Stay with Me

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  Adrian blinked. “Women are beastly, unpredictable messes.”

  “I guess.”

  He reached over and mussed up her hair at the crown. “Aw, I’m kidding. You’re the exact opposite of a ‘beastly mess,’ Julia, and you know it. I’m sure that your dad was very proud of you.” He gave her an over-the-imaginary-bifocals look. “I’m sure that beautiful daughters are a huge pain. You probably stressed him out with all your parties and boyfriends.”

  She nodded. “I tried.”

  “Kidding aside, Julia, I’m sorry that you lost your father so soon. That sucks.”

  Julia sighed. “Strangely enough, I feel him all around me, so no, I don’t actually miss him. What I do wish is that we had been closer when he was alive, so we could stay that way now that he’s gone.” She threw her hands up. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. It does. If you reach this level of closeness,” he lifted a hand over his head for a moment, “then it can stay that way forever.”

  “Exactly. I think you’ve reached that with your dad.” She unfolded her arms and took a deep breath. “Hearing you talk about your dad, in the context of this . . .” She gestured toward David’s hospital room. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this stuff. I’ve never even admitted it to myself before. But there it is. I’m disappointed in that relationship. It could have been more. And the opportunity to improve it is gone, and that hurts.”

  “Believe me, I understand.” He tapped at his heart. “David’s crisis is making all kinds of crap float up for me too.” Julia never got to hear what that “crap” might be because out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Levine marching up the hall with his entourage. They went into David’s room, and when they came out they informed Adrian and Julia that David had developed an infection and was running a slight fever. He ticked off the steps he would be taking over the next twenty-four hours, and gave them permission to go back in after the nurse finished up. Julia fished a small notebook and pen out of her purse and asked him to repeat the specifics, then did the same with the nurse, writing down all the details and flipping back to her previous notations. “I have to repeat this clearly and accurately for the O’Farrells,” she told Adrian.

  They were alone again in the hallway. Adrian said, “Look, Julia, I know that my brother wishes that he had behaved differently.” He tilted his head in the direction of David’s door again. “He disappointed you too.”

  She shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”

  Adrian closed his eyes for a couple of seconds and hung his head. “I have to tell you something, Julia. Up until today, I was afraid to see David. I was literally terrified. But I had to come, of course. And now he’s my hero,” he said. “And frankly so are you. You’ve been at his side from the moment you got back from your vacation. Taina says you passed out cold when you first saw him in the ICU. And here you are. He disappointed you, but you don’t have the heart to disappoint him.”

  She chuckled bitterly, covered her eyes, and said, “I’m terrible at this, Adrian. I just figure it sucks less than having a brain tumor.” Adrian put his arm over her shoulder briefly, and gave her a reassuring pat. Wanting to change the subject, Julia said, “So if you think I’m such a good old gal, why’d you feel the need to test me about your songs?”

  He gave her a bashful look. “I figured I’d catch you in a little white lie,” he said. “You look like someone who sticks to gringo rock.” He bobbled his head from side to side, as if to dislodge the name of a band. “Dave Matthews?”

  “You think I’m a provincial Yankee.”

  He made a face like he was seriously considering the question. “No . . . just a goody. What I mean is . . .” He squinted, like a fortuneteller struggling to read an aura. “Do you recycle? Pack a lunch everyday? Floss? Check the fire alarm batteries on a schedule? Are you in bed by ten every night?

  She burst out laughing. “Yes to all of them. But for your information, I love hip-hop and rap. And reggaeton.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure. I don’t limit myself. And I’m pretty sure I can whip your butt when it comes to Latin American history.”

  Adrian grinned widely and shook a finger at her. “Now it’s you that’s underestimating me. Bring it on.”

  She rubbed the palms of her hands together. “You got it. This summer.”

  Suddenly his smile faded. He was pensive for a moment before speaking again. “Hey, I know that you were David’s first choice as ‘decision-maker,’ and that you refused the role. I just want you to know that it does mean a lot to me. I’m his brother, after all. So thank you.” He opened his arms and she stepped into them. She noticed, fleetingly, that he smelled faintly of cologne, something David never wore. She was thinking about how different the two brothers were, when, from down the hall came a bright flash of light. A man with an enormous zoom lens had just taken a photo of them. He disappeared so quickly that Julia wondered if she’d seen him at all. She figured she’d end up on the cover of a hospital fund-raising brochure or a newsletter or something like that. She turned back to Adrian and saw that he had a worried look on his face. She realized then that he wasn’t just cool, he was complex. Suddenenly, she liked him.

  Chapter 15

  David

  According to Dr. Levine, I’m having a “fantastic” recovery. I don’t see it that way, but apparently most people have a lot more complications than I’ve had, especially if they have other medical conditions, which fortunately, I don’t. “You have the heart and liver of a bull,” Dr. Levine joked. There was a blood clot in my lungs followed by several infections. But in the strange and twisted world of brain cancer, this somehow qualified as “fantastic.”

