by Alex Lyttle
“Where are you guys going?” he asked.
“I was just going to show Aleta the games room,” I said, retracing my steps back into the room, feeling suddenly guilty.
“Oh.”
Sammy looked sad.
“We won’t go if you’re awake,” I said. “We can stay and read to you if you want?”
Sammy shook his head looking down at the bed. “No,” he said, “it’s fine. You guys like it better when I’m not around anyway.”
I saw Aleta’s expression and knew it was exactly how I looked. It was the look of someone who’d just been stabbed in the stomach.
“Why would you think that?” I said, faking confusion.
We had avoided Sammy for the whole summer. He wasn’t stupid. With Aleta back, he was worried it would happen again. If I was going to have Aleta to the hospital, I was going to have to offer Sammy some reassurance.
I sat down on the bed next to him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around much this summer. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hang out with you, it was just that, well, I was being selfish.”
Aleta stood next to me. “I’m sorry too, Sammy,” she said.
I looked at her and with a nod we made a tacit agreement. “We have somewhere we want to show you when you’re better,” I said.
Aleta smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Really? Where?” Sammy asked.
“It’s a secret spot. Across the fields, behind our house. It’s a long walk but it’s worth it. There’s a pond for swimming, a mud river for sliding and best of all, a view all the way to Lake Huron. You’ll love it.”
Sammy became more awake than I’d seen him in days.
“Can you tell me more?” he asked.
“Sure.”
We sat at the end of his bed describing at length the shady reading trees and the taste of the sun when it was starting to set. While I dramatically re-enacted swimming and sliding, Aleta added in the occasional detail—a colour, a smell, a sound. Together we recreated our summer. Only this time, we shared it with Sammy.
When he was just about asleep—mind rotating between our world and his—I offered him a plan. I grabbed the walkie-talkies from the bedside table and put one beside him. “When you wake up, if I’m not here, call me on this. I want to know whenever you’re awake so I can come back and be with you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sammy said with a smile.
We waited a few more minutes to be sure he was asleep before we left.
CHAPTER 31
REALLY, I HADN’T WANTED TO SHOW ALETA THE GAMES ROOM; I had wanted her to meet Oliver. I was happy to see he was sitting in his familiar spot by the TV when we entered. Only on that day, he wasn’t playing Mario, he was writing on a piece of yellow paper that he quickly crumpled up and put in his pocket when he saw us.
“Cal,” he said, “and this must be your sister.”
Aleta’s forehead crinkled and she looked at me with a look somewhere between surprised and comical.
“I’m kidding. I just like to make it awkward when I meet someone so they don’t focus on my bald head.”
I laughed when I saw how confused Aleta looked. “Aleta, meet Oliver. Sometimes I think all the medications he takes affect his brain.”
“They probably do,” Oliver said, reaching out his hand and shaking Aleta’s. “You guys are just in time. I was planning a field trip today.”
“A field trip?” Aleta asked.
“Follow me,” Oliver said, standing up.
I had no idea what Oliver was planning but I helped him get untangled so that he could make his way to the door. When he got to the exit he turned and put up his hand to stop us. He looked around the corner then said, “Psst, Jenny, come here.”
Moments later one of the nurses appeared. She looked suspiciously at Oliver.
“Yes, Oliver?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t mind letting me and a few friends out for a quick trip would you?”
The nurse looked really skeptical as she glanced over Oliver’s shoulder at Aleta and me.
“Hi, Cal,” she said. Then turning back to Oliver, she said, “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea today.”
“Ohhhh,” Oliver said, grabbing his side and hunching over. “The pain is too much. I don’t even know if I’ll make it to tomorrow. Ohhhhhh.”
Jenny rolled her eyes, turned around and looked back down the hall she had come. “Okay, just be quick,” she said.
Jenny swiped her name badge over a sensor on a door and we walked through to find ourselves in a concrete stairwell. The sound inside the stairwell echoed and the only light was from a few windows on each of the floors above.
“One of you is going to have to help me with my IV pole,” Oliver said, lifting the bottom of his hospital gown so that his bare legs showed beneath and started walking up the stairs. I followed behind, carefully bringing his IV pole so that I was never too far behind as to stretch the tubing and never too close as to bang his legs.
After the first flight of stairs Oliver stopped and rested against the railing.
“Phew, and I thought dying was hard work,” he said, breathing heavily between words.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Oliver turned and started up the next flight. “To the top, my friend—to the top.”
It took us a while getting to the top as we had to stop longer and longer with each flight and I could sense Aleta feeling more and more worried as we went. Oliver looked ready to pass out on more than one occasion and I was beginning to realize that after this expedition, Aleta would likely never return to the hospital with me. I thought about turning around but Oliver was too determined.
At the top was a large door and Oliver grabbed a thin piece of metal off the nearby windowsill and jammed it into the frame. He was able to pry the door enough to get his fingers in, then, pushing it the rest of the way open, he said, “Welcome to my favourite spot in the whole world.” Then he started to laugh. “That’s a lie—but it is the nicest spot in this hospital.”
