by Laura Lanni
“Hallelujah.”
Anna didn’t remember the details of that day. Not the way I did. We never remembered things the same way. I remembered what she said and did, and she remembered what I said and did. We each saw ourselves reflected off the other. I laughed to myself as I ran to gather up a cup of solid, crystalline water that normal folks call ice.
I thought about our baby, the one that Anna insisted was a boy. She’d resisted the medical tests that would verify the sex of the baby because she’d read that the test could hurt the fetus. So I was surprised when she insisted that she felt like the baby was a boy, because I was so certain it was a girl. From medical school, I knew that no statistical studies supported the fuzzy claims of women’s intuition. Likewise, there were no words to explain why I was expecting a daughter, so I humored my wife. We joked about it.
“Good thing this baby is a boy,” I said, just a week before Bethany was born, “because I don’t think I could survive in a hormonal house of two women.”
Anna whacked me with a pillow and said, “I’m not hormonal, you jerk. Can I have some ice cream?”
“There’s only vanilla left.”
“Aw, Eddie, I want chocolate. Your boy wants chocolate, too.”
I went to the store late in the night for more chocolate ice cream. Just the way I ran for ice on Bethany’s birthday. I’d do anything to make my Anna happy.
In the early evening, as the sun was setting through the tinted hospital window, they told Anna she could push. My relief was physical. My heart rate slowed. It would end soon. It would start soon. The pains would end. A life would begin.
In the first moments after Bethany’s birth, I was acutely aware of the low frequency hum in the room. A soft, almost imperceptible magnetic field pulsed the molecules of the air into frantic motion. I had that hair-standing-up-at-the-back-of-my-neck feeling while I watched, in awe, the raw beauty of new life. My wife, my world, held our daughter as her brand new antimatter hovered above them. I stroked her downy cheek. I touched her tiny fingers. Her antimatter latched on while we mere mortals stood in awe. There is no other word. We can marvel in awe. That’s all we can do when the power that is life blows us down and holds us up.
Unaware that she was crying, Anna leaked a steady stream of tears while she smiled, as happy as we’d ever be in our lives together in this bubble of a moment, at the edge of the crevice from which the energy of our daughter’s life emerged and converged. I could understand it all, in theory, more than a typical dad. But at the edge of the abyss, at the beginning or end of a life, the passage of the antimatter through the space-time gap will always leave me breathless and awed.
33
Hitch in Time
I know way too much. Much more than I could compassionately tell my patients, or their parents, about the rapidly replicating murderous cells that crowd out the good ones in their young bodies. I know even more about the boundary, the elusive and delicate perimeter, the membrane that divides death from life. The deathday. The heaviest burden I’ve borne during my medical career has been struggling for acceptance that, as a doctor, I can only do so much. I offer support and medicine to the children in my care and to their families, yet their final choice, the ultimate decision, is utterly beyond the scope of my power.
Despite my frustration, I would not change my choice to spend my days with the children in my care, especially the time I’ve spent with them on the edges, the borders of their lives. Obstetricians bring children into the world and I, sadly, often help them leave. Quite an emotional career for an outwardly stoic geek of a man, yet I cherished my work enough to share it with my own, healthy daughter.
When Bethany was little, I brought her to the hospital with me some days after school. She played with the kids who were my patients in the pediatric oncology ward, particularly a little boy named Ben. During our ride in one day Bethany asked, “Dad, how do little kids get sick?”
“Same way as adults: bacteria and viruses and cancers and things like that.”
“Do you think Ben will be awake today?” she asked hopefully. Sometimes when she visited, Ben slept the whole time.
“We’ll see.”
“I hope so. I want to beat him at War.” She smiled in anticipation. Ben was my patient, part of my work, a child I worried about. To Bethany, he was a normal kid and a friend.
