by Rob Rufus
U
S
“Thanks, baby.”
“You promise you like it?” she asked.
“Goddamn right I do.”
She nodded. She found some medical tape in a drawer and taped the little cross to my bedrail. She told me to look at it every night.
“At least he’ll be safe from vampires,” Brody said.
Everyone but Ali laughed.
“Show him the magazine,” Ashley said softly.
Nat and Brody looked at each other and grinned. Slowly, Brody pulled a copy of Rolling Stone out of his backpack. He tossed it in my lap.
“Turn to page one twenty-eight,” Nat said.
I flipped through the magazine until I got to a two-page article titled “Punks Rejoice—Warped Tour ’01 Announces Official Lineup.” I scanned through the article, faster and faster, skipping the bullshit—near the end there was a full listing of bands: 311, Good Charlotte, Dropkick Murphys, AFI, Flogging Molly, Jimmy Eat World, the Distillers . . . Defiance of Authority . . .
My jaw fucking dropped—we were in Rolling fucking Stone! WHAT?!?!
“Dude!” I yelled. “Holy shit!”
“I know!”
“I mean shit!”
“I know!”
* * *
My eyes kept drifting to the Rolling Stone.
Seeing our name in print was the most validating thing that had ever happened to me. But I could only imagine how Nat and Brody felt; even Paul must have wondered what the hell we were going to do now that I was in the hospital. No one had mentioned it, but we all knew it needed to be dealt with—now.
I felt like I’d blown it for everyone. Our band would never get a chance like this again. Not kids like us. Not in West Virginia.
“Look, guys,” I said, leaning forward. “I think we are gonna have to find a fill-in drummer for the tour.”
“Fuck that,” Nat said instantly.
No one else said anything.
“You were in here when the doc went over my treatment plan,” I said to him. “I don’t think I’ll even be done with chemo by the summer—it makes me so fucking weak, bro, there’s no way.”
“Maybe your doctors can schedule treatments around the shows. Push them back a week or something.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Brody said.
“Really?” Nat snapped. “How the fuck would you know how it works?”
I sighed. “It wouldn’t matter, anyway. Even if they were willing to do that . . . y’all just don’t understand how shitty I feel. I can barely get into the bathroom—how am I gonna go on tour?” I held up the magazine. “There is no way I want to fuck this up any more than I already have—you guys have to do the tour. You have to.”
“Who would you want to fill in?” Paul asked.
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
“I have a few ideas,” Brody said, “I’ll put some feelers out . . . if you want me to . . . and then we can start auditioning. Any of the drummers around town would kill to do it.”
“We need to wait until Rob is home before we try anyone out,” Nat said. “Rob is going to pick the fill-in. It’s his band as much as anyone’s.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Brody said.
Nat ran his hand through his hair. “But for the record, I think this fucking sucks.”
* * *
There was one more item inside the backpack—clippers. Paul had been shaving his head for years. At home, I never woulda considered cutting my hair off. My fucking hair was my best feature. But after seeing those pathetic hairs matted to my washcloth, I suddenly thought it was a great idea. Maybe I was still in shock.
I instructed Ali on how to help me walk my IV into the bathroom. The towel from my bath was on the floor, and she wrapped it around my neck. Paul flipped on his clippers, and I leaned over the sink.
“I always knew you wanted to jock my style,” he said.
I felt the vibrations run over my skull. My hair was pretty thick, and still covered in clumps of glue, so it took five passes to shear through it. I stared into the sink, watching bleached hairs rain down. When Paul turned off the clippers, my ears were ringing.
I looked up at the mirror and I saw a different person.
Without hair, I did look thin. My head shrank back behind my glasses. I wasn’t totally bald—I had a head full of stubble, just like Paul. I could see his reflection as he admired his work.
“Now that’s a hell of a haircut,” he said.
Ali rubbed the hair off my neck and shoulders. She said she loved it. Nat said that I looked like Dad. I checked my reflection again.
Mom came into the room. She didn’t seem surprised by my haircut. She walked over and rubbed the stubble.
“I wanted to come tell you it’s almost time for your treatment,” she said.
The room got quiet. I couldn’t let them stay while I got chemo, not even Nat. I told everyone that it was time to go.
We said our goodbyes and made plans for home—shit to do, movies to see, the normal stuff. No one had the energy to talk about the band anymore.
Finally, they left—everyone but Ali. Nat shut the door to give us some privacy.
We sat beside each other on my bed, holding hands like we did on our first date. She was careful not to twist my IV port.
She asked me if I hurt. I lied and said no. I wrapped my arm around her waist and held her as tight as my weak body would let me.
But soon, she was gone. Replaced by the nurse, strapping those bags of poison up again.
* * *
As I was going to sleep that night, I looked at the cross now taped to my bed. It seemed wrong to start believing in God just because I was sick—how many people had done the exact same shit, in the exact same bed?
It wasn’t like I didn’t believe, anyway. I’d simply never cared. But there I was, staring at a hospital cross.
Fuck it, I thought.
I shut my eyes.
