“Someday you’ll have kids and you’ll know what it’s like.”
After she left, I couldn’t help thinking about that. Someday I’ll have kids? I wasn’t sure I wanted that. College, boyfriends, kids. That was all great, I guess. No, it wasn’t great. It was terrifying. Somehow life was easier when all I had to do was get to the next breath.
TWENTY-ONE
The next day, Goth moved into my ward, taking the bed to my left. Our morning ritual was similar. Vital signs. Pills—Goth took almost as many as I did—breakfast, a two-hour IV drip for me, rest for Goth, drawing blood. As Nurse Margie drew my blood, I asked, “What happens to my blood? Where does it go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just know a courier comes by every afternoon.”
“For my blood?”
“I guess so. I give your blood to Ray. Ray gives something to the courier. He may get something too, I’m not sure.”
“Aren’t we in the middle of nowhere?”
“We are out of the way. Oh, you know what I found out? Ray is a Heartwell. I mean, his last name is Martindale, but he’s a Heartwell on his mother’s side.”
“Why does that matter?”
“The Heartwell’s go back to colonial times. Their name is on everything. Dr. Harry might be scared to fire him,” she whispered as she pulled the needle out of my arm and took the bag of blood away.
Of course, Goth’s ritual was prepping him to get the treatment, and to keep his CF under control until that happened. Mine was to monitor the effects of the treatment. In between Nurse Margie’s visits, Goth and I talked about all sorts of things. Books we liked—he liked a lot more than I did. I wasn’t what you’d call a big reader. Movies. TV. High school. Politics very briefly, since it bored us both. Boys. Parents. Most of the movies Goth liked were way old, from the nineties and before. He liked Hitchcock. I’d heard of Hitchcock, but other than Psycho, I hadn’t seen any of his movies.
“You saw the remake. It’s not the same,” Goth had said in exasperation. I’d made the mistake of saying I liked Anne Heche even though people said she was as crazy as they come.
He’d seen all of Hitchcock’s films, of course, even the super old black and white ones made in England. When it came to movies, Goth had more to say about the ones he hated than the ones he liked. He hated superheroes, dystopian futures, and anything with sparkly vampires.
He must have been super broke. His cellphone was a brand I’d never heard of, and he didn’t have a laptop or even an iPad. Instead he had a portable DVD player and a stack of beat-up DVDs. He said we could watch one of his movies later if I wanted. I knew I probably wouldn’t like the movie much, whichever one he picked, but I loved the idea of watching it with him.
Nurse Margie brought us breakfast. There wasn’t a real cook at the institute. Most of what they fed us was packaged at the grocery store. Goth usually got takeout. I had worked my way up to a plastic cup of applesauce. That morning Goth had breakfast from Mickey Ds. I wish I could say I was jealous, but it was hard enough to eat an entire plastic cup of applesauce.
“Did you make a bucket list?” Goth asked in between mouthfuls of breakfast biscuit.
“Not really,” I said. “My mom was determined that I live. I didn’t bother with a list since I couldn’t exactly ask for help with anything on it.”
“I’m putting you on my bucket list,” he said. “But don’t plan to stay there very long.” He gave me a devilish look as he took a bite of his thick doughy biscuit.
I didn’t know what to say. He was flirting with me heavily. I liked it. But I wasn’t sure, didn’t really know how to flirt back. I realized no one had flirted with me for the last five years. I mean, flirting with dying kids is kind of pervy. And before that, when I was healthy, I was fourteen. A kid. Flirting with a kid is even pervier. I mean, for anyone who’s not fourteen. Come to think of it, no one had ever flirted with me.
TWENTY-TWO
When I was sick, I wished having cancer was more like it was on TV. It might not have been as bad if I’d been stuck for months on end in a cancer ward with a handful of plucky teens. A couple of them hot guys around my age—well, played by actors in their late twenties pretending to be my age but hot all the same. That would have taught me how to flirt. Between chemo sessions I could have flirted with them and possibly taken side trips to the supply closet whenever the nausea subsided.
