by Alex Lyttle
Sammy was already awake and sitting up. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s my newest magic trick,” Dr. Parker replied, turning on the light and pulling Sammy’s bedside table to the centre of the room. He set three red cups upside down on it. “All right, can you both see?”
I sat up in my cot and nodded.
“Okay, what I’ve got here are three, perfectly normal, plastic cups.” He lifted all three, one-by-one, showing us what looked like three very ordinary cups. “And what was underneath them, Sammy?”
Sammy looked confused. “Umm…nothing?”
“Correct. Except that if I take this magic wand from my pocket and tap each cup once, look what happens.” He took a wand from his white coat pocket and tapped each cup lightly on top then returned the wand. As he lifted each cup again, a small red ball appeared underneath.
“Wow!” Sammy said, his eyes wide with disbelief as he looked over at me.
Dr. Parker replaced the cups over the red balls and continued, “Now, wouldn’t it be great if we could make these red balls turn into something bigger, like basketballs?”
Sammy’s eyes grew even wider. “Yeah!”
“I wish I could but I can’t,” Dr. Parker said with a smirk. “Basketballs wouldn’t fit under these cups, now would they?”
“No,” Sammy said with a frown, his eyes now returning to their regular size.
“I’m afraid that I’m stuck with these plain red balls,” Dr. Parker said, faking disappointment as he lifted each cup again, this time revealing three baseballs.
Sammy let out a squeal. “They’re…they’re changed into baseballs!”
Dr. Parker looked down, then shot Sammy a look of surprise.
“So they are! Amazing! And here I thought I’d be stuck with those plain red balls forever.” After a moment of inspecting the baseballs he looked back up. “And would you look at this! This one’s signed by someone on the London Hurricanes. It says, ‘To Sammy, Get Well, Mike Ribbon #23.’”
He tossed the ball onto Sammy’s bed then grabbed the second ball. “And this one is signed: ‘To Cal, Help Him Through It, Mike Ribbon #23.’”
He tossed me the ball and I caught it.
“What about the last one?” Sammy asked.
“This one doesn’t seem to have anything on it,” he said, looking it over. “I guess I’ll keep that one.”
Dr. Parker put the cups and remaining baseball into his pocket and returned the table. “Since I’m here I might as well give you the once-over. Better make sure your head is still attached,” Dr. Parker said, as he felt the front and back of Sammy’s neck. The nurse had done the same thing the day before only she had said she was looking for knots or something like that. “And I’ll make sure your heart is still beating.” He pulled out his stethoscope and listened for a while over Sammy’s chest. “Yep, good news, it’s still beating. And lastly, I better make sure you have the right number of fingers.” He took Sammy’s hand and began counting. “One, two, three, four, six. Hmm, looks like you have too many. I guess we’ll have to remove one. Let’s see, which one is your least favourite?”
Sammy looked startled. “No! One, two, three, four, five!” he protested, counting each of his fingers for Dr. Parker to see.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Parker asked.
“Yes. Right, Cal?” Sammy said, turning to me.
I laughed. Sammy was so gullible. “Right.”
“If you say so. I’ll tell the nurses we don’t need the finger clippers after all.”
Sammy looked relieved.
Dr. Parker winked at me then walked over to the bed where Mom was sitting. She hadn’t said a word.
“We’ll be giving Sammy a different chemotherapy today.”
“Is it dauna-something?” she asked.
“That’s right—Daunarubicin. And then Etoposide tomorrow. After that, we’ll wait a few days for his body to recover, then do it again.”
“So that will be Cycle One?”
“Correct. We’ll do three cycles—twenty-seven days in total. During the week we meet every morning with the rest of the oncology team and go through all your questions. Since it’s a weekend you only get me. Any questions?”
Mom pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket on which she’d made a list. I can’t say I remember what any of them were but Dr. Parker sat patiently beside her and answered them all.
Sammy and I were busy inspecting our new prizes. We didn’t know who the London Hurricanes were but it didn’t matter, a new baseball was a new baseball and we were both pretty excited.
