She finished her bagel and we carried our dishes back inside. She washed her plate and her cup and sat them in the drainer. I needed a roommate like her. Jake lets them ferment until one of us gets home from school or whatever and can’t stand the smell any longer.
“I should head home,” she said. “I could really use a shower and my toothbrush.”
“Okay. Let me get my boots on, I’ll take you.”
“I don’t mind taking the bus.”
“I don’t mind taking you. I’ll be right back.” When I got back, she had folded the blanket we left on the couch, and straightened up the living room. It was funny how much we were alike sometimes. “You ready?” I asked her.
We rode back to her dorms on Susie, so conversation was pointless. I don’t know about her, but I was enjoying her arms around me again, even if she only did it to keep from falling off the bike. I thought about my failed kiss attempt. Then I thought about the night we danced in the rain. I think she would have kissed me that night. I was beginning to figure out that Molly’s a thinker, and if she lets herself, she can think of a reason to talk herself out of anything. I think some guy must have hurt her in the past. She tries to put up this wall around her heart. She likes me though; I can see it in her eyes and her smile. I feel it…in my heart. I’m not ready to give up on this being more than just friends. I wasn’t going to pressure her at all, but I was still hoping if we hung out enough, she might start to feel it too.
Chapter Eleven
Molly
I had just gotten out of the shower when Megan got home. “Phew!” I was really glad she hadn’t already been here; I would have never heard the end of it, having spent the night with Brock, no matter how innocent it had been.
As I dried my hair I thought about how good it had felt to wake up in his arms, with my head on his strong chest and his arm around me. If I hadn’t been so shocked to wake up there, I may have pretended to be asleep a little longer, just because it felt so right. He was already awake when I opened my eyes and I had to wonder how long he had lain still like that, just holding me and letting me sleep. Everything he did was so…caring and sweet. I wondered how a guy that good-looking wasn’t spoiled and arrogant. They were few and far between that’s for sure. I thought about the failed kiss and wondered when….or if I was ever ready if he would want to try it again. Megan’s knocking on the door interrupted my thoughts. I turned off the blow dryer and said, “Come on in Meg.”
“Hey Molly, how was your night?” Megan said as she came in the door.
“It was fun. We just watched a movie. How was yours?”
“The car show was good, but Tim’s mom’s house was…questionable. I had serious concerns about her housekeeping methods.” Megan was kind of a clean-freak which wasn’t a bad thing, but I worry that she might have to kill Jake when they finally decide to get married or live together. From what Brock told me, he is kind of a slob.
“I have to pee,” Megan said.
I shook my head. I don’t know if it’s a psychological thing or what, but every time I go into the bathroom, Megan has to pee. I was okay with it now, though it was really hot in the bathroom. I got this sudden, overwhelming need for air. I went out into the room and opened the one and only window we have. It’s not that big, but I hung my head out of it like a dog out of a car window. As soon as the fresh air hit my lungs I became nauseated and my head started feeling a little foggy. As I stood there, clutching on to the windowsill, the room started to spin. Maybe it was the bagel….
I turned around and tried to make it to my bed about the time that Megan came out of the bathroom. One look at me sent her running to my side. She grabbed my arm and helped me get to the bed and then she said, “Molly you’re as white as a sheet.”
“I’m a little light-headed,” I told her. “I just need to lie down.”
Megan helped me lay back on the bed. The room was spinning now and my ears were ringing. I suddenly felt like I needed to puke and I tried to get up but I was too off-balance to stand.
Megan grabbed her purse and said, “We’re going to the hospital.”
“No,” I protested. “I’m okay.” To prove I was a liar no doubt, I stumbled into the desk between our beds.
“Molly, you’re going with me or I’m calling an ambulance. Wait right there I’m going to get Debbie.”
Debbie was our “house-mother” at the dorms. She knew about my illness, she had to…just in case, my grandma had said. I tried to protest again, but when I opened my mouth I realized that any motion at all was going to make me puke. I sat down in the desk chair and leaned forward with my head close to the metal trash can…just in case, and waited for them to get back.
