Nick’s on a tear. “It’s not fair to punish Thomas for something his father does. And if they take Thomas away, he’ll only worry more that his dad will do something really crazy. Overdose, maybe.”
“One thing’s for sure. You can’t solve Thomas’s problem or his father’s. They both need help.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“He needs more than that, Nick.”
“Friends are useless, then?”
“Not at all. Thomas is lucky to have such a good friend.”
“Dad. That’s garbage. Worthless garbage if he’s dead tomorrow.”
“Then he needs to tell an adult who can help him. A trained adult, a professional.”
“Oh, right, so now you’re promoting professionals? Then why don’t you and Mom let Daniel do what the doctors say? They’re the professionals, aren’t they?”
To tune them out, I reread the end of the chapter where Holden thinks about jumping out the window. I read it again. There he is all alone in the city, he’s passed up sex with a strange girl, and he’s getting ready to go out and see another girl he knows but doesn’t really like. He’s thinking about ending it, just like that. Sure, jumping out a window may seem like a quick and easy end to your problems. But what about Phoebe? And old Mr. Spencer? And his parents? Holden’s more concerned about the rubberneckers. Something’s wrong with that picture.
Holden, buddy, you don’t see how good you’ve got it. At seventeen, you have your whole life ahead of you. There’s plenty of time for Jane or Sally and dancing and making new friends at a new school. You don’t have a father who’s beating up on you. You don’t have to worry about money. You don’t have The Disease.
To keep from losing it over the waste of the whole asinine world, I get up and jump in the river. Only thing is, if I did lose it, I’m not sure who I’d be crying for.
We moor for the night in Urbanna harbor. Turns out the houseboat doesn’t move very fast. Dad puts away the charts for his dream family cruise. We’ll have to go back upriver on Sunday for Nick to be at school on time Monday morning. In the narrow harbor the sailboats on moorings jut out every which way like spilled toothpicks. No breeze at all. You can smell the Italian food from the restaurant on the pier. Nick doesn’t ask for pizza, which surprises the heck out of me. He’s taken the family cruise idea more seriously than I thought. After dinner he pulls out the Scrabble board. Yikes. I spoke too soon.
Just because I like reading and books doesn’t mean I have to like Scrabble. Some games are so random. If you get the right letters, you look like a genius. But if you get the tough ones, you can be snuffed out in a couple of rounds. Anyone with one good six-or seven-letter word on a Double Word space and you can’t catch up with the Q in your hand, even if you’re brilliant.
“I’ll just watch,” I say.
Nick flips the board up and letter tiles fly everywhere.
Mom’s knuckles turn white on the handle of her mug. “That was totally uncalled for, Nick. Go to your room.”
Dad starts picking up tiles.
But Nick’s had a tough afternoon, and he’s not ready to give it up. “That’s just great, Mom. Ignore the spoiled brat and punish me. What did I do wrong?”
Dad takes over, the ultimate diplomat, a dyed-in-the-wool UN peacekeeper. “Sit down, both of you. Daniel’s just afraid of losing to his little brother. He’ll play one round. Won’t you, buddy?”
That strategy, trying to make me feel competitive, is truly juvenile. But Mom’s swiping at tears and anyone can see Nick’s only letting off steam about Thomas, so I give in and pick seven tiles. Of course, I make party and quirk and feel like a real louse when I have the high score.
Bright and early Monday morning the sheriff’s back at the creek. Nick’s already left for school. We have just picked the mooring back up after Daily Devotions at June Parker Marina. When we first moved to the boat, we had to get used to the timing, when to fill the water tank and empty the sewage tank and get fuel for the stove and the motor. Mom nicknamed the whole process Daily Devotions. It was almost every day then, because we had no idea how things worked. The joke was so perfect since my parents honor Mother Nature above all else, and these were basic functions of nature, at least for houseboat dwellers. Daily Devotions is not that funny anymore, just what we call it.
Sheriff Jessup glides into the creek in the game warden’s borrowed Whaler. He isn’t taking any chances on cooperation.
Dad takes the line and loops it around the railing, but he doesn’t move closer to shake hands. “The order said noon.”
“I know. I’ll be back to get him then.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Dad’s voice is steel. “I think we can manage to deliver our own son to the hospital.”
“It’s in the court order. The county has to transport him. You can follow the cruiser. And afterwards you can bring him home.”
“Fine. If it has to be that way, fine.”
“I’m sorry, Stieg. I know this seems endless and personal.”
“It is personal.”
“The county people are just doing their job.”
“Let them find a cure for Daniel, then.”
In the long silence that follows the sheriff fumbles with the clipboard to free a bunch of papers while I’m watching through the louvered window slats and thinking disloyal thoughts, that Dad has it right without meaning to, that finding a cure is exactly what the county is trying to do. After Sheriff Jessup makes a notation on his clipboard, he hands Dad the papers, all different colors, stapled together and creased permanently where they’ve been trapped in the clipboard for who knows how long.
