The next day, little came in or out of the hospital, the streets silent with the congestion of abandoned cars. For hours, I listened to the whirring blades of a helicopter, presumably bringing patients to the hospital’s helipad just outside my view. Andrew slept, only waking when the nurse checked his ID before changing medications. Eventually, boredom and hunger forced me downstairs to the coffee shop, where I came upon two women negotiating the purchase of one-half of the last raisin bagel in the Starbucks goodie case. When handed their goods by a traumatized barista, they stalked off to their own perspective corners, hurling dagger-eyes at one another. It struck me: I was trapped in a giant stone fortress with an angry pack of ravenous parents, doctors, and nurses, desperate with stress and hunger, willing to fight for the last bit of dried up food. I backed out of the cafe and hightailed it back to my own room.
With the exception of these hunger-induced battles, the hospital was quiet. I quickly passed the darkened gift shop with a hastily scrawled note taped to the door saying it would reopen after the storm. Even the smiling hippo in the elevator seemed morose at the lack of visitors. The corridor outside our room was occupied only by the cleaning staff disinfecting an empty room. I lingered outside our door for a moment, secretly watching Andrew enjoy the snow falling outside our picture window. Stuffed Frightful was tucked under his arm, the Shadow action figure contorted in a sitting position above his head. He would be loath to admit he was enjoying himself, so I pretended not to notice as I entered the room.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Bored.”
He cut me off from any further conversation by becoming suddenly absorbed in a movie on the iPad, so I made myself comfortable on the bench and opened my book. Moments later, I heard a rustling, then the familiar sound of plugs being pulled from the wall and the squeak of wheels on the IV pole.
I kept my eyes glued to my book as Andrew crouched down on the bench next to me. “I think I would like one of those excavators for my birthday,” he stated plainly, as if we had been in the middle of a conversation.
I turned to stare at him. Are you kidding? I thought. With all of the lines and poles and beeping machines attached to him, he rarely got out of bed on his own. Now he was sitting next to me, telling me he wanted construction equipment for his birthday?
I watched Andrew stare at the massive earthmovers on the ground below. His face was gaunt, the palest white; his mouth a flaming red from the ulcers that cut through his flesh. But there was a new life in his eyes I hadn’t seen in months, an inner strength that astonished me.
“You want an excavator?” I asked. I recalled a time when he wanted to be one.
“I could help Dad clean the yard with it. You know, Mom, they look exactly like the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago. Same big jaw. Huge teeth.” There was a long pause. “Yep. I would like one of those.”
I stared at him incredulously. He gazed back, looking into my eyes, like a regular kid having an everyday chat. Stunned, I wondered how long had it been since I sat next to my son having a conversation? Six months? A year? I couldn’t remember.
A few days before the snow, the SCCA put him on a new regimen of drugs, preparing him for transplant. They had also installed a timed narcotic pump. Andrew had been dosing himself as needed and seemed much more able to cope with the pain. It was clearly working. Looking at him, I decided I liked narcotics. Very much.
I redirected my attention to the scene outside our window. A massive blue crane had been erected the day before the storm while the construction crew prepared stacks of materials to be assembled in the new building.
“What about this new crane?” I asked, hopeful for more conversation. “Wouldn’t it be cool to be up high in one of those and lift giant steel beams?”
Andrew looked at me like I was an idiot. “No. They don’t have teeth.”
Three days later, I was still abandoned at the hospital. I watched as cars and busses performed a complicated ballet on the hill of ice in front of the hospital and decided I wasn’t interested in joining that treacherous dance. On day four, however, after hours of gazing out the window at muddy streets slathered in ice, I sent out a desperate alarm on my blog: Stuck in hospital with hungry ravenous beasts. Wearing same underwear since Tuesday. No relief in sight.