Dr. Parker was still talking with Mom when Sammy’s nurse came back in with an IV bag in hand. She hesitated when she saw Dr. Parker but he waved her in.
“How are you feeling today, Sammy?” she asked.
He shrugged. He was too interested in the ball to care so she went about doing her usual routine. She hung another bag on the IV pole—this one an orangey colour—then pushed a few buttons on the box that was attached lower down on the pole. “Okay, I’ll be back to check on you periodically. If you need any help getting up to the loo, just push the call button on the side of your bed.”
As Dr. Parker started to leave he turned one last time to Sammy and me. “Don’t forget to go to Bingo night tonight—six pm in the games room. It’s a favourite of the kids around here. Great prizes.”
I nodded. I’d already intended to go after Oliver had mentioned it. I just hoped Sammy would be able to go too.
CHAPTER 24
SAMMY’S RETCHING STARTED SOONER THAT DAY. IT WAS LIKE A horrible metronome keeping track of the time. Minute, retch, minute, retch, minute until nothing more came out—just gags and groans and gargles.
When Dad showed up it was almost noon and Mom looked cross. “What took you so long getting here?”
The whites of his eyes were a bright red and for the first time in a while he hadn’t shaved. Black bristle daubed with white covered his face. “Sorry,” he said, then he sat on the end of Sammy’s bed. “How ya’ feeling, sport?”
Sammy answered with a heave.
I spent Day Two the same way I spent Day One—bored. Sammy rotated between heaving and sleeping while I watched TV or tried to get him to play Connect Four. I even offered to read him more of The Secret Garden but he said no, and since I wasn’t really interested in the book either, I put it aside.
By mid afternoon Mom had softened a little toward Dad and they sat on their bed reading. Mom continuing her book on cancer, Dad rotating between different magazines from the library.
I spent a few hours playing video games in the games room, secretly hoping Oliver would show up but he never did. When I couldn’t look at the words Game Over another time I returned to my cot and argued with the clock to hurry up. It was stubborn. The minute hand never slowed or sped up, it just trucked along at the same horribly slow pace.
“It’s almost six o’clock,” I announced at five forty-five. “You ready for Bingo night?”
Mom set down her book and looked at the clock. “I don’t think Sammy feels up for Bingo night. He’s had a rough day.”
“I’m okay,” Sammy lied as he suppressed another gag. “I feel fine.”
Mom looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”
“Sure as sure,” I said, answering for Sammy as I hopped out of my cot.
Sammy was less enthusiastic in his dismount but climbed from bed all the same. His hospital gown had come undone and Mom took a few minutes tying it back up. Outside the room I could already see a slow stream of children and parents moving toward the games room.
Dr. Parker was right. Bingo night was a floor favourite. It was run by a group of volunteers that looked like they were probably in high school wearing red vests with embroidered teddy bears on the front. The head of the volunteers was a girl named Marribeth; she had crooked teeth and a raspy voice. “You know the routine, everyone grab a card, a dabber and have a seat,” she said smiling, only her croaky voice made her sound grumpy.
We sat at a table near the back and watched as more and more children entered.
“Cal,” Sammy said, pulling on my sleeve as he watched a mother walk in with a little boy not much bigger than he was. “Why do they all look so weird?”
The boy looked no different than the rest of the kids on the floor—bald and skinny as a toothpick. “They have cancer,” I said, leaning in close so no one would hear me.
“But why don’t they have hair? I have cancer and I have hair.”
Sammy looked genuinely frightened.
“I think that’s from the medicine,” I said.
“Will I lose my hair?” he asked, reaching up and touching his head as if to check that it was still there.
I wished Mom would stop talking to the lady at the table next to ours so she could rescue me from the conversation. I didn’t want to lie but I didn’t want Sammy to start crying either.
Thankfully, Oliver walked in at that moment, followed by his mother pushing his IV pole. She was still wearing the same polka dot outfit from the day before—or maybe she had a few of the same outfits. He walked straight up to our table. “You ready to win some prizes?” he asked, taking the empty seat on the other side of me. He looked over at Sammy and smiled.
