True Love

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “I only take hits if my defense fails to block their tackles,” Luke said, making light of his discomfort.

  It bothered Julie that he had to put on some macho act for her father, but she didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to embarrass him. As soon as her father left, she’d make certain that he got a pain pill from the nurse.

  “What’s next?” Coach Ellis asked.

  Nancy responded with, “The full pathology report on the lump will be available in a couple of days; then Dr. Sanchez will know what we’re dealing with.”

  “So, you’ll probably be home for Christmas after all,” Patricia Ellis said. “That’ll be good.” She paused, then added, “You know, I was wondering if the two of you might like to come over for Christmas dinner.”

  Julie was positively shocked. Her mother had never issued such an invitation before. Of course, Luke had eaten with her family on occasion, but never with his mom as a guest too.

  “Are you sure?” Nancy asked, looking hesitant. “I’ve been so preoccupied with all of this that I haven’t given Christmas a second thought. It would be very kind of you to have us.”

  “We’re absolutely sure,” Coach interjected.

  “No need for both of us to cook,” Patricia added.

  Julie wondered if this was something her mother had come up with on her own or if her father was responsible for the invitation. At the moment, she didn’t care. The thought of having Luke at her family’s table for Christmas dinner would help her get through the ordeal of the hospital.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Ellis,” Luke said. He always called her “Mrs. Ellis” because she treated him rather formally. It irked Julie that her mother didn’t adore Luke the way she and her father did, but she’d learned to live with it.

  “I know it can’t be fun being stuck in the hospital all during your holiday break,” Julie’s mother said.

  “As word’s gotten around, some of the guys on the team have called me. A few are going off on skiing trips with their families and staying at fancy resorts. I tell them that this is my resort for the holidays.”

  The adults laughed and the coach tapped Luke’s shoulder. “That’s the spirit. I knew they couldn’t keep you down.”

  Later, when he and Julie were alone, Luke confided, “I wasn’t exactly honest with your father. All this stuff is getting me down.”

  “It’s okay to tell him. You don’t always have to act as if you’re in complete control.”

  “No, it’s not okay. He expects me to blow this off and not get depressed.”

  “I know he does. And it makes me mad.”

  Luke looked surprised. “Why?”

  “Because you shouldn’t have to hide what you’re really feeling for fear that it might disappoint someone.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes. “Well, I am. I’m mad because this is happening to you and you didn’t do anything to deserve it. And I’m mad because people—especially my father—are acting like you shouldn’t be too bothered by any of it. That’s so lame! If it were me, I’d be throwing things at everybody who stuck his head in the door. Nurses, doctors, lab techs—everybody.”

  Luke grinned and took her hand. “Don’t think I haven’t wanted to. But I figure they’re all only doing their jobs. Besides, don’t forget—I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He winked and she returned his smile. He said, “I got you a present.”

  “Me? But when, and how?”

  He opened the drawer to his bedside table and extracted a long-stemmed red rose, wrapped in cellophane and tied with a bright green Christmas bow. He handed her the flower. “When I was in the recovery room, I begged one of the nurses to buy it for me in the gift shop and put it in my room so I could give it to you.”

  A lump of emotion clogged Julie’s throat. “You’re the one who’s sick, I should be buying you flowers.”

  He shook his head, looking pleased by the reaction his unexpected gift had caused. “I’d rather have tickets to the Super Bowl.”

  She hugged him, holding him tightly and with great feeling. “Oh, Luke, I can’t wait until all this is over.”

  “Me too,” he said into her ear. “The only thing that’s made it halfway tolerable is that you’re here with me. Just a few more days, honey. Just a few more days.”

