Faith by Thomas D. Demus

by Will Searcy

time?”

  Sam tried to peer up into my eyes. He searched for hope. He wanted confidence and assurance. He wanted the comforting look and gentle embrace of a father, but I would not let him see me. If I got one square look from that innocent little face, I would cave.

  “Well,” Doctor Abaddon said, easing his way back into things. “I have some prescriptions for you. We’ll go over the instructions. The surgery will remove as much of the tumors as possible and allow us to biopsy. Based on that, we’ll develop a treatment plan to combat this thing. But … really the best thing that you can do now … is to be there for him.” I choked on the lump in my throat. “Maybe not try to make him understand as much as support him through it. Make sure he’s eating well, getting good sleep. And ... try to keep some joy in his life. This battle will be hard enough, try to keep things light whenever possible.”

  I nodded. I wanted to curse, cry, and scream, but I nodded. All I could think about was the sanctity of my car. That driver’s seat where I was in charge, in my own universe, and invisible again, like the drivers passing over the bridge.

  “Do you have any questions?” Doctor Abaddon asked.

  I shook my head “no”.

  He nodded and rose, opening the door for Sam and me. I guess he knew I would perform my own Internet due diligence on the subject and would not arrive at significant questions, or conclusions, until then. Maybe he detected my anguish. Or, he had worked long enough to know that the anguish was there no matter to which degree it was “presenting” in the subject, as a cancer doctor would say.

  I received the prescription instructions at the office pharmacy, but grief blurred my consciousness. My head was spinning. My stomach lurched. It felt like I had the cancer myself and bore the brunt of its destruction all at once. I wished I did. Instead, it was Sam. At some point, he reached his little hand into mine. It was sweating. I had to bite my lip again.

  The copay and medicine, which was not covered by insurance, were worse than I thought, but I refused to think of money at a time like that. I refused to think about it until we ran out of it. At the rate I was going, it was possible.

  I finally escaped the doctor’s office – down the elevator and outside to the parking lot. The onslaught at the oncologist’s office left me weak and exhausted. There was no strength. No strength for a time like this. I slid into the driver’s seat of my car, devoid of any noticeable muscular assistance.

  It did not happen suddenly. A tidal wave did not crash down on me with overwhelming force. It started with a whimper. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, but another whimper came. I clenched my jaws with a chunk of cheek between my teeth. Still, the next whimper came. I could not help but notice the silence emanating from the back seat, like a dark cloud expanding and enveloping me. I lost the strength to not look. In the rearview mirror, I saw Sam staring up at my reflection. His little eyes were full of fear and misplaced hope. Hope that I could do something.

  The tidal wave struck. I wept. I wept like I had never wept before. I wept so powerfully I was incapable of seeing through my tears to drive.

  “I love you, buddy,” I moaned into the rearview mirror.

  Sam looked down. His hope deferred to fear. He saw me wailing and knew it was the cry of a hopeless man. I could do nothing for him. He was on his own, and so was I.

  3. FIGHTING QUICKSAND

  The moments spent watching Sam sleep were the most peaceful moments in my life. Something about a sleeping child reminded me of simplicity. It reminded me of absoluteness. There was clarity and comfort in a world of black-and-whites. I did not waste my heart fighting the black. I accepted it, knowing that light overcame every corner of darkness in time. Such simple thoughts. How I wished I had them then, but my world had become a world of manufactured gray. As I sat there watching my son sleep, I knew I would heal him. I knew he would live.

  It was 5 o’clock, and I had not slept. Contrary to doctor’s orders, as soon as I could see through my watery eyes, I had driven Sam to his favorite restaurant and gotten him the grandest breakfast feast of his life. We ate pancakes with strawberries, blueberries, chocolate chips, whipped cream, and syrup. There were scrambled eggs, whole-wheat toast, bacon, and sausages. Sam had a chocolate milkshake, and I had coffee. We ate and pretended life was immortal. We pretended we were happy. We pretended we would never have to leave that restaurant.

