Never Rest

by Marshall Thornton

  “We? I don’t remember signing anything.”

  “You were very sick, Jake. I signed it for you.”

  “So I can get sued if I tell people about the treatment?”

  “Technically, yes. But no one ever sues over those things. I mean, if you wrote up an article for a medical journal, sure they’d sue you, but it’s not anything to worry about.” She gave me a sidelong glance and then decided to change the subject. “I also brought you a piece of cheesecake. It’s so good.”

  I felt uncomfortable. The first cheesecake she’d brought had sat in the drawer to my nightstand for a couple of days before I threw it away. I hadn’t told her I’d never eaten it.

  “I almost didn’t get it for you since you didn’t say anything about the first one. You liked it, didn’t you?” she asked. “I’m sure you ate the whole thing the minute I walked out of here.”

  Cheesecake was more than just my favorite dessert. It had become a big thing with us. During the worst of the chemo, cheesecake was often the only thing my mom could get me to eat. It was soft and kind of melted in your stomach so if it came back up…anyway, cheesecake was more than a dessert between us. I wanted to lie and say I’d eaten it, but I couldn’t.

  “I, uh, I’m still not big on solid food, Mom.”

  “But it’s cheesecake. You always ate cheesecake no matter how sick you were.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe things are different because I’m not so sick

  anymore.”

  She looked at me a moment, and then decided that was an answer she liked. “When you come home, we’re going to have to see about you making some new friends.”

  Wow. Segue much, Mom?

  “Yeah, I’ll go hangout at the Cheesecake Factory and see who I meet.”

  “This is a serious conversation, Jake.”

  That made me uncomfortable. I hated serious conversations. Friends. She wanted me to make friends. It was a completely alien concept. I’d had friends in junior high school, but they drifted away as I got sicker and sicker. I couldn’t blame them and, to be honest, I hadn’t been all that interested in hearing about the things they were doing. Things I’d never get to do. But I didn’t think she was talking about those kinds of friends. I was fairly sure—

  “How do boys meet boys these days? Do they still go to bars or is it all on the Internet?”

  She’d been googling again.

  “Mom, I don’t want to talk about stuff like that.”

  “Unless, Goth is—are the two of you—?”

  I kept my eyes down, not wanting to look at her. I mean, it wasn’t the gay thing. I didn’t think I’d want to talk to my mom about girls either. Picking at the piping on the sofa cushion, I realized something scary.

  The pattern. It was palm trees and parrots. Just like in my dream. I looked up and actually took in the room. The windows were wooden with little eyehooks. A card table was in the corner. On the far side of the room, a door led to the other ward. The solarium was just as it had been in my dream. The dream I’d had more than a week before. The dream I’d had in my bed because I could barely get out of it. This was the first time I’d been in the room. So, how had I known what it looked like?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The dreams were real.

  Or were they? I guess I might have gotten up by myself and sleepwalked, or semi-sleepwalked, so maybe I had actually been in the solarium before. That had to be it. The dreams couldn’t be true. They were impossible dreams. I wondered if I should tell Dr. Harry about them. I could just imagine him making a note about into his phone, “Patient reports impossible dreams as side effect.”

  Late that afternoon, I had an appointment with Dr. Harry. Of course, no one had told me. No one ever told me. Nurse Margie simply came into the ward and said, “Jake, Dr. Harry will see you now” like I’d been sitting there flipping through magazines hoping he’d hurry up. Then she walked me to the examining room.

  For once, my mom didn’t try to come with me. I wondered if that meant she was accepting that I wanted to make my own decisions or if she was just so happy I was getting better she didn’t care.

  In the examining room, Nurse Margie asked me to sit on the table. Quietly, she slunk out of the room. Dr. Harry was already in the room sitting on a stool in the corner reading over my file, which in the last ten days—two weeks? Or was it just more? God, I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been there. Anyway, it had grown to nearly an inch thick. I was well on my way to another four-inch thick file.

  He was taking forever to read it too. Finally I couldn’t take the silence any more. “Do you think it will hit the bestseller list?” He didn’t laugh. Instead, he turned and looked at me blandly. I had the feeling he was about to make a note in my file about inappropriate attempts at humor. Oh God, there I go again. Imaging things. I definitely wasn’t telling him about the sleepwalking, or dreaming, or hallucinating, or whatever it was.

  I noticed he needed a haircut. His beard was somehow more badly trimmed than before. How had he gone to a conference looking like that? Or was that the way doctors showed up at those things? Messy and unkempt. For all I knew it was a badge of honor. The messier the doctor, the better the research. They probably walked around saying to each other, “I couldn’t possibly take time out to get a haircut. My research is that important.”

  Of course, I suppose it was that important. It was keeping me alive.

  “Tell me how you’ve been feeling,” he said, slipping his hand onto my neck so he could take my pulse via the carotid artery.

  “Curious.”

  “I meant your body. How has your body been feeling?”

  Stubbornly, I repeated, “Curious. Why are you giving me back my own blood?” I asked, referring to the treatments I got in the afternoon when a bag of blood, presumably my own blood, spent a good hour dripping back into me.

