He shakes his head. “Yes, I’m here. I will help you, baby. Give me a minute and I am all yours, okay?” I nod and hand him the supplies and he gently goes to work. I forgot what it felt like to have his hands on my body.
“Babe, you have to stop moaning. If I am reading you right, this is business, so we are going to talk about that to keep us both focused because, believe me, you are not the only one affected. So, did you just tell me we are having this baby today and that, despite our fight, I get to be there?” he asks, shaving and trying to keep the topic neutral.
How had I let this man go? Had I missed something? I don’t think so, but I didn’t really give him time to tell me his side of the story, either. Now I am starting to feel bad, like maybe I jumped to conclusions. I hold back the tears and look down at his beautiful face. “Yes, Ander. You get to be there. You are the dad. I want the baby to know he has a dad. Can you be there for us? Lola is not old enough to manage a child and I really want her to finish college.”
He reaches up and feathers his fingers across my face. “Baby, yes, I will be there. Nothing on this planet could stop me from seeing the birth of my child, but we have one stop to make on the way, okay?” He sees the hitch in my breathing. “Just listen. We have time and this is important. Please, give me this. Give me this one last thing.”
Well, when he throws that in there, I have no option but to say yes. The doctor scheduled my C-section for the end of the day so I have to check in at five pm, which means no food or drink before that. I need to make sure he is aware of that because if he hears my tummy rumble, his protective instincts will go against doctor’s orders. Apparently, Ander needs the whole day for whatever it is he desperately needs to show me. I tell him I might not make it through that much excitement without a nap, and he promises I will be sitting most of the time and I can sleep if I need to.
However embarrassing the shave is, noticing his reaction to me in my fat form and my dying body, I finally feel a little power, a little feminine. All this time, I have been focused on the baby and on survival. It is nice to relax and be taken care of for a moment, and feel like the woman I am…for the time being.
ANDER
Not only has she agreed to come with me and I get the pleasure of shaving her, but today is the day I get to meet my baby. I have never been so scared and so excited at the same time. My wife is dying. She is so ill, she can’t make it through the day without a nap, but she is still giving me a child. As I dry her off and get her ready to go, I can see the hollowness of her cheeks and the paleness of her skin. She is dying right before my eyes and I have not been here for her because my ego wanted to show her I could do this for her on my own. Now I am seeing how much I have missed. She is smiling, but the tiredness remains. She knows she is going in today to give birth, then will hang on until she dies…alone.
I cannot believe she feels like she is doing all this alone. That’s my fault. When we married, we said through sickness and health. Well, this is sickness and I have failed. My intentions are true. I will fight this for her. That is what today was for. I am going to take her to the shop and show her what we have done. I am going to give her the chance to be the mommy she always wanted, and I am hopeful she will give me the chance to be involved, as well. If not as her husband, then as the dad. But I am going to do everything in my power to earn my position as husband back.
As we drive the few blocks from the house to the shop, Leire sleeps. I am sure that is what she spends most of her time doing lately because she surely isn’t eating. She has a port – an implant in her chest which has a direct link to her heart. The needles go into it so the nurses don’t have to constantly find a vein. She also has a glass jar giving her nutrition. I suck. Where had I been while she had undergone surgery to keep feeding our child? I was tattooing. My stupid ego just wouldn’t let me not save my family, then I was in so deep that Leire wouldn’t let me. My daughter knows more about what is going on than I do. Thankfully, the small and infrequent texts have continued so I knew she was still alive and that the baby was fine.
When we get to the shop, I gently wake Leire. When she sees where we are, shock quickly shows on her face, followed by anger. “Even on today, the day your child comes to join the world, you cannot stop working? What in the hell was I thinking when I married you? Maybe Brittany was right. I should have held out for someone better than a lowly tattoo artist.”
“I know this makes no sense, baby, and I know you are hurt, but if you will just put aside all that hurt and anger for one moment and come inside, I will show you what I have been doing. Why I have been absent. Please. Just give me a moment, all right?”
Too week to deny me, I pick her up and carry her inside where everyone is waiting. The seething look Cora receives from Leire hurts even me. “Baby, wait. Cora was here for you. We have all been here for you. When the doctor told me how much money the treatment and transplant was going to cost, you decided you wouldn’t do anything until the baby was born. However, in my head, it was always you, me, Lola, and the baby. So I set about ways to make sure that happened.”
Leire looks up at me. I can see her fighting within herself. I know her well enough to know that this is going to hurt her, but she needs to see what is going to happen.
“Since the moment we walked out of that doctor’s office, I have been calling in every favor, tattooing every person I know. I have had open houses and benefit nights to raise money for you and our baby. And, sweetheart, we did it. Because of all the amazing people, people most write off because of their tattoos, we have raised enough money to cover all of the treatment and the birth itself. You are going to have this baby, then we are going to start treatment. We are going to cure you and live that life we pledged on the beach. Together.”
