by Heidi Willis
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Chapter Fourteen
After a few days it becomes clear the first course of treatment ain't working. Ashley's reactions worsen, and she starts the funny breathing thing she did before she was diagnosed. She gets a little to eat--chicken and broth and sugar-free jello; even fruits and vegetables have too many carbs. She's hooked up to an IV too, for extra fluids and vitamins, but she whittles down to nothing but bones under skin stretched thin. The hives break out in other places than her arms and belly, and none of the medicine they give seems to help her itching. For the first day or two she's restless at the hospital. She reads a bit, and uses my phone to text her friends, and discovers the addictiveness of daytime soaps. She wanders down to the arcade, but most of the kids there are siblings of sick kids, and she feels self-conscious about her looks, so she ends up in her room most of the time.
By the third day she's sleeping a lot. I don't know if it's boredom or the blood sugars they just can't seem to get down. She's running in the three hundreds regularly now, and hospital workers stop acting like this is common.
Travis can't get off work much anymore. His boss let go all the other workers because business is so bad and needs Travis there every day. We're thankful he's keeping Travis on, for the money of course, but mostly for the insurance. He drives in at night for a few hours every day and then drives back home. Logan stays at home during the week since it's so close to the end of school. He's got finals coming up. His visits, when he comes, are the only thing Ashley don't sleep through. They sit together and play games and talk while Travis and me get something to eat in the cafeteria.
I call Pastor Joel and tell him to tell the women at the church not to come by. It's not that I don't appreciate their efforts and all, but it's more work to have them here. And I don't want to plan any more functions.
Travis tells me Brenda organized a committee of women to bring breakfasts and sack lunches every morning to him and Logan. She connived a few teens to mow and water the lawn and weed the garden. Ashley perked up a bit when she heard Brian Lee was the first to volunteer. Janise began a magazine drive to gather "fun and useless" magazines to send with Travis for Ashley and me, and Donna Jean has taken over the job of dealing with our insurance company, which has turned into a full time job in itself. "You have enough to deal with without worrying about where the money is coming from," she told us.
Saturday morning, she calls and asks if the youth group can meet at the hospital for the movie night. "They want to do this. They are so worried for Ashley. And my guess is it might be good for Ashley to have some friends around. If she's feeling up for it."
"I don't know." I take stock of the tiny room. "We might fit about seven kids in here, maybe one or two more, but not the entire group. And we don't have a DVD player in the room."
"I already called the hospital," she says, not a whit of apology in her voice. "They said we could use their recreation room, and there's a DVD player in there along with plenty of couches and floor space for the entire group." She pauses, and then adds, "And they said it should be fine for Ashley to go."
I'm dumbfounded silent by this.
"Please let us do this. Pastor Joel says we can bring the church bus, and all the kids are already counting on it."
"I don't know if Ashley'll want to see 'em. She's so embarrassed about her looks right now."
"I bought her a new outfit. A shirt, really lightweight, but long sleeves, to cover the swelling. And some Capri's. Very trendy. And I'll bring some make-up and do her hair before anyone gets there. She'll feel like a princess."
I have run out of excuses. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah."
"I'll see you in a couple hours then. The kids are planning to get there about seven. Maybe Ashley can invite some of the other kids from the hospital to join us."
"Sure," I say. "Donna Jean?"
"Yes?"
I want to tell her how much this means to us. How much it'll mean to Ashley. How I don't know how we would've made it through this week without her. But I can't find words that do it justice.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome, Babs." There is a second silence before she hangs up the phone. I think of the bracelet Ashley wore last year, the leather strap with the letters WWJD engraved into them. What Would Jesus Do?
He would do this, I think.
~~~~
While the kids gather for movie night, Travis and I decide to go somewhere for dinner where we aren't eating off plastic trays. Even though Travis done plenty of back and forth, I've barely left the hospital since we got here, and I'm feeling like a caged cat.
Dr. Benton gives us the name of a restaurant, and we drive down towards the river, across the bridge, and down a winding road until I make Travis pull over so I can check the directions again. By the time he finds a place to pull off, we're in a lot packed with cars thick as flies under a neon light that says "Chuy's."
"We're here," he says.
The place is crowded and noisy, so loud we have to scream to the hostess who takes our names and asks us if we want to sit inside or out and tells us we're welcome to wait at the bar. I blush to think what Pastor Joel and the ladies of First Baptist would say if they saw us here. In the bar area there are a bunch of kids playing pool under pink and blue lights, and the Pepto Bismal pink walls and ceilings are lined with velvet Elvis paintings and hubcaps. I'm starting to reevaluate my opinion of Dr. Benton.
For forty minutes we wait while young college kids swirl around us. We don't talk much, 'cause we can't hear each other anyways, and we sip at our sweet tea, lost in our own thoughts. When the hostess takes us to a table outside, my ears are ringing and my stomach growling.
Normally, a deck in Texas summer is not the place to eat, but tonight the stars are out and the breeze is blowing enough to keep us cool. I'm glad not to be inside where everyone's happy and drinking and being normal when our lives are turned upside down. A perky waitress brings us chips and salsa and flashes her outlandishly white teeth at us and takes our orders. I watch trucks come and go from the parking lot and nibble on the chips until I finally blurt out what both of us is thinking.
