Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

by Julie Gregory

  “Oh, no, I don't think we're going to need that, Sandy. But what we really should do is some more tests under the close eye of hospital staff. Could we get Julie into Ohio State for a week and run a comprehensive assessment?”

  “I don't think there's a problem in that. I'm just glad I've finally found someone who is actually competent enough to realize that this kid is sick. I'd say it's about time we were getting somewhere in this runaround, wouldn't you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  THERE IS NOTHING MORE DISTINCTIVE than the smell of “hospital.” As soon as the interior doors wisp open, you stand in shiny waxed hallways, the smell of canned breath, escaped from breathing tubes, wafts out from the rooms. The air is cool with a smack of oxygen that zings your nose if you breathe in too fast, and it's all mixed together with the clean fiber scent of bandages and sterile gauzes.

  At the intake desk, they strap a little plastic band to my wrist, branded with my name in blurry blue dye like the stamp you see on rump roast.

  MY MOTHER CHECKS ME IN. It's like vacation or going away to camp, which I've always wanted to do. I take the good blue suitcase, my best Paul Zindel books. I curl-iron my hair. I look nice. I count out nine pairs of underwear. I'm taking extra, just in case I get to stay.

  My room is stocked with my very own welcome basket holding individual packs of Kleenex, a blue plastic bottle imprinted with the words “Keri Lotion,” and a little tan swimming pool dish to throw up in. There's a swing-arm nightstand and a heavy curtain that clinks around the bed when somebody wants to do something that others shouldn't see. As soon as Mom leaves my room, I pull the curtain all the way back to the far corner of the bed, twist it into a skinny rope, and jam it tight behind the mattress.

  I LOVE THE HOSPITAL. My bed goes up and down with a clicker. Jell-O awaits at my disposal. The nurses make their daily rounds, give me meds, take my temperature, ask about “bowel movements.” And since I have no idea what they are and feel too stupid to ask, I guess at the right number from the expressions on their face.

  They push a cart down the hallway and deliver and take away my food tray. They peel off the cling wrap and the locked-in aroma of warm mash—delicious and piping hot—steams my face. They joke about my taste for hospital food as I ravage the compartments of my plate; canned green beans, meat loaf, I don't care, I scarf it down.

  Late mornings they come get me, lift me into a wheelchair, and roll me down to a treadmill to count my heartbeats. I have no idea why they insist I ride in a chair. An aide scoops me out of my clean white nest and folds my feet into slippers. Why be wheeled when you can walk? But the care and kindness make me want to cry. And I want to stay as long as I can. In a few days, I will be depressing my call button like Dad on his remote, huffing “Where's my second fruit cup?”

  They roll me down to the heart unit and park me by the station where the nurse works with her needles and gauges. It's a vast, open room, with a gym treadmill, blood pressure machines, EKG equipment, wires, and contraptions, all designed to hear the heart.

  She hooks the familiar little pads to my chest and plugs the other ends into the machine. They clasp their fingers around my wrists and steady my elbows, helping me from wheelchair to treadmill. A belt gets locked around my waist and is affixed to the rails of the equipment, in case I collapse. After even a minute, I'm winded. But I'm getting stronger. Day by day, I walk faster and longer and the nurses are so impressed they say I might even get to go home early. Wouldn't that be nice?

  And that's when I collapse. As long as my legs buckle at will, I get to stay: with my second helpings, with my stacks of books, and with my mother only a slow-fading memory.

  MOM IS THERE, OF COURSE, every day, all day. From the time visiting hours begin to the moment they're over. But she is not with me. She visits other patients or consults with the staff at the nurses' station. When she stops by my room at night to pick up her purse, she slips me a scrap of paper with the room numbers of the kids she visited, kids in for cancer, for tests, for operations.

  “Here, Sis, why don't you go up there to the surgery floor and visit room six-twelve? She's the sweetest little girl, about your age, and she's getting a brain tumor taken out on Friday. They're not sure if she's going to make it; it would be so nice for her to get cheered up by you, honey.”