Bethany was a miniature replica of my Anna. Just like her mother, she carried my heart in her small, innocent hands. I willfully avoided finding out her deathday. I decided, in Bethany’s case, to behave as a normal parent. It was a much healthier, more human way to live. It allowed me to worry about her every day and sort of spread the angst out into three-hundred-sixty-five bearable doses instead of the annual nuclear bomb I experienced in the third quarter of each year from knowing Anna’s deathday.
Professionally, I was aware of the deathdays of many children because I was with them and fighting to keep them alive when they died. Forever died. These kids’ bodies were usually so weakened by their illnesses that they most likely had no choices when they passed through to the dead side. Even the most resilient antimatter cannot sustain the energy of life when its corresponding matter is too weak. Sometimes, I witnessed a child’s return by being present when his heart stopped and restarted. I had a keen awareness of their journey to the dead side and back. I enjoyed spending time with these kids who traveled round-trip through their space-time gap. They saw the world through shining eyes and were brimming with life.
I never directly questioned them on their experiences, but sometimes the children remembered little bits of the journey, which they would unconsciously share with their family, brothers, nurses, and even me. Most often, they just thought they’d had a dream—a long and convoluted dream.
Bethany’s friend, Ben, had an obvious deathday on February ninth. His small-cell lymphoma cancer had succumbed to medicine and his own strong will multiple times—once with radiation and chemotherapy when he was three and once with a bone marrow transplant from his older brother. The third time, he came back to us from the dead side on his own. There were no alternative treatments, and he was too weak for more chemo. I had no faith that his body could sustain a reentry, but he’d made it back somehow.
I remember the day when the first code was called on then three-year-old Ben. I excused myself from my consultation and started my run. Nurses and doctors universally describe this race in the same manner: it is a slow-motion sprint. No worldly speed is ever fast enough; gravity amps up to exert an additional negative force vector—like iron chains on your ankles—as you run. Your legs pump, muscles burn, like your own life is on the line, with death trotting at your side, taunting you, all the way to the room with the dying child.
I arrived at Ben’s door and found two nurses and a resident surrounding his bed. They were listening for a heartbeat, adjusting his IV, watching the monitors, calling out what they found—a symphony of medical professionals working to keep the body’s trillions of molecules oxygenated and viable in case the patient came back. When the patient is three years old, thirty pounds, and limp, the symphony plays its beat in all eighth notes. This is the essence of what we do—provide maximum time, extend the workability of the body, the matter, and keep the space-time gap stretched open to give the soul a nice wide window to make its choice. We give the hitch a chance.
The code cart came in right behind me. I absorbed all of the information from the team in seconds while my eyes scanned the monitors that showed Ben’s pulse, oxygen, brain waves.
“Pulse forty and dropping. BP eighty over thirty-five.”
“Oxygen at fifty percent.”
We were losing him fast.
“He stopped breathing.”
“Beginning CPR.” A nurse got on the bed with Ben and bent over his tiny body.
This was the process. CPR, then intubate if there was not a DNR order. When his heart stopped and the brainwaves stopped, we had five minutes to bring him back with the defibrillators. All of the eq
uipment was here. It was my call.
Although I was working frantically with my team, I felt myself stepping away and watching the action. I often had this sensation when emergencies galloped at light speed. Somehow the five minutes lasted hours. Time warped and slowed. The feeling of doing the same things over and over and over was common. That was the hitch in time. I believe this was when the antimatter came back.
Ben came back.
When one of my little patients did not or could not return to us, there was no hitch or slowdown in the emergency room drama. Time slammed forward at a breathless pace and relentlessly beat us to the finish line. Even the best medical teams could not keep up. Afterward, when the time of death was called, the tender absence of the young soul was physically evident. In those cases, I knew the child’s antimatter departed quickly and painlessly. No decisions. No agonizing. A clean break. What lay beyond to greet the antimatter in death was all good. The child would be cared for and comforted by the entire universe.
