by Donna Cooner
“You did this?” My mouth feels dry, my throat raw. I blink the blurry from my eyes once more and stare down at the tiny picture. I’m amazed. “I never knew you could draw like this.”
“It’s a pumpkin,” he says.
“I can see that,” I say, trying to smile. I try to concentrate and understand. Rat did this. For me. Even in my current state, I can see it’s remarkable. “Why didn’t you ever show me your drawings before?”
“Drawing is different than science or math. It’s not measurable.” There’s a long pause. I give him a weak smile and then he adds, “You might not like it.”
“But it’s wonderful,” I say, taking the paper from him with a shaky hand.
“I was just thinking while you were in surgery. I know how you like fairy tales, but I can’t draw fairy godmothers and carriages and stuff like that very well. Not like your mom.”
I feel the tears well up in my eyes and one slides slowly down the side of my face onto the hospital pillow. How did he know I was thinking of her?
“What did she say to you that day in the hospital?” I ask. He knew what I was talking about. She’d asked us all to leave that day except for Rat. I watched through the window as she talked and he took notes carefully, his face too serious for a ten-year-old.
“She told me to take good care of you.”
“And that’s what has made you stick it . . . me . . . out?”
“I promised,” he says, solemnly. “Besides I’m really good at it.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You know she would be proud of you,” he says, brushing my tear away with the tip of his finger. “And she would really want to be here now if she could. So I drew this pumpkin to remind you of that.”
“It’s an amazing pumpkin,” I say, sniffling just a little bit.
“Much better than fancy carriages and fairy godmothers.”
“Cinderella needed that pumpkin for everything else to happen. Everybody has to start somewhere.” Rat folds the drawing up and tucks it under the cup of ice chips on the tray in front of me. “Now you’re ready for the magic to happen.”
“She needed a Rat, too,” I say.
“Doesn’t everybody?” he asks with a laugh.
Someone enters the room. I turn my head slowly to see Briella with a backpack and some school books. Quickly, I wipe away the traces of tears from my face with the hand that doesn’t have tubes coming out of it. Briella glances at me, but quickly looks away like she’s not sure if she wants to see me or not.
“Charlotte dropped me off. She said for me to stay here because Rat needs a break.”
Rat steps back from the bed and stretches with a long groan.
“I probably should walk around for a bit.”
I didn’t realize he’d been here all this time. I feel a little guilty.
“You’ll be all right for a few minutes without me?” he asks.
“Sure. I brought my English homework,” Briella says.
“I think he means me,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. Right,” she mumbles, slouching down into the chair with her books in her lap.
“I’ll be okay,” I say to Rat. “Go get something to eat.”
He waves to both of us and leaves. Briella looks at me nervously and then down at her books, opening one randomly to a page near the middle.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to die while you’re here,” I say.
“Good,” she says, “ ’cause you look really bad.”
“Thanks.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not too much. Just feels weird with all these tubes.”
“I didn’t know,” she says, standing up and walking over to the side of my bed.
“Know what?”
“That it would be so . . . hard.”
I give a short laugh, but abruptly stop, clutching my stomach at the quick stabbing pain it caused.
“Did you think it would be like going to the dentist or something?” I say. I don’t tell her the hard part is only just now starting. Let her try spending her days eating three tablespoons of food for each meal.
“Why do you always act like I’m so stupid?” Briella asks.
Of course, now it’s all about her. Even with me lying in a hospital room stuck full of tubes every where. I don’t have the energy to argue with her. I punch the button in my hand and lean back on the pillow, closing my eyes.
“You’re not stupid,” I say in a monotone. Eventually, I hear her move away from the bed and go back to the chair.
“You’re lucky you don’t have to take finals,” Briella says from the chair. “I wish I could miss the last five weeks of school.”
“Good grades make a lot of things possible. You should try it,” I say, with my eyes still closed. “Besides I think finals would have been a lot easier than this.”
“For you, maybe.”
I open my eyes and look over at Briella. She has her English book open now, and she is staring down at a blank notebook page, twirling a pencil around in one hand.
“What’s your grade?” I ask.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It can’t be that bad. You’ve paid me to write almost every essay.”
“It wasn’t all essays. There were some stupid in-class tests over the readings. You couldn’t take those for me,” she mumbles. “Summer school’s bad. Mom is going to kill me.”
“Can you save it with your final?” It feels good to talk about something besides the surgery. Something normal outside these hospital walls.
“I could, but I won’t. I’ve never brought my grade up by a final. I’m not so good at tests. Besides, I have this big essay due next week even before finals.”
Her shoulders slump, and she looks so dejected I almost take pity on her. Then I remember. It’s Briella.
“You didn’t come here just to give Rat a break, did you?”
“What do you mean?” She gives me an “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look, and I know I’ve nailed it.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Briella. Look at me,” I yell across the hospital room. “You want me to do your homework now?”
“Don’t get so excited. It’s no big deal. Honestly.” Briella rolls her eyes at me and slams her book shut. She scribbles angrily on the paper in front of her.
“She’s only glad you’re alive because of what you can do for her. She doesn’t care about you.”