  “If you answer my questions, maybe I’ll answer yours. How have you been feeling? Physically?”

  “Lethargic, I guess.” That was a word doctors loved, lethargic. “I haven’t wanted to get out of bed much. I sleep a lot. I’m a little stiff, sometimes. And I just, I don’t know, I feel different than I felt before. Before when I didn’t have leukemia, I mean. I feel different than that.” I leaned in close. “Goth has cystic fibrosis. How can you be curing both leukemia and cystic fibrosis?”

  “Is that it? Those are your only symptoms?”

  “Sometimes it feels like I’ve forgotten to breathe. I’ll breathe because I remember to, and then I’ll try to think about the last time I was sure I took a breath and can’t really...”

  “Were you always conscious of your breathing?” he asked, lifting my wrist and checking the pulse there. “Before the treatment?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Jake, no one is completely conscious of their breathing. What you’re describing isn’t uncommon. No one thinks about breathing unless they’re sick. Any other symptoms?”

  Was it dangerous not to tell him about the maybe-sleepwalking? If I didn’t tell him, it would probably keep happening. But if I told him, then he was very likely to do nothing except ask me lots of questions. The dreams weren’t hurting me, or at least anyone but me. The questions wouldn’t hurt me either, except somehow it felt like they would. But why did I think—

  “Jake, any other symptoms?”

  I shook my head.

  “Still no appetite?” he asked. He squatted down by the floor, pushed up one leg of my pajama bottoms and checked the pulse in my ankle.

  I shook my head again. He had to look up to see my answer. I added a quick, “No.”

  “Bowel movements?”

  “That’s in the file.” So was how much I peed. They made me pee into a plastic jug now so they could measure it. “Can you answer my question now? Why are you taking my blood out and putting it back in?”

  He stood. I worried that he was about to reach between my thighs again. I crossed my legs. Instead, he asked, “Have you masturbated since you got here?
”

  “What? Why are you— Why is that important? I’m here because I have leukemia not because I need Viagra.”

  “You don’t have leukemia, Jake. Not anymore.”

  I was having trouble connecting with that. I knew I was going to be okay. I knew I was getting better. But I really didn’t see how the leukemia could be instantly gone. It had been with me for five, maybe six years. How could it just disappear? And how could he be so sure?

  “The reason I ask the question is that a sexual response is an important indicator of health. Do you have erections in the morning when you wake up?”

  “I’m not answering your question unless you answer mine.”

  He studied me as though deciding whether I’d keep my end of the bargain. “We’ve taken your blood and added specially treated stem cells.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Stem cells take on the properties of cells around them. And then they replicate.”

  “My cells can’t replicate?”

  “You’ve had a lot of chemo therapy which has done damage. This will help put you right.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No what?”

  “No, I don’t have erections in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” Closing my file, he tucked it under his arm and, as he walked toward the door, said, “Eventually, I’m going to need a sperm sample.”

  Well, that was icky.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “—subject continues to have little appetite, which is an indication that the digestive system has not responded to treatment as well as other systems. That may have to do with the high dose of antibiotic we’re administering to deter bacterial activity. Sexual response appears to be diminished, though subject is reticent to discuss this.”

  Dr. Harry chuckles at this, sits back in his chair.

  “Why is it that each new generation is always perceived as being more permissive, more open about things like sex, and then it never bears out? My own generation, we were hippies, we were the sexual revolution, and look at how we’re perceived now—tea party fanatics and Fox News junkies. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that the boy is…what? Inhibited? The young, it seems, are never as advertised.”

  He finished his drink, poured himself another, picked up the smartphone and spoke into it. “But I digress. The subject did admit to not have erections in the morning, so I will interpret that as a suppressed libido. Not surprising, though. So many systems are involved in a sexual response. Very few of the subject’s organ systems are working at optimal levels. Though I hope that with continued treatments—”

  He stopped, pondered his words.

  “I had hoped the subject would be showing a more positive response to treatment by this point. I am still optimistic, but that optimism is tempered with caution.”

  He stopped again, briefly this time.

  “Note to self: Call Dr. Callabray and discuss the results of today’s blood tests. Possibly increase the ratio of differentiated stem cells to pluripotent cells by ten percent. Also discuss timeline for determining success or non-success of experiment.”

  Sighing heavily, he set the smartphone on his desk. He looked over at the pictures on his wall. I thought he might smile again but instead his habitual frown deepened.

  “I want to save him. I want to save them all.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  After Nurse Margie picked up our breakfast trays, Goth said, “I’m feeling kind of good today. How about you?”

  “I guess I’m okay.”

  “I wonder if it’s time to work on my bucket list.” Goth even winked when he said that.

  “Oh, um, well, sure.”

  “It’s going to be a very long day. I can’t wait for it to get dark,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  I giggled even though I kind of wished we weren’t talking about it. Now I was going to be nervous the rest of the day. Or at least, that’s what I expected. Things didn’t turn out that way.