  The afternoon Dr. Sanchez came to discuss Luke’s diagnosis with Luke, his mother, and Julie, the nurses were decorating the floor for the holidays. The scents of pine and bayberry filled the halls and each door was garnished with colorful ribbons. But when the doctor came inside the room, he closed the door and shut out the noise of Christmas preparations. The sun slanted through the blinds, casting patterns across Luke’s bedcovers. The doctor, his hands full of charts and papers, pulled a chair to the side of the bed. Nancy sat near the doctor and Julie remained in her perch on the bed, her fingers laced through Luke’s. The adjoining bed was still empty, so there was no one to overhear, no one to shut out with the flimsy green curtain.

  “You’re not smiling, Doc,” Luke said. “Did the nurses forget to invite you to their Christmas party?”

  “No way. Who do you think plays Santa Claus for the pediatric ward?” His banter was easy, but Julie saw that his eyes weren’t smiling.

  “So, what do you have to tell us?” Luke’s mother asked. “What’s wrong with my son?”

  The doctor flipped open the manila folder on his lap. “I’m going to give this to you straight, Luke, because you asked me to.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And because it’s the only way I deal with my patients. I talk straight.”

  Julie’s heart began to hammer and her fingers tightened around Luke’s.

  “The official name for what you have is Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.”

  Julie heard Luke’s mother gasp and saw her shake her head. “What’s that?” Julie asked, not one bit embarrassed by her ignorance.

  “It’s a form of cancer that develops in the lymph system, which is part of the body’s circulatory system. Right now, you’re in an early stage and your prognosis is good.”

  Cancer! Julie felt as if someone had hit her hard in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her. Maybe she hadn’t heard Dr. Sanchez correctly. “But Luke’s so healthy,” she blurted. “He plays football.”

  “Hodgkin’s is rare—it accounts for less than one percent of all cancer cases. Unfortunately, when we see it, it’s in young people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. Basically, as in all cancers, the cells of the lymph system go crazy and start dividing at will. This breaks down the immune system—your body’s infection-fighting machine—and it can spread to other organs.”

  Luke’s face looked impassive, as if he were listening to a weather report. Julie wanted to scream, No! No! You’ve made a mistake!

  “He never complained of any pain,” Nancy said.

  “His symptoms were classic—swollen, painless nodes in his neck, night sweats, fevers, weight loss. But those symptoms could be ascribed to any number of illnesses. That’s why we ran so many tests.” Dr. Sanchez removed several papers from the file folder.

  “Your pathology report shows that the cells in your neck were positive for cancer. But on the good side, your CT scan showed that your lymph network looks clean. And your bone marrow biopsy was negative also. In other words, the cancer hasn’t spread yet.”

  “ ‘Yet’?” It was the first time Luke had spoken.

  “Untreated, it will spread.”

  “How do you treat it?” Luke asked.

  “We start with chemotherapy.”

  Julie felt sick to her stomach. She’d heard about chemotherapy and its side effects.

  Dr. Sanchez continued. “I’m moving you up to the oncology floor and assigning you another doctor. Paul Kessler is one of our top oncologists—a big football fan, too. He played for Duke University as an undergraduate. You’ll like him.”

  “So I won’t be home for Christmas.” Luke’s voice sounded flat. “You t
old me I’d be home for Christmas.”

  “You might be,” Dr. Sanchez said. “Chemo patients are given their initial doses in the hospital to see how they tolerate the drugs and to work out the best combination. We’ll insert a Port-A-Cath here.” He touched an area near Luke’s collarbone. “It’s a tube gizmo surgically implanted under the skin so that your chemo can be administered without having to stick you all the time. The catheter’s opening will be on the outside.

  “Medications will be inserted every three weeks for six cycles, for a total of eighteen weeks. At that rate, you’ll be through chemo by April.”

  “I’ve got to walk around with a stupid tube hanging half out of me? I’ve got to take all these weird chemicals? What about school? What about my life?” Luke’s voice rose.

  “Dr. Kessler will answer all your questions. Chemo is his specialty. But you’ll be able to return to school once you’re on the program. And after you adjust, you’ll resume regular life. The chemo treatments will eventually be over, Luke.”

