Radiate

by Gibson, Marley

  HAYLEY MATTHEWS: I’LL DO IT MYSELF.

  GABRIEL TREMBLAY: GOOD ATTITUDE. I CAN HELP YOU WITH A WORKOUT IF YOU NEED IT, SINCE I’LL BE DOING IT FOR THE FOOTBALL TEAM, TOO.

  HAYLEY MATTHEWS: THAT’S COOL OF YOU. I’LL TAKE YOU UP ON IT.

  HAYLEY MATTHEWS: HEY, GABRIEL, I NEED TO RUN. NEED TO HEAR WHAT MY PARENTALS ARE DISCUSSING.

  GABRIEL TREMBLAY: SNEAKY?

  HAYLEY MATTHEWS: A BIT. ☺ TTYS!

  GABRIEL TREMBLAY: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, HAY!

  I close the lid of my laptop and reach for the TV remote to mute the rerun of some cop show. Cliff left earlier for Lily’s, so it’s just the three of us. Mom and Dad are sitting at the dimly lit dining room table with their heads bent together. I swear I see Mom wipe away tears from her eyes. Is something wrong? Something about my surgery? Something they’re not telling me?

  I scooch over on the couch, staying low, and straining my ear to listen. I hate eavesdropping like this, but if it has to do with me, I deserve to know. Peeking through the cushions, I watch as Dad scrubs his face with his hands.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you, Nan. I had to let Kirk and Jamaal go. The business just isn’t bringing in enough revenue for me to keep them on full time.”

  “Which means we’ll now have to pay their unemployment,” Mom whispers.

  “It is what it is, Nan.”

  “Why is this happening now?” Mom pleads.

  “The economy sucks, and people aren’t shopping in small towns anymore. Helen Cargill at the fabric store next door put a For Sale sign up in the window of her store yesterday. Mom-and-pop businesses are the way of the past, and I can’t compete with the corporate giants in Montgomery, Dothan, Birmingham, or even as far as Atlanta. Everyone wants things quick and discounted, and Matthews Hardware isn’t about that. Sales are down across the board.”

  Mom starts to speak, but she spots me. She quickly shifts into Happy Mother Mode and calls out to me, “Everything okay, Hayley?”

  “You tell me,” I say back.

  “Fine, just fine. Your dad and I are catching up on things.” Hmm... she’s never been a good liar. I can see right through her. I’ll let it go for now. “Everything’s just fine,” she repeats.

  Fine. Really, Mom?

  Is it?

  ***

  Bright and early Monday morning, Mom and I use Cliff’s car to go downtown to the Lurleen B. Wallace Radiation Therapy and Cancer Institute at UAB where I’m going for my outpatient radiotherapy.

  Radiotherapy—what a weird term, like I need help listening to the radio or something.

  Where these thoughts come from, I have no idea!

  Mom holds the door open for me as I swing through on my crutches. We wander around the state-of-the-art treatment center named for the only female American governor to die while in office. Poor woman had something like three kinds of cancer that her husband and her doctors hid from her at first because back then you just didn’t talk about things like that. Honestly! Thank God my parents and I didn’t play games with each other.

  We climb into the elevator and hit the button. Mom lets out a rather choppy sigh, and I stare at her.

  “I feel like I’m descending into hell,” she says.

  “We’re going up,” I say, trying to break the tension.

  “Figuratively, Hayley.”

  We reach the proper office and sign in. They promise the wait time won’t be very long—famous last words in a doctor’s office. I don’t know why they bother actually scheduling people for a set time, because they can’t ever stick to it.

  The waiting room is full, and I’m clearly the youngest patient in the area. All eyes turn to me as I swing on my crutches over to a small couch that Mom and I share. The TV is muted, and everyone seems to be thumbing through magazines in the most uninterested manner. These are my fellow sufferers, though; my kinsmen. Everyone is here for radiation treatment of something. Will we all survive? Are there those among us who won’t?