But it wasn’t like that. At the hospital, I mean hospitals, I almost never saw the same patients or nurses or even orderlies. Not that some of them weren’t sexy enough to spark a dirty thought or two but I’d never see them again. And the few times I had to stay in the hospital it was only for a few days and I wasn’t exactly crushing on the other patients.
So basically, I had no clue what I was doing with Goth. I mean, all I really knew about being gay was from TV and, you know, porn, so how I got from asexual best friend to ‘wow, I didn’t even know that was possible’ was a little fuzzy. Okay a lot fuzzy.
Anyway, the rest of that week fell into a routine. Nurse Margie woke me and took my vital signs. She gave me a cup of weak tea and a bit of broth at lunchtime, but I was still off solid food. I was peeing more often and with enough warning that I managed to ring for a bedpan. I also had a couple of BMs. Crampy, humiliating struggles, which produced a couple of dark, withered turds that smelled like a primordial swamp. Nurse Margie snatched them away, and I assumed they went upstairs for more study. Actually, I was surprised no one gave me a gold star for passing them. I thought I deserved a ribbon, at least.
Goth flirted with me. A lot. I fumbled around trying to flirt back when I could. But I was still too weak to take myself off his bucket list. That didn’t stop him from climbing into bed with me one night and cuddling.
“Cuddling with a handsome man is also on my bucket list,” he whispered. I found out I liked cuddling and hoped I’d get to do a lot of it. Goth was incredibly warm and that made snuggling a little like sitting around a campfire. A sexy campfire. One that I gave occasional steamy- kisses.
Every other day I spent about an hour with Ray. He got a bit more skilled at doing a PET scan, but his social skills remained subpar. One morning, I asked, “What exactly is a PET scan for?”
“I dunno,” he replied sullenly. “If I knew shit like that, why I would I work here?”
I was of the opinion that if he worked at a research institute, he really ought to know shit like that but decided not to share that with him. On the day of our second scan, he started giving me another test along with the PET. I imagine I didn’t get one the first time because reading two manuals would have been overwhelming.
Along with the PET scan, I was given an EEG on Mondays and Wednesdays and an EKG on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The EEG was a boring and not very pleasant test that had Ray attaching electrodes to my head making me look like an actor about to do some CGI emoting in front of a green screen. Meanwhile, the EKG was another boring and not very pleasant test where Ray attached electrodes to my chest and legs with tape. You don’t have to be particularly hairy for the removal of that tape to be, well, challenging.
The EKGs checked my heart and the EEGs checked my brain. The PET scan must check everything else, I guessed. That was confirmed when my mom came in one morning that week and said, “A PET scan measures how well your organs function.”
“Thanks, I was dying to know that.” I waited. Saying something like that was the kind of thing my mom would always scold me for. She didn’t like any reference to the possibility I might die. Even things people say all the time like, “You’re killing me” or “I would just die for a whatever.” But she didn’t say a thing. Apparently, dying was now just like any other word.
“The wireless at the B&B is excellent,” she said, obliquely explaining how she suddenly knew all about PET scans.
“Why do we need to know how my organs are functioning?”
“That should be obvious, Jake.”
“No, I mean, why do we need to know on a daily
basis? That seems weird. And expensive.”
“I’m sure it’s not that expensive.”
“I bet that machine cost a million dollars. And getting it onto the second floor probably cost another mil.”
“That machine did not cost a million dollars.”
“Google it when you get back to the B&B.”
“It doesn’t matter how much the machine cost.”
“Yes, it does. If I’m the only one using a million dollar machine, it matters. It matters because it’s weird.”
“Jake, it’s not weird. This is research. Yes, it would be a lot to spend on just you, but it’s not just you. Not really. It’s everyone who comes after you. This research could eventually help thousands of people. Maybe millions.”