“You’re Sammy right? I’m Oliver.”
Sammy nodded back but looked intimidated. He’d never been a shy kid before he’d gotten sick but something had changed in him since coming to the hospital. He wasn’t the boisterous little brother who talked incessantly even when I wanted him to be quiet. He’d become a shy little kid who hardly talked when the nurses came in the room and never had questions despite people constantly asking him over and over again if he did. I’d thought initially it was because he was too weak but looking at Oliver, who was twice as frail as Sammy, I realized it must have been something different. In fact, looking around the room, all the kids looked frailer than Sammy—the room was full of gaunt, skeleton-like frames attached to tubes and IV poles.
Oliver must have noticed me staring around the room because he leaned in close, careful to speak quietly enough so that our moms couldn’t hear.
“You looking at the little girl with Down Syndrome?” he asked.
I didn’t know what Down Syndrome was but I had been staring at a little girl two tables over with small, oval shaped eyes and a tongue that didn’t seem to fit in her mouth. She was already dabbing away at her Bingo card despite her mother trying to explain that she had to wait. It didn’t seem to matter to her how the game was played—she was content just dabbing.
“Her name’s Gracie. She’s three years old and has ALL.”
“ALL?” I asked.
“The nicer cousin of your brother’s AML. 95% cure rate—the best odds of any cancer.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking this through in my head. Why couldn’t Sammy have had that cancer? “And what about that girl in the wheelchair?” I said, pointing at another girl sitting across the room with a disinterested look on her face. She was the oldest in the room—well into her teens—and it seemed like she’d been dragged to Bingo night rather than come willingly. Like everyone else, she was bald and skinny with prominent bones sticking out of her cheeks and below her neck. Unlike the rest, she wore regular clothes instead of a faded blue hospital gown. I imagined she would have been pretty before she’d gotten sick.
“Jessica Walter, seventeen years old, osteosarcoma,” Oliver said, without a hint of hesitation pronouncing the last word. “She used to be a big-time ballet dancer before she had her leg amputated.”
“Amputated?” I said, lifting my bum off the seat a bit so I could get a better look. Sure enough, just like Oliver had said, she had one leg on the footrest of her wheelchair and where the other one should have been there was nothing.
“Yep, amputated. One day she came home from dance with a pain in her thigh but her mother told her it was a muscle cramp. So she went for massage therapy and saw a chiropractor and all the while kept dancing because that’s what her mother wanted her to do. She told me that she never even liked to dance, she just kept doing it because she couldn’t tell her mom she hated it.
“Well, finally, the pain got so bad she had to pull out of some big dance competition and her mom took her to the doctor. The X-ray showed that the cancer had literally eaten away most of her leg bone.” Oliver made a horrendous chomping noise for effect. “Next thing, her leg was gone, she was getting chemotherapy and now has a ten percent chance of still being alive in five years.”
I noticed the girl had a woman sitting next to her—most of the kids had their moms with them—and I couldn’t help but feel like her mom had a remorseful look on her face. Probably it was just Oliver’s story affecting me, but still, the distance between the daughter and mother was perceivable from across the room.
Bingo night was filling up quickly and there were only a few spots left at the tables. At the front, the volunteers looked to be getting ready to start but held off as the last few stragglers wandered in.
The last group was a man followed by a woman with a beautiful long dress. They had brown skin and the lady had one of those funny red dots between her eyes. Behind them came two boys holding hands. The older boy was guiding the smaller one into the room and it was obvious who the sick one was—the smaller boy had a shuffled gait and a yellow tube running from his face into his nose. They were both smiling and when they sat down at a table the older boy helped the younger one with his Bingo dabber. They reminded me of Sammy and me when we were younger.
Once again, Oliver followed my eyes across the room. “Hassan and his twin brother, Amir,” Oliver said. “Hassan has metastatic neuroblastoma. At most, he’ll live a few more months.”
“Twins?” I replied.