Evidently, Skinny survived the surgery, too.
Chapter Nine
Five days after the surgery, someone knocks on my bedroom door.
“Come in.”
“Hey.” It’s Rat, followed closely by Roxanne. She has a yellow tennis ball in her mouth and her tail is whipping around like a helicopter. She loves Rat almost as much as she loves food. Which is saying a lot.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I ask him.
“I called and told them I was going to have the flu this week.”
“But you will ruin your perfect attendance record.” Rat hasn’t missed a day of school since we all had chicken pox in first grade.
“It’s okay. Principal Watson has decided not to give out the certificates. He doesn’t want to reward kids for doing what they should do.” His blond hair is sticking out on the top of his head like he just ran his hands through it. But it always looks like that. “I’m exempt from all my finals anyway.”
I always forget about the perfect grade-point combination that results in the exemption prize. I’m usually close, but not perfect. Apparently, the only way I get to skip finals is with a major doctor’s excuse and tons of extra work.
Roxanne’s brown head pops up over the side of the bed. She has the tennis ball in her mouth and a hopeful look on her face. While I watch she carefully opens her mouth and lets the tennis ball roll across the bed toward my hand. I ignore her.
“So you’re here?” I have to admit I like the idea. I breathe in a deep sigh and feel myself relax.
/> “Somebody had to get you started on the right track.” He slides his backpack off his shoulder and perches on the edge of my bed. “Charlotte and your dad had to go back to work. Ugly One and Two are at school. Who else?”
Roxanne jumps up, retrieves the tennis ball lying untouched by my hand, returns to her spot beside the bed, and repeats the whole process all over again. The ball rolls slowly across the bed until it rests beside my fingers. Her face says it all: PLEEEEASE! She is stubborn when it comes to playing. I pick up the ball and Roxanne dances back from the bed in happy anticipation. Then I throw the tennis ball out my open bedroom door over the banister, wincing at the sudden unexpected pain of the movement. The ball bounces down the stairs and Roxanne takes off — thrilled. It’s so easy to please a Labrador. I hear her thunder down the stairs in glee.
“Charlotte said they were going to hire someone to sit with me during the day,” I say.
“Voilà. You’re looking at him. Besides, I can use the extra money for a new lens for my telescope.”
Roxanne is back at the edge of the bed again. She opens her mouth and lets the ball roll across my comforter toward my hand then sits back and stares at me with huge, pleading brown eyes. PLEEEEASE! “I can’t. It hurts,” I say to her. She looks totally bummed and lies down on the floor with a big “I’m so disappointed in you” sigh. Guilt. It’s another thing Labradors are good at.
“What are they paying you?” I look back at Rat.
“Same thing they pay for Roxanne’s day care.”
“They’re paying you to dog-sit me?”
“Want a treat? Sit.”
“Very funny.”
“Well, I couldn’t say lie down because you’re already doing that.” He unzips the backpack and pulls out the all-too-familiar informational booklet. “Now let’s see what we’re supposed to do today.”
I groan.
He starts to read, “There will be white tape known as Steri-Strips on your incision sites. These need to stay on for five days post-op. They should then be removed so the incisions can have open air. Don’t worry about the incisions coming apart — there are two layers of dissolving sutures under the Steri-Strips.” He leans over the bed. “So, let’s see what they look like.”
“Really?”
He nods. Before the surgery there was no way I would show anyone my bare stomach. But in the last week, so many people have poked and prodded me, I am sort of getting used to it. Besides, this is Rat, and at the moment he is all I have. I pull up my T-shirt and reveal the two white bandages.
“Humm.” Rat inspects the incisions with the interest of a scientist looking through a microscope at the cure for cancer.
“Redness around the incision of one-fourth an inch is not unusual. Do they hurt?”
“Just a little sore.”
“Good. Some pain at the incisions is normal, but after forty-eight hours it should improve daily. If it becomes more tender after this period, especially if there is increased redness, if swelling has increased, and if there is drainage or bleeding, then there may be infection. At that point we should call the doctor.” He recites it all from memory. “We don’t need to call the doctor. It’s been nearly a week since the surgery, and there’s very little redness.”
I pull the T-shirt back over the top of my stomach and watch Rat retrieve his laptop out of his backpack. “What’s that for?”
“I need to record today’s data.” He types away at the keyboard. “I’m keeping a chart. Going to print it out and put it right up there on the wall.” He motions toward the space beside my bedroom door but doesn’t look up from the computer.
“What data?”
“Weight loss. Exercise. Attitude.” He looks up expectantly from the screen and announces, “Week two. Weight?”
Again, not something I would ever want anyone to know, but this morning I stepped on the brand-new bathroom scale Charlotte bought me before the surgery, and the news was actually pretty good.
“Two eighty-five,” I say.
“Weight loss?”
“Seventeen pounds.”
“Right on target.” Rat types it into the computer. “Exercise?”
“Since I’ve been home?” I ask, trying to stall. After all, he’d been there for most of my walks around the hospital hallways, carefully supervising me while I pushed my rolling rack full of connected bags of dripping liquids.