"Ashley'd sure love this place."
"We'll bring her here when she gets out. Like a celebration." He uses his napkin to wipe up the salsa he's dripped all over the table. "She's gonna be fine. You know that." It's a statement. Which don't make no sense to me, because I know no such thing.
"Sure." I shrug and look down at my hands, and I break the chip into tiny pieces.
"Babs?"
"What do you want me to say, Travis? You want to hear I don't know that she's gonna be fine? That I sit in her room all day watching her waste away planning what songs she'd want at her funeral while you and Logan are going 'bout your normal lives back home?" It's unfair. As soon as it's out I know it's unfair to say that.
I see him lean back in his chair and look up at the string of colorful lights above us, hurt in his eyes. "I'm sorry."
He don't look at me, so I add, "I know you'd be there if you could. I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at this whole thing. I feel like I'm all alone in this."
He still don't answer me, like he crawled into himself again and shut me out. I'm so tired of this by now. I don't know when it happened, this quiet between us. Sometime when the kids were small and loud and demanding attention, and I didn't notice that we stopped talking. Or rather, that he stopped talking back. And by the time I noticed, he'd buried himself in work and that dang chair and ESPN.
I'd thought for awhile, right after Ashley came home from the hospital the first time, we were doing better. We were talking more. He kissed me more. I'd almost forgotten how much I'd missed that. I thought maybe there really was a silver lining from all this. But now we hardly see each other again, and it's all changed. Or it hasn't.
"How's Logan's finals going?" I change topics.
"Okay. He don't talk about them much. But he studies a lot, so I think he's doing all right.
He told me about the baseball team."
"Oh?" I try to be nonchalant. That means casual, which is hard to do when you feel guilty for keeping a secret.
"He said you gave him a tongue-lashing for it."
"Yeah. He's lucky I didn't ground him for a month of Sundays. A fight's a fight, whether there's fists involved or not."
"Do you even know who it was with?"
"Does it matter?" I ask, laying out the pieces of the chip on my napkin and putting the small bites into my mouth one by one so it takes forever to eat it all.
"It was Troy Donegan."
I suddenly know why Logan got in a fight. Troy is this small, bony boy with a chip on his privileged little shoulder.
"What was it about?" I finally ask, chewing very slowly.
"He was talking trash."
"About Logan?" It's not hard to imagine someone talking trash about Logan. He draws it on himself.
"About Ash." I stop chewing, a stabbing pain in my heart replacing the hardness. "You and Logan are so alike you can't even see straight," he adds.
"We are not," I protest, and then immediately wonder why I'm protesting being like my own son. I think of Logan telling me the apple don't fall far from the tree.
"Give the kid a little slack now and then." He signals the waitress for another drink. "What I don't get," he says, "is why you didn't tell me about it in the first place."
I shrug and hunt out a blue tortilla chip from the basket. "Why didn't you tell me Bob's company is going under?" Bob is his boss--that company is our lifeline. I've had this information for awhile now but haven't said a word about it until now. Like by saying it out loud our lives might come crashing down. It's not that I'm angry so much as really worried.
He stares at me, not blinking. "How did you know?"
I shrug again. "People in the church talk. A lot."
"I was gonna tell you. When Ashley was better." He puts down the chip that's halfway to his mouth, and looks down. I can tell he's embarrassed. Or ashamed. "We still got the insurance. For now. And he's trying to find me work with other contractors. The housing market ain't what it use to be, Babs. He just don't have work for me, but I'm getting other stuff."
"We got no security, Travis." My voice comes out high and tight, more mad than what I feel. "What happens when he can't pay his bills, and we got no insurance? It's probably costing us a thousand dollars a day to keep Ashley in this fancy hospital, for who knows how long." I'm scared. I want to roll back time a week to when Travis might have reached out to take my hand, to squeeze it and tell me everything will be all right. I'd even take having him tell me to trust God. I need him to tell me God will provide, even if I don't agree. I need to hear that.
But Travis slams his hand on the table instead. "I'm looking, Babs. What do you want me to do? I can't make people buy houses they can't afford just so I can build them."
We sit for a few minutes not talking, listening to the music blaring through the doorway and watching the young kids without a care in the world drinking and flirting and playing pool.
I push the salsa and chips aside. "Are we going to be all right, Travis?"
"Of course. We got some money tucked away. And we can sell some stuff if we need to." The food comes, and I wait until the server is gone to talk again.
"I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about us. What happens if Ashley don't make it?"
He uses his knife to make a barrier between the rice and the beans so they don't touch: a habit that drives me nuts. "We've got to trust God will heal Ashley."
It's what I wanted to hear, but now that it's out there, I can't help but answer, "And if he don't?"
He freezes for a second, then takes a breath. "And if he don't, we've got to trust that it's his will, and he'll give us strength."
I don't like that answer. I don't know what I wanted him to say, but this isn't it. I'd be mad at him except he's got that pinched look on his face, and he won't look at me, and I know, even though a place in him believes it, it hurts to say it.
