Plain Jane

by Kim Hood

  ‘Jane Ellen!’ Her voice was almost a whisper, but her tone was acidic. I couldn’t remember when she had last used my middle name; it had been ages since she had gotten angry at me. ‘This is NOT the place, nor is it the time.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I was on a roll now. ‘And when was the time you were going to tell me? I suppose you were going to tell me when she was out of surgery, like you did after her knee surgery? It’s fantastic the way you include me. I’m sure you must get so many compliments on your parenting skills.’ There was a weird buzzing in my head when I stopped talking. Mom just looked at me with utter contempt, and Emma didn’t look at me at all. I tried to take a breath, to stop the buzzing, but the silence was worse. Pictures started flashing in my head again – x-rays, bottles of drugs, a severed leg on a stainless steel table – Emma’s leg, with her pink princess slipper still on the foot. I shut my eyes to try to make the pictures go away.

  ‘Jane!’ Mom’s voice sounded far away.

  ‘You just take it, Mom,’ I was talking again before I could stop myself, talking fast now, before she could shut me down. ‘You let them pump her full of poison. Methotrexate, Topotecin, Doxorubicin, Ifosfamide, Etoposide.’ I rattled off all the drug names that Emma had been given, names I didn’t even think I had known. They came flying into my head now.

  ‘I wonder how much those drugs cost. I wonder who is profiting. I’m sure someone is. While people collect their little piles of coins for Emma in the shops to make themselves feel better, some big drug companies are collecting their millions from hospitals like this one that keep pumping the poison into kids’ arms, even when there is hardly any arm left to pump it into.’ The words just kept spilling out. The more I talked the more the words came.

  ‘You heard Dr Ballerini. The drugs are poison—but the doctors won’t listen because they’re probably being paid by the drug companies too. You’ve got to wonder if there was ever anything wrong with Emma in the first place.’

  ‘Stop it, Jane. Nobody said anything like that. You are not making sense.’ Mom’s voice was shrill and panicked, but I couldn’t stop.

  ‘And now, after there’s no more money to be made from the drugs, they’re just going to cut off Emma’s leg and throw it away. Or maybe we get to take it home to hang a lamp shade on. I can’t let that happen. You know it can’t happen.’

  The sound of Emma crying made me stop. I could see her, but she was like this picture that I couldn’t get to, couldn’t feel. She seemed like a moving picture of herself. The buzzing in my head was getting louder and it felt like the walls were moving in on us. I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t seem to get any air into my lungs. I had to get out.

  When I walked into the hall, it wasn’t better. The pictures kept running through my head – piles of pills, piles of legs, white coated doctors moving toward Emma with saws. I walked down hallways, willing my mind to stop. Stop, stop, stop. I kept walking – right, left, left, left, right. I kept walking. I didn’t know where I was. I’d been in this hospital hundreds of times, and I didn’t know where I was. And I couldn’t breathe.

  There was a line of chairs against a wall, with no one sitting in them so I sat down and put my head between my knees. Was that what you were supposed to do for shock? That was what this was – shock. I just had to calm down.

  My head was still upside down when I felt a hand on my shoulder. The picture of Dr Whitman so patronisingly patting my shoulder rose, and I bolted upright. I wanted to slap him.

  It wasn’t him though; it was Dr Jonathan.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’ For a moment I was confused, feeling like I was back on the bus, with Farley asking the same question, but the blue coat brought me back. I think I must have nodded, because he did sit. My head was still buzzing, but I was feeling a little calmer. Not calm enough to open my mouth though. There were still words piling up in my throat that would spill out if I did. I kept it shut.

  ‘That was pretty brave, standing up to Dr Whitman like that,’ he said.

  I still couldn’t open my mouth. I was afraid of what might come out. It didn’t stop the words from looping back up through my brain though. Methotrexate, Topotecin, Doxorubicin, Ifosfamide, Etoposide, limb salvage, osteosarcoma, resistant osteosarcoma, aggressive sarcoma. The pictures kept up the slide show too, flashing fast and furious, with words and dates underneath. Osteosarcoma tumour November 2012, Surgery one December 2012, Methotrexate January to February 2013 … A slideshow documenting Emma’s history going through my mind.