  I bite my thumbnail as Mom fidgets in her seat. If I know her—and I do—she’s finding it hard not to strike up a conversation with a total stranger. That’s just how she is.

  Sure enough, after a moment, Mom turns to a grandmotherly type woman who sits across from us clutching a rosary.

  Mom leans forward. “Have you been waiting long?”

  The old woman looks up with soft hazel eyes. “My husband is in right now,” she says. Her gaze shifts to me and my bandaged leg. “You poor thing. Cancer?”

  I shrug like it’s no big deal. “They took it out. This is just follow-up treatment.”

  “God bless you, sweetie.” She looks around the room at the other patients. “How in the world do you even get cancer? I don’t understand what causes it.”

  I’m sure if Uncle Roger were here, he’d regale her with all the proper medical points. I don’t have the first freaking clue. I’m still asking myself the same question.

  A man in overalls speaks up. “I smoked for twenty years. The doctors suppose that’s how I got lung cancer.”

  The old woman shakes her head. “No... that’s not it. My husband doesn’t smoke at all.”

  A woman close to Mom’s age says, “My husband drank a lot. I’m sure that had something to do with his cancer.”

  Again, the old woman isn’t satisfied. “See, my husband doesn’t drink at all. Never has.”

  “I’ve been angry most of my life,” a third person says. His face is red as he says it, probably pissed off at the cancer itself. “They say anger and stress can harm your body. Maybe my constant irritation with everything caused my tumor.”

  The old woman gives another dismissive head bob. “My husband is the most kind and gentle soul. He never gets angry at anyone. That can’t be it.”

  I can’t stop myself. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind my saying”—I smile—“I think I know what caused your husband’s cancer.”

  Her eyes widen. “You do?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I think his halo is on too tight.”

  There’s dead silence, but only for a millisecond. Then everyone in the waiting room bursts out into healthy laughter. I giggle at my joke, and the old woman chuckles heartily into a tissue until her eyes are filled with tears.

  “Good one,” the smoker man says.

  “I needed that,” another woman says.

  The old woman gives me a look that tells me I shouldn’t have said that, but she loves me dearly for it. “You’ve got a clever girl there,” she says to Mom.

  “Sometimes a little too much,” Mom says. Her cheeks are three shades of crimson.

  Saving me, a woman on staff comes out and announces, “Hayley Matthews?”

  “Good luck, everyone,” I say, and follow the woman wearing scrubs with SpongeBob SquarePants on them. The old woman waves to me.

  “I’m Tracy,” she says, escorting us back into the radiotherapy room.

  Like pretty much every other room I’ve been in at the UAB hospital, it’s frickin’ freezing in here. Chill bumps dance across my bare arms and down my legs, not only due to the massive air conditioning, but also the trepidation tripping through my system. I’m entering yet another alien world.

  Using a small step stool, I climb up onto the black table covered with a thin quilting top. In front of me in the sterile room is something I can only describe as an overgrown Mr. Coffee on steroids. Seriously! It’s humongoid! Only, the place where the coffeepot should go is where I’ll be lying down. That’s going to shoot me up with radioactive waves?

  I must shudder noticeably, because the technician seeks to soothe me.

  “It’s a little intimidating, isn’t it?” Tracy asks with a laugh. “Don’t worry, Hayley. I’ll explain everything to you before we do any of the radiation. I want to make you as comfortable as possible.”

  “I don’t know if you can,” I say through gritted teeth.

  Tracy slides a couple of chairs up next to the small desk in the room. “Please.” She indicates the seats
with her arm spread. Mom takes the first one and I lower myself to the second. Tracy puts her elbows on the table and begins to explain what’s about to happen to me now.

  “External radiotherapy is also known as external beam radiation or teletherapy where you have your treatment here in the hospital’s radiotherapy department, but you’re not an inpatient. Beams of radiation from this external machine”—she points to the institutional-size coffeemaker—“are focused on the areas of concern, according to your physician. We’ll target the surrounding tissues from where your tumor was removed and any other areas of your leg affected by the cancer.”

  “So, I, like, lie under that huge thing?” I ask with a hitch in my breath.