Dad reads in silence, exchanging each page for the next without raising his head. He doesn’t even look up when the sheriff unties the line, points the Whaler away from the houseboat and heads back up the creek to the boat landing. As soon as the sheriff’s gone, Mom grabs the papers out of Dad’s hand.
“There’s nothing in here about the chemotherapy,” she says.
“Nothing,” Dad says.
“This is a criminal order, a totally different statute number. They’ve convicted us of neglect. Criminal neglect.”
“Yes,” Dad says in the same dull tone.
The county has won. Round one and round two. Another court order and my parents are suddenly criminals. They stand outside the main cabin in shock where I pretend to watch the morning talk shows. When a bunch of high school kids from Oklahoma wave to the cameras outside Rockefeller Center, I have a flash. We could do that, take our case to the media and wave signs that say SAVE DANIEL or FREE THE LANDONS. But this is probably not the right time for that argument so I file it away for later.
Mom whispers to Dad, “Do we have enough in the bank for me to take Daniel to Mexico?”
Dad’s voice is as sad as I’ve ever heard it. “I give up. I can’t fight you and the county both.”
The stark river edge from Apocalypse Now blurs in front of me as I envision Mom and me on donkeys crossing the scraggy hillsides under that bloodred sun they write about in every book on Mexico. We pass reams of bright orange butterflies and those wide-petal yellow cactus flowers you see in all the movie scenes of deserts. The horizon shimmers in the distance, a turquoise and purple line crimped against the sand hills. See what I mean about my life getting exciting?
The only thing about going to Mexico is I’ll be sorry to abandon Meredith to Leonard’s spit and polish. But if the Mexican cure works and I come back a sophisticated world traveler, a starched-shirt senator’s son won’t have a chance. If being the operative word.
CHAPTER TEN
Riding in a cop car is not as thrilling as everyone makes it out to be. They only deliver me to Doctor Morley’s office on Route 360 in Mechanicsville. My parents are supposed to meet me there, where the medical people will hand off the official prescription for the chemotherapy and the directions to the treatment center at Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, all per the court order. That’s where they�
��ll shoot me up with the drugs, according to the sheriff, though those aren’t his words. He’s mostly silent on the ride down, except for asking three times if I’m hungry. So I know he meant what he said to Dad. He does feel bad about the whole thing.
With Sheriff Jessup in his waiting room, Doctor Morley is a whole lot more nervous than on my earlier visits. Makes me wonder if he’s second-guessing his own professional opinion.
“Hard to be in the spotlight, eh?” He stares at his hands, maybe trying to ignore the uniform at attention by the open door. But when he looks up, it’s not at the sheriff but right at me. Up until this point Doctor Morley’s been one of the few medical people who talk to me instead of about me to my parents. Since I’m the patient, I appreciate it, even though Mom probably would prefer that some of what he says he’d save for just them. With the legal issues turning my condition into some kind of big-deal public controversy, I’m hoping for a few minutes alone with the doc. My questions will only upset Mom.
“Can I talk to Doctor Morley in his office?” I ask.
Sheriff Jessup nods. “Just so you’re not planning to escape by throwing yourself out the window.”
“I won’t let him near the window,” Doctor Morley says before he motions for me to go into the examining room.
Meredith’s lecture about my right to ask questions is inspiring this burst of pushiness. And it makes me realize how the court order punishing my parents makes that right almost worthless. But Holden would have asked. So I plow ahead.
“How does this chemo thing work?”
“You lie down and they set you up for the IV. After the prick for the intubation, it’s painless. They’ll give you an antinausea medicine first, and probably Benadryl because the antinausea drug makes you twitchy.” He’s watching my face as if I might burst into tears. “Takes a while for the medicine to empty. The nurses check on you every few minutes. They have to watch your tolerance, particularly this first time.”
“‘This first time’? There’s going to be more than one session?”
“Three is the way we plan to start with you.”
“‘We’?”
“With a complicated disease like AML, doctors from each part of the treatment consult. And they have to gauge your reaction without going too far. The medicine is expensive and a kind of trial run saves time and expense in the long run.”
It’s been four months since they found the tumors in my neck, throat, lungs, whatever. Four months since they said I had a year left. In the long run takes on a whole new meaning. Doctor Morley doesn’t wait, so he must think my pause means I’m ready to hear more.
“The tricky part is redefining the treatment once we know how your body reacts. Everyone’s different. Given that your stomach has been giving you fits already, I’d say you should plan on not traveling for a good couple of hours after your sessions. And we may have to set you up for an overnight if it gets too hard to take. Or depending on your white blood count.”
“I’ll lose my hair and puke?”
“The hair, yes, that happens in about ninety-nine percent of the cases. Most people tolerate the drugs pretty well, though, so maybe not the puking.”
Laughing at the serious doctor using a nontechnical term, I push. “Anything else? I’m better if I can prepare. My, ah, imagination is not easy to control sometimes.” Shrugging to let him know I can handle this, I still feel uneasy. It’s too little information for this complicated a medical procedure. He’s not telling me the whole truth.
