Once the orderlies left, Ryan sat next to Lucas on the bed while I took up residence in the chair. Ryan’s eyes were clouded, and I could tell he was doing everything in his power to hold himself together. Tenderly, he brushed strands of hair away from Lucas’s face. “He’s going to be alright, right?”
I wasn’t sure if the question was directed at me or if it was rhetorical, so I didn’t answer.
Ryan fell silent again, simply brushing his fingers across Lucas’s forehead.
Why is it taking so long? Shouldn’t they know something by now? Where the hell was the doctor?
As if the mere thought conjured the man, a doctor came in. Ryan jumped from the bed, and the doctor extended his hand. “Mr. Duncan, I’m Doctor Trundell.”
“What’s wrong with my son?”
I had to give Ryan props. Right to the point.
“Come with me,” the doctor said, and turned to leave the room. Ryan began to follow, stopped at the door and turned to me. The expression on his face told me I needed to be with him.
Casting one last glance back at my nephew, I followed Ryan and the doctor from the room.
Doctor Trundell led us down the hall to one of the small family waiting rooms that were set up throughout the hospital. The rooms attempted to create a homier atmosphere, but they failed miserably.
“Please, take a seat,” Trundell said after closing the door.
Ryan sat on the couch and I sat next to him. While Trundell took the chair across from my brother, I studied the man. Late fifties, hair almost white, eyes ice blue. He looked like a man who had an air of indifference about him. He may know what he was doing, but he was detached from his work. I supposed, having been in similar situations, that a certain amount of detachment was necessary or you would go crazy. This was my family, though. The only family I had left. Detachment wasn’t an option for me.
“We’ve run a series of tests, including full panel blood work-up,” Trundell began. Then he paused and inhaled deeply. “There’s no easy way to say this. Your son has leukemia.”
The air left Ryan’s body in a visible huff, and he sagged. I wrapped my arm around him and pulled him to me, the word running through my head, over and over.
Leukemia.
TWELVE HOUR SHIFTS NORMALLY SUCK. That one should have sucked more given how the day had started. Yet it didn’t. For the rest of the day, my brain continued replaying the interaction between Adam and me. Granted, given what I normally did at the shop, it wasn’t that uncommon for my mind to wander. Everywhere I turned, I hoped to see him again. I should have been nervous that I caught him staring at me through the window as he left.
I also knew that I would probably never see him again. The thought saddened me. It shouldn’t have, really. I mean, even if he were to come back, what would we talk about? What could we possibly have in common?
Absolutely nothing.
He would turn out like virtually everyone else. He would learn about my past, he would see the scars on my arms, and he would run. I couldn’t blame him. Not really. I was fucked up. I had been for years, and nothing about that was going to change.
I trudged up the stairs to my apartment after we’d closed. Unlocking the door, then tossed my messenger bag onto the couch and wandered into the kitchenette to the refrigerator. Bread, cheese, milk, and sliced ham. I needed to grocery shop the next day, that much was evident.
I put together a sandwich, flopped down on the couch to eat, and turned on the television. Pulling my phone from my messenger bag, I turned it on, then tossed it back to the couch to finish booting. Grabbing the plate in one hand and the television remote with the other, I proceeded to do nothing but flip channels. Nothing caught my attention, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn the television off. I needed the external noise, if only to quiet my internal noise.
It wasn’t helping.
Finally finished with my sandwich, I took the plate back to the sink then returned to the couch and grabbed my phone. The little icon appeared on the screen indicating I had a voicemail. I flipped through the log, and found the missed call was from the same number that I missed earlier. I stood up and began pacing, instinctively knowing something was off. Few people had my number, and no one called me. I pressed the voicemail key and entered my code.
“Mister Barrows, this is Andrew Pannell with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. I apologize for this in advance. Apparently, your number was misplaced within the system, and before it was found, it was already too late. I’m calling to inform you that one Roger Barrows is scheduled for release on the first of September. I apologize for you finding out this way, but I felt it only right to get word to you as quickly as possible. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate in contacting my office.”
I froze in place. I pulled my phone from my ear and simply stared at the screen. My vision tunneled to the point at which all I saw was the screen. My head began to spin and my legs became weak. Slumping down to the floor, I leaned against the wall and glared at my phone.
It couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real. It was someone’s idea of a sick joke. After everything that bastard did to me, after everything he was responsible for, he was going to go free?
My stomach was in knots, I felt a stabbing pain in my gut, like someone was taking a fork to my insides. The sandwich I had just eaten threatened to come back up, and I frantically knee-walked to the bathroom. Making it just in time, I leaned into the toilet and vomited, again and again until nothing was left but bile, but even that didn’t stop me.
I don’t know when I started crying. I only realized I was when nothing was left in my stomach. Wracking sobs ripped through me, and I shook uncontrollably. I wanted to scream, to rage at the unfairness of the world.
I don’t remember when I fell asleep. Only that I woke up a few hours later still in the bathroom, wrapped around the cold porcelain of the toilet. I didn’t care how disgusting that was, only that it felt good to feel the cold.