God, I prayed silently, listen—if you let me survive, I’ll do anything. Straight up—I’ll be a good dude. I swear. I’ll stop listening to Bad Religion and Agnostic Front. I’ll quit saying “goddamn” all the time. Anything.
Please—just don’t let me die, God. Please just let me get out of here, just let me live. You’ve gotta fucking let me live—I will make good. I swear.
Amen.
With that, I fell asleep quickly—feeling safe in the knowledge that neither of us would let the other one down.
8
The day after my friends left, Dad and Nat did too. Dad came down with a cold, so he was no longer allowed on the ward. Besides, my parents wanted Nat back in school. They had to call my room to tell me goodbye.
* * *
Tom Petty once sang that days went by like paper in the wind. That was exactly how it felt in the hospital. I was living in a time zone all to myself—hours moved all around me, sometimes slowly, but sometimes blowing away so quickly that I barely noticed them pass.
The drugs played a big part, but it was more than that; Mom and I had eased into a routine. A sick routine that I hate to even think about—wake, blood, pills, puke, shit, puke, sleep, puke, pills, blood, drugs, pray, sleep.
But the humiliations and tests were not the only thing that broke up the monotony—sometimes I got random visitors: a clown, a comfort dog, a football player doing a photo op. A therapist came by a few times, but I wasn’t into it. Once, a priest stopped by. He left me a copy of the New Testament—a picture Bible for kids. I put it in the pile with Briana and the girls.
When my final day of chemo arrived, it felt like forever, and no time at all.
* * *
The morning after my last injection, I woke to the never-ending headache of being processed out of the hospital. I spent the first half of the day going t
hrough the now-familiar list of tests and scans. A dietician came by a few hours later with a stack of printed-out dietary restrictions and suggestions. The printouts said I needed to eat at least five thousand calories a day. She told me to drink Ensure, like a grandmother. . . .
I nodded—yes, ma’am—I’d do whatever I needed to, so long as they let me leave.
* * *
Stacey came to see me. She had papers too—a giant list of prescriptions. She went over all of them, how to take them, when to take them, on and on. She warned me about possible mouth sores and prescribed some chemical rinse to prevent them. I barely paid attention. I was sure Mom would remember it all.
Stacey hung around the room until Dr. Ranalli came by.
He said the discharge papers were almost processed. He started warning us to keep an eye out for new side effects—I yawned. Once I left the hospital, I’d feel fine. I wouldn’t be getting dosed with poison. I couldn’t imagine the side effects following me home.
When Dr. Ranalli was leaving, Mom hugged him for a really long time. He turned around as he left my room and yelled, “And NO skateboarding!”
He laughed into the hallway. Stacey gave us both (lucky me) hugs, and said to call if we noticed any more side effects.
By the time the nurse brought in my paperwork, it was nearly eight at night. But I couldn’t bitch about it—I couldn’t bitch about anything—I was going home.
She unhooked me from the IV but then inserted a temporary port into my bicep—one needle slid out, another slid in. She promised that it would mean less shots for my blood work. All it meant to me was that there was a four-inch tube dangling off my damn arm. The nurse curled it and wrapped tape around it.
When Mom pulled out a set of clothes that Nat had brought me, I started to get stoked. Goddamn—I mean, goshdarn—I’d never wanted to feel normal so bad in my life!
* * *
The clothes hung off me, literally.
My Minor Threat shirt looked oversize, and my pants hung from my ass even worse than usual. I must have lost twenty pounds, I thought. Actually, I’d lost twenty-three.
“They’re here with the wheelchair,” Mom said.
I kept staring at myself in the bathroom mirror.
“Cool. Let’s go home.”
* * *
If there were sights on the way out of town, it was too dark to see them.
All I saw was traffic, and the shadows of buildings. The on-ramp of the interstate was jammed with cars; horns and headlights surrounded us and made my head throb.
But once we got off the interstate things were quiet, and Mom promised US-23 ran all the way home.
The land outside the city was flat and empty, just like I remembered. No neighborhoods, just random homes with barren acres of land separating them. It was the kind of dark that only exists in the in-between.
There were no other cars on the road. Our headlights stretched out for miles. In the rearview mirror I watched the road, lit red by our taillights, fade back into the black, empty night.
* * *
Somewhere outside Chillicothe the clouds let go of the moon, and dull yellow patches appeared in the sky. I looked out the window—there was the moon again, reflecting off water running just yards from the road.
“Is that our river?” I asked.
It was.
* * *
I fell asleep sometime after that. When Mom woke me, the car was no longer moving. I looked around and yawned. It took me a moment to realize I was home—we were parked beneath the oak trees in front of our house.
Mom was already out of the car, pulling her things from the trunk. I unbuckled my seat belt but hesitated. I looked toward the house.
The lights were on downstairs, the same comfortable yellow as the moon on the river. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling they were burning for someone else.
SIDE B
Broken bodies in a death rock dance hall,
Please be my partner. . . .
—The Misfits (“All Hell Breaks Loose”)
ELEVEN
Half In/Half Out
1
I woke to the sound of birds, talking in the way that birds talk. I heard a car skid as it bounced over the cracked bricks on our road. My sheets felt heavy and warm.
I opened my eyes.