Megan and Debbie were back in five minutes. Debbie was a good choice for house-mother. She was a senior and very smart, and not prone to panic at all. She took charge right away, taking me under one arm and telling Megan to get under the other.
“Do you have her purse with her I.D. and all that?” Debbie asked Meggs. Megan grabbed it and, acting as if they were leading a rag doll, we were on our way. I tried to tell them that I would be okay, and that I didn’t want to go to the hospital, but they acted like they couldn’t hear me. For a few seconds I thought maybe I was only saying it in my head. When we got downstairs, Debbie told Megan to go get the car and pull it up to the curb. When she had gone, Debbie looked at me and said, “Should I call Grandma?” I thought about being sarcastic and telling her I didn’t care if she called her grandma, but she was being nice and there was no reason for me to be a bitch just because I felt like throwing up and passing out.
“I’m really fine, Debbie. I don’t think we need to worry her.”
Debbie didn’t say anything, but she didn’t look convinced either. When Megan pulled the car up out front, Debbie tucked me into the passenger seat and told her, “Take her to the ambulance bay side. There will be wheelchairs there. If they keep her, even for a few hours, call her grandmother.”
Megan said she would and Debbie closed the door. I had a feeling that once she got inside she was going to decide to call grandma herself. It was nice of her to worry, but I hated it. I despised being the center of all of this negative attention. I closed my eyes and lay my head back against the seat and thought once again…I just want to be normal.
When I opened my eyes again, we were at the emergency entrance of the hospital. Megan parked where the ambulances go, and I was trying to tell her she wasn’t supposed to park there. She acted like she couldn’t hear me again and jumped out to grab a wheelchair. She opened the car door and was going to try and help me out, although I could have done it myself, when an orderly showed up.
“You need some help?”
“No, I can do it myself.”
“Yes, please,” Megan said.
Am I not talking out loud?
“She’s really weak; I don’t want her to fall.”
The orderly told Megan where to park the chair and once again I was treated like Ragged-Ann. He put his hands around my waist and told me to hold on around his shoulders and then he lifted me into the chair. It was really way too much of a production and I told Megan so as he pushed me inside. I guess she must have been able to hear me that time, because she finally said, “Shhh, Molly. Hush!” Now my feelings were hurt. I was sick and she was yelling at me.
The guy who had helped us pushed me up to the triage desk and then told Megan she could go move her car. I had to answer a bunch of questions and while I was doing that the nausea returned and I found myself staring at the bottom of a Pepto-Bismol pink plastic bucket. I had the dry heaves a few times, but nothing was coming out. The nurse was taking my vitals now, and she said that I was running a temperature, my pulse was high and my blood pressure low. She and I both knew what that meant, I was dehydrated.
“Have you been drinking water?” she asked.
“Does coffee count?” I asked her.
She wasn’t in the mood for humor though. I guess because of what they see ev
ery day, nurses rarely are. I admitted that I may have forgotten to drink enough but just for the last two days. Otherwise I was usually really good about it. She didn’t give me credit for that though, and excused herself when Megan came back and went to call my oncologist. Jeez! What a tattle-tale. When I was able to lift my head out of the bucket, I looked at Meggs and said, “Now I’m going to get a lecture you know.”
My best friend looked me in the eyes and said, “Good. You need to take better care of yourself.”
“I usually do…” I wanted to defend myself, but mean or not, she was right. I stick to my diet religiously, and usually make sure to drink six bottles of water a day. I knew how prone I was to getting dehydrated. I had been a little distracted lately…maybe it was Brock. If that were the case however, then it came back to being Megan’s fault. She was the one who introduced us.