  Days dimmed into night and the mornings turned over and over again. People came and went, came and went, while I remained in a kind of netherworld. After eight days I still couldn’t read. I looked at a page of text and it was just a series of letters from our alphabet that meant nothing to me. I had some right field-of-vision problems. But there was hope, at least, in the fact that my brain was still swollen. Some or all the cognitive issues could go away as the swelling went down. In the meantime, my brain was behaving mischievously. As it turns out, language is encoded by sound for storage. So when the brain can’t access a word, it selects another word that sounds similar. Like the time I was discussing medical issues with Dr. Levine and I referred to my stern-faced, silver-haired cardiologist, Dr. Butterfield, as my “partyologist.”

  “Tom Butterfield is an excellent heart man, but as a partyologist?” Dr. Levine turned to his physician’s assistant. “I just can’t picture Tom Butterfield in a Hawaiian shirt passing out tequila shots, can you?”

  The PA shook his head. “No. And I hope I don’t ever have to see Dr. Butterfield do the Macarena.”

  The next day, my dad was with me when my day nurse came in with a tray full of what looked like hypodermic needles. She was the beautiful one, but that didn’t even register, I just didn’t want to get poked anymore. I pointed at the metal tray in her hands and asked her if she was planning on giving me an erection. My dad blushed violently and covered his mouth. “Injection, my son meant injection,” he said over and over as his body shook with laughter.

  After the surgery, Taina gave me these “Caribbean Lagoon” pajamas and a bathrobe to match. The funny thing is that I absolutely loved them because they were lined with the softest, warmest flannel on the planet. They always keep it so damn cold in hospitals. Everyone who came to visit was highly amused by my “pimp” pajamas. The pretty nurse came to check on me while the guys from work were visiting me. They took one look at her and that was it, they started calling me “the Hef.” The PJs turned out to be a bottomless source of jokes and a welcomed icebreaker, especially for some of the guys who didn’t know what to say. In fact, three of my hiking buddies rode me so hard about my “fabulous” pajamas that they managed, in an hour’s visit, not to make a single reference to the fact that
I was sick. And I’m totally cool with that. They came and that’s what counts.

  Laughter did me good and cleared my head. And when the fog lifted I noticed that Julia was writing down every word the doctors said: what times I got my meds, when I ate, when I peed. She wrote in this pink notebook, with her brow furrowed, biting her lower lip. “What’s that little blue pill for?” she asked. “Didn’t he get two last time?” and “Aren’t they going to hang up another liter of IV fluids before that one runs out?” and “When is he supposed to get his next dose of pain medicine?” Once, she even stopped me from drinking someone’s urine sample off a cart when I thought it was apple juice. I thought of all the pills I took without thinking twice, how I just submitted without question. I took Julia’s left hand in mine and ran my fingers along the length of her ring finger. I said, “You just wait till I get out of this mess, Julia. I can’t wait to show you how much I love you.” Her response was always vague or dismissive: you just worry about getting better or I know you would do the same for me. Then she’d do something nice, like hum a tune or read softly to me, even though for the most part, I only wanted silence. So I’d close my eyes and drift off, and there would be that feeling of a window opening, a pop-up on the computer expanding across my vision, the audio kicking in. Piano music.

  The blonde woman took my hands and we sang, “Ah-beh-cé-ché-dé-eh-efe-gé-hache-eee-jota-kah . . .” We went through the whole Spanish alphabet that way. When we were done, there was clapping. I turned around. Behind me were more children, maybe a dozen, sitting on the floor. “A-E-I-O-U,” I said, and the children all shouted back, “¡El burro sabe mas que tú!” We dissolved into giggles. The screen closed and I was back on the homepage of my life. I couldn’t have said how many days passed like this before they let me go home, but it was a bunch. Later, I learned that I had been in the hospital for ten days.

  At home, I was tired and too over stimulated to even watch TV. Turns out watching TV isn’t such a passive activity after all. When my relatives came over, I felt like I was at a rock concert. Eating and mundane tasks like brushing my teeth and getting a glass of water required reserves of energy that I didn’t have. I keep telling myself to be patient, but recovery was taking way too long and it made me mad. I was seized by rage at the smallest things, and I had tantrums, just like a little kid. The most pathetic one was when I threw a piece of pizza to the floor, enraged because my mother had forgotten that I never, ever, eat pepperoni. Even Julia saw my nasty streak. She was helping me wash my scalp in the sink, so I wouldn’t get my wound wet. She was supposed to use the medicinal shampoo they had given me at the hospital. I shouted, “Not that kind!” as I slapped the half-empty bottle of Prell out of her hand. It clattered across the tile floor and landed quietly on the bath rug. She just stood there, stunned, while I hunched over the sink with my head full of the wrong kind of suds. In the bathroom mirror, I saw the effort in her face. I’m sure that she wanted to smack me upside the head with the hairbrush, which is exactly what I would have done. But Julia is the very definition of self-control. She put her hands up in the air, took a step back, said see-you-later, and went home.

  At first, Julia came by the house every day after dinner. I was terrified to ask if she’d seen Jonathan, so I didn’t. She reserved Friday and Saturday nights for herself and I suspected that that was when she stepped out of my world and into someone else’s. I lay awake in bed, worrying that she might meet someone else, that she would stop coming to see me.