  I'll go anywhere in the hospital Mom tells me to, as long as it's not home. My family members are as remote as white fluffy clouds that have floated away in my sky and I am like the great god Odin, from the Douglas Adams books I'm reading, whose life's luxury is spent slipped between crisp linen sheets, surrounded by the pampering care of people who work in shifts to fulfill my basic needs. A delicious return to infancy. My books and my sheets and those little compartments full of food are all I need.

  When Mom comes in, she reads my chart on the door and paces around the room, hoping to catch my doctor.

  I bury myself in a book, hoping she'll leave.

  “You being good for them, Sis?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, we are all so very lucky to be in here with Michael as our cardiologist. This is the chance of a lifetime, to have them do all these tests. We're bending over backwards to get you the best of care, you know? So for God's sake, Julie, don't fuck it up, let them do whatever they need to do and let's get to the bottom of this thing.”

  THE TIMES I'M SCARED are when a throng of boys with stethoscopes and white coats whisk into my room unannounced with a doctor leading the way. These are medical students. The doctor pontificates on palpitations, prolapses, and murmurs, while the students fan around my bed to stare at the thirteen-year-old patient, a rarity in this predominately geriatric field.

  He reaches behind my neck with fingers soft and distracted, and unties my gown. The thin-washed cotton peels softly down my chest, settling into a flimsy loose roll around my waist. He flutters his fingertips along me, still lecturing to the students, feeling for ticks and skips. Fat tears swell in my eyes and one by one plunge over the rim, tears so heavy that they trickle to my collarbones. Don't fuck it up, Julie, let them do whatever they want. He instructs the students to feel, too, and cold, strange digits finger their way toward me, pressing, holding, and floating faintly like ghosts around the heart-related stops on my chest.

  To feel the beat of my heart those hands have to get oriented. They graze against the tiny bottom swell of my almost-there breast; a valiant effort of minuscule curve trying to grow out of my ill health like a fragile flower on a craggy ledge. They push up into a rib, climb up on top of my nipple and, while tears fall harder, press in on the virgin center, never touched before, trying to catch the rhythm of my heart faintly beating.

  They touch me without breaking stride in their talk to notice. I am just a girl, a girl men touch without asking, a girl men disrobe without even seeing her tears. Then, as fast as they swarmed in, they're gone, turning like a school of fish, a precision drill team of white coats leaving me to cover up and rub the singe of foreign fingers from my skin.

  MY STAY IS ALMOST OVER. I am going to have to go home eventually. I have done all the tests. I have worn another heart monitor, done more EKGs, worked up to a feeble jog on the treadmill. I have visited the girl in 612.

  ANURSE WALKS INTO MY ROOM for night check. She picks up the unused throw-up dish off my swivel arm table.

  “So, how you doin', hon?” She walks to the sink.

  “Fine.”

  “Liking the food?” She runs the tap and starts filling the tub with water.

  “Yeah, it's good.”

  “Ready to go home?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Awww, you miss your family, don't you?” She sits on the side of my bed and pulls a razor from the pocket of her white smock. I bolt up, eyes wide.

  “We're going to have to shave you now, honey.”

  “Shave me?” My chest could not possibly have any more hair on it.

  “Down here. “ She pats for my pubic bone under the thin hospital blanket.
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  “What? I'm done, I'm going home! I don't have anything down there!” I jerk my knees up. “I'm here for my heart!”

  “Well, honey, we can't have any hair down there because even just a little bit would be in the doctor's way. That's where he cuts with his scalpel.”

  “What scalpel?”

  “That's the knife he uses for the test.”

  My eyes widen.

  “For your heart catheterization.” I'm trying her patience. Why do I have to make her job harder? My mother is here all day, every day, surely I know.

  “That's the reason you're here this week, so they can figure out what's happening in the valves of your heart. Tomorrow they're going to make a little incision in the vein of your arm and the artery of your thigh and run some electrical connectors into the valves so they can see it on a TV screen. You might think it's kinda neat, watching your heart on TV.”

  This has got to be a mistake. Maybe this nurse got a slip of paper from my mom for somebody else. It's a mix-up. My eyes are searching my bedspread, as fast as my brain is scanning. How did this happen? They're going to cut me. My breath quickens, my eyes fixate in horror.

  “You, you can't do this to me,” my voice speaks by itself. “You can't do it,” it says louder, “my mother is making it up!”