A wave of cool air rushed in at us and the brightness from outside made me squint after spending the last twenty minutes walking up the dimly lit stairwell. The rooftop was flat and covered with pebbles and tar. We followed Oliver as he walked toward the far edge of the roof where he sat down with his legs dangling over the ledge.
“Grab a seat,” he said, patting beside him.
I was about to say that we were fine standing when Aleta hopped up on the ledge and sat next to him. I warily joined so that the three of us were now high above the hospital overlooking the ground below. There was a parking lot directly beneath us and on the other side was a road that looped around the hospital. Opposite the road was a large, grassy park. The grass was dead and dull but the colour of the trees made up for it. A winding dirt path cut through the park, passing an old-looking playground before entering a wooded area beyond. From where we sat we could see the tops of those trees spread out like a giant quilt of oranges and yellows and greens and golds.
“Not a bad spot, huh?” Oliver said.
It wasn’t quite the view from our Secret Spot, there were no rolling hills or sparkling lake in the distance, but I had to admit, it was pretty.
“It’s lovely,” Aleta said.
The sun was already starting its descent toward the horizon behind us and it cast a long shadow of three small figures atop the hospital on the parking lot below.
“I used to come up here a lot,” Oliver mused. “Back when I used to dream of getting out. I thought that on a really clear day I might see all the way home.” He pointed off in the distance to a forest on the horizon. “My colony is somewhere behind those trees.”
“What do you mean when you ‘used to’ dream?” I asked. “What about your miracle?”
Oliver laughed. “Between you and me, I stopped waiting for a miracle a long time ago.”
We sat in silence watching a man and a little girl walking hand-in-hand in the park while a white dog trotted beside
them. They were heading to the playground.
Far in the distance where the horizon met the blue sky it created a sense of infinity—everything carrying on and on and on. The world was beautiful—no doubt—and I thought about bringing Sammy up to see it.
“Do you think there really is a heaven?” I asked, looking up at the sky.
Oliver shrugged and shifted a little on the edge of the roof. “Between you and me, I hope not.”
Aleta and I laughed awkwardly.
I thought he must have been joking. Of course he was joking. But when I turned to face him there wasn’t the slightest hint of a smile. He was just staring into the distance with a far-off look in his eyes.
“You can’t be serious?” I said, repeating my thoughts out loud.
He turned and looked at me. “Why not?”
I glanced past Oliver at Aleta. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be having in front of her. Not after what I’d just learned earlier.
“Because, if there’s no heaven then where do we go after we die?”
“We get eaten by worms.”
I rolled my eyes—he was definitely joking.
“No, I’m serious. What’s so bad about that? What’s so bad about getting eaten by worms then being recycled into the rest of the earth? Maybe my body will become part of those maple trees down there and another part will become those clouds and another part will lay hidden underground until spring when I pop out as a flower that everyone stops to look at. Or maybe I’d just be a dandelion, or a drop of water in the ocean, or a spot of dirt on someone’s shoe, but you know what, I’m fine with that. I’ve been actively dying for a long time and the closer I get, the more I realize that this place isn’t so bad—I’m fine staying.”
“So then you don’t believe in God?” Aleta asked.
Oliver’s eyes had the same glassy look he’d had when I’d seen him with his sister. “Which god? I’ve been away from the colony long enough to know that there are supposedly lots of gods out there. Everyone in this hospital believes something different so why can’t I? If I believed my colony’s religion, then I’d be saying billions of other people were wrong. And if I believed someone else’s, the same thing goes. So I’ve come up with my own idea for an after-life and that’s just worms.”
I was shocked. I’d never heard anyone say they didn’t believe in God. I’d just assumed the reverend and Mom and Dad and everyone else at church knew what they were talking about.
“So what about your family? Wouldn’t you miss them if you just became…dirt?” Aleta asked.
“No. They’ll be right there with me when they die. Maybe they’ll be a cloud next to my cloud and we’ll float over Africa and see the Sahara, or we’ll be swaying pines in a forest along a coast somewhere, or maybe one atom of me will get joined to one atom from each of them and we’ll become a drop of water in a river that rushes down a mountain only to get evaporated at the bottom and to do it all over again.”
The idea made me think about our Secret Spot and when I looked at Aleta I thought she must have been thinking the same thing because she wasn’t scowling or questioning Oliver’s crazy idea but actually nodding with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Yeah, that sounds nice,” she said.
“I’m just not convinced that there’s some unfathomably wonderful place up there that’s so much better than here,” Oliver continued. “I like it here. I like everything about here. I just don’t like everything about my health here. But if I were just atoms there would be no more cancer, no more pain, no more dying, just me travelling the world, changing from one form to another, seeing everything I never got to see because I haven’t left this hospital in 675 days.”
We sat in silence watching our shadows slowly creep across the road, listening to the wind and thinking about Oliver’s version of heaven, when we were pulled from our thoughts by the staticy voice of Sammy on the walkie-talkie.
“Cal? Cal, are you there?” it crackled.
I picked up my walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Roger that. I’m here. I’ll come down right away.”
“Okay,” he said. Then after a few seconds, “Oh, I meant robber that.”
I stood up carefully and hopped off the ledge.