  Luke’s face had become an angry mask and his hand in Julie’s felt icy cold. “And then what, Doc? Will the cancer be gone forever? Will I get to pick up where I left off? Or is this thing going to hang over me for the rest of my life?”

  “I can’t answer that, Luke. I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t want to go through chemo and all. Maybe I just want to pack up and go home and forget the whole mess.”

  “Luke, you can’t—” his mother began.

  The doctor interjected, “You have the right to refuse treatment, Luke, but it wouldn’t be wise. With it, you at least have hope for recovery. Without it, you will most certainly die.”

  7

  Nothing had prepared Julie for Luke’s diagnosis. She moved through the next day in a numbing fog of disbelief. She sobbed into the phone when she told her father and felt an odd kind of comfort in his display of explosive anger. Her mother was sympathetic, and sorry, but she wanted Julie to come home—Christmas was only a week away. Julie refused, becoming adamant about staying with Luke’s mother at the Ronald McDonald House. She couldn’t leave Luke. She simply couldn’t.

  He was started on chemo, and the side effects were immediate. He began vomiting continually. “It takes some adjustments to arrive at the right combination,” Dr. Kessler said. “The important thing is, Luke has to keep eating.”

  His advice seemed stupid, since Luke couldn’t keep anything down. Luke begged Julie to go home. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” he moaned. His skin looked ashen.

  “I’m not leaving,” Julie insisted. Yet, the weekend before Christmas, she decided to return home long enough to replenish her wardrobe—and to appease her mother. She rode the high-speed train from Chicago to Waterton, where her father picked her up at the station.

  “You look thin,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she told him.

  Walking into her house, she felt like a stranger. The decorations were up. It was the first time in all of her seventeen years that she hadn’t helped with the festivities. She went quickly to her room, and felt like a stranger there too. Everything was familiar, yet alien. She’d grown used to the hospital smells and sparse furnishings. Her room seemed too colorful. Too cluttered.

  Julie kept a tight rein on her emotions as she dumped the contents of her suitcase on the bed and started toward her closet for fresh clothes. Midway, she stopped. Draped on a hanger from atop the molding of the closet door, exactly where she’d left it, was the black taffeta dress she was to have worn to the school holiday dance.

  The dress looked beautiful and pristine. It reminded her of a simpler time, a throwback to days of unhurried sweetness when nothing was more pressing in her life than studying for a test. Or talking on the phone with Solena. Or making plans for a date with Luke. She felt a catch in her throat.

  Slowly, she approached the dress and fingered the satiny material. How foreign it felt. Her hands were used to touching hospital sheets, hospital-issue pajamas, and cotton blankets. The dress’s elegant fabric no longer belonged in her world. She wondered if there would ever be room for such an extravagance again.

  Tears slid down her cheeks, wetting her skin. She felt her shoulders begin to shake as sobs, unchecked, poured out of her. Luke, Luke … What’s going to happen to us? She couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t stop aching inside. Julie buried her face in the dark fabric and felt the dampness soak into the material. She could almost hear her mother saying, “Be careful. Water will stain taffeta. It’s not a very practical dress, you know.”

  But Julie only wept harder, not caring. Somehow the tearstains seemed appropriate. The dress would wear the watermarks forever, a symbol of the lost innocence of her life. Of the cruel and bitter upheaval in Luke’s. The dress was fantasy. The heap of practical clothing on her bed was real life.

  Quickly, Julie jerked open the closet door and, with muffled weeping, began to repack.

  On Christmas Day, Luke’s hair began to fall out. “Ho, ho, ho,” he said without mirth, holding up the wad of hair left on his pillow.

  “It’s only hair,” Julie said. But inwardly, she was shaken.

  At her mother’s insistence—as well as Luke’s and his mother’s—she had gone home Christmas Eve and spent Christmas morning with her parents. Then, bringing gifts, she and her family had driven over to Chicago to visit Luke.