When the nurse came back, she told me that Dr. Harris wanted her to admit me. I protested again. I was fine; I would just go home and drink some more water. I them so, and again my words fell on deaf ears. As she got the paperwork ready, Megan said, “I’m going to step out in the lobby and call your grandma.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Meg. They’re going to stick an IV in me and pump me with some fluids and cut me loose. I don’t want to worry her.” She’ll come right away, and she’ll have that look she gets when her eyebrows have been drawn together in the middle too long.
“We don’t know that,” Megan was saying. “If I don’t call her, Dr. Harris will. Then I’ll be the one getting the lecture when she gets here.”
Megan was right; grandma would be pissed if they didn’t call her. “Okay, but be sure to tell her I’m okay and not to race right over here.”
“Yeah,” Megan said with a little laugh, “that’ll work.” She knew my grandma about as well as I did. Before leaving, she leaned down and hugged me real quick and said, “I’ll be right back.”
When Megan got back they were trying to start the IV. Once the ER nurses got the fluids running in me they would take me to the oncology unit. When I was really sick and getting chemo in the hospital every month I had a Meta-port. It was implanted in my chest and they would numb the spot and access my veins through my chest. It kept the veins in my arms and hands from getting ruined from the harsh drugs, plus it was easy if I was dehydrated, or needed blood. I remember being so happy when I was in remission, and they had taken it out. Now as the nurse dug into my arm, looking for the scrawny vein that had packed up and moved away, I wished I had it back. After three tries, a male nurse finally found one in my hand.
“It’s probably not going to work if you need meds, it’s so small. Hopefully we can get enough fluids in you to pump up the other ones before they need them.”
They took me to the oncology unit then and got me checked into a room. It felt good to lie on the cool sheets of the hospital bed and I had just started to fall asleep when the nurse came in to check my vitals. After she did that, she told me that Dr. Harris wanted them to draw blood too. Great, hopefully my little skinny vein held up. I looked at poor Meg, sitting there at the bedside and told her, “Hey, thanks for bringing me. You don’t have to stay here.”
She just made a face at me. I knew that no matter what I said, she wouldn’t leave me alone. When grandma got here, and I knew too that she would come, then Meggs might leave. The nurse took the blood and left, and I finally got to drift off to sleep for a while.
I had strange dreams; it probably had something to do with not having much fluid in my brain. Brock was in all of them, and we were dancing on the rooftops of all the building at the university. He was singing to me, sometimes it was Justin Timberlake, but one time…it was Brittany Spears and I have to admit, I was embarrassed for him. Just about the time we had danced our way across the rooftops and were standing at the edge of the roof of the three story tall library, he went in for the kiss. This time I was going to do it, I couldn’t wait for our lips to meet….
“Molly…Molly wake up.” I opened one eye. It was Dr. Harris. Damn you evil oncologist! I opened the other eye, and where Megan had been in my peripheral vision before now sat Grandma.
“Hi Grandma,” I said, “Hi, Dr. Harris.” I was still mad at him for ruining the kiss, but Grandma was here so I had to be polite.
“Hey Molly. How are you feeling?” Grandma asked.
“I’m okay, Grandma,” I told her. “I’m just a little dehydrated. Everyone’s overreacting a bit, I think.”
Dr. Harris cut in then and said, “Molly, your hemoglobin is low. We’re going to have to give you some blood too.” See, pure evil. Now I would be here all day. He wasn’t finished yet though, as he went on to say, “I’m going to admit you at least overnight too.”
“Oh no, I have classes tomorrow. I don’t have time to be lying in a bed…”
“Molly,” he interrupted me. He was not only evil, he was rude. “Your Bun/Creatinine ratio is 10:1.”
I wished that I didn’t know what that meant. But, unfortunately, my evil oncologist was one of those outstanding communicators and excellent teachers. When we first started all of this nonsense he had explained to me more than I thought I needed to know about Blood Urea Nitrogen and Creatinine. The BUN was a molecule that came from protein breakdown. It mostly gets excreted when we pee, but the amount of it in your blood can indicate the rate of blood flow through your nephrons.