She has silent tears running down her face as she starts shaking her head back and forth. “No. NO! YOU LEFT US!” she cries. I grab her hands, using her weakness and inability to pull them away against her. “You left us. If you really wanted us, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me know so I could have some hope during this whole ordeal? Do you know what hope is? Instead of counting the days until I could hope for a cure, I have been counting the days to my death. Instead of hoping to see my child grow, I have been hoping to just make it through the surgery and see him breathe. YOU TOOK MY HOPE. I know what you did is amazing and I am thankful, but I cannot forgive you yet. You are going to need to give me time. Time to process that maybe everything will be okay. That maybe there is one last thing I get to try. You waited until now to give that to me and it is probably too late. Doctors always say that attitude is the key to survival. That having a positive attitude can help where medicine cannot. I have not had a positive attitude for one moment. I let the cancer take its place and grow. By now, it is probably beyond anything anyone can do.
“You and your efforts are so greatly appreciated, but please, if the doctor says it is not worth the effort, would you take the money and place it in a trust for the baby?”
With tears running down both our faces now, I truly see the damage I have done. I took her hope. I was her hope and I took it. I deserve to be alone.
People like to say that hope is deadly. That you shouldn’t give someone hope where there is none. But those people don’t know anything. Even doctors believe in the power of hope. How I let myself believe that I could do this without telling her, without giving her hope, is really hitting me now and I deserve it.
“I am so sorry, Leire. I…I didn’t think. I’m a selfish bastard. I wanted the glory of seeing your face when you saw I could raise the funds to do this on my own, with my team. Now I see the true error of my thinking. I may have thought I was doing this for you and the baby but, really, it was for me. It was to boost my ego, to show that I was man enough to take care of you and my family. In reality, I showed you that all I cared about was me. I cannot believe I didn’t see this through your eyes. If I had stopped and even began to listen to you at any point in our arguments, I would ha
ve seen this. I was too focused on my prize, showing you what I could do. So, now, I will face the consequences. We will go in and have our baby, do this treatment, and I will earn your trust back if it takes me until the end of time. From the moment you walked into the shop, I knew you were it for me, and I will not let you go. I will not let cancer take you, and I certainly will not let my stupidity and foolish selfishness take you. I will prove to you that the faith you put in me when we said our vows was not misplaced.”
She looks up and shakes her head, tears still streaming down her face. “I hope you do, but from where I am sitting, I have no faith. So, let’s go have this baby and see if you and your massive ego can even do a dent in the damage you have caused. I hope you can. I really do. I do love you, Ander. You are my always, but I have always known that would be short-lived. But take me and let’s see what they can do.”
Nodding, I gently pick her up and turn to leave. Wyatt and Cora have both somehow quietly left the room during all that mess. With one last glace at what I thought was going to be a major surprise, I walk her to my car and drive to the hospital, hoping I will get the chance to leave with two people. The other option is not even worth considering.
LEIRE
After so many months of preparing myself to die, it is almost impossible to get my head around the fact that maybe Ander has given me a chance. That maybe a little bit of hope is trying to make a place in my heart. I don’t want it there, though. I don’t want the hope to take root. I have prepared for the worst and am ready, but now I am finally given a rope? It is a fraying and ragged rope, but it is there. Am I strong enough to take it? I don’t know. Instead, I get into Ander’s car and sleep.
I must have slept all the way to the hospital and check-in. I wake to my fears in full force…the sounds, the tastes, the smells are all there. With the IV in place and the doctors getting ready to do the epidural, all I can taste is the coppery lemon of the saline they are using to flush my IV lines. I can hear nothing except the constant beeping of the monitors. It seems that even covering up my body and making myself new isn’t enough to escape my fears.
Feeling a pinch, I suddenly can’t feel my body and I begin to relax. They must have given me something through the IV and started the epidural. Is this what it’s like to die? To see what is going on around you but have no emotional connection to it? I watch at a drape is set up between my belly and my face, and Ander walks in wearing scrubs.
For what seems like the longest time, the doctors are just working over my belly and Ander is looking pale and panicked, his head swiveling from the baby to me and back again. Finally, I hear the baby’s cries and see Ander reach to cut the cord, then see the little face of my boy. I know I did what I could. I brought him safely into the world. I can’t help that my body doesn’t have any more to give. I watch as the face of my child slowly fades to black.
ANDER
When the machines begin blaring, the nurses rush to take my son from me. I am reluctant to give him to them, but they know what they are doing. I know nothing, because I was tattooing. Instead of reading up on being a father, I was working. I give my son to them and am rushed from the room. All my work is for nothing. I took her hope and I took her life. They should keep my son because I am not a person capable of thinking beyond myself. I thought only of me and my rewards. I deserve every moment of this.
Outside the operating room, I collapse to my knees, sobbing for what I have just lost. My entire reason for being… I don’t know how long I kneeled there until a nurse comes out and finds me. She picks me up and sits me in a chair, telling me the doctors have stopped the bleeding and will be talking to me shortly. At that moment, I know what Leire meant when she said hope mattered. For a moment, I had none, believing I had nothing to live for. Now, moments later, that little sliver of good news has given me enough hope to breathe again. Leire mentioned to me how she lives on laughter and hope, and I took it away in my need to feel important. Important? Me? What is important is if she lives, not whether or not I provided the means. What was I thinking? So I sit in that hard, plastic chair and wait.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and look up to see her oncologist. With eyes red from crying, I look to him for some hope. Hope that I took from Leire. Hope, however small, I now desperately need.