Twenty minutes later, a woman I had never met walked into the room swinging a Walmart bag. “I heard you placed an order,” she said with a huge catlike grin. I sat there confused, not having a clue who she was.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My mom is a friend of your dad’s from Rotary. She read your blog and called me here at work. So…I went digging around our donation bin and found you the perfect outfit! The underwear is especially nice.”
She dumped the contents of her bag on my lap, revealing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, new socks, and two pairs of size extra-large granny panties covered in tiny pink flowers. I laughed out loud when she took them from the package and modeled them for me. They would cover me from butt to armpits, but I had to admit there was a great sense of appeal in having something clean to wear. I couldn’t wait to put them on.
I slept in my new sweat suit—a mass of grey fleecy cotton rolled up at the sleeves and ankles, wrapping me in a temporary state of bliss. The next morning, the icy temperatures broke, allowing forty-five degree rain to wash the last of the ice and snow away. When I opened the shades, I saw a message spray-painted onto one of the vertical steel beams directly outside our window. It read, “Hi Andrew!” in huge green letters.
“Look out the window!” I called to Andrew as soon as I registered the message was for us. He lazily opened one eye, then sat up in bed when he realized what it said.
“Is that for me?”
“Oh yeah it is! There are all sorts of people cheering for you. You’re famous!”
I marveled at the thought of someone rappelling off the side of the building to create spray paint graffiti for Andrew.
“I told you I wanted an excavator,” he said flatly.
I gave him the what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look I reserve just for him. “What does that have to do with the message?” I asked.
“You know. Construction people. They’re cool,” he said with an obvious air of disgust at my lack of understanding.
Grandma Connie called later that morning, having heard through the grapevine that one of our blog followers had connections at the hospital and, presumably, had made arrangements for the message to be written. I wondered if there was any connection with the woman who brought me the granny panties.
At noon, when Jon arrived to relieve me, my heart gave a leap at the sight of him. “I heard you’re famous, Andrew!” he said, walking in to the room.
“I’d like an excavator,” Andrew replied.
Jon grinned and grabbed me in a bear hug.
“Thank God you’re here,” I said, burying my head in his chest. He smelled like fresh laundry, lavender soap, deodorant, and hair gel. I could have stood there and smelled him forever.
Dr. Lewis poked his head into the room right as I was telling Jon how I wished I could relieve him of his clean clothes. “Andrew can leave the hospital today for a short ride in the car if you like.”
I glanced at Jon, thinking he had arranged it. He shook his head, looking as surprised as I felt. Turning back to Dr. Lewis, I noticed his eyes were smiling, lighting up his face in a way that made me ache for my grandfather Joe, someone I had loved dearly. It didn’t seem possible this was the same formal and humorless man who had lectured a room full of white coats and me earlier in the week. When he handed Jon a stack of papers, I noticed his fingers were long, smooth and graceful, those of a surgeon.
“Your son’s pain seems to be controlled right now. I thought it would be good for him to get some fresh air. Once you move upstairs this weekend, it will be a long time before he’s able to go outside again.”
“When can we go?” Jon asked.
“Any time. I signed a ninety-minute
pass, so let your nurse know when you’re ready.”
“Can I visit Frightful?” Andrew asked Jon, his voice small and hopeful.
Neither of us knew how to answer. There was no way to get home and back in time, let alone the agony of forcing him to stay in the car while he peered through the window at the home and friend he missed. It would have crushed him.
Andrew must have come to the same conclusion, because he said, “Maybe Stuffed Frightful could go for a ride?”
While I helped Jon place Andrew in our van, I wondered how long would it be before he could leave again. What would our lives look like? Would we just pack up, go home, and carry on with life? Or would we be too bruised from the trauma of the past few years to be able to move on? I couldn’t think too much about those questions; they would only lead to other questions I wasn’t willing to ask. So I forced myself to concentrate on today. Today Andrew had a sparkle in his eye, and our conversation had filled me with hope. Today Jon would take his son for a drive, and I would go home to our daughter, make dinner and pretend our life was normal.