  “It’s called a simulator,” Tracy tells me. “I know it can be a bit intimidating, but you really have nothing to worry about. You can’t feel a thing.”

  A bit?

  I scrunch up my face as I gaze at the electronic beast beside me. “It looks uncomfortable,” I say, trying not to sound like a complainer; I’m only making an observation.

  Tracy smiles. “That’s the main complaint about radiotherapy—the couch is a tad lumpy.”

  Glancing around the room, I feel as if the machine is waiting for me—to consume me and keep me from getting to my cheerleading. “If Dr. Dykema removed the tumor and my bone, and then Dr. Sampson put all of that chemotherapy in me, I don’t understand why I have to do this, too?”

  “It’s all part of the total therapy,” the technician tells me. “We’ll do your radiotherapy treatment every day this week at eleven a.m. starting today, Monday, and going until Friday. The doctors have only called for one week of treatment, so that’s good.”

  “I suppose,” I say, peering down at my big toe that’s now painted in a white and red French manicure style.

  “The radiotreatment is painless, Hayley. I promise you, it only takes a few minutes out of the day.”

  Tracy stands and then points to the “couch,” as she referred to the black table. It’s certainly not anything I’d want to stretch out on to watch a movie. Still, I do as I’m instructed.

  “Mrs. Matthews, why don’t you wait outside the room? You won’t be allowed to stay once the machine is activated.”

  “Oh, of course,” Mom says, and gathers her purse.

  Sure... Mom can leave, but I get to be in here for five days as this machine fries my insides.

  I slip off my sandals and stretch out on the table. At least the pillow is fluffy.

  Tracy unravels the mass of Ace bandages and sets them on a nearby table. “I’m going to make a pinprick tattoo on your leg so I’ll know how to line up the machine.” True to her word, she pulls out a thick purple pen and draws a dot right in the center of my leg; the spot that was operated on three times. From there, she begins extending the lines in all four directions. Ugly purple marks crisscross my fresh scar like a mad scientist writing on a white board.

  “Will that come off?” I ask.

  “In time,” Tracy says. “Please don’t wash them off this week as we’ll be using these guidelines every day.”

  I nod, but I really wish she’d used a red or blue marker so at least the lines would match my school colors. Oh well.

  “Make yourself comfy,” she tells me.

  I squiggle around a little to find the softest spot on the table. Not gonna happen. “I’m good,” I report.

  “All right, Hayley. I’m going to leave you alone for a few minutes. I’ll ask you to take a deep breath and hold it. There will be a silence, a click, and then a hum. As I said, the treatment will not harm you. You won’t feel a thing. You must, however, lie very, very still for the few minutes it takes to treat you. While the machine is on, I’ll be able to hear you in the next room through the intercom if you need me for anything.”

  Breathe. Hold it. Don’t move. So much to take in. So much to remember.

  She positions me on the table and squares the above light to focus on her grid. She takes a roll of medical tape and secures it over the top of my foot and across to both sides of the table. “Since it’s your first time, this is only for good measure.”

  With a pat on my knee, Tracy the tech in her SpongeBob scrubs disappears behind a swinging door into an observation room. Her voice comes across the crackling intercom.

  “Are you ready, Hayley?”

  “Yes,” I say instead of nodding. I’m so paranoid trying to not move that I feel like I am moving. Good thing she taped me down.

  “Okay... Take a deep breath... Hold it . . .”

  Click.

  Whir.

  Hummmmm.

  The sound is muffled by the staccato beat of my heart apparently trying to start its own rhythm section.

  A red hue covers my leg for what seems an eternity. I don’t blink for fear that even that slight motion could cause the radiation to kill off good cells in my leg. As soon as the light comes on, it fades away and the machine silences. The mighty monster is satiated for the moment, so it returns to its dormant state. I’m totally going to have nightmares about that thing.

  “Good... Now breathe.”

  A gush of air escapes me, followed by somewhat of a pant.

  I did it. I got through it. At least the first treatment.