“As you know, Leire chose to delay treatment to protect the baby. Because of this, there are already complications. She nearly bled out during delivery but, thankfully, we were able to stop it. With recurrent lymphoma, staging becomes, well…difficult, as stages three through five are generally staged the same because the treatment is the same. Leire is rare, as she has already lived past more than one recurrence. Just a single recurrence and successful treatment is generally all people get the chance at. Leire’s body has been through more trials and chemotherapy than anyone I’ve ever seen, and what we are about to try is another trial. The stem cell research trial for her indolent recurrent NHL, or Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, has multiple steps. First, we need to kill as much of her immune system as she has left. She will be isolated for this time. You can see her through the glass of her room and, on occasions when we feel both you and her are stable, you can suit up to sit in her room for a bit. She will undergo two rounds of CHOP-cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone…the typical chemotherapies used for lymphoma. These will do their job in killing both her immune cells and starting the process of killing the disease itself. It is ugly to watch and worse to undergo.
“I am warning you now so you are prepared to see what she will become. You will not recognize the woman in there. You will also need to put your own feelings, ego, and emotions aside and focus on her. Drugs make us different, Ander. She will say things she doesn’t mean, see things that aren’t there. You cannot take offence to them. You have to focus on the end result.
“When the chemo has done its job and her body is ready, we will infuse the blood from the umbilical cord. While the survival rate of five years for most matched stem/bone marrow adults with this treatment has typically been 65%, we have no numbers for the survival of matches with their own, well… their own blood, but I hope it’s higher. If this works, we will follow her for long-term follow-up. I am hopeful for the best.
“Does this make sense? I know it is a lot to take in right now. I suggest, instead of focusing on it, you go see your son, hold him, focus on life. Maybe you can transfer that focus to her because she will need all the hope and prayers you can give her.” He finishes by using the word I have now come to hate…hope. But I do listen. I do get it. This is tricky and will be long, but I have a son I need to see.
When I walk to the nursery and stop at the window, my eyes search the room and find the name “Baby Giovide”. She hasn’t cut me out after all. He may not have a name yet, but she let him keep mine. Suddenly, one of the huge boulders I have been carrying lifts. When a nurse looks up, she smiles at me and motions to a door. Walking to it, she opens it, going over the cleanliness rules as she gets me a new set of scrubs, then leads me to my son.
As I pick him up, she goes over how he will be remaining in the nursery or NICU, depending on how he does. I am reminded that he has no name. Bug. He is Bug. I hold him close and when she asks if we have a name, I say “No.” She looks at me sympathetically. “I am waiting for my wife to help me name him. She called him ‘Bug’. Can I call him that without it being official?”
“No problem, Mr. Giovide. There’s no hurry. We will call him Bug, for now.”
My Bug. He is clean and smells so fresh. I have a son and a daughter now, and although I was not a part of my daughter’s life until recently, I will be a part of his. I hold him close while he sleeps, whispering about his life and how mommy loves him and wants to hold and see him. That she wants nothing more than for him to grow big and strong. I whisper until the nurse takes him from me for a feeding and a nap. When I ask if I can sleep next to him, she says they don’t allow parents to sleep in the nursery. I have no clue what to do. I leave in a fog, de
ciding to search for the oncology department. Maybe they have somewhere for me to stay.
LEIRE
Well, judging from the smells and sounds, I’m not dead. I’m unable to open my eyes and I feel like shit, but I’m not dead. I hear a voice I thought I would never hear again.
“Sweetheart, you did it. You gave us a beautiful son and you pulled through. The doctor mentioned something about your treatment, the blood transfusion from the umbilical cord, and how I wouldn’t be able to really see you when your immune system disappears, but until then, I am here. I would bring Bug in, but they won’t let me. I didn’t know if you already had a name and I don’t want to name him without you, so everyone is calling him Bug right now. It’s kind of cute. Anyway, you just woke up and I need to get the nurse, okay?”
He stood and left. If I could laugh, I would have. My man is WAY over his head, feeling grief. I need to ease it. This is going to be hard enough on me, let alone someone who cares and loves me. By the time he hurries back into the room with the nurse to turn off the constant beeping machines and take vitals, he seems to have calmed some. I take this as a good sign.
“Ander, come here,” I whisper. Hmm… My mouth works now. That’s an improvement. “We can’t keep calling him Bug. You are going to have to come up with a name, okay? I am trusting him to you. He is in your care. You are his father, and will be an excellent one. I am sorry for every bit of what I said. You are not a loser. You are an artist with a living canvas. You are my husband and I love you. Even when I was angrier than all hell at you, I still loved you. I’ll always love you. This is going to be tough, so I need you to be tough for me. The chemotherapy drugs they use have massive side effects. I am not talking the hair loss, fingernail loss, and tiredness everyone sees. I am talking about the unseen. I feel like, before they kick, in I need to prepare you for what you will see, hear…everything.”
One More Breath Page 17