Taking hold of the sink, I used it to balance myself as I stood. I didn’t bother looking in the mirror. I knew what I would find. I felt awful, to my very core. All the old fears, all of the old hurts, all of the taunts and hateful words came back in a rush.
I made my way to the bed and collapsed, drained and deflated.
My father was getting out of prison, and I was still trapped in mine.
RYAN WANTED TO SPEND THE night in the hospital with Lucas, but Doctor Trundell advised against it. “Lucas will need your strength to get through this,” he said, and, as much as I disliked the man, it made sense. Lucas was going to be in for the fight of his life. Literally. And we would need to be strong for him when he couldn’t be for himself.
With Trundell’s help, I was able to convince my brother to go home, only by promising to return first thing the following morning. Lucas would be returning home in a couple of days, after more tests were run.
I followed Ryan out of the hospital, staying as close physically to him as I could. His body, his entire being, looked compressed, weighted down. I expected him to collapse at any moment.
He didn’t.
He went in the opposite direction from me when we walked out of the sliding hospital doors. I tugged on his shirt. “Where’re you going?”
He tilted his head, like I was insane. “To my car.”
I snorted. “You are not fucking driving right now. You’re in no fuckin’ shape to get behind the wheel.”
His brow furrowed. He must’ve forgotten that I had met him at the hospital earlier in the day. I pulled on his shirt again, and said, “We’re taking my truck. We’ll get your car tomorrow when we come back.”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, although, truth be told, he probably couldn’t even do that.
Almost mechanically, he followed me to my truck. I unlocked it with the fob, and he slid into the passenger’s seat. Climbing in behind the wheel, I glanced over to him. His face was pale, his eyes wide and staring straight ahead, and
his hands were folded in his lap.
I had seen that look before, usually in the men that had been badly wounded out in the field. The ones that truly felt their lives were over. It was a look of acquiescence, totally giving up even before he’d begun to fight. I understood that a lot of it was shock. The diagnosis was a kick in the nuts, and he was entitled to curl into a ball, but only for a little while.
I couldn’t let him fall too far, though. Like I did for those men, like I did for Ryan when we were kids, I had to figure out how to make him fight. I had to figure out how to fight.
I just didn’t know how.
I woke up the following day, feeling exhausted. I silently wished a truck had run me over. If I felt this bad, I could only imagine how Ryan would feel when he woke up.
I padded out to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. I had been living in Ryan’s house for a month, since returning from Afghanistan, but had tried to keep to myself. Ryan and Lucas had built a life for themselves after Sarah left, and I felt like an intruder. The construction job I’d gotten right after returning stateside helped keep me out of their hair and provided me with a decent source of income. I had become familiar with where he kept everything in the kitchen, so starting a pot of coffee was done almost mechanically. I didn’t drink much of the stuff, but I knew Ryan did. And I knew he’d need it after everything he had been through the day before. I would actually be surprised if he had slept at all.
Once the coffee was started, I sat on the couch and pulled out my laptop. I didn’t know much about leukemia, so I had determined that I would need to research it. Knowledge is power, or so they say, and I wanted as much knowledge as I could get about it.
One thought kept popping into my head. How do you fight an enemy you can’t see?
I was used to seeing who I was up against, being able to track their movements either through binoculars or the scope of a gun when needed. But I couldn’t see leukemia, I couldn’t shoot it.
Ryan finally wandered out of his room. Yawning, he plopped himself down on the couch next to me. Through a yawn, he said, “Morning.”
Glancing up from my laptop screen, I said, “Morning. How’d you sleep?”
I knew the answer without him speaking. I could see it in his face, the dark-colored bags under his eyes, and the slump to his shoulders.
“Like shit. You?”
“Same. Coffee’s made.”
“So I smell.” He leaned his head against the back of the couch and fell silent for a moment. I almost thought he had fallen back asleep when he whispered, “What am I gonna do?”
I knew it was a rhetorical question. He didn’t really expect me to have an answer. But I had one anyway. “You’re going to fight. We’re going to fight. You, me, and Lucas.”
With his head still pressed to the back of the couch, he turned to me and said, “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I fail him?”
I knew where his questions were coming from. His marriage was in shambles. Sarah had left him six months earlier, leaving both him and Lucas behind to start a new life with a man fifteen years her senior and far, far wealthier than Ryan could ever hope to be. I hated the woman for instilling the sense of failure in him, the same sense that he was afraid of when it came to Lucas.
“You won’t. You’ve always been a fighter, you just couldn’t see it. You were smart too, and you need to be both now.”
His lip curled at the corner. “No, you were the fighter, my protector. I can’t outsmart this. I can’t win against this with my brain.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you still have to be strong for him and yourself. You might not be able to outthink it, but you can certainly look into it. Get second opinions. Hell, third opinions if needed. But don’t give up. I won’t let you.”
This time, his lips curled into a full smile. “What’re you doing?”
“Research.”
Throwing himself forward, he scooted toward where I sat on the couch to get a better look at the laptop.
“Holy shit! I don’t think you’ve ever researched a thing in your life. I did your research papers for you in high school.”