Suddenly, I felt the weight of it all. What if we had actually cured acute blah-blah-blah-leukemia? What if we cured all leukemia? All cancer? Just like in my dreams. That would be pretty amazing. And totally strange.
I mean, a couple weeks ago I was this kid who was going to die without having done much of anything with his life and now, maybe I was going to be this kid who was part of driving cancer into extinction. That was like… awesome.
And hard to believe.
After the tests, Ray would help me back down the stairs. Other things were on the second floor, some kind of lab, I think, and an office or two. Everything was behind closed doors, though, so I wasn’t familiar with any of it besides the scanning room and Ray’s office.
The week passed slowly. When you’re sick, time is a friend and an enemy. You’re constantly hoping for more of it and at the same time, there are hours, days, even weeks when you’d like to crush time, skip it, forget it entirely. The waiting is interminable. Waiting for appointments to be scheduled, for nurses to frantically tell you the doctor is running behind before they hurry off to tell someone else the same thing, for test results that will tell you how much time you have or don’t have.
Now that I was better, or at least getting better, I was struggling to figure out how to feel about time. Right now, I hated it. I had nothing to fill it with. I was killing time and feeling bad about the slaughter. It had been so precious until just recently. I should be appreciating it, feeling joyful that I’d eventually be leaving the institute and having an entire life of time to fill with amazing things, but I wasn’t appreciating it. Mostly I was bored to death.
Everything had changed. I had plenty of time. Time to spare even. Maybe even more time than I wanted. And that was beginning to frighten me the most. I had no idea if time would turn out to be a friend or a foe.
TWENTY-THREE
My mother returned on Saturday. I woke up to find her staring at me. She whispered, “Who’s that?”
“That’s Goth.”
“Really? There really is a Goth? I thought you might be, you know, hallucinating.”
“You thought I was hallucinating, and you didn’t say anything?”
“I thought it would go away.”
“Because that’s what hallucinations usually do?”
“Well, yes, it is.” Then she asked, “Is he awake?”
“Goth? Are you awake?”
He didn’t roll over, just grunted.
“Sorry if I woke you,” my mom said. “I’m Jake’s mother, Cheryl.”
He grunted again. It was very rude. Given what he’d said about his parents, though, I couldn’t blame him. Parents weren’t necessarily his favorite thing.
“Well, um, Goth it’s nice to meet you.” Then to me she said, in a completely audible whisper, “I can’t believe his parents named him Goliath. It’s a lovely name for a Saint Bernard, but a child?”
“Mom.”
Goth rolled over and sat up. “Okay, I think I like you.”
“You’re not fond of your name,” my mother said.
“No. I don’t think many people would be.”
“Well, it is better than Adolph.”
“Um, yeah, it is.”
“Or Genghis,” she suggested.
“That too.”
Then she came up blank and very nearly had to concede that Goth had the third worst name of all time. Instead, she changed the subject. “You’re in the study?”
“Yeah. Hopefully, they’ll start the treatment soon.”
“I’m sure they will,” my mom said.
Just then Nurse Margie came in and started our morning routine. My mom squeezed in and gave me a hug. “All right, I’m going to go have breakfast at this little place in the village. They have the most amazing biscuits and gravy. It’s huge, so I won’t be able to eat it all. I’ll bring the rest back, Jake.”
I smiled at her, knowing full well I’d be giving it to Goth.
Two hours later, she came back with a to-go tin from the restaurant and a white plastic bag that said CVS on the outside. She set the food down on the stand between the beds and handed me the white plastic bag as subtly as she could. It didn’t matter, though. Goth wasn’t paying any attention. Nurse Margie was sitting on the bed slapping him on the back to dislodge his mucus.
I glanced into the bag and saw that my mom had brought me a roll-on deodorant and a bottle of designer cologne. “Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked.
Whispering, she said, “Yes. You’re a little…ripe.”
