“Wow, that’s impressive. You got that right on the first guess.”
Her feet crash to the floor and she leans in, her eyes fixed on mine. “Okay, funny guy, that ain’t funny. Where the hell are your parents? If you’re dying, they ought to be here.” Her hand is poised to tear back the curtain.
“Please, wait, let me explain.”
“I’m all ears. And I’ve heard it all before. You can’t shock me.”
“Leukemia. Almost a year.”
“Let me guess. Chemo and radiation slowed things down and now you’re feeling lousy again. You skipped out on round two.”
“No chemotherapy, no radiation. My mother took me to Mexico.” I can’t believe the words are spilling out, racing to be spoken in this cubicle to a woman—a girl, really—who doesn’t know me and probably doesn’t care one way or the other.
“Jesus H. Christ. What were they thinking?”
“It sounded really logical at the time. I agreed with them.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a teenager. I expect that kind of stupidity from a teenager, but adults are supposed to know better.”
When she turns to work the dials on a machine off to the side, I slide my legs off the gurney. The suitcase ought to be here somewhere. My jacket. My backpack. The papers from Senator Yowell, the new law that gives me the right to make treatment decisions on my own.
Next thing I know I wake up covered with blankets, still in the same little cubicle. The same nurse has the phone to her fuzz of orange hair. That same stare focuses on punching numbers, while her pen taps against the counter until someone answers on the other end and her head starts to nod like a groupie’s at a rock concert. The conversation is long and longer, but not loud enough for me to make out the words. I doze off and lose most of it, except “emergency” and “ASAP.” When she turns around, I try to smile. I need her and she knows it.
“You lied,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter. My parents don’t understand. No one understands. Anyway, it’s my life.”
“That’s what they all say. Well, now that you’re here, you’re going to get a chance to do a better job of explaining it. Don’t move.”
She brings me a tray from the cafeteria. Hamburger, fries, and orange juice.
“Daniel Solstice Landon, that your real name?”
“Yeah. Swedish.”
“I’m Jolie, but I’m not French.”
“Look, I’m sorry to be so much trouble. The nosebleeds are . . . I can never tell about the nosebleeds. Will they let me talk to a doctor?”
“Maybe. If you eat. You need strength. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“From the nosebleed?”
“I’d say someone took a heavy object to the back of your head.”
My fingers explore and discover that my head has been shaved. Tape and a bandage cover a padded square between my ears. So the men in the alley were sober enough after all. No wonder my head throbs.
“I’m not very hungry.”
“You’ll have to do better than that. Drink the orange juice at least. Blood sugar levels, you know. They have to take another tube of blood—a big tube this time—and you already fainted once with me. Who knows how many times before you got here.”
“How did I get here?”
“Listen, we aren’t writing biographies. This is the emergency room. No one comes here with a history all written out in plain English.” She holds the paper cup to my lips and shakes her head. “If you were my kid, I’d kill you for running away without telling me. I assume your parents had no idea you were headed here.”
“No idea.” I’m biting my lip to keep from throwing up the juice.
“You’re turning green. Need the bucket?”
“Thanks.”
While I spit orange drool into the plastic kidney-shaped pan that I know is meant for another kind of liquid altogether, the nurse smoothes my hair off my forehead and tucks it behind my ears.
“Ever thought about getting a haircut?”
“You and my dad.”
“First impressions are important. They can’t give medicine to just any old Harry who shows up at the emergency room. And certainly not chemotherapy. It requires a slew of tests and forms and doctor’s opinions, to say nothing of parental consent. And money or insurance. Did you think it would be like taking an aspirin?”
“If you open the backpack, the papers are all in there.”
“Listen, you aren’t Barbie. You didn’t come with a backpack.”
“I had one, and a suitcase. Is that here?”
She shakes her orange hair. “Sorry.”
“The law says I can make my own decision.”
“Not if you’re a minor.” She holds out the battered copy of Senator Yowell’s letter with the statute language stapled on the back. “These were in your jacket pocket.”
“Didn’t you read it? It says a minor can consent if he’s fully informed. That’s the whole thing, the reason I came to New York.” Holden will forgive me for not mentioning all my reasons.
She puts the papers in my hand. “Did you read it? The conditions include written verification from your parents that you’ve been informed of all your medical options. I guess I’m supposed to believe that piece of paper was in the phantom backpack.”
When Jolie comes back from dealing with the other patients that stream by in gurneys and wheelchairs, I tell her the story from the beginning. Not the sprained ankle and Meredith, but the rest of it. She smoothes out the pages of Senator Yowell’s letter while she listens, and I’m surprised when they buzz to say a second tray has arrived.
“Dinner,” she says.
“What was the other?”
“Lunch.” After she yanks the table around and props me up on the pillows in front of the tray, she turns down the lights and tells me she’ll check back later.
“With the doctor? I need to talk to someone official about starting the chemo. I’m not sure how much time I have.”
“We’re dealing with all that. Just eat as much as you can and get some rest.”
“Do you have to leave?”