Creatinine is also released into the blood by muscle, and it measurement shows how well the kidneys are able to either reabsorb it…as they should, or if it’s just excreted. If I was normal, my ratio would be around 15:1. A 10:1 meant bad things, likely a necrotic kidney, or at least necrotic nephrons inside the kidney. Necrotic means dead and to a girl with only one kidney, that could mean dead period. It was not the best news I had ever gotten.
“So what do we do about that?” I asked him.
“First we take care of your blood count, and then we’ll run some more tests,” he said.
I looked at Grandma. Her face was drawn tight like it always is when she worries about me and that line between her eyebrows was deep. Poor thing, she was really pretty for an almost sixty-year-old woman. In her heyday, she had been beautiful. Sometimes when I look at her and I see the lines around her eyes I wonder if she would look ten years younger if it hadn’t been for me and all of the worrying she does. I held my hand out to her and she took it. She smiled at me; she wanted me to believe everything would be okay. That’s what grandma’s do. I closed my eyes and tried to drift back into the dream.
Chapter Twelve
Brock
Jake was on the couch playing video games when I came out of my room with my guitar slung across my shoulder.
“Where are you off to?” Jake asked me as he shot at the zombies that ran amok through the city.
“I’m going to go over to the hospital. I don’t have much going on today. I thought I’d see if they’d let me play for some of the kids or old people in the oncology unit.”
“Not hanging out with Molly today?”
It was hard to have a conversation with a guy in his boxers, sitting sideways with his tongue hanging out for balance. “I don’t know, maybe later,” I said. “Where’s Megan today?”
Jake shrugged, “I think she had her fill of me last night. She wasn’t impressed with the place we stayed. I guess it was because she had to move dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes off the sofa where she was supposed to sleep. Tim’s mom works…a lot. She’s not much of a housekeeper. I forgot to tell Megan that before she agreed to stay there.”
I laughed. Poor Jake was always in trouble of one kind or another. It was good that he didn’t really let it get to him I thought, as he blew up a zombie convoy and grinned from ear to ear.
“I’ll see you later,” I told him as I went out the door. The zombies were getting back up; I think the grunt was for me.
When I got to the hospital I went to the children’s unit first. I liked playing for the kids. They didn’t expect anythi
ng fancy, just fun. It also helped me put my own stuff into perspective. I mean if a bald three-year-old can sit in the bed while poison is being pumped into his veins and still giggle at my silly songs, then who was I to feel sorry for myself…ever.
I spoke to the nurses who said they were always glad to have me. They told me which rooms would be okay to go into. The first one was a little guy named Carlos. He had just turned four his mom said, and he was sitting in his crib with an IV, watching SpongeBob and eating a strawberry Gogurt when I got there. I had met him a few times before when I’d come here. I knocked on the door and his little face lit up, “Brock!” he yelled. It sounded more like “Bwock!” but I liked it.
“Hey buddy, how are you today?”
“Mama says we can go home tomorrow. I’ll be there for Michael’s birthday.” Michael was his older brother. He had told me about him the last time I was here. He was turning twelve and Carlos hero-worshipped him.
“That’s great!” I told him. I loved his enthusiasm. “That must mean you’re doing better?” I looked at his mom when I said it. The last time I had talked to her, the little guy’s tumor wasn’t responding very well to his treatments.
“The doctor changed the chemo. The last MRI showed that the tumor was shrinking.”
I looked back at Carlos and smiled at him. “High-five on that, buddy!” He held out his little hand and I gave him a five. “You have any requests?” I asked him. I knew what he was going to say; it was the same every time.
“Five little monkeys!” he squealed. It wasn’t my best work, but what are you going to do? I sat in the chair next to the bed and we sang it…five times while I strummed the tune on my guitar. It would be stuck in my head now for the rest of eternity, but as I left his room and saw that huge smile on his little face, I knew that it was worth it.
Dirty Biker (An MC Motorcycle Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Page 57