There was no janitor. No tubes, no beeping. I reached for my glasses—there, on the side table. I put them on. I sat up.
I looked around my old bedroom. My posters. My skateboard. My stereo. My dirty laundry on the floor—the whole fucking room was untouched.
I looked at my alarm clock. Red lights spelled 12:42. I groaned and got out of bed. I walked slowly into my bathroom and pissed in my toilet—no IV, no piss bottle or nurse or mom. I smiled.
Damn, it was good to be home.
* * *
I walked downstairs. I walked through the house. It was quiet.
I saw a cluster of pill vials sitting on the kitchen counter—dozens of them, sitting out in the open like we were running some goshdarn methadone clinic.
I found Mom in the backyard, reading in her chipped white wicker chair. I sat down on the back stairs and looked up at the clouds. The lukewarm late-April breeze gave me gooseflesh. I breathed in the smell of grass and young flowers, remembering what it meant to have the sun on my skin.
Mom called to me. She said I wasn’t allowed in direct sunlight without sunblock—doctor’s orders, like I could die of melanoma after five minutes of fresh air.
* * *
I took my first shower in almost two weeks. Mom helped me wrap a trash bag over the port in my upper arm. She asked me to leave the bathroom door unlocked.
I turned the HOT knob as far right as it would go. I leaned my head against the tile and sucked in the heat. The steam and the water rinsed the debris from my body and the bad thoughts from my mind. I stayed in there until the hot water ran out.
Out of the shower, my body looked as sleek as a pale pink wet suit. My chest hair was gone now. Puberty in reverse. I whipped the steam from the mirror and squinted at myself—I realized that my eyebrows were almost gone too. It gave me an expressionless appearance. I almost didn’t look human.
I spent the better part of an hour getting dressed, enjoying getting to wear something besides a backless gown. I threw on an old Zero Skateboards long-sleeve. I reached for my jacket—but then remembered it was the one I wore on the day of my X-ray. I put it back on the rack. I never touched it again.
I grabbed a black beanie from my bottom drawer. I pulled it down on my head as far as it would go, until the threads reached the top of my glasses—a temporary fix to my eyebrow problem.
When I walked back downstairs, Nat and Paul were sitting in the living room. They said we were going to go out to the Pizza Buffet, the way we sometimes used to. I tried to act energetic and followed them out to the van.
* * *
Man, I’d missed our van. Our smelly, ugly fucking van. I missed the cigarette holes in the seats and the crack in the windshield. I missed all of it.
Nat picked up our buddy Tyson first. I hadn’t seen him since before I got diagnosed, but when he climbed into the backseat he did his best not to act shocked by my change in appearance. He told me that I looked good.
Then Nat drove to Ali’s house. Paul walked with me up to her front door.
When the door swung open, Ali was wearing my old Descendents shirt. Add that to her tight jeans and eye makeup, and she almost looked punk.
She squeezed me. The curves of her body moved against mine. I sighed.
“Okay, lovebirds,” Paul said, “Let’s go get fucking pizza before y’all make me lose my appetite.”
* * *
Nat parked at the very end of the Pizza Buffet parking lot. We got out of the van and walked toward the restaurant. A few yards from t
he door, I stopped.
I looked down for a moment—and then projectile vomited all over the blacktop. The puke was thick and bright pink, chewed bubble gum mixed with roadkill guts. It poured out of me in one heavy stream.
My friends stood in shock, covering their mouths. They backed away from me. The puke kept coming. A pink, chunky pile of it seeped across the parking lot. I felt it soak into my shoes.
Pizza Buffet customers watched from the restaurant window. After an eternity of puking, the manager came out to see what was happening. He saw me and cringed.
“What are you doing to our lot?” he yelled.
“You got a fucking problem?” Nat said.
“Go the fuck back inside!” Paul yelled.
The manager walked backward, toward the door.
“Don’t even look at him, asshole,” Nat said, “or he is gonna puke all over you next! Then he is going to go inside and puke all over this shitty pizza!”
The manager adiosed.
I wiped off my mouth, panting. I looked down at the mess.
“Well,” I said, “thanks for lunch.”
* * *
I mostly stayed home after that.
I was bummed—I’d thought that the puking and sickness would only happen during the chemo sessions, not in between them. But damn, was I wrong. I felt nauseous constantly.
But all in all, my life out of the hospital wasn’t much different from how I was before I went in.
I was still sick, but it was a different kind of sick.
I spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch. It was a safe distance from the bathroom, and if I couldn’t make it Dad would hose the mess off the concrete. I could stay out of the sun but still be out in the world.
I rocked in our old green swing, looking over at the houses and colored mailboxes. I admired the way the yards rolled down through the oaks and over the bumpy brick street. I traced the houses up, over their gutters and roofs and chimneys, out to the green hills that rose at their backs.
With every day that passed, each sunset seemed a little less like a mirage.
2
The side effects felt different than they did in the hospital. I wasn’t sure if the changes were manifesting, or if they’d been present ever since I started treatment and I’d just been too sick to know. But now that I was free from the physical/mental wasteland of chemotherapy, I was beginning to notice a lot of weird shit.