  Chapter 16

  In February, March, and April, Julia thought of cancer and work and not much else. She was in constant communication with a vast network of people, from David’s close family members to acquaintances of acquaintances who offered hope in the form of e-mails about new treatments and stories of long-term survivors, or just jokes to cheer him up. Then, as the weather grew warmer, the hats began to arrive. Not knowing what else to do for David as he went through chemotherapy, people began to send them as gifts (presumably to conceal his balding head) along with cheerful notes explaining that he would need a good hat for the upcoming season of days spent outdoors. One friend brought him a brimmed, waterproof hiker’s hat with an adjustable chin strap; another gave him a “packable” straw hat. He got an Irish tweed cap from his uncle and a baseball cap with a waving Brazilian flag courtesy of his old flame, June Jones, who was in the Amazon.

  At David’s request, Taina had phoned June, now on the biology faculty at Cal Tech. They had talked one afternoon, and since then, June had been sending cancer-fighting botanicals by the bushel. By March, the FedEx guy was showing up once a week with products from either June Jones or the Lorenses. David figured he had nothing to lose, so Marcia and Julia made “miracle” shakes and sprinkled kelp flakes on his pizza and tacos, especially since Sue taught them that tomato masked the taste very well. One day, David tried to convince Julia to try some lovely lapis-blue seeds that June had sent, seeds that to her looked like something you should wear rather than eat. He assured her that they were perfectly safe and “great for circulation.” Unfortunately for David, June had included a note reminding him what they were for and urging him, as always, to check with his doctor before taking any of her botanicals. Julia’s first reaction to his offer was surprise. She doubted very much that David had the energy to entertain the effects of an aphrodisiac. Then it hit her. For David, there was only the here and now. There was no time for contemplating the consequences of an impulsive act. So rather than point this out, she just decided to be on guard. She refrained from having any frontal contact with him whatsoever. In the moments that he broke down and talked about how scared he was, she hugged him from behind. She held him tight and let him know, by that gesture, that she stood behind him, not with him, on his journey. David’s intense period of recuperation was no time to test their friendship. There was too much at stake.

  In the meantime, Julia had made no progress in her quest to move on after their split. Twice she had kissed Jonathan Miller’s scratchy face and twice it failed to stir up her libido. It just made her feel sad and empty. There was an early kind of grief unraveling inside her, and it had some of the strains of widowhood, since she and David had once shared a home and presumably, a future. There was also the anger and disappointment one felt in a divorce. She was in a kind of emotional limbo.

  When the first of the daffodils began to bud, Julia saw two of her girlfriends for the first time in months. They took her to the movies, to see a comedy. A few weeks later, Julia invited them to her messy apartment for dinner on the condition that the menu wouldn’t include anything super-healthy, certainly not fish or berries or green vegetables. Instead, Julia grilled the fattiest steaks she could find, mixed bacon with the mashed potatoes, dipped the corn in melted butter, and salted everything with abandon. They drank coconut rum and pineapple juice instead of red wine. One of her friends, a fellow teacher, presented her with a monstrously large chocolate cake. “Julia, David should eat like this everyday. The ‘anti-cancer’ diet is a waste. Think about it,” she said as she dragged a finger through the brown glaze. “There are only so many cakes, beers, steaks, vacations, and games of strip poker you’re allowed to have in a lifetime. He should be skydiving like the country song says. David should be drinking and feasting and screwing like a Roman emperor,” she said, as she licked a dollop of chocolate off her finger. “His time is running out.”

  Julia held her chin up with her fist and looked into her friend’s eyes. “That’s basically what his doctor said. Although not exactly in those words,” she said with a weak smile. “As for David’s attitude about it, he goes back and forth,” she said. “He buys a bonsai tree one day and calls old friends to say good-bye the next. He talks about having grandchildren and in the same breath he’s wondering who will inherit his Wrangler. It’s like watching a pendulum go back and forth, back and forth. Where it will stop? Nobody knows.”

  “Oh, but we do know,” Julia’s other friend, a nurse, said. “It’s the when that’s
the question.”

  Chapter 17

  David

  Radiation therapy was a painless but creepy procedure, beginning with the waiver I was asked to sign absolving the practice of all responsibility if I ended up with brain damage. A technician put a soft, netlike contraption over my face and head, hit the gas pedal, and beamed God knows how many units of DNA-zapping photons into my head. One week after I finished radiation, Julia came over with steaks and chocolate cake and champagne to celebrate. I began a one-year high-dose chemotherapy routine, with a cycle of MRIs every two months.

  Dr. Levine mentioned that a group of medical students would be viewing the surgery he performed on me. I asked him if I could see it and he said no. A few days later, Julia discovered a web link for medical students with video footage of brain surgery on Dr. Levine’s university web page. It didn’t require a password to view because the patient is anonymous. I confirmed that it was me by the time and date stamp visible at the bottom of the screen. But even that wasn’t necessary because I knew from the quickening of my heart the moment the footage started up, that it was me.