“I have to head back downstairs. You coming?”
Aleta stood up and followed but Oliver didn’t.
“I’m going to stay out a little longer,” Oliver said. “Feel free to tell Jenny I fell off the edge.”
I laughed. “We won’t.”
“Bye, Oliver,” Aleta said. “It was nice to meet you.”
“And, you,” Oliver said, putting his hand to his head and pretending to tip an invisible hat.
That night when we dropped Aleta off at her house she told me she would come back. We hugged outside the car but it was awkward and short—Dad was sitting in the car watching. Still, it felt nice to have Aleta back. It felt like things were finally looking up.
CHAPTER 32
THE LAST WEEK BEFORE DAY 27 SEEMED TO CRAWL BY. IT WAS like waiting for a birthday or Christmas—the more I thought about it, the longer it took.
In truth, it wasn’t so much that I wanted Day 27 to come as I needed Day 27 to come. Sure, I wanted answers. I wanted to know that Sammy’s cancer was better and that soon he could come home, but more so, my parents needed to know.
The tension between Mom and Dad had continued to climb the closer Day 27 got. It got to the point that they couldn’t even be in the same room. When Dad came, Mom made an excuse to leave—a fundraiser meeting, a coffee, a walk—something to get out. Then when Dad went home Mom returned and sat next to Sammy on the bed, running her fingers across his head, just like she used to when he had hair, reading another book about cancer. She must have read every book on cancer possible. Which meant that she knew just about everything there was to know about Sammy’s cancer. It also meant she understood when the doctors jabbered on in the mornings about platelets and red blood cells and medicines with fancy names. She knew what Sammy needed when he was throwing up or had a tummy ache or couldn’t sleep. She knew tons, which meant she could answer my questions. Well, most of them.
“Mom, how long will Sammy have to stay in the hospital?” I asked one evening while I ate my cafeteria dinner on the cot.
“That depends, honey,” she said, not looking up from her book.
Sammy was asleep next to her so I thought it was an okay time to ask about his cancer.
“Depends on what?” I asked.
“Well, it depends on how the cancer responds to the chemotherapy.”
I knew that already. I knew we were waiting for the answer from the bone needle, but I wanted to know how long after the bone needle.
“No, I mean, like, if Sammy’s bones don’t have any more cancer, how long after that? Do we get to go home right away?”
Mom put her book down on her knee and looked at me. “No, it doesn’t work like that. These first twenty-seven days are called induction therapy,”—I repeated the word induction in my head—“after that Sammy will need a few more months of chemotherapy to be sure it doesn’t come back.”
“How many more months?”
“Two, maybe three. I’m not sure exactly.”
“So, no matter what, he’ll still be here at least another two or three months,” I whined.
“No, he could probably come home for those two or three months. He would only have to come back once a week for the chemotherapy. It’s only during the induction therapy that he has to stay in the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because the chemotherapy they use during the induction therapy is very strong. His body is so wiped out that if he went home he’d be at risk for picking up an infection.”
“Like the flu?”
“Yes, like the flu.”
“So that’s why we can’t come to the hospital if we have a cold or something?”
Mom nodded.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Jenny walk into th
e room. She began adjusting something on Sammy’s IV pump. The nurses were always coming in and out.
“And what happens if his bone needle shows that the chemotherapy didn’t work?”
Mom’s face looked a little stern. “Let’s not worry about that.”
“But would he have to stay in the hospital for six hundred days?”
“Six hundred days?” Mom said. “Why would you think that?”
“Because the chemotherapy didn’t work for Oliver and he’s been here for 670-something days.”
“Oh,” Mom said. She looked like she was thinking but I guess she couldn’t think of anything to say because we just sat looking at each other.
Finally, Jenny spoke from where she was still adjusting the IV pump. “You don’t have to worry about Sammy being here as long as Oliver. Oliver could have left here a long time ago if he wanted.”
Jenny turned and looked at the door as if she was nervous about what she’d just said. Oliver’s room was right next door, I guess she was worried he might have heard.
“Oliver isn’t here because he wants to be,” I said a little angrily. “Oliver can’t eat without his IV or else he throws up. He’s here because he needs the medicine.”
Jenny lifted one eyebrow. “Really?” she asked, still going about fixing Sammy’s tubing. “Have you ever seen Oliver gag or throw up?”
I was about to respond but had to stop and think. I scanned my memories for a time I’d seen Oliver throwing up. I hadn’t. I hadn’t even seen him look nauseous before, and I knew what that looked like because Sammy was always nauseous.
“Then why is he still here?” I asked.
Jenny shrugged. “I don’t know. Only Oliver does. Anyway, I really shouldn’t be telling you all of this. I just didn’t want you worrying that Sammy would be here that long. Oliver is a bit of an anomaly. Not that we mind, we love having him here.”
The next day at school I told Aleta about what Jenny had told me. We tried to figure out why anyone would want to stay that long in the hospital. It didn’t make sense. Especially after everything Oliver had told us about wanting to see the world. You’d think if that were true he would be itching to get out. I wanted to ask him but Jenny had made me promise not to say anything.