  I can't believe I blurted that out. I cannot believe I just said that! I jump to the back corner of the bed, clutching the covers up to my neck with one hand, slipping my other behind me, to pin that curtain to the headboard.

  The nurse watches me hard. Her expression says she doesn't believe me. Maybe I don't believe me, either. I can't really believe I just said that. That would be ridiculous. My mother loves me. There's something wrong with me. I do feel sick. I am tired all the time. I am sick or else I wouldn't be here. If I wasn't sick the doctors wouldn't keep trying to fix me.

  But still we stare. Nurse and I, frozen in eye lock. She is peering into me, the caged animal, trying to discern if I'm up to something or not. I stare back, afraid to take my eyes off her for even a second. She is scanning my face, probing behind my tears, for the glint that says ha, ha, I'm joking, for even the hint of smile that will crack open my mouth, and then we'll both have a good pressure-releasing laugh.

  She doesn't find it.

  “Be back in a sec.” She sets the pan of water down without a sound. “Let me see what's going on.” She pads out.

  I am saved. They'll find out. They'll keep me. Mom'll be furious. I don't care. I can run away. I'll get a job. I can find a new family. I can go live with my cardiologist.

  I think about the last time I sat in the doctor's office with my mother; how pissed she was when they couldn't find anything and how thrilled she was when they said I could go in the hospital. It was in my head even as I said to her, “See, we knew there was something wrong with me all along.” Long-due answers on my illness were cause for celebration; I was relieved that the doctors finally believed her. But didn't I have a flash that I might be just agreeing because I was scared not to? Because I was stupid, because I failed in school, because I drooled? Didn't I think that maybe I was acting sicker because she slammed my head against the inside of the window on the way home if I didn't show them how sick I was? I tried to think straight. It made no sense. It was insane.

  Mom knows what she's doing. She's the one who sees my symptoms.

  The quiet of the hall fills with the hurried squeak of a single pair of nurse shoes.

  My nurse forks over a pleated paper cup. “Take this. We're going to give it a few minutes.”

  She yanks the curtain from behind the mattress and flies it around the bed in one fluid motion. I throw my head into my hands and scream. My chest heaves like a baby, tears running down my face. She's going to shave me. The pills start to wash over me in a slow gradual tide. I fall into my bed and a corner of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret pokes me in the back. I throw my arm over my face, bite into the pad of flesh on my palm and sob bitterly as she lifts my gown. Cool air hits my bare skin, protected and warm, and she starts to lather. The place I promised myself nobody would ever touch. She pries my knees apart and runs the razor over me. I howl. I bite into my arm, past the IV holes and the bruises on my veins, the black sticky tape marks and the Band-Aided cotton ball, smeared with a single drop of blood. I cannot stand her hands on me. I hate my wet skin, the sick smell of my father's shave cream. There is not enough shaving cream between us so that our skin never touches. There could never be enough.

  “Now, see, that wasn't so bad now, was it?”

  THE NEXT MORNING THEY JOSTLE ME deep from within the arms of the mistress of sleep. Stink Pup's rat tail thumps a tap, tap against the inside of my arm. My head turns dreamily to see him, oh wait, it's two fingers tapping for a vein. Drip, drip, the IV goes, it runs into the bruise, spreads warm through my vein. I turn my head again, the drug trickles through every tiny blood vessel in my neck, creating countless delicious rivulets flowing into me.

  Two men have me on a sheet, sliding me on nothing, from bed to gurney. There's a stick in me somewhere, a pinch, hazy and soft, so far away. Did I step on a wasp? Was that me dripping wet from the pool running over the grass and stepping on the electric fence, the gate left down, strung across the yard, my glassy foot glued to the shocking grass? No, it's only my big toe, toasty from under the covers, hitting the cold metal bar. I can sleep now, they tell me, I am safe in the hospital. Ca-clunk, they snap the guardrails up. There is no gravity, just suspension in a nothing world. I'm living on the white, empty ceiling I have always wanted.

  We are rolling down the hall. I am rolling through the nothing world, warm and tucked in tight like the sheets on the spare-room mattress at Grandma's house. You'd have to kick your legs wildly to get free, but who wants to make the effort?