  ‘You are right to question Emma’s treatment.’ He was smiling at me like some kind of Jesus. ‘It isn’t the only way.’

  The pictures stopped. The buzzing stopped. The words stopped. Utter relief poured in.

  I looked at Dr Jonathan and he had this weird glow around him. Okay, he didn’t. It was just the light behind him, coming in the window, but I swear what he said was the clearest thing I have ever heard in my life. It isn’t the only way.

  I couldn’t talk. I wanted to hear every word he said.

  ‘I can’t talk about it here, obviously.’ He turned, and looked over his shoulder, and then he stood up quickly. ‘But listen carefully. You’ll hear the truth, if you listen carefully.’ He flashed me that Jesus smile before he continued down the hall as if he had not just uttered the most important words I would ever hear.

  I’m not sure how many halls I wandered before I found the glass doors leading to freedom. It didn’t matter anymore. There was another way! Emma was going to get better and she most certainly was not going to lose her leg. For the first time in three years there was hope of escaping this death trap we were caught in. I had been too mired down, just going through the motions. I hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to even question what was happening in this awful institution. Mom and Dad obviously were not going to see it. They believed everything they were told. How long had Dr Jonathan been trying to tell me there was another way?

  It didn’t matter now. He’d found a way to tell me and I was going to find out the truth.

  It took me a moment to remember that it was Saturday when I woke up. It was getting more difficult to keep the days straight without enough classes to give me anchor points.

  The night before I hadn’t gone over to Dell’s either. Every night I had sworn that tonight was the night. Last night I had forgotten to even do that. Two Friday nights without him now. Weird.

  I always go to Dell’s on Friday nights. Usually he buys us pizza, and sometimes we go over to his friend Dave’s house – especially since Dave has started going out with Kelly-the-hairdresser. It is all properly grown up. I feel like I am twelve on those nights, but I would rather feel twelve and out of place, than to feel like this was my life, like Brenda does. Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe I tell myself that because part of me wishes that I could be happy with this life, like Brenda is happy with hers.

  Anyway, I hadn’t gone to Dell’s, so I didn’t know whether I had missed a double date or not. I walked into the bathroom with my phone, trying to remember if Dell had texted me the night before, if I had actually replied with an excuse for not coming over like I’d been meaning to do all week. I seemed to have turned it off. Nine missed calls and five text messages lit up the screen when it came back to life, answering my question.

  For a moment I felt bad about all of those unanswered calls and messages, and then I remembered that I had turned the phone off because the phone had not stopped beeping at me. It had seemed really important not to be interrupted. Not that I had been any place where it would have been a problem to be interrupted. I’d come home, taken out note pads, and started writing down every single thing that I remembered between when Emma had been diagnosed and now. There was a lot to remember. The phone beeping at me had become irritating. But then the house phone had rang as well, so after I took the call from Dad, who said he was going to the hospital when his shift ended, I took that phone off the hook too.

  Three years was a lot of stuff to try to remember, and
I didn’t need any interruptions. But even with none, and even though I made notes, and then drawings – the drawings seemed to jog more memories than words – until after 5am, I didn’t seem to be any closer to understanding what Dr Jonathan had been trying to tell me.

  I looked at my phone again, this time to figure out if I should eat breakfast or lunch. It had to be late. There were no sounds of Dad, so he must have already left again.

  The time. I forgot that I wanted to know the time. I felt all disoriented with staying up until nearly dawn, and sleeping late. Why wasn’t Mom here yet?

  I switched the phone on again. 8:04. For a moment I thought that maybe I had slept the whole day through, but it was too light for that. It really was only eight in the morning. I couldn’t seem to sleep anymore.

  I had a brainwave. Another reason to be up at such an ungodly hour. I would start the cleaning. I could maybe even finish most of it before Mom got home.