I gave his shoulder a playful shove, but was silently grateful that there was at least some sarcasm in what he said. That meant he wasn’t entirely lost. Yet.
He got up from the couch. “Coffee?”
“Sure. But only a little. That shit makes me jittery.”
Ryan wandered into the kitchen and I opened my internet browser to Google and typed leukemia into the search field.
The first site I pulled up was The American Cancer Society. I figured they would have the most information, and may be able to point the way for different treatment options.
Ryan returned to the living room and handed me a small cup, keeping the larger one for himself. I set my cup on the coffee table and handed him the laptop. “Read.”
Ever the obedient little brother, he did, sipping his coffee as he scanned the page. After several minutes, he turned to me and said, “I never realized there were different kinds of leukemia.”
“Me either.”
“And each one has its own treatment protocol.”
I didn’t take the laptop back. I wanted him to read, to follow the path that I had purposely set him on. Knowledge is power, and he needed the power.
I stood from the couch and grabbed my cup of coffee from the table. “I’m going for a run. Need to clear my head. When you’re done with that, shower, and we’ll go see Lucas.”
Without turning away from the laptop’s screen, he said, “Sounds like a plan.”
I may not be the smart one, I thought, but I sure as fuck can be crafty.
I WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING morning feeling utterly lost. I lay in bed for a while, not wanting to go anywhere or do anything. If it were only possible to disappear into the sheets of my bed, I would have. But that wasn’t possible. I had the day off and errands to run.
I swung my legs off the bed and felt the cold floor under my feet. It had a grounding effect on me. The cold always did.
I walked into my small bathroom, and turned on the shower, setting the heat at the highest temperature I could stand. Shedding my T-shirt and boxer briefs, I stepped in, and felt the little pinpricks of heat as the water hit my back. It bordered on painful, but I welcomed it. It allowed me to feel something other than adrift.
How could the system have failed me yet again?
My entire life had been a series of disappointments and hardships, first with the death of my mother, through my father’s alcoholic rages, all the way to the point where I—
No. I will not think about that. Never again. I cannot go down that road again.
But, like Pandora’s box, once that line of thought was started, it was difficult to stop.
I pressed my palms forward, and leaned my forehead against the wall, soaking in the heat. Clearing my head of anything other than the water took some doing, but I had years of practice. I could do this, focus on the water. Pretend it was washing everything away.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, certainly until the water began losing some of its heat. I took that as my cue to finish shampooing my hair and cleaning the rest of me.
On autopilot, I turned off the shower, dried off, and brushed my teeth. Leaving the towel draped over the shower curtain bar, I walked naked to the closet. I pulled out a yellow, long-sleeved shirt and a clean pair of jeans and dressed.
I called my doctor first.
The receptionist answered, sounding almost robotic. “Doctor Scheinberg’s office. This is Janice. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Janice. It’s David Barrows. I need to call in my prescription.”
At hearing my name, Janice’s voice brightened noticeably. “David! How are you doing?”
“Fine, thanks,” I lied. “You?”
“Doing good. Aaron’s cutting teeth now, so he’s keeping me up at night. But other than that, I can’t complain.”
I had begun seeing Doctor Scheinberg just after
Janice got pregnant. So, I saw her through every stage of her pregnancy. She used to have her ultrasound pictures framed on her desk, but those had been replaced with pictures of her little boy, now six months old.
“I hear whiskey on the gums is good for that,” I said, and tried to give a little chuckle. If she had the slightest indication that I was feeling anything other than happy, she would insist on my making an appoint with the doctor. I was not in the mood for that. I didn’t want to talk about what was bothering me. For the moment, I simply wanted to wallow in it.
She apparently did not see through my mask, because she gave a soft snorting sound. “I am not putting whiskey in my baby’s mouth.”
After a moment’s pause, I said, “So, that prescription?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. I’ll call it in. I assume you want the same pharmacy?”
“Yes, please.”
“Will do.”
I tried to smile into the phone, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “Thank you, Janice.”
“No problem, David. You have a good day.”
“You too.”
With that, I disconnected the call and tossed my phone into my messenger bag.
I grabbed a pad of paper and pen, and began making my grocery list, then put that in my bag with my phone. Grabbing a copy of the bus schedule—I didn’t drive, another in my lengthy list of failures—I placed that in my bag as well.
Slinging my bag over my shoulder and grabbing my keys, I left my apartment, checking the lock on the door. Three times.
Riding the bus was somewhat therapeutic for me. It allowed me to clear my mind and watch the scenery go by. Granted, there wasn’t much. Dilapidated buildings, in the area that I lived in, gradually gave way to newer, more expensive businesses and homes. My insurance required that I use a particular pharmacy, which was on the other side of town. I bussed out there almost weekly to grocery shop. I felt safer. So, it was a win/win for me.
My first stop was the pharmacy. Despite having the prescription called in, I still had to wait for it to be filled. I used the time to thumb through magazines that I would never buy. Why the hell Kim Kardashian was still so popular was completely beyond me.
Looking In Page 3