“I mean,” he pauses for emphasis, “over the last three days since I’ve been back in school and you’ve been here.”
“You’re looking at it,” I finally confess.
Rat glances back up at me and frowns. “That will have to change. Attitude?”
“Grumpy.” He types down my response. “I’m hungry. I want to eat something.”
“The good news is if you can pour it, you can eat it. According to the doctor’s info, if you can suck it through a straw and it’s about the consistency of pancake batter, you can have it.”
“That’s good news?” I ask.
“What did you eat last week?”
“I didn’t eat. I drank my meals. Clear liquids.”
Rat types away on his computer, mumbling, “Good, good.” He pauses and flips through the papers in his hand. “Let’s see what’s on the menu for week two. Broth, cream soups, diet popsicles, watery grits, oatmeal, or cream of wheat. Then we can start to work in mashed-up foods in weeks three to six.”
“Yum,” I say, frowning. Six weeks seems like a really long time without chewing.
“Now we work on the attitude and the exercise.” Rat closes his computer and stands up. “Come on.”
I am still wary the pain will surprise me when I get out of bed, so I move carefully. I push the covers slowly back from my legs. I’m wearing gray stretchy sweats and socks that Charlotte helped me put on before she left for work. I wondered why she was so insistent about helping me get into the clothes and so determined to brush my thick tangled hair up into a ponytail. Now I realize she was trying to make me presentable for the dog-sitter.
Rat reaches behind me to push gently against my back, supporting me, while I sit up slowly. There is an intense, pulling tightness at my stomach, and I stop to breathe in deeply. Once. Twice. The pain pills are working, but I still murmur an “ouch” as I stand, wobbling only slightly. I shuffle out slowly to the top of the stairs with Rat and Roxanne close behind. Rat holds my elbow and I step gingerly down each step, one at a time. At the bottom, we turn around and I start back up again. Roxanne is thrilled with the new game. She accompanies us every step of the way, ball in mouth. After two very slow trips up and down the stairs, I’m allowed to sit down on the couch.
“And now . . .” Rat picks something up off the coffee table and waves a DVD in front of my face, “your reward.”
I’ve never been a big fan of movie versions of musicals, always preferring the stage, but Chicago is about as good as it gets. I smile at Rat and settle back into the cushions of the sofa.
“You put it in, and I’ll get us a snack,” he says.
He comes back in a few minutes with a bowl of clear brown soup and a sack full of microwaved popcorn. I push play. My brain says I’m hungry. My hands want to put something in my mouth, but my throat won’t accept it. I take a spoonful of soup. I feel like I’ve just eaten a Thanksgiving dinner. I need to eat more. I take another spoonful. I almost can’t swallow it. I push it down my throat. It stops somewhere near the middle of my chest. This can’t be it. I have to eat more. I watch Rat put handfuls of popcorn in his mouth. The smell is incredible. My hands twitch to pick up a handful. What do you do when you watch a movie? You eat popcorn. That’s normal. But I’m not normal now. He chews, and I swear I can hear every crunch. I can’t hear the dialogue. All I can think of is what popcorn used to taste like. He glances over at me, realizing I’m watching him.
“This bothering you?” He talks around the last handful of popcorn he put in his mouth seconds ago. I don’t have to answer him. “Sorry.”
He puts the popco
rn on the coffee table, and I feel guilty. He shouldn’t have to pay for what I can’t do anymore.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m going to have to get used to it.”
I’m actually starving. My body knows it’s consuming itself, my mind knows it, too, but there is nothing I can do about it. I sip the Diet Coke in front of me. I can’t take another sip. My throat rejects it. It won’t go down. I’m like a cup of water that’s completely full. Not a single drop will go in. I’m not sick like throw-up sick. It just won’t go into my body. So it comes back up. I run to the bathroom and cough up a small drop of soda into the toilet. I come out of the bathroom to find Briella in the living room.
“How was school?” Rat asks her.
“Okay, I guess,” Briella answers. She kicks off her sandals and walks over barefoot to the popcorn bowl. Scooping up a handful and stuffing it into her mouth, she plops down onto the couch beside Rat. “English is going to kill me.”
“Not your best subject?”
“I don’t think I have a best subject.” Briella frowns. “At least I’m not the only one struggling with English. You should have seen Chance today.”
“What happened?” Rat doesn’t look at her. Briella pulls out her phone and starts texting.
“He forgot his homework.” They both laugh. I don’t get the joke.
“What was the excuse this time?” Rat asks.
“He left his bedroom window open last night, and the wind blew it outside. When he tried to climb up the tree to get it back, he fell and sprained his ankle. Spent the rest of the night in the ER.”
“Was he limping?”
“Of course. He always has the supporting details right. Even had his ankle all wrapped up.”
“Creative,” Rat says, smiling broadly.
“Always,” Briella agrees, still texting.
“What happened to the paper?”
Hey, I’m watching a movie here. Who knew Rat was suddenly going to turn into Chatty Cathy? I make a huffing sound, but they don’t stop.