  Just before lunch, Nurse Margie walked into the ward with a grumpy-

  looking kid, late teens, leaning on her. He was short, had unruly red hair and teeth too big for his mouth. With them was a girl a few years older. She looked exactly like the boy except with longer, redder hair and bigger teeth. Before he got onto the bed, she squeezed him tight and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I can’t stay. You’ll call me, right?”

  “Yeah, whatev.”

  “I love you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Mom and Dad love you, too.”

  That made me wonder what were they like? Two toothy, high-powered executives far too important to be bothered with their son’s health? A couple of unrepentant red-haired drunks who’d wandered off on a bender? Or did they even know their son was here? Could his sister have kidnapped him and brought him on her own? Kind of like my mom.

  The kid rolled his eyes at his sister. Making me wonder, Did his parents just not care? And then she hurried out of the ward, choking back a tear.

  After settling the guy into a bed across from us, Nurse Margie introduced him as Edmond Henley. We all said, “Hey.”

  Then she busied herself with the roving vitals stand. Watching someone get their blood pressure checked didn’t exactly encourage conversation. After making notes on Edmond’s brand-new chart, Nurse Margie scurried out of the ward.

  As soon the door closed behind her, Edmond was out of bed and crossing the room. It was a journey of about ten feet, but he was huffing and puffing by the time he got to us. He took a moment to catch his breath and then, keeping his voice low, asked, “Is there any, uh…pussy around here?”

  I almost burst out laughing. The guy could barely walk across the room. What did he think he was going to do with a woman? Of course, I probably shouldn’t have been thinking that. Goth and I weren’t in much better shape and we were trying to figure a way to be alone to do pretty much the same kind of things Edmond wanted a woman for.

  “There’s another ward on the other side of the building,” Goth explained. “I was in there to start, but they moved me over here. I think they’re going to put patients in there. Who was that with you? Your sister?”

  “Yeah. She’s annoying. Not as bad as my mom and dad but super annoying. You should have seen my parents when I said I didn’t want them to bring me here. It was like the apocalypse had started or something.” He chewed on that a moment, then asked, “Do you think there will be some hotties in the other ward?”

  Goth smirked at him and said, “I don’t know. I asked for 8x10s, but they haven’t brought them by yet.”

  Not even remotely getting the joke, Edmond looked at him suspiciously before deciding to ignore the comment.

  “I hope they’re hot,” he said. “The last place I was in, there weren’t any babes under forty. Not that I don’t like the older ladies, but I have my standards.”

  I could tell Goth was working up to say something snide, so I asked, “What do you have?”

  “Pulmonary hypertension.”

  “That’s high blood pressure, right?” I asked. It didn’t sound so bad.

  “Yeah. In my lungs.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need a heart-lung transplant, and they do like fifty of those a year.” He pouted like a little kid. “I’m like number three hundred and sixty-five on the list.”

  Goth nodded. “I looked into that.” By way of explanation, he added, “Cystic fibrosis.”

  Edmond looked at me.

  “Leukemia.”

  “So how bad is this treatment?” he asked. “Does it hurt? Did you throw up a lot? I hate puking.”

  Goth looked at me intently. We hadn’t talked about this.

  “It’s not bad,” I said. “Nothing like chemo. I mean, there are a lot of tests and shit. Like daily.”

  “Dr. Harry said it would be a couple weeks before I could have it,” Edmond said. “I thought there’d be like a whole bunch of people ahead of me.”

  “There’s just
us,” I said uncomfortably. I didn’t know what he was getting at. “So far.”

  Edmond sat down on the edge of my bed without asking. He probably didn’t have enough breath. “So how many people have had this treatment?”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure a lot have. It’s just—”

  “It’s just what?” Edmond was sort of pushy. I wasn’t appreciating that about him.

  “I think I’m the only one here who’s actually had it. But there were probably a whole bunch of people before I got here.” I was kind of lying. I did want it to be true, though. Maybe it wasn’t a terrible lie.

  “No. I don’t think so,” Goth said. “Their website is only a couple months old.”

  “How do you know that?” Edmond asked. “Are you like a hacker?”

  “No. My parents have a computer, but they watched everything I did. I mean they treated anything medical like it was porn. I had to use the computer at the library, but I could only get there every few weeks. One time the website wasn’t there. The next time it was.”

  Edmond ignored the weirdness of what Goth had said and looked at me and said, “So you’re the first to get the treatment.”

  “No, that’s not, I don’t think—” I wasn’t the first. I knew that. Nurse Margie had said I was the only success story she’d seen. That meant there were others. Others who hadn’t—

  “And we have to wait to make sure nothing weird happens to you.”

  Now I was uncomfortable. Edmond and Goth and everyone who would come afterward were depending on me. But no, it was fine. Dr. Harry was confident I was okay and was going to stay okay. So was my mom. But were they right? They could be wrong. Was I likely to drop dead one day? Tomorrow? Next week? And if I died, would Goth? And Edmond? And the girls who might or might not already be in the other ward? I felt pressure, but it wasn’t pressure I could do anything about. I sort of hated it.

  “What does the treatment actually do?” Goth asked. “How does one treatment cure different diseases? That’s kind of confusing.”