  I needed to do something, and for once, it didn’t feel like an impossible task. It actually felt fantastic. Three cups of coffee had me buzzing – in a good way, not the fuzzy, scary buzz of the day before, but pure caffeine induced energy. I put the radio on and leapt about the place like I was Annie and all of her orphan side-kicks.

  The kitchen, with the week’s dishes on the verge of falling off every counter, was suddenly a challenge I could tackle. I didn’t stop with the dishes. I cleaned the fridge, and the oven, and every cupboard. I got down on my knees and scrubbed every inch of the floor. Literally, with a scrubbing brush I found way behind the drain pipe under the sink.

  I don’t think I have ever looked at the room the same way by the time I was through with it. It was pure pride. I felt like taking photos and posting them on every site, though a tiny part of me did realise that would be a bit weird, so I didn’t.

  Instead, I moved onto other rooms. The more I cleaned, the more I saw that needed cleaning. I forgot that I was going to eat breakfast – yes, it was definitely breakfast I was going to eat. I couldn’t remember eating any dinner the night before, so I must be starving. I thought I must be. But I kept going because I wanted to get the house spotless before Mom got home. She would probably be bringing us something to eat anyway.

  I remembered how angry she had been with me the day before. I’d never seen that look of loathing before. If Dr Jonathan hadn’t have found me, talked to me, I would probably still have been wallowing in that look, inventing ever more cutting retorts to that look, ready to hurl at Mom the moment she walked in.

  That seemed a little ridiculous now though. She was just tired. We had all been tired. How could we not be, slogging through week after week, month after month, of the same old thing? I’d felt the same way until Dr Jonathan confirmed that I was right – that we didn’t have to accept every damn thing that the hospital threw at us.

  I wanted Mom to come home and smile, to feel like she could sit down, and we could have lunch together. I was going to give her that. I could make her happy. We could forget about the day before.

  That was my line of thought while I did more cleaning in four hours than I had probably done in my entire life. I am not exaggerating. I suddenly understood Mom’s exasperation at how little I ever achieved in the cleaning department. It wasn’t that hard. It really wasn’t. How had I missed that?

  I actually ran out of things to clean. At least, I ran out of things to clean that had ever occurred to me to clean. As I lay on the sofa, looking at the ceiling and feeling completely smug with myself, I did begin to wonder if ceilings get cleaned. Did they need to be cleaned? Dirt would settle on surfaces, and with gravity, you would think that ceilings would just stay white, but did they? I started to go through all of the possibilities. Smoke. It would rise. But nobody in our house smoked. We didn’t even have a fireplace; we had a gas thing that looked like a fire burning instead. Dad had fought for a real one. We had a chimney. But Mom didn’t want a fireplace – because of the smoke. That would get on the ceiling and need to be cleaned. I was safe. I could skip the ceiling.

  Where was she anyway? I had lost track of time again. That sense of the time of day was evading me.

  When I found my phone again there were three more missed calls. None were from Mom though. Or Dad. I was going to have to ring Dell back soon, though first I had to come up with some pretty good excuse as to why I hadn’t called before now, not kept my promise of staying away for only a week. For some reason I couldn’t seem to attach the guilt I should feel to that thought. Now that I had finished rushing around the house, I had a sudden urge to go back to my notes.

  I found Mom’s number and rang her instead.

  ‘Jane!’ Mom answered straight away.

  ‘Hi, Mom.’ It felt strange to talk. I hadn’t uttered a single word to anyone for nearly twenty-four hours, even though my head had been spitting out thoughts with hardly a break.

  ‘I’m sorry, hon. I was meant to be home hours ago.’ The anger of yesterday seemed to have left her. Me too.

  ‘Were you? What time is it?’ I asked, surprised that she was that late.

  ‘Dad’s here still, and we’re coming home soon. Both of us,’ she said. I hadn’t heard that decisiveness in here voice for months. It made me a bit nostalgic – that was the Mom I knew, even though it had more often than not been directed at what I should be doing, but wasn’t.