Oliver nodded. “Proof that cancer kids don’t grow like normal kids. Look at me, I’m sixteen and I look like I’m thirteen,” Oliver said.
I was shocked but pretended not to be. I’d definitely thought he was twelve or thirteen.
While we sat and waited for the game to start Oliver continued to list off the various diagnoses around the room as if he were reading a shopping list. He seemed to know everything about cancer and everyone with cancer. I guess when you’ve lived in a hospital for as long as he had, you just sort of picked things up.
The game finally started and Marribeth croaked out number after number. The room hushed as everyone concentrated on their sheets to be sure they didn’t miss a possible dab but Oliver didn’t once look down at his Bingo card. As he continued talking I remembered back to his room full of toys and realized he’d been to more than a few Bingo nights. I guessed he no longer came for the prizes; it was more for the company. And I was quite happy to have the company too. Not because I lacked people to talk to, but I lacked knowledge. From Oliver I would get the answers to all the questions Sammy had. It would let me be what my brother expected—a guide.
“Bingo!” the first winner shouted. She was a little girl sitting sandwiched between her mother and father at the same table as the girl in the wheelchair. ALL, I recalled Oliver saying, she would probably be fine. Her face had instantaneously gone from a concentrated gloom to a full-faced smile. Even the wheelchair girl next to her was smiling.
Marribeth walked over and checked her card and after it was verified, the girl walked to the front of the room where a huge caravan covered with an assortment of plastic-wrapped toys and plush stuffed animals sat. She chose a green frog stuffy and hugged it close to her chest as she walked back to her mom and dad.
After that the atmosphere in the room changed. Anticipation, a low din of excitement, smiles and eager eyes—even Sammy looked a lot happier once he realized that there were tangible goods to be won.
Three Bingos later and it was my turn. I practically leapt from my chair as I screamed the word, “Bingo!” After Marribeth had agreed it was true, I raced to the toy caravan and began looking over all the goods. After a short while I settled on a Lego airplane that looked awesome but I would later learn was
nearly impossible to put together.
As I walked back to the table I saw Sammy beaming with excitement for me. My heart sank a little. Sammy still hadn’t won. Sammy and his darn luck.
With each passing Bingo it became more and more apparent that Sammy wouldn’t win. And then Marribeth announced that it would be the last game and one of the tiny kids who couldn’t even play but whose parents played for him won. They carried the kid up to the cart and he grabbed the nearest stuffy because it was soft, not because he understood what it was. As they walked back toward their table the kid dropped the stuffy and probably wouldn’t have noticed if they’d never picked it back up.
I felt sad for Sammy. More so, I felt angry with myself. I should have told him he could go up and choose something instead of taking the Lego airplane. I couldn’t bear to look at him despite the fact that he was still smiling. My selfishness had reared up again and I hated it. I felt as if every person in the room were looking at me. “That’s the boy who didn’t let his brother get anything,” they must be thinking. “And he’s not even sick.”
“Okay, that’s the end of Bingo night,” Marribeth croaked and I thought I saw Sammy sink a little in his chair. “Anyone who didn’t win a prize may come up and choose one from the cart.”
Sammy jumped from his chair, forgetting about the IV attached to his arm, and started toward the front. Mom barely had time to catch him with the pole before he tore it out. When he returned he had plastic-wrapped walkie-talkies.
“Awesome!” I said, looking at them. “I didn’t see these!”
We had gotten a pair of walkie-talkies a few years back for Christmas but they were much smaller and barely worked from one end of the house to the other. These ones looked heavy duty. They were big and black with lots of buttons and knobs on them and the moment Sammy and I got back to the room we asked Dad to open them. While Sammy sat in his bed I proceeded to walk down the hospital corridor periodically asking, “Can you still hear me?”
In the end it turned out they worked further than the hospital would allow me to walk. Even at the cafeteria I could clearly make out what Sammy was saying, his crackly voice echoing, “robber that,” after everything I said because I couldn’t explain to him over the walkie-talkie that it was “roger” not “robber.”