Hannah was flopped on the couch with her cat sprawled across her legs when I walked in the door. The TV remote sat next to a box of Wheat Thins, a chemistry book, and a balled up pair of socks. Sitting next to her, I ran my fingers through her curly blond hair, remembering how I used to put it in pig tails when I sent her off to grade school.
“How was your day?” I asked.
She shrugged, keeping her eyes focused on the TV. I reached over to pet Charlie and quickly avoided being scratched. “Doesn’t look like Charlie had a good day,” I mumbled, wandering into the kitchen to thumb through a stack of mail. Peeking through my lashes, I noticed she had draped his obese body across her shoulders; a frown, or maybe a look of frustration, crossed her pretty face.
“Mom, my friends at school have been asking about my brother, and I don’t know what to say. Nobody even knows what a bone marrow transplant is.”
“People ask me that, too. Sometimes I don’t know how to explain it. They assume he has leukemia, and I have to explain: No, not cancer, but something that acts a little bit like it. Then I really confuse them,” I said.
Hannah joined me in the kitchen, pawing through an assortment of leftovers I put on the counter. After deciding against all of them, she went in search of instant oatmeal.
“Well, what am I supposed to say?” I heard from the back of the pantry.
I thought for a moment. “Maybe you could tell them that the cells in his body keep getting the wrong messages. His body thinks there is a threat, so it makes lots and lots of killer cells to go fight off the bad ones, but there are no bad ones to kill. The only way to fix it is to give him new healthy cells to replace the ones that are sick.”
She looked hard at me. “You know, you really talk like a mom—no high school kid will ever believe that. I get it though. I’ll think of something to say,” she said through a mouthful of sticky oatmeal. “I don’t think I’m hungry after all. Do you want it?”
Without waiting for an answer, she handed me the bowl and disappeared upstairs.
I knew she was scared. In three days, she would begin a series of injections that would force her body to produce an abundance of stem cells. She had been warned that it could be very painful, and she was a little tweaked. So was I, for that matter. I was putting both my kids in harm’s way, and I felt like I had no other choice. Hannah was in her room with her headphones on, so I went to my studio and called Julie. I couldn’t wait for her upcoming visit. I needed her.
“It’s me,” I said when I heard her pick up.
“How are you? You home?”
“Yes. There’s still a bunch of snow outside, but the roads are clear.”
I heard the faraway sound of a lawnmower puttering to life, the opening and closing of a door, and the faint bark of her dog in the yard.
“Hannah goes in for injections in three days!” I blurted into the phone.
“I know.”
I was becoming frantic at her lack of conversation. I wanted her to throw out some comforting words, convince me this was the answer to all our prayers, and assure me it would all be okay.
“Andrew moves to the Transplant Unit the same day, then the next day he begins chemo. She’s freaked out, Andrew’s resigned, and I think we are insane to try this!” I said.
I swallowed back tears and wiped my nose on my Walmart sweatshirt sleeve. A whiff of stale sweat reminded me that I really needed to take a shower. I turned to stare at the rain slapping against the studio window.
“Can I be honest with you?” Julie asked.
“Please,” I begged.
“Stop thinking. Stop questioning, and just be. He is having the transplant. You knew this was the right thing the moment Dr. Torgerson told you about it. Remember that.”
I gave her the silent treatment, the distance between Seattle and Phoenix yawning even further between us. Did she think it was that easy? She wasn’t putting her kids at risk. I imagined her biting her lower lip, a habit of hers when planning what to say next.
This time, she spoke more gently. “You and Jon are great parents. Be confident in the fact that you’re making the best decision you can at this moment. I don’t know why life has been so hard on your family, but you’ve made it this far. Trust that Andrew will make it safely to the other side…no matter what that looks like.”