Ben’s mother sensed his deathday and made a point of having her son in the hospital every year in early February. A few years after his first death, I was called at home about him by the head nurse.
“Dr. Wixim, Mrs. Martin is here with Ben. She’s insisting we admit him. There is no medical basis—his temp and oxygen are both normal, white blood cells slightly elevated but not alarming—so her insurance refuses coverage. She won’t take him home. What should we do?” Sandy was one of my favorite head nurses. She loved the kids and supported their parents through the worst living nightmare: watching their children die. Ben and his mom depended on Sandy for consistent pain management and middle-of-the-night jokes. Right now, dealing with a panicked mom and a stubborn insurance rep, she was all business.
“It would help if I could talk to Mrs. Martin. Is she there with you?”
“Sure is. Hold on.”
“Dr. Wixim? This is Candace Martin, Ben’s mom?”
“Yes, Mrs. Martin. Tell me what’s going on with Ben.”
“Well, it’s hard to explain. So far everyone has told me to just take him home. But I can’t.” She paused, and I heard a sniff. Then she stated this as a fact, “Dr. Wixim, if I take him home, he’ll die.” She rushed on, “I know this sounds crazy. But I also know that I’m right.”
That’s how it was with the space-time gap. The deathday was a mystery to almost everyone. Those who had some inkling of it were puzzled by it. Parents who knew their child’s deathday were paralyzed, even when they had no idea how they knew, or even what it was they knew. They suffered from relentless and mysterious anxiety, both physical and emotional, when the planet revolved to the proximity of their child’s deathday. Ben’s mother felt his deathday pulling her son away and knew that he’d almost died this week in February twice before.
“All right, listen. I have some questions for you. I could ask Sandy because they are medical issues, but it will help me know what to do if I hear the answers from you. Okay?”
I heard a small gasp of hesitation. “It feels like I’m about to take a test that I forgot to study for. What if I give the wrong answers?”
She was a mess and didn’t know I was on her side. I was also certain Ben’s deathday was coming up and that he was dangerously susceptible to the force it would exert on him in his weakened state.
“Candace, if your son is going to die soon, being in the hospital might not help him. But I’ll fight with your insurance to admit him. Just help me find a reason.”
“I’m ready.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“Does he have a fever?”
“No.”
“Is he complaining of any pain?”
“No.”
“Diarrhea or constipation?”
“Always one or the other—from his meds.”
“Is he sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Is he disoriented or—”
“Wait!” she interrupted. “Sleeping. That’s it. Actually, he isn’t sleeping well. He falls asleep easily but he wakes up four or five times a night.”
“Does he stay awake? Insomnia?”
“No. He goes back to sleep.”
“Does he complain of pain at night?”
“No,” she said, “let me think a minute. See, Ben doesn’t even wake me up when he does. He tells me in the morning that he was up. He worries that I need my rest. In the morning I always ask, ‘How’d you sleep?’ and his standard answer is ‘Like a rock’ or, when he’s feeling silly, ‘With my eyes closed.’ He learned those from his dad. But lately, he just talks about his dreams. His dreams are waking him up.”
“Are they nightmares, did he say?”
“No, not nightmares—he never seems afraid. Well, you know Ben isn’t afraid of anything. No nightlight, none of that jazz. He’s good at falling asleep. He likes to sleep.” She paused. I didn’t interrupt her thoughts. I waited. Then she said, “He’s dreaming that he’s talking to my mom.”
“Is Ben close to his grandmother?”
“He was,” she said, “before she died.”
Then he was hovering nearby, feeling the edges of his space-time gap. She was right that he could die. I didn’t know what I could do about it, except grant his mother’s request for support. “Candace, I need to examine him right away. Put Sandy on the line.”
“Oh, thank you so much.” She was crying.
Sandy’s voice said, “I don’t see how this will fly, Ed. You can’t admit a kid for nightmares.”
“I can. And I am. Admit him for gastroenteritis and insomnia. I’ll wrestle with the insurance later, and I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Insurance will deny it,” she insisted.