  ‘So … will I wait here for you?’ I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that, because it didn’t fit our pattern.

  Mom and Dad and me, together on a Saturday afternoon, without Emma, was not what we did. I had a sinking feeling that it was a bad conversation she planned to have. She didn’t know one thing that I was starting to figure out, so of course she was just going to accept anything the hospital told her. She was completely in their web. I was certain that Dad was as well.

  ‘Sweetie, we need to have a chat with you. It hasn’t been an easy day here.’

  That’s when I knew that I definitely could not be here when they got back. I felt like I was going to choke. I couldn’t breathe again. My stomach started to heave and I put the phone down, and ran to the toilet. I didn’t know how I had anything in my stomach to throw up.

  Was it Grandad? But I already knew. I already knew, and she didn’t know I knew. I didn’t want to be here to hear it again. But of course it wasn’t Grandad. That was ages ago.

  I tried to calm down, to stop that memory. Because it was a memory. I’d always known it was; I just didn’t want it there in my head.

  And it was time to see Dell.

  ‘I’m coming over,’ I said as soon as he answered. There wasn’t any point in going into everything with him over the phone. He’d answered, so I knew he’d forgive me for not getting back to him before now. Dell didn’t have it in him to get mad anyway. That’s why we were so good together.

  It wasn’t until I was on my way over to his house that it occurred to me that I maybe should have at least changed my clothes. I was still wearing the jeans and hoodie that I had been wearing the day before, and now I had cleaned an entire house in them. I wasn’t concerned enough to turn around and go back to change though.

  The window was closed and still locked when I got there and I knocked to let Dell know I was here. I guessed that he hadn’t opened it since I had been here last. Two weeks without it being used as my front door. I hadn’t put on a jacket when I left my house, and the closed window reminded me that I was pretty cold. For a second, the fact that I didn’t have a jacket on kind of panicked me – not because I thought I was in danger of freezing to death or anything, but because a jacket isn’t really something anyone just forgot to put on in Canada in December. It was weird even for me.

  My head was so full of everything else, I couldn’t keep things straight. Why wasn’t my head working?

  It was Dr Jonathan’s fault; I hadn’t been able to think properly since he’d got me thinking of what was happening in the hospital. But what did a little forgetfulness matter when I needed most of my brain to
think about what he had told me, to listen to what was going to save Emma’s leg. I could see my list of dates and drugs. November 2012 – Methotexate, February to March 2012 – Ifosfamide and Etoposide. The list covered several pages. I’d written everything out, but now I needed to find out more about those drugs. There was probably a connection between them.

  Thinking about it made the nightmare hospital slideshow start up in my head again. And I was suddenly panicked about the pictures that would follow.

  I banged on the window again – hard. I had to see Dell before THAT picture came back. If he didn’t answer soon I was going to have to go.

  It was too cold to be standing around outside.

  The window slid open finally and I made a very ungraceful entrance through it, catching my toe on the frame and ending up landing in a half summersault at Dell’s feet. I mumbled some sort of apology and stood up.

  ‘Sorry, I was upstairs. I didn’t think you’d get here so fast,’ Dell said. ‘Do you want something to eat? I’m just making some pasta.’

  ‘Sure, okay,’ I said, even though the thought of eating made my stomach churn.

  Dell headed up the stairs, but I didn’t follow him. My legs felt all wobbly and I had to sit down. Sit down and try to think clearly enough to say something to Dell. I didn’t know what I was going to say though.

  It felt weird being in Dell’s house, like I had never been there before. I’d never noticed how dingy it was. The ceiling was so low that I always felt like my head would hit it, even though I wasn’t tall enough to worry about that. Everything was brown. Dark wood panelled walls, geometric brown patterns marching across the carpet, swirling brown flowers on the sagging sofa. Everything sepia coloured, like the room had been photo shopped.

  And the smell. There was that damp, musty smell that basements always seem to have, but with overlays of unwashed dishes and dirty socks. I was feeling sick again.