I let out a deep breath, blowing crumpled bangs out of my eyes. She was right, and I knew it. My constant wrestling match over my feelings surrounding Andrew continually made me lose my way. I was living in a Ping-Pong game of emotions. Hold on. Let go. Hold on. Let go. One moment, I was willing to let go and accept any outcome; the next, I was scrabbling to retain my chokehold on control. If I had control, then the fear couldn’t overcome me. Or so I thought.
I fingered the yellow, pink, and orange sticky notes framing my computer screen, reminders of things I would never get to.
“Did I tell you about the dream I had about leaving Andrew with the wounded man?”
“You did. I remember you using the word surrender,” she said.
“Yes. I really felt like I had let go of my worry. I also felt an incredible peace about everything. I somehow knew the dream was a gift.” I started to peel the sticky notes off my computer, flicking them into the garbage. “But I feel like I lost it somewhere. The peace. You know what I mean?”
“I do. We’re human, and we keep forgetting that we don’t need to carry our fears around with us. We’re pretty dense sometimes,” she said.
I dumped a stack of junk mail in to the garbage and crushed it with my foot. “I’m afraid I won’t find it again,” I told her, feeling the sting of tears.
“Just keep letting go. If you pick up that beastly bag of worry again, set it down, and know it’s not yours to carry.” Julie made kissing noises on the other end of the line. “Only eight more days until I get there. Then I’m all yours, sista!”
“I can’t wait,” I said, feeling layers of tension leave my shoulders at her abrupt change in mood.
The line clicked off and my faraway friend was back in sunny Arizona. I turned to study the landscape outside my windows. Even in the heart of winter, Jon kept the yard immaculate. I knew he spent his precious few hours away from the hospital or work raking and cleaning up the dead leaves and branches in the yard. It was his walking meditation, his way of finding some sort of peace.
I heard one of the hens attempt to crow in the coop, followed by a jumble of friendly clucks and cackles as the others were roused. Maybe it was Frightful calling to me?
“Cher-cher. Cher-ROO!”
Trust me. All will be well.
I closed my eyes, picturing Frightful’s silky coat, her puff of black beard around her beak, and her eyes that seemed to know things about my son I couldn’t fathom.
I thanked the Divine for sending my son a feathery friend and for sending me courage through a friend who told me the truth.
Chapter 23
>
A feeling of relief followed me into the Transplant Unit three days later. The moment we walked through the doors, I knew there was no room for indecision. Remarkably, I had made peace with not only the transplant itself, but with the possible outcomes. What no one could prepare me for, however, was the journey between the first step and the last. That part, I was still clutching on to my desire for control. So every morning when I woke up, I had to let go all over again.
While we checked in at the front desk, a young patient came sliding around the corner. Amelia was wearing sparkly slippers, mismatched knee-high polka-dot socks, and a shiny bald head. She shimmered with energy. She could have been eight years old, or sixteen. I had no idea.
She immediately walked up to Andrew in his wheelchair and introduced her socks. “This one with the red dots is Carly and the one with the blue dots is Gertrude,” she informed him.
Andrew cranked his head around, eyes begging me for escape.
I grinned and whispered in his ear, “Be polite.”
He held up Stuffed Frightful for her to examine.
“Name?” she asked.
“Frightful. Except it’s not an actual real chicken.”
Amelia reached out a hand, glittery orange fingernails tapped at Frightful’s fuzzy bird head. “Nice to meet you, Frightful.”
The nurse showed us to our new corner room just as Amelia disappeared inside the room next door. I spotted a tired looking woman sitting outside her door, knitting.
“You must be Amelia’s mom,” I said, smiling my friendliest smile.
I needed allies and friends. We would be living in this place, Jon and I, which was both unreal, yet extraordinary. It was a place where children were bald and plastic lines emerged from pale creamy chests. A place where anything could happen, and usually did. We’d been in the hospital long enough to know that we were best to not try to align our survival stories or measure our pain against another’s. For some, God felt victorious over the situation, and for others God seemed to have abandoned them entirely. That is a dance that continues our whole lives long, I suppose.
The Chicken Who Saved Us Page 18