“Of course they will. That’s what they do. But you know at the end of the battle they’ll always cave and pay for the care of a dying six-year-old.” I hung up and told Anna I was going to the hospital for a couple hours.
The Thursday I brought Bethany to see Ben was February tenth, one day after his deathday. His mother had been right. The day before, his heart had stopped. No pulse. No brainwaves. We called a code and worked on him for minutes that felt like days. And he came back to us. When I walked in his room with Bethany, he was napping. The room was dark.
Bethany heaved a noisy sigh and whispered, “Who will play War with me, Daddy?”
Ben rolled over and saw her in the doorway and, still groggy, said, “Whatcha’ doing here, Beth-Bomb?”
She snorted and said, “Came to smell ya, Ben-Bomb.” They both burst into giggles.
I opened the blinds to let in the winter light. I patted Ben’s foot and read his chart while Bethany jumped up onto the bed with him.
His chart indicated hourly checks of blood pressure and temperature. He was steady and strong. Lungs were clear. Other than being tired, he was ready to go home.
“Wanna play War?” Ben asked as he pulled a double deck of cards from under his pillow.
Bethany beamed and nodded. They split the cards to shuffle. No dealing required. They made two piles of agreed-upon equal heights and started warring.
I kissed Bethany’s head and messed up Ben’s mop of new hair and continued on my rounds. He was doing great. He was going home again.
As a pediatrician treating terminally ill children, I could predict who would come back based on whether there was that hitch when they died, whether I had the stepping-away-from-things feeling and the incredible second-by-second déjà vu. This was when the antimatter would return. Their space-time gap opened, and I am convinced everyone in the room would have felt it if they knew to expect it or knew what it was. I watched my peers for evidence of this knowledge. But, even in this, I was isolated.
The times that I’d died were not easy for me. My experiences from the dead side made me a better doctor, but also served to alienate me from normal humans. I knew that it would be impossible to explain what I knew to anyone who’d never survived death, so I never tried.
When Anna died, I felt the hitch. I’m sure I did. Th
at was two days ago, and I’m still waiting for her, trying to be patient, hopeful but helpless. Everything I could’ve done to influence her choice to return to me is now in my past. On the living side, there’s no going back in time to repair mistakes. They gape open like rips in our relationship. Maybe Anna can look past our last few months. Maybe she’ll forgive me.
Maybe not.
34
Hair Farming and Parenting
Many of my kids in oncology lose all of their hair during treatments. They don’t just lose their headhair, as Bethany used to call it, they lose eyelashes and eyebrows, too. Though it bothered Bethany at first, she became accustomed to it. After accompanying me on my evening hospital rounds, I was surprised when our first-grader, with glorious chestnut hair, asked me about my bald young patients.
“Daddy, Jess doesn’t have any hairs. Katie, too. Aren’t old men the baldies? Little kids—little girls are ’sposed to have hairs like me, right?” She sat up like a puppy in the front seat of my truck, watching every detail of the world go by.
“Yeah, Bethy,” I said as I rubbed the top of her little head, “they’re supposed to have beautiful hair like you. But the medicine to make them get better takes their hair away.” It was a tough concept to explain to my healthy little girl.
“Hey! There’s my school! And there’s the swing that Maddie wouldn’t share!” She frowned at me. “Medicine takes away hairs? Why do you give them that medicine, then?” She absently stroked her long ponytail.
“It’s called a ‘side effect.’ The medicine fights the bad cancer, but also eats up their hair.”
“Ick. Hair-eater,” she pondered with a sneer. She looked out the window and announced, “Look! A field of cow!”
“Cows,” I corrected her but immediately regretted it.
“No, Daddy,” she argued. “Mom said we don’t have to add s to cow. She said they’re like deer and fish. My teacher marked it wrong on my spelling test and Mom wrote her a note.”