  When we had stepped outside into the gray skies that promised rain, our meals sat heavy in our stomachs, and our hearts deflated like helium slipping through a balloon. I was not ready to take Sam home, so I drove in aimless loops through town until I could pretend to be hungry for another meal. When the time came, I followed our breakfast with a larger lunch. Sam ate pepperoni pizza and French fries, and I gave him bites of my bacon cheeseburger. We ordered an ice cream Sundae for dessert and, even though we were stuffed, we ordered still more. We ate raspberry sherbet and oatmeal raisin cookies sprinkled with brown sugar. Sam laughed, and I tried. He asked how cheese was made, and I told him I did not know. I was only a bridge operator.

  By 3 p.m., Sam’s weariness had defeated his will, and he succumbed to sleep. I sat and waited. I had not informed my wife. Oddly, I did not even debate myself on the matter. No part of me wanted to tell her. It was not because I wanted to save her soul from angst for a precious few hours. It was because I wanted Sam to myself. I wanted my time with him. He was my son. She would have her time, but I needed mine. I would not tell her, not yet.

  The door opened to us like a stone being rolled away from a tomb. My wife peeked inside like she was trespassing in an abandoned home. She spotted me in the leather recliner, watching Sam sleep on our cloth couch. My wife closed the door quietly behind her, slipped her keys on the counter, and tiptoed over to me.

  “How’s he doing?” she asked.

  I squeaked a rebuke like a haughty socialite. The reaction was so visceral it confused my wife more than concerned her. She looked at me and waited.

  Sam stirred in his sleep. Part of him must have felt his mother’s presence, and she comforted him more than I could. The corners of his lips curled into a faint smile. I loved it when he smiled, but now his smile reminded me that the days of love without consequences had passed. No matter how much joy I found in the love of my son, I knew pain would soon overtake and overcome. It would stretch the borders of my heart until it tore and the pain rotted my insides like the cancer riddling my son. I stood and marched out the front door without giving my wife so much as a look.

  “What the Hell, Thomas?” she shouted as the screen door clattered against the frame and snickered at me.

  I could not face her. I stared out at our cramped neighborhood and felt the houses closing in on me like walls to a schizophrenic. Her footsteps behind me tapped closer. By the time she placed her hand on my shoulder, I shrieked my wounded soul through my lips and into the sky. She jumped back, and when I finally turned to face her, I could see her terror. My eyes burned hot with histamine. I rubbed them and felt the warm tears soil my hands. Somewhere between the sleep depravation and heartbreak, my capacity for understanding, or even rational thought, had escaped me.

  “He has cancer!” I shouted at her as if it was her fault.

  She reacted as I am sure mothers do, but I was lost. Instead of consoling my wife, I turned and screamed at the sky again. I hollered and yelled. I wailed and sobbed. Nothing made sense to me except to protest. Protest cancer. Protest fate. Protest anything that led me to that point. That was all I wanted to do.

  It could have been five seconds or five minutes before I realized my wife was gone. I would have felt embarrassment if I felt anything other than heartache. I staggered back towards the house and reentered through the front door, where I found my wife sitting on the couch, stroking Sam’s sweet face, his head huddled in her lap. The living room door slammed behind me, but she did not look up. It was odd to
see her so singularly focused. Instead of juggling the universe, she was staring at all that mattered in it. Sweet little Sam stared into her eyes in total dependence. He was scared, but I could see his anxiety being eased away with each stroke of his mother’s hand.

  Finally, my wife looked up at me. Never before had I seen such emptiness in anyone’s eyes. I should have thought this was a moment that I would never forget, but I was tired. I was ready to sleep. Loving acts and mending bridges sounded like too much work. Convincing her eyes to still love me was a chore. Maybe after a good night’s rest I could get to it. I planned on sleeping on the job. Hopefully no one would come while I slept.

  The surgery that Friday went well. Doctor Abaddon said they removed a large part of the liver, but enough remained to stave off a transplant. He said that with the amount of the lungs they removed that Sam would never be able to go free diving or run a marathon, but he could breathe. That was all I needed to hear. Doctor Abaddon tried to scare me with survival rates and outdated statistics. He tried to warn me that the chemotherapy would be taxing and may not work, or that the cancer had already spread and there was no guarantee against recurrence. All empty threats to me. The cancer was out!