“Shift ends at seven, kid. By tomorrow morning the doctors will have some results from the tests and they can make some decisions.” She nods at the tray. “Right now eating’s your job. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“And you’ll be back then?”
“Sure. In the morning.”
“You’re not just saying that? You mean it?”
She smiles and snaps a quick salute.
All alone in the curtained space, I go over the plan that made so much sense back in Virginia. It’s beyond embarrassing the stuff I’ve done to try to beat this leukemia thing: stealing Nick’s life savings for the train ticket, crying on the phone to Meredith, and seeing Mack strung out and not sticking around to be sure he stops. Even with Senator Yowell’s new law and all his political cronies’ high hopes for a more fair system, I should have known they wouldn’t make it easy for a kid. It’s not looking like I’ll be able to convince the New York doctors to give me the stupid chemo drugs. And I can’t even disappear.
To fail at this, too, after the failure of my body is too much. Now that I’m miles from home, I can see the mistake so clearly. Leukemia is one of those problems you can’t solve yourself. The list of Dad’s twelve steps from AA floats in my consciousness like the Ouija board, though the room is suddenly crooked and the white shapes move in and out of focus, on one side of the bed and then the other.
First, Dad says, you have to admit you have a problem you can’t control. Then you have to admit you need help from a higher power outside yourself. I’m partway there. A recovering leukemia addict? That’s not quite right. Leukemia’s the only part that fits. The room around me whirls. The clock, the machines turn fuzzy and unreadable. My eyes blur and my throat gets thicker. The walls are tilting up around me, so I know I’m sicker than I’ve ever been, sinking, dying. Just before it all goes black, a familiar voice tunnels into the cold slap of
air from the automatic door that gapes open to the coal black cavity of a New York City night.
Mom’s found me after all.
I’m not sure how I get from the emergency room gurney to a real hospital bed. The room is dark except for the mechanical light that glows from behind the curtain rack above my head. They’ve hidden my bed behind a half-drawn curtain. Green this time, instead of white. The curtain confuses me because it’s hard to believe they’d put someone as sick as me with these scheming overblown white blood cells in a room with another patient. But I can hear the other guy breathing in long slow rasps just outside my space. From the rattle in his throat, it’s a good thing he’s on the other side of the curtain.
No surprise that there’s no mirror in a cancer ward. Outside the picture window the lights of New York flicker like the candles on the Phantom’s subterranean organ. I wonder how far down it is from this room to the street. There’s nothing in Essex County this high.
“How long did they say for the results?” It’s Mom’s voice directed at the doorway, the only block of solid light in the murkiness.
“It’s a long process.” The answer comes from a strange woman in scrubs who steps up to the bed as she’s stripping clear gloves from her hands. A stark white mask on an elastic circle rings her neck like jewelry. “They’ve already done the lab work. We rushed it through since it’s so . . . because of his condition. We’re lucky his white count is just high enough. If he’d spent any longer on the street . . . They’re going to try to do a super round first, about twice the normal dose, then stabilize him for the helicopter ride to Virginia.”
When Mom nods from the other side of the bed, a small rush of air brushes my face. I can’t help the smile, though I doubt anyone else notices it. The rest of me is wrapped in sheets, swaddled like a baby. Back at the beginning again. So…I haven’t made that leap to independence after all, but somehow I’m not as bummed as I would have expected.
Dad appears, his collar looking suspiciously like the one on his pajama shirt. “Doctor, are you sure he can manage the altitude?”
The unspoken joke starts me coughing again. Remember Butch Cassidy when the railroad’s hired guns are chasing him and the Sundance Kid? Standing on the cliff above the raging river, Butch says, “I can’t swim,” and Sundance laughs. “Are you kidding? The fall will probably kill you.”
The doctor, edging toward Dad and away from me, assumes her best bedside manner. “That’s why the medevac. It’s high-speed. He should be in Richmond by six tomorrow morning, even with the chemotherapy infusion here. MCV has a bed for him in ICU. You can visit him there.”
“I’m not leaving him,” Mom says, dredging her words through a monotone of guilt.
“Sylvie.” Dad’s voice. “Let these people do their jobs. This treatment is what Daniel wants.”
The doctor fiddles with the buttons on the machine. Even I can tell she’s giving my parents time to adjust. “You all sit tight now. Transport for the treatment will be here shortly.”
Nick’s bubble-gum breath is close. “Hey, Daniel, old buddy. You awake? Thought you could get away from us, huh? The Clampetts come to the Big Apple.”
I’m all out of fancy words.
Nick stays close. “Joe’s gone downstairs for coffee. He says you forgot this.” He spreads my fingers and he positions something in my palm; dry, smooth, the edges worn soft with use. My copy of Catcher. There in the blurred, overly warm air of nighttime hospital purgatory, the sharp memory of the dark cover and sunlit letters burns behind my eyes. Holden’s right after all. When you jump, there are lots of people watching.