  In the halls, dust specks float in dappled sunlight, warm fizz of flat cola, swaying in the window of a back corner last-row seat, a voice in geography floats through the air, menacing a test on Friday, lulling me into cardiac rest. I'd give all my money, all my stolen lunch money, just to sleep in the sun. To lay my head against a warm glass window and feel an angel's breath, hot on my scalp. We turn a corner, the wheels sliding spin on the waxed white tile floor. Take me away, make me sleep, my lids cannot bear the weight.

  “JULIE, JULIE, HONEY.“ It's Mom, bending over me, looking bright into my drugged eyes. She is hoping for the best. She knows I'm in good hands. She waves to me in bon voyage fashion.

  My father stands solid, his chest puffed out, arms stiff at his sides like a gingerbread man, big beaver grin on his face. “Good luck, Sissy. We love you.” I think I see his bottom eyelid quiver with a brimming tear. His forehead is lined into thick vertical folds. I raise my leaden fingers to squeeze one. They look like the 3-D mountain ranges from my globe in fourth grade—the one I used to study with my hands when all the world lay at my fingers. I want to touch the mountains that run across my father's forehead. My hand stretches out for my dad but they wheel me on.

  They park me in the operating room, bustle around me.

  “Breathe deep, Julie.” The voice from above lowers a mask over my nose and mouth.

  I breathe as they tell me and slip down elevator shafts. Ebony's tail is a burr loaf and thumps like a club on the porch. Stink Pup's snarl-grin lifts his upper lip while the fishhook dangles out of it. Ebony pushes her nose under my hand and bump, bumps it up. Okay, I'll pat your head. Ebony's tongue, lick, lick, on the back of my hand. Oh, babydog. I love you, too. Or is that the needle stick of another IV? And Ebony's nose under my palm—is that really her or just a stranger's hand, trying to steady mine?

  I MAKE A DOUBLE CHIN, drawing my head down to watch. They pull my right arm out and flip it over. The crook of my forearm is sliced neatly with a scalpel and filleted open like a chicken breast. It is a bloodless act. The electrical wire snakes into my vein. They push it up, up my arm, down over my shoulder and into my heart. I feel nothing but the slightest tingle. We have contact. The crew points me
to the screen so I can watch my heart beat on TV. Don't forget to tell him you've got sharp chest pains when you breathe.

  My eyes blink. The screen shows a lump of heart, beating in two little pumps at a time. Ba-bump, ba-bump. Surely this is not me. Not my body.

  “Idz like a soap opra,” I slur. The crew chuckles, I am in this with them, and I feel good that I can get older people to laugh.

  The doctor stands at the bottom of the table and I lie there, pelvic bones poking through thin white sheets. He studies his tray of many scalpels.

  What did I say last night? He selects his knife. C'mon, Julie, be a good patient, don't fuck it up. He pulls my limp right leg out from under the sheet and kinks my thigh up and out for maximum arch, like he was getting ready to crack a giant crab leg.

  I watch.

  He slides his blade across my taut muscle like a bow to a violin. Please don't do this to me. He has broken the seal of my body. Blood flows from the slit and rushes; staining, screaming across the cool white sheet. My mother is making it up. I flop my head side to side, panting. Please don't do this to me. I look down; blood flows out of me, red races across a field of white. Is this me? My leg? My blood? The doctor threads his wire toward the incision in my thigh. My mother is making it up. My legs are moving, curling away. Don't let it touch me, get the wire out, get it out! What happened to you? You were being such a good patient. I'm struggling to my lazy elbows. They fold like cheap cards. My arm wire jerks with me. I have to see, the cut on my thigh, I have to watch the wire go in, to know it is real. I pant like a woman in labor. Where am I? I pivot my head in slow motion, scanning the startled faces of those who cannot hold me down, just a sweet complacent thing, me the good patient.

  The doctor halts his wire, staring calmly into my eyes from behind his mask. Quick, get her sedated, she's ruining the test. I cannot see his lips move, but I hear the words. They scurry with their breathing tube; scrape it up my nose, snake it down my throat, tie up my other arm, tap wildly for a vein not yet collapsed.

  Stick. Injection. Sedation. Calm. Enough to last me another twelve years.