Doctor Morley doesn’t wait for the next question. He seems to be following a memorized checklist. “Some people get migraines. Ever had one?”
“No.”
“Mostly they make you feel nauseated, more of the same. But they can cause fainting, blackouts.”
“There’s a difference?”
“The level of consciousness. Memory loss. Fainting is a short incident with relatively little impact on your general health. Blackouts are more serious.”
“There’s no way to prevent them?”
“The nurses will let you know that kind of thing. If you do black out, we’ll keep you overnight for observation. If your counts are skewed, we’ll keep you overnight anyway.”
“Are you the doctor who testified against my parents in the court hearings?”
His face floods with recognition that this is where I was headed all along and he moves back behind his desk as if to protect himself. Or perhaps to add substance to his position, the way a judge wears a robe so the criminal will accept the authority of the court at sentencing. Protective coloration. Sixth-grade science.
“I was subpoenaed, Daniel. I had no choice about testifying. It’s simply a matter of how best to save your life. That’s what the court wants. That’s what everyone wants.”
“But no guarantee, right?”
“No, no guarantee. Still, there’s no reason to believe with an active, otherwise healthy teenager that the standard regimen won’t work for you. Chemotherapy is effective in the short run for a majority of cases. And if it doesn’t work, we have other treatments we can try. Saving your life, that’s the goal.”
“If you can.”
“Well, of course, if we can. We’re not miracle workers.”
Mom comes in without knocking. “He’s a minor, Doctor Morley. You have no right to speak to him outside of our presence. Court order or not.”
“He asked.”
She looks stunned, and suddenly very fragile and not at all the opinionated, confident person I know.
“It’s okay, Mom, I only wanted to understand how it works. What to expect.”
She starts to take my face in her hands, but pulls back at the last minute as if she’s remembered I’m not a little boy. Instead she mouths an apology. But she refuses to shake Doctor Morley’s outstretched hand. After she moves to the window, her side turned to us, he sees the session is over. He motions to the door.
In the meantime Dad’s taken care of the paperwork with the nurse. She’s printed directions to the hospital, a confirmation of the appointment time, a copy of the fact sheet about the chemotherapy drugs with the warnings in bold capital letters, a prescription for more anti-nausea medicine to take at home afterward. Dad shows them to me while Mom’s in the bathroom.
“Your mother’s going to go home for the first treatment,” he says as he folds the papers and tries to fit them in his shirt pocket. Of course they’re way too thick and he looks spastic when they hang up on the edge of the pocket. “To be with Nick. The chemo session may very well be delayed.”
He’s not telling the whole truth either, but now I know better. Thank you, Meredith.
It turns out he’s more right than he knows. After we sit and kill time for an hour in Doctor Morley’s waiting room while the lab work is processed, my blood is so screwed up they can’t use the first chemo appointment. We go home in Dad’s car with Sheriff Jessup’s cruiser a silent shadow behind us down Route 360. He probably has to report to the court that we’ve complied.
Before my “count” straightens out, that idiot Walker finally gets his act together. The appeal order gets entered with a stay on the government’s authority to force the chemotherapy on us. On me.
Despite Mom’s secret plan, we don’t actually go to Mexico in October. Walker tells my mom it would be a crime for her to leave the country while the appeal of the neglect charge is pending. They can drag her back if she flees the jurisdiction. Extradition. I have to go to the dictionary to look it up.
While my parents and Walker are debating how to prolong the delay of chemotherapy during the appeal, I catch the flu. Because of my lousy white blood count, I’m shipped off to the hospital until enough antibiotics can be pumped into me to avoid a new infection. Although my parents fall all over themselves blaming each other, it doesn’t even bother me because of how I catch the flu. Meredith, of course.
Leonard Yowell decides to throw a Halloween party. Which ticks Mack off big-time. I guess he wanted to be the king of Hallo
ween parties. He says he’s been busy at school with a new club and that classes are harder in tenth grade. Plus we had that fight over his watching out for my interests with Meredith, so we haven’t talked much.
I refuse to go begging for friends. I’d have trouble telling who was just feeling sorry for me. Even people like Holden who are good judges of character would have trouble.
About the party. The Yowells have way more money than the Petrianos, or anyone in town that I know for that matter, which means the food’ll be way better. And there’ll be more space for more people. That could be interesting or a hassle depending on which kids Leonard invites. If he’s using the whole shebang as an excuse to impress the preppies, then it could be more than touchy.
Preppies are really the most dangerous group in any high school. Adults don’t get this. It’s like camouflage. Preppies have been taught good manners, but their disdain for their own kind sometimes fools you into thinking they’re in sync with you, when all they’re really doing is getting a few laughs at your expense. Barracudas. Like Stradlater, Holden’s roommate at Pencey, who combs his hair all over you like you were nothing, while he pretends he likes hanging out with you. Borrows your jacket and then stretches it with his muscled shoulders, just to impress a girl he has no business messing around with in the first place. When people like that—ones who’re used to being the leaders—are being generous and funny, they’re actually planning their next meal. And if the right friends show up, you’re likely to be the appetizer.
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