I must sleep some. Coughing wakes me up and I turn toward the invisible roommate. But it’s my own coughing. The sky is crimson and bloody, the edges of the city skyline like a black marker scratched on the red wound in hasty stitches to staunch the bleeding. The coughing’s much worse. The band in my chest tightens. My ribs ache with the effort to suck in air after each spasm. With each whistling gasp, Mom winces as if she’s caught her finger in the door. She leans down, a whisper hovering, but when my hands loosen on the bedrail and the heart monitor’s blips slow, then pause, she stands back up and starts to yell.
“Help, oh, God, nurse, help. Stieg”—she shakes my father who’s asleep in the chair—“get someone. He’s choking.”
Before Dad makes it to the doorway there’s a new, deep voice and the broad bleached shoulders of a uniform bearing down on me. A male nurse works the dials and presses my chest with hard urgent thrusts with the heel of his palms until the blips are steady again and my lungs fill. For several long minutes no one says anything and he stares at me without any judgment, just intent on trained observation.
“Hey, kid.” He raises his eyebrows. “You back?”
And I nod. I’d like to thank him, but I’m afraid to breathe in and trigger the cough again.
“After we arranged for these high-powered drugs you asked for and went to all this trouble, you gotta stick around.” He lifts me, wrapped in the sheets, up off the bed and onto a mechanized stretcher. He moves efficiently, snapping and tugging the tubes and the hanging bags of medicine. Straps cross my chest and arms, another set over my thighs. He chats with Dad about the Yankees and the Dodgers. I’m disconnected and connected again without feeling anything except smaller shudders in my bones and gut. Everything is shrinking into itself, tighter and tighter. When my stomach twists, I fight the urge to curl into myself. That explains the restraints, illogical as it seems that my body is still laced as it struggles to find air. Razor cuts stab and twist in the deepest part of me. My teeth clamp down so no one can hear the moans I’m battling to keep buried.
The nurse ignores the choking coughs and the family trailing in my wake as he pushes the wheeled stretcher steadily. Once we get to the elevator Joe blocks the door to delay its closing, while Mom and Dad and Nick squeeze in around the stretcher. And even though Meredith’s not here, holding my hand with those perfect fingers, I imagine her with Mack and Juliann, the three of them shoulder to shoulder on his basement couch, waiting for word. I can see them lining up at the end of the fishing pier, setting off fireworks to celebrate my coming home. The elevator groans.
“Family road trip,” Nick says and we’re off.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1906 my seventeen-year-old grandmother snuck a buggy from the livery stable and drove the horses down Main Street and out of town. One hundred years ago proper young ladies did not drive carriages. When obstacles, expectations, and conventions jam me up, I think of my grandmother and embrace the risk. As a fifty-seven-year old, writing a teenage boy’s story was risky, even after three teenagers of my own.
Being a writer is different from being an author, more so today with publishing industry consolidations and the insistence that success as a writer is measured in sales figures. That Alex Carr, my editor, and AmazonEncore championed Daniel’s story speaks volumes to the future of books in whatever format readers crave, a vision that AE promotes in all that it does for writers and readers. I will never forget the ongoing support of a slew of fellow writers, librarians, and book-festival organizers who remain the foundation on which a writer’s bridge to readers is built. And without my friends from our small Virginia town and the doctors and nurses at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, who treated my cancer and gave me insights into Daniel’s, I might have missed this chance to honor J. D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield.
Finally I have to thank Chris, my partner for life, who loved Daniel Solstice Landon from the first draft of the first chapter. Chris has worried over Daniel as conscientiously as he did our own children, and like me, he is relieved that Daniel discovered the true meaning of family.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
At first Daniel accepts his parents’ refusal to follow the established treatments for leukemia, but when he realizes he’s not getting better, he is forced to reexamine that decision. How much control should a minor have over his own medical treatment? What ri
sks does Daniel face when he takes action for himself? Is a teenager capable of making life decisions without his parents’ input?
As J. D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield reports his feelings and actions, the reader begins to question Holden’s reliability as a narrator. Is Daniel a reliable narrator? Does he see his dilemma and the issues with his friends clearly?
Books and the characters in them often impact one’s view of the world or a particular challenge. Does Daniel’s fascination with Holden Caulfield add to Daniel’s insight into the issues he confronts or not? What changes occurred in your view of those same issues after you listened to Daniel’s reasoning?
Studies support the importance of family activities in confidence levels of children. How do Daniel’s brothers, Joe and Nick, influence Daniel’s take on the adult world and his ability to face his illness?
Courts and politicians impose rules that dictate personal and family decisions. Do you think the state has the right to dictate what kind of medical treatment a child receives? Is Senator Yowell’s effort to change the law to help the Landons an appropriate action for a politician?
Choices about sex and drugs hound today’s teenagers. What things do Daniel, Meredith, Mack, and Leonard consider when they have to make those choices? Should the fact that Daniel is dying affect his decision to sleep with Meredith?
As a result of cases like Daniel’s, several states changed their laws to allow informed minors to consent to their own medical treatment. Do you think that change is good? How might the new medical consent law affect other laws that regulate the behavior of minors?
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