  The hospital staff had done its best to make the day festive for the patients on the oncology floor, wheeling them out of their rooms to gather round the decorated tree in the rec room next to the nurses’ station. They had bought and wrapped gifts for all their regulars, which Julie found touching. It struck her that in a weird way, they were all part of a family, one held together by the disease of cancer. Many of the patients were worse off than Luke, but he was the youngest one on the floor, and clearly a favorite of the staff.

  Coach Ellis brought him a football signed by the players on the Indianapolis Colts, and she had given him a baseball hat, a sweater, and a glamorous color photograph of herself. He sat holding it, staring down at her smiling face. “You’re beautiful, Julie. You look just like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Oh, stop it,” she chided, embarrassed by his compliment. He’d been a fan of Marilyn’s for years; posters of her hung in his room beside posters of NFL superstars. “You told me once that you wanted a good picture of me, so I had it made for you. It’s nothing special.”

  “It is to me.” He looked into her eyes, and in spite of his gaunt face, his thinning hair, and his sallow complexion, she still considered him handsome. “I bought you this last October. I’ve been paying it off a little at a time. Mom got it out for me last week when she went home for the day.” He handed her a small, wrapped box.

  Inside was a gold bracelet, the chain thin and delicate, with tiny pearls set like staggered snowdrops along its length. She thought it was the most wonderful gift she’d ever received from him and told him so by kissing him in front of the entire assembly. Everybody clapped and Luke blushed. “I got you this too,” he said, and produced a rose, which gave her another opportunity to kiss him.

  That night, Julie and Luke’s mother returned to their room at the Ronald McDonald House. Nancy put away her few gifts. Julie’s parents had been generous to Luke’s mother, buying her a stylish cable-knit sweater and a gift certificate to a Waterton area department store, which Julie had brought to Chicago.

  “Being stuck in the hospital is a crummy way to spend the holiday,” Julie announced as she climbed under the covers. “And I know the hospital kitchen tried, but my mom’s Christmas dinner is so much better.”

  “Perhaps she’ll give us a rain check on that dinner.”

  “I know she will.”

  “I can’t thank you and your parents enough for all you’ve done for Luke and me. When Luke was younger, I was so afraid he’d take up with the wrong crowd. But then football came along, and with it, your dad. He’s treated Luke like a son.”

  “Luke’s
never talked much about his father. Not even to me. I guess he misses having one more than ever now.”

  “I don’t think he remembers Larry very well.”

  “He died in a fall, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He was walking the steel riggings. He’d only been on the job for a few months. The company paid his funeral expenses and I was lucky enough to be hired on as an office worker.”

  “Well, you’re the office manager now,” Julie said.

  “It’s taken me seven years of hard work to get there. That’s why I want Luke to go to college.”

  Although Julie believed Nancy accepted the way she and Luke felt about one another, Julie also knew Nancy had dreams for her son. She prized education and always urged Luke to get good grades so that he could have a better life. In that respect, Nancy and Julie’s mother thought alike. They equated getting out of Waterton with optimum happiness.

  “You’re lucky to have such a nice family, Julie. I wish I had more family around me. Especially now.”

  None of Luke’s grandparents was living. “Luke’s uncle Steve knows what’s going on, doesn’t he?” Steve was Luke’s father’s only brother.

  “Yes, but he’s all the way out in Los Angeles. Except for phone calls and cards, there’s nothing he can do. We haven’t seen him for years. He’s a bachelor with a job connected to the movie industry. He has a life of his own out there. No … I’m afraid all Luke and I have for support is each other. And your family, of course. Your family has made all the difference in our lives, Julie.”

  Julie wondered if Nancy would be so comfortable if she understood how much Julie’s mother wanted Julie and Luke’s relationship to cool off. “I’ll always be here for Luke,” Julie declared. “No matter what.”

  Nancy smiled. “Right now, you’re the only thing holding my son together. This chemo business has knocked him for a loop. Kids—boys especially—think they’re invincible. Why, I can count on one hand the number of days Luke’s been sick in his life. When he gets sick, he doesn’t mess around with the small stuff, does he?”