  “See? It was easy,” Tracy says when she comes back into the room.

  Sure, it was a piece of cake for her. She stood behind a lead wall and pressed a button.

  I sit up and rewrap the Ace bandage around my scarred and purple-marked leg. I slip my shoes back on and crutch out of the treatment room to where Mom’s waiting for me in the hallway.

  “Well?”

  I muster up a bit of a smile, mostly glad that I made it through and didn’t mess up or make things worse for myself.

  “One treatment down. Four to go.”

  ***

  Monday night, I sleep like a baby. We’re talking out like a light before eight p.m.

  Tuesday afternoon, I’m nauseated like all get-out. I throw up water and can’t stomach the tomato soup Mom places before me.

  Wednesday after dinner (spaghetti that I can’t eat), I fall unconscious on the couch watching TV. It’s as if someone gave me a sleeping pill.

  Thursday morning, Tracy tells me “extreme fatigue” is a side effect of radiation therapy.

  “It’s very common. It’s your body telling you it has to rest. That’ll be gone about three weeks after your treatment is completed.”

  Perfect. So now I’m narcoleptic.

  Thursday night, I can’t get through reading e-mails or checking people’s Facebook. I’m sick as a dog, and now the skin on my leg is so massively dry that even the most intense Jergens skin lotion won’t help. I manage to eat two Snickers bars so I can bring my blood sugar levels up before I crash hard at eight thirty.

  Friday morning, I’m dead to the world and can barely come to consciousness when Mom rattles me on the shoulder.

  “Wake up, sweetie.”

  “Nuh-uh,” I mumble into the pillow.

  “This is it, Hayley. Last treatment and then your dad’s coming to get us. We’re going home.”

  This sparks in my brain like a clanging alarm clock and three cups of espresso.

  Home. Back to Maxwell. Back to my life.

  It’s really the only thing that forces my limbs awake and into action. Since I slept later, I forgo a shower and grab the last Snickers bar on my way out of Cliff’s. Mom has our bags packed for when we return from UAB.

  For the first time all week, I’m not overanalyzing my position on the therapy table. I easily slide up onto the pad and stretch my leg out into position. Tracy, noticing my confidence, even skips taping my foot down before she slips away into her protective room.

  One last click, zoom, and hum of the simulator.

  I sit perfectly still.

  But in my mind, I’m running free. I haven’t a care in the world weighing me down. I’m running down the sidelines of the football field, cartwheeling, and doing back handsprings. There�
��s nothing holding me back. I can do anything. I’m unlocked from the medical shackles that have held me back all summer.

  My goal is in sight.

  I’m going home!

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

  —John Vance Cheney

  Hey, ladies, need a ride to Maxwell?” Dad asks when he pulls up in the truck outside Cliff’s apartment. He just drove three hours to get here, and now he’s turning around to do it again. He must be as relieved as I am that I’m done with this.

  “Yes, please!” I say enthusiastically.

  We load our things into the truck, and Dad helps me up into back seat of the cab.

  He’s brought a pillow along that he places on the seat and hefts my foot up on it. “There. Buckle up and make yourself comfortable.”

  I do as he says, clicking the shoulder strap around me.

  Mom climbs into the front, and we’re off.

  Soon, the skyline of Birmingham is nothing but a faded memory. Dad weaves through Friday afternoon traffic heading south on I-65. I lean my head back and let out a long, deep sigh, one that’s been stuck in my windpipe since the day I discovered that nasty-ass growth in my leg. I can’t believe that was only six weeks ago. In some ways, it feels like yesterday; in others, it feels like years.

  Mom turns in response to my massive exhalation. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  I give her a “you’ve got to be kidding me look,” so she adjusts forward in her seat.

  Cancer.

  It’s something old people get. People who smoke or drink too much get afflicted with it. It’s inherited. Millions of people walk in charity fundraisers to combat it. Telethons are held for it. Pink is now the color that represents cancer prevention.

  I’ve always liked pink. So why couldn’t I prevent it?

  Cancer.