and Maddy first meet from their bedroom windows and he writes his number on the window so that Maddy can text him.
They talk about why Maddy essentially bound to the house and they continue to do this for a few days. Maddy eventually asks her nurse if he can come visit if they both stay on opposite sides of them room. She shoots her down real, quick but eventually surprises her with a visit from Olly. Olly comes over at least two times once when Carla was there and once when they were alone for the 4th of July.
Olly’s dad makes his family move around a lot. He’s also not the nicest man to his family. One day Olly and his dad get into a fight in the front yard and Olly’s dad punches him in the face. Maddy sees the fight from her room and runs outside without thinking to see if Olly’s OK. I think Olly’s family situation makes him a protector. In the book, he’s always defending his mother and sister against his father. Which he then protects Maddy.
He urges her to go back in as her mother runs after her and doesn’t understand why she would risk her life for someone she doesn’t know. She then realizes that Maddy does know Olly and Maddy lies and tells her mother that their just online friends. She doesn’t believe her and Carla gets fired because she has endangered her daughter’s life by allowing Olly inside.
Pauline put’s Maddy on “house arrest” and cuts off her internet use expect for school hours. Maddy decides to buy tickets to Hawaii and asks Olly to go with her. I think that since Maddy had spent pretty much her whole life indoors she was tired of living that way. Having her vitals and temperature checked several times a day and never being to feel the wind blow through her hair or grass against her skin.
In Hawaii Maddy does get sick which lands her in the hospital. When she wakes up she’s home in her bed. Which I have to point out is strange because her heart stopped and then she makes up hooked to a heart monitor in her room at home? OK, not very realistic but we’ll go with it.
Later, Maddy also deals with Olly leaving town when they return from Hawaii. His mother wanted to go back to New York to escape her drunken and abusive husband. So, Olly, his sister and mother leave in the middle of the night while their dad is out.
The doctor that treated Maddy calls her and tells her that she doesn’t believe that she has SCID. Maddy then goes into a panic and starts questioning her mother and if everything she told her was a lie. Maddy runs away and finds a convenience store where she calls Carla to pick her up. Taking what the doctor told her and how her mother didn’t have any record that she had SCID Maddy gets a second opinion on her diagnoses. That doctor tells her that she doesn’t have SCID. Maddy’s was a very sick baby with ear infections and hospital stays. Her mother had lost her son and husband in a car accident and Maddy was all that she had left.
So, when the doctors told her that Maddy’s issues where just allergies she felt that it was much more. She felt as though since Maddy was all that she had she couldn’t lose her too. Whether or not she truly felt Maddy was sicker than the doctors said she created a bigger sickness in her head. Which deprived Maddy of a normal childhood and the fear that any little thing that she came in contact with would make her sick.
When Maddy realizes that she’s not sick she decides to fly to New York to see Olly. They meet at a book store and with everything that happened they decided to make that their first encounter with each other.
Having read the book by Nicola Yoon first (yay me!) I felt that they followed the book almost exactly. Which is important because for me I like to visualize what I’m reading and the movie brought my visions to life. I also appreciate how Yoon didn’t focus on one race in her story. Many of the young adult novels that I read are written by Caucasian women and that’s who is reflected in their stories.
Yoon was born in Jamaica and later moved to Brooklyn. Her husband is Asian American which I believe influences her multi-cultural characters. So, if you have the chance go see Everything, Everything but I suggest you read the book first. You don’t really have too, it’s just better if you do.