“I’d love to take a shower.” So far, I’d only been allowed humiliating sponge baths.
She glanced at Goth trying to hack up a phlegm ball. “Come on,” she said to me. “You’re getting up. You need to spend more time out of bed.”
“I don’t know if that’s okay. No one’s said anything about it.”
“I’m saying it.” She threw back my covers and stared at me until I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
I had been spending most of my time in bed, other than an occasional trip outside to watch Goth smoke. I can’t say why I’d been virtually bedridden—a seriously stupid word by the way, I mean, I wasn’t being ridden by the bed. Nor was I riding the bed. Anyway, I didn’t have a good reason for not getting up more than I did. I’d been curious enough about the place to dream about it, so why hadn’t I spent more time wandering around?
Honestly, moving seemed to bother me, so I hadn’t been doing much of it. It wasn’t painful, exactly. It was more annoying. Like my body was fighting against it. It was simpler not to do it at all.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as she pulled me to a standing position.
“To the solarium. It’s nice. You could use a little sunlight. You look like a vampire.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Huh? I never thought about this, but do teenage boys find vampires as much a turn on as teenage—”
“Did you talk to dad?” I asked, mostly to avoid her question.
“Yes, he got the pictures I sent.” Because there was no wi-fi to Skype with, my mom had taken some pictures of me smiling and waving. Proof of life she called it. “He still doesn’t believe me when I tell him you’re getting better. I told him he should come up and see for himself.”
“No, that’s okay. He’s got the halflings and the steplings to worry about. And since I’m not dying...” We were in the hallway. “Hey, did they miss you at work?”
“They did. The temp screwed everything up. If I play my cards right, I can get a raise out of the whole thing. And I’m going to need it.”
“Why? You said this was paid for.”
“Not for this. For college. You’re going to live, Jake.” She said that a lot and each time, a big smile broke out on her face. It was starting to get annoying.
“Dad will pay for it. You should spend your money on yourself.”
“But I want to.” She helped me down onto the sofa in the very bright solarium. “As soon as you’re back on your feet, you should start college. We might be able to get you in for the spring semester. What do you want to study?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I’ve been focused on being sick.” Actually, it was too bright in there. I had to squint.
“You know what I think? You should be a doctor. You were always good at science. Remember that chemistry set I got you when you were eight? You did every single experiment in the booklet.”
“That’s not a reason to be a doctor.” I kind of remembered the chemistry set but kind of didn’t.
“Of course it is.” She smiled at me real hard. “Well, think about it. You can be anything you want. You have your whole life in front of you.” She slipped her arm through mine and squeezed. “This is so wonderful, Jake. I feel like there’s been a rubber band tied around my heart for years, and now it’s been released.”
I knew I should be feeling the same, but I just wasn’t. The rubber band felt like it was still wrapped tight around my heart. I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t get her hopes up. I didn’t feel normal yet, and it was entirely possible I never would. I was part of an experiment, and experiments sometimes went badly. In fact, if you’d ever watched a sci-fi TV show, they almost always did. I’d be lucky as long as I didn’t come out of this with some annoying superpower, like having everything I touch burst into flames. But I couldn’t tell her that.
“Dr. Harry hasn’t told me how long you’ll be here. I’m trying to see him later. Maybe he’ll have more information then.”
“He’s back?”
“He is. And I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. I can’t believe they don’t have any wi-fi in this place. You’d think with cell reception this bad, they’d at least set it up so we could email. Or Skype. It’s just barbaric that I have to call the landline at the nurses’ desk to find out anything about you. The least they could do would be to put a phone in here.”
“Oh, I know why there’s no wi-fi. Nurse Margie told me. It’s because everything is secret. She told me they have to sign non-disclosure agreements. They can’t talk about what happens here. Kind of weird if you think about it.”
“Oh, that’s right. I didn’t make the connection.”
“What connection?”
“We signed the same agreement before we came.”
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