"How could Ashley dying be his will? It just don't make any sense to me that he'd do that to a little girl."
"He's not doing it to her, Babs. It's not like he's sitting up there on his throne and says, hey, lets kill off one of my kids."
I flinch. "Whether he's doing it or not, he could stop it. Why won't he?"
He pushes his food around more, not eating. "I don't know, Babs. Pastor Joel says sometimes God makes great things come out of tragedies. Greater things than could come without them."
I stare at him hard. "I don't want great things. I want Ashley."
"Me too, Babs." He sighs and looks at me, finally. "I'm not against you. I just don't know. I just know we have to trust that God is in control, and whatever happens he'll work out for the best."
"I don't want to trust God." There. I said it. I expect Travis to react, but he don't. He just lays his fork down and then looks up at me. His eyes mirror the Christmas lights above us.
"What do you want to trust in, Babs?"
"Us," I say. "You, and me, and Logan, and Ashley. And Dr. Benton. And science. I want to believe in things I can see and feel and know work."
"Just because you can't see God don't mean he's not real."
"I know that," I say exasperatedly. "But God. . . I can't depend on God. Sometimes when you pray, he answers, and sometimes he don't." I have a vision of my own dad suddenly in front of me. Not the dad I knew and loved. The dad all wasted away with cancer, breathing through an oxygen mask, eyes empty. Travis and I sat by his bed day and night that last month, pouring out prayers that if he had to die, he'd do it quickly and painlessly. It was anything but quick and painless.
I shake the vision off. "Sometimes he makes sick people better, and sometimes he don't. Sometimes babies that should live, die, and old people that should die, live. You can lay it all in God's hands, but it don't mean it will work out. Medicine works. You have a headache, you take a pill and it takes the headache away. It don't care whether or not you believe in it. It don't care if it will make you stronger if you have to brave through the headache. It don't care if you been a good person or a bad person. It just works. You can't trust God to work."
He thinks about this as he takes a stab of enchilada and chews it. "You think you're the only one who thinks about this stuff, Babs? You think I haven't asked myself those questions too?"
I actually didn't. His faith seems so sure of itself. Then I think of him in the hospital yelling at Pastor Joel. "How do you do it, then? How do you keep believing?"
"I don't know. Maybe because it's easier than not believing."
"So it's like a crutch?" I try not to be bitter when I say this, but his answer is the most useless answer ever.
"No. It's not that." He's frustrated, I can tell. I've asked him to explain something personal. He don't do well with explaining or personal, but I need to know. I need to know how he can not be angry that Ashley is so sick.
"You know what Pastor Joel told me the other day?" he says.
"What?"
"He told me you can't always know what God is going to do or why, but you can always trust that it's the best thing."
I put down my fork, not that I'm eating anyway. "You telling me it's best for Ashley to die?"
"No!"
"Then what does that mean?"
"I don't know, okay? Maybe it means we see just the little picture. Today and tomorrow and maybe a few days down the road. But God knows it all. He sees the future all the way through the end."
"And the future is better without Ashley?"
"No, Babs. You're twisting my words." He puts his fork down and pushes his plate away. "I don't know all the answers. It just seems like trusting God is more a sure thing than trusting science. I don't know how you can trust pills more than God. Especially after medicine isn't exactly working for us right now. I gotta go to the bathroom." He stands suddenly, pushing his chair so fast it starts to fall over and walks into the restaurant.
/> I'm alone again. In the middle of a crowd. I push the food around on my plate, but I can't bring myself to eat it. All I can think is how many carbs there must be with all the rice and beans and tortillas and how if I can't trust God or science, who can I trust?
~~~~
Chapter Fifteen
"Enough is enough," Dr. Benton says on the fifth day of our second settling in at Children's. "It's time to move to plan B."
"The desensing thing?"
"Desensitization. Yes." He lays a graph across Ashley's lap. "This is a day-by-day guide to what's going to happen over the next few weeks. We're going to keep you on the pump, and the lispro insulin, but we'll back way off your dosage. You'll start with a miniscule amount. Not enough to do anything to your blood sugars--not enough to do anything to cause your immune system to react, but hopefully enough that your body will accept it. Once it does, we'll up the dosage. A little every couple hours."
"How long until I'm able to eat again, and take regular amounts?" Ashley is tired of the intravenous "food" and is asking for something substantial. She's lost so much weight I can pick her up, which I've had to do twice when she couldn't walk to the bathroom by herself 'cause she was so weak.
"Six months, if things go well."
"Six months?"
"If it goes well."
"And what if it doesn't go well?"
"Then we move on to plan C."
"I thought there wasn't a plan C."
Dr. Benton takes the graphs from Ashley's lap and puts them back in his folder. "There is always a plan C. We don't give up until we've won."
For the first time he sounds tired and not at all sure. I follow him into the hall, out of earshot of Ashley and ask, "Do you know what plan C is?"
"I'm working on it."
"Do you think the desensi-thing –"
"Desensitization."
"That. You don't think it will work?"
"There's no way to know, Mrs. Babcock."
"Are there odds?"
"There are always odds. But